First, learn to pray.
Love must be primary in prayer
and God must be loved for God’s own Self.
We need to form a ‘cloud of forgetting’
between us and all things
to block distractions.
The word ‘penance’
has ironically been corrupted
by moralistic and individualistic
meanings – the original meaning was
‘turning away from the world-trance’
so you could see clearly.
All Seers engaged in this life
of penance – clear-seeing.
John of the Cross advocated
carrying in your heart
an image of Christ
crucified
clearing away the confusion
and fog of living.
Then you can see that
Planet Earth is in the middle
of a Calvary-disintegration
thousands of species extinguished
our lungs, the rainforests
destroyed by the pandemic
of greed and nuclear weapons
threatening annihilation of everything.
Rather than seeing these facts
we anaesthetize the pain
with addiction:
to computer games, binge-watching, porn.
If there are no names already written in Heaven
no grace, then I have to make my name everyday
“Its all about the money”
and I have to out-compete the seven billion
other dogs gobbling up other dogs.
And so, I anaesthetize, I enter the world- trance.
What is needed is
a return to Nature.
Identifying my self with the universe
is not romanticism or sentimental
it is essential
to Christian mysticism
the salvation of the planet
you cannot discover your True Self
without discovering you are One
with Nature.
But scientists don’t want mysticism –
symbols and emotion bother them because
– although they are a fact
with undeniably immense impact –
they cannot be precisely
defined or measured.
New religions are powerless
unless full of the sacred life-force of Eros
which creates powerful
visions – Jesus’ preaching
is full of Eros –
both exciting and disturbing.
The first letter to Timothy
witnesses the Church’s transition
from a charismatic, democratic movement
into an institution
ruled by a hierarchy.
To get back to the Original Church
we must return to mysticism:
loving God, others, and our True Self
embedded in Nature.
We need to return to nature-mysticism
to grace, names already written in Nature
to see clearly
God in all things
and save our Mother
Earth.
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 