Many of us think today that Christian theology has to become a mystical theology once again. – Bede Griffiths

The Christian of the future will be a mystic ― or will not exist. – Karl Rahner

Christian Fundamentalism

What started out as a small project quickly evolved into what feels like my life’s work. Growing up in a Christian fundamentalist environment, I understand how hard it can be to feel like you can’t grow spiritually without the tentacles of fundamentalism bringing you down, trigger after trigger.

As a Spiritual Director I work with people like me who are “recovering” from Christian fundamentalism. Fundamentalism has its role in faith development (more about that here) and it is not my intention to put down anyone for their beliefs or faith style. However, there is more to Christianity.

A large part of my own healing process was unlearning. As I uncovered my own wisdom, I also discovered the beautiful writings and teachings from some of the earliest Christians, the mystics.

So, I offer this as a gift to anyone who is interested in deepening their spirituality but continues to trip over their fundamentalist baggage. I’d like to share with you that the Christian tradition is actually quite beautiful. By no means perfect, my favorite aspect of Christianity is its mystical tradition. I think that here in the mystical tradition is where Christianity needs to re-root itself.

This is intended to be a resource. Which means that I will update this page as I continue to learn. Please feel welcome to provide feedback in the form of resonance or recommended edits.

Enjoy!

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Unlearning with Christian Mysticism

Christian Fundamentalism	Christian Mysticism
Frightened into God	Loved into God
God is outside the self	God is inside and outside of Self
Humanity and divinity are at odds	Humanity and divinity are integrated
Only a select few are “saved”	The divine mystery is in the hearts of all beings
There can be only one correct religion	The divine mystery is present in all religion
Exclusive	Inclusive
Conversion is about knowing	Conversion is about not knowing
Performance	Silence
Doing	Being
Spiritual practice is an obligation	Spiritual practice is an invitation
Sin is a transgression	Sin is a separation from love
The body (flesh) is negative	The body is sacred
Sexual energy is suppressed	Sexual energy is surrendered
Darkness is ignored / condemned	Darkness is integrated
Kingdom of Heaven is in the sky	Kingdom of Heaven is within

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Receipts

Loved into God

I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For Love…. So I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning.
Julian of Norwich

The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to love.
Teresa of Ávila

There is nothing better or more necessary than love.
John of the Cross

My sole occupation is love.
John of the Cross

God loves them by becoming them, not excluding them.
Richard Rohr

If you are frightened into God, it is never the true God that you meet. If you are loved into God, you meet a God worthy of both Jesus and Christ. How you get there is where you arrive.
Richard Rohr

God’s grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend him through love. He is incomprehensible to the intellect. Even angels know him by loving him. Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p14)

Look. Every rational creature, every person, and every angel has two main strengths: the power to know and the power to love. God made both of these, but he’s not knowable through the first one. To the power of love, however, he is entirely known, because a loving soul is open to receive God’s abundance. Each person loves uniquely, and God’s limitlessness can fill all angels and all souls that will ever exist. His very nature makes love endless and miraculous. God will never stop loving us.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p14)

Never stop loving, no matter what comes your way.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p22)

God’s pedagogy is always personal. He wants only the best for you. If you are his student and he is your teacher, then you’re also his friend. He knows the contour of your abilities and can teach you about love. Pay attention, and his grace will bind your soul to him in the joyful union on earth as best as you can.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p100-101)

In my vision I saw something small. No bigger than a hazelnut, it lay in the palm of my hand, round as a ball. Looking at it with the eye of my understanding, I wondered. “What is that?” I was given to understand it is everything in creation. That this minute thing lasted at all amazed me. It was so tiny, it looked as if it would suddenly vanish into nothing. Concerning this tiny, hazelnut-sized cosmos, I received this answer in my soul. “It lasts and always will because God loves it.” I saw then that everything’s alive through God’s love.
Julian of Norwich

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God is Inside and Outside of Self

One knows God in oneself, and knows oneself in God.
Teresa of Avila

We have found Him, He has found us. We are in Him, He is in us. There is nothing further to look for, except for the deepening of this life we already possess. Be content.
Thomas Merton

Since with all my soul I behold the face of my beloved, therefore all the beauty of his form is seen in me.
Gregory of Nyssa

There are simple people who imagine they are going to see God as if He were standing here and they there. This is not true. God and I are one.
Meister Eckhart

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.
Meister Eckhart

So many droplets in the sea, in bread so many grains; So too of our multiplicity, nothing but God remains.
Angelus Silesius

Truly speaking there is no outside and no inside, no without and no within, in the mystery of God and in the divine Presence. Yet the mind is so much distracted through the senses that it needs first of all to be withdrawn from external things. Hence the need of recollecting and gathering towards their centre all thoughts and all desires. Then, after we have been inwardly fully illumined by the glory of the Presence, we realize that there are no limits to that glory, no limits to that Presence. In the light of the Splendour our very I, however personal it may be, seems no longer to know any boundary; it encompasses, as it were, everything on earth, attains to everything in creation, even to the core of every being, even to the centre of each heart, of each soul of man, though of course without losing its own individuality. Nothing, then, is foreign or strange to it in creation, for nothing is strange or foreign to God, and in God himself we have at long last found our home, the bosom of our Father.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p23)

What we have to discover is what lies beyond the mind. It is the hidden mystery, from which the mind and the whole creation comes. You look out on the world around you and you find the hidden mystery of [God]. You look into your self, your body and your mind, and within the depths of your being, beyond your mind, you find this hidden mystery of the Spirit… In Christian terms you have discovered yourself in God. My true Self is my self in God and God in me. I am not really my Self until I have discovered this hidden centre of my being.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p60)

The divine life is also the pervading Presence of the Holy Spirit in everything. The Holy Spirit is in us, as he is in God, the mystery of unity, of non-duality. He is in us, welling up from the Father and dwelling in us, in the innermost recesses of our hearts, “more intimate to us even than we are intimate to ourselves” (St Augustine), and making us inwardly presence also to each other, in the same way as the Son and the Father really abide in each other.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p8)

Praying is simply believing that we are living in the mystery of God, that we are encompassed by that mystery, that we are really plunged into and immersed in it – “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) – that the mystery of God in its fullness is both inside and outside us, within and without, like the air which surrounds us and penetrates into the tiniest hollows of our lungs.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p7)

It is not the mind which grasps the Self, it is the Self which grasps the mind.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p103-104)

Before transformation, you pray to God. After transformation you pray through God, as official Christian prayers always say: “Through Christ our Lord. Amen!”
Richard Rohr

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Humanity and Divinity are Integrated

Divinity is aimed at humanity.
Hildegard of Bingen

One who knows oneself, knows God: and one who knows God is worthy to worship Him as is right. Therefore, my beloveds in the Lord, know yourselves.
Anthony the Great

God revealed the Christ [in Jesus] so that humanity could never be separated from the pattern that he portrayed.
Gregory Palamas

Holy means fully human. It means compassionate, gentle, forgiving, understanding, and, above all, filled with joy. Joy flows from holiness rooted in the act that we have discovered ourselves.
John Main

God made all beings to this end, to [enjoy the same union] of humanity and divinity that was united in Christ.
Maximus the Confessor

The transformation of our human nature, its deification and transfiguration—were these not accomplished in Christ from the start, from the moment in which He assumed our nature?
Gregory Palamas

We are all meant to be mothers of God.
Meister Eckhart

Jesus was meant to be the guarantee that divinity can indeed reside within humanity, which is always our great doubt and denial.
Richard Rohr

Meditation should be that meeting point where the human spirit touches and opens itself to the Holy Spirit.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation in Christ p36)

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.
Meister Eckhart

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The Divine Mystery is in the Hearts of All Beings

There is no such thing as individual salvation. We are saved as members of a Body, of an organic whole, of man and the universe.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p56)

God is equally near in all creatures.
Meister Eckhart

In the ocean is all ocean, even the smallest droplet; Say, which holy soul in God not God will be?
Angelus Silesius

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature — even a caterpillar — I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature.
Meister Eckhart

Individual identity is not lost when we know ourselves but it is transcended. We are freed of its inherent illusions of self-sufficiency and self-centeredness. This individuality is lost by letting go of it. The true Self then becomes clear and, from the ego’s point of view initially, is seen as a stranger. There are not many individual enlightenments as the ego may imagine but the one great enlightenment of the Self in which all participate.
Laurence Freeman

Let us place our first step in the ascent at the bottom, presenting to ourselves the whole material world as a mirror, through which we may pass over to God, the Supreme Craftsman…The Creator’s supreme power, wisdom and benevolence shine forth in created things.
Bonaventure

The idea is that God is dancing in the heart of creation and in every human heart. We must find the Lord who is dancing in our hearts; then we will see the Lord dancing in all of creation.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p41)

Every creature is a capacity for God, a capacity which God alone can fulfill.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p43)

The Spirit is present in the whole creation, preparing for the final gathering up of all into Christ, the Son. He is present in the core of each being, in the heart of each man, as a ceaseless call and longing, as an unquenchable thirst for this unity and koinonia (greek word meaning communion, fellowship, communication, “being/having together”).
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p8)

The Lord reveals Himself in the whole creation and He reveals Himself in the human heart. It can be called panentheism. God is in everything. I like to recall how St Thomas Aquinas asked, “In what way is God in the creation?” and he answered, “First of all God is in the whole creation by His power, because He sustains everything by His power.”.. God is in everything by His Presence. God is present in everything. And furthermore He is not present as it were as a part of Himself, because there are no parts of God. He is present in His essence.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p43)

God has no form. He is beyond every form. Precisely for that reason he can reveal and manifest himself under any form. Nothing “comprehends” him, but he shines through everything and makes himself known in everything. No form may be considered unworthy to be his sign, for there is really no form at all which could worthily signify him.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p15)

Each man who comes to me on the path of my life is a manifestation of God to me. That is because that man is – as God is – and depends on, and shares in, God’s being; because that man is aware of himself – as God is aware of himself – and depends on and shares in the divine awareness and knowledge.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p15)

The life of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of communion, of “encounter”, of coming together, of being face to face in the unity of the Holy Spirit. God is everywhere, God alone is everywhere both hidden and unveiled in his manifestation: it is God who gives, God who receives, God who approaches, God who is approached, God who loves, God who is loved.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p16)

Of course to know the Self is to know man and nature, but it is to know them not dispersed in space and time and cut off from reality, but in their integrity and unity as an organic whole, every part related to every other, every point reflecting the whole.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p50)

I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows. I gleam in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze, as with invisible life that contains everything, I awaken everything to life. I am the breeze that nurtures all things green. I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
Hildegard of Bingen

Everything belongs and you are a part of it. All things in God and God in all things. The outer world is a sacrament of God.
Richard Rohr

Truly there is nothing in this universe, or indeed in the whole creation, which is not in itself a revelation, a manifestation of God to man.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p11)

The mystery within one man’s heart – as has already been said – is the mystery within every man’s heart. No man is apart from others in the place in which God abides.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p31)

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The Divine Mystery is Present in Every Religion

Every religion, from the most primitive to the most advanced, is a pathway to this One. To realize the One above the dualities, to know the Self, is the goal of all religion.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p56)

All paths lead to God, for God is on them equally for the person who knows.
Meister Eckhart

Every truth without exception — and whoever may utter it — is from the Holy Spirit. The old pagan virtues were from God. Revelation has been made to many pagans.
Thomas Aquinas

God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.
Meister Eckhart

The true and essential work of all religion is to help us recognize and recover the divine image in everything. Our job is to mirror things correctly, deeply, and fully until all beings know who they are.
Richard Rohr

The goal of each religion is the same. It is the absolute, transcendent state, the one Reality, the eternal Truth, which cannot be expressed, cannot be conceived. This is the goal not only of all religion, but of all human existence.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p74)

Every religion goes beyond dualism through its mystical tradition. This is our calling and our hope. Meditation is the only way to go beyond dualism. As long as you think rationally you will have a dualistic attitude. But when you stop the mind, you discover the unifying principle beyond everything.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation p50)

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Inclusive

When is a man in mere understanding? I answer, “When a man sees one thing separated from another.” And when is a man above mere understanding? That I can tell you: “When a man sees All in all, then a man stands beyond mere understanding.”
Meister Eckhart

I welcome all the creatures of the world with grace.
Hildegard of Bingen

My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity.
Thomas Merton

Prayer is to see God in any man, or in any creature with which we come in contact.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p15)

When you have learned to see yourself in all beings, in all creation, in the earth, the trees, and the flowers, the birds and animals, in the streets and shops, and in every person, then you discover the Lord dancing in the world and in every human heart. The yogi sees all beings in himself and himself in the heart of all beings.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p102)

We can know no peace if we do not exercise gentleness. Peacemakers must be at peace within themselves.
John Main

The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else.
Richard Rohr

You can safely assume that you created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott

When you don’t recognize that the Christ Mystery is universal, that God is present in—and is saving—all of creation, you can choose what you respect and what you disrespect, what you love and what you hate.
Richard Rohr

Prayer is the smile, the look of the eyes which conveys to any other person the greetings of a heart, which tells them, unknown as they may be and met by chance in a public place or vehicle, that they are not really a stranger, but are recognized and loved as a sibling.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer 18)

She said, moreover, that if one would attain to purity of mind it was necessary to abstain altogether from any judgment on one’s neighbour and from all empty talk about his conduct. In creatures one should always seek only for the will of God. With great force she said: “For no reason whatever should one judge the actions of creatures or their motives. Even when we see that it is an actual sin, we ought not to pass judgment on it, but have holy and sincere compassion and offer it up to God, with humble and devout prayer.
Catherine of Siena, written by Tommaso di Petra

While engaged in this work, that nature contemplative has no special relationship with anyone in particular, whether family or stranger, friend or enemy, because everyone is family and no one is a stranger, and everyone is friend and no one is an enemy. The genuine lover of God takes this love even further. Those who cause contemplatives pain or stress are considered their very special friends, and contemplatives wish them every good thing, just as they do their closest friend.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p62)

My point is — don’t judge. No person on earth should be judged by another. Nobody can say whether what someone else does is “good” or “evil.” That said, yes, you can scrutinize a person’s actions, weigh them in your mind, and determine whether the deeds themselves are good or evil, but you cannot judge the person.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p71)

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Conversion is about Not Knowing

We can’t think our way to God. That’s why I’m willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. He can be loved, but not thought… Even meditating on God’s love must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p21)

Every concept grasped by the mind becomes an obstacle in the quest to those who search.
Gregory of Nyssa

Blessed is the one who has arrived at infinite ignorance.
Evagrius Ponticus

I pray God to rid me of God.
Meister Eckhart

Knowledge of God is a subject one can never fully master.
Henri Nouwen

When you are praying do not shape within yourself any image of the deity and do not let your mind be shaped by the impress of any form. Approach the immaterial in an immaterial manner. Prayer means the shedding of thought.
Evagrius Ponticus

Meditation takes us to that place beyond understanding where mystery is known and knows us.
John Main

We must remember that our experience of union with God, our feeling of His presence is altogether accidental and secondary. It is only a side effect of His actual presence in our souls, and gives no sure indication of that presence in any case. For God Himself is above all apprehension and ideas and sensations, however spiritual, that can ever be experienced by the spirit of man in this life.
Thomas Merton

God refuses to be known by the intellect. God only allows himself to be loved by the heart.
Richard Rohr

It is not by word or thought but by meditation on the Mystery that we can pierce the veil. This is where all human reason fails. All these words, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, Yahweh, Christ, are meaningless to those who cannot get beyond their reason and allow the divine Mystery to shine through its symbol.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p73)

Knowledge hinders, not helps you in contemplation.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p21)

Your ability to reason is never helpful in contemplation.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p83)

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Silence

There is nothing in all creation so like God as stillness.
Meister Eckhart

Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.
Maya Angelou

Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation.
Thomas Keating

If you could be silent from all willing and thinking for one hour, you would hear God’s inexpressible words.
Jakob Böhme

In the throne of silence are manifest the perfections of spiritual beauty.
Miguel de Molinos

Pure prayer is prayer beyond words, beyond thoughts.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation p15-16)

Listen carefully…and incline the ear of your heart.
Rule of St. Benedict

Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.
Abba Moses

Meditation is a pilgrimage to the heart.
John Main

The original message, the essential truth, of every religion is the sacred Mystery, the presence in this world of a hidden Wisdom, which cannot be expressed in words, which cannot be known by sense or reason, but is hidden in the heart – the Ground of Centre or Substance of the soul, of which the mystics speak – and reveals itself to those who seek it in the silence beyond word and thought. All myth and ritual, all doctrine and sacrament, is but a means to awaken the soul to this hidden Mystery, to allow the divine Presence to make itself known.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p118)

Man is made not merely to work with his hands and to think with his mind, but also to adore in the deep silence of his heart. Even more than to adore he is called to plunge into that silence and to lose himself there, unable to utter any word, not even a word of adoration or of praise; for no word can express the mystery of God, the mystery of man in the presence of God, the mystery of the Son in the eternal presence of the Father. There the mind cannot even think or conceive a thought, for it is overwhelmed, silenced, blinded by this light – a sun which does not allow any other luminary to be seen in the sky when it stands on its zenith.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p31)

Real prayer cannot possibly remain restricted to the personal needs or private benefit of the man who is praying, nor for those of the man for whom he is praying; … true prayer, has already been born in the depths of the heart, murmured there by the Spirit who alone knows for what man should ask (Rom 8:26).
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p40)

The aim of prayer, indeed, is not to think about God, nor to form conceptions of God, however strong and lofty they may be. It is for God himself, for God beyond any sign and any veil, that the soul, fed by the gospel and the Spirit, is thirsty. It is God in himself whom the soul wants, the hidden God within, the God who is realized in the contemplation of saints and sages.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p37)

As we enter the silence within us, having allowed ourselves to become aware of its presence in the first place, we are entering a void in which we are unmade. We cannot remain the person we were or thought we were. But we are, in fact, not being destroyed but awakened to the eternally fresh source of our being. We become aware that we are being created, that we are springing from the Creator’s hand and returning to him in Love.
John Main, Word into Silence

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Being

As we enter the silence within us, having allowed ourselves to become aware of its presence in the first place, we are entering a void in which we are unmade. We cannot remain the person we were or thought we were. But we are, in fact, not being destroyed but awakened to the eternally fresh source of our being. We become aware that we are being created, that we are springing from the Creator’s hand and returning to him in Love.
John Main

My words have outlined what only experience can teach you clearly, that we come to contemplation directly, not through certain techniques. They can’t make it happen. All good methods depend on contemplative prayer, while it depends on nothing. No routine leads to love.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p80)

God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peaceful heart.
Meister Eckhart

God comes to us disguised as our life.
Paula D’Arcy

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.
Clare of Assisi

Don’t start by trying to love God, or even people. Love rocks and elements first. Move to trees, then animals, and then humans… It might be the only way to love, because how you do anything, is how you do everything.
Richard Rohr

The outer work will never be puny if the inner work is great.
Meister Eckhart

Each human being is a focus of the divine Light which shines through all equally, but each receives it according to its capacity. Each is conscious only of the divine Light itself and loses itself in its radiance; each is filled to capacity and knows no difference, yet the distinctions and the differences remain. The experience is of ‘non-duality’, of immersion in the divine Being, Knowledge and Bliss, yet no two souls are the same and the experience of each is unique. This was the very purpose of creation — that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal ‘idea’ in God, should ‘become’ God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p42)

The Greek fathers of the Church used to say, “Lead the thoughts from the head into the heart and keep them there.” This is to open the heart to the Cosmic Mystery.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p47)

Centering prayer is not so much an exercise of attention as intention. It may take a while to grasp this distinction. You do not attend to any particular thought content. Rather, you intend to go to your inmost being, where you believe God dwells. You are opening to Him by pure faith, not by means of concepts or feelings.
Thomas Keating (Open Mind Open Heart p39)

When you are in your mind you are never truly at peace. And when you are truly at peace you are never in your mind.
Richard Rohr

The call to meditation, for the early Fathers of the Church, was a call to purity of heart and that is what innocence is—purity of heart. A vision unclouded by egoism or by desire or by images, a heart simply moved by love. Meditation leads us to pure clarity—clarity of vision, clarity of understanding and clarity of love—a clarity that comes from simplicity. And to begin to meditate requires nothing more than the simple determination to begin and then to continue. To begin means to discover your own roots, your own potential and destiny. It is to set out on the journey both to our source and our goal.
John Main (The Heart of Creation)

Presence, or as St. Simeon calls it, “attention of the heart,” is the capacity to be fully engaged at every level of one’s being: alive and simultaneously present to both God and the situation at hand. Developing attention of the heart is all-important, Simeon maintains, because without it, it is impossible to acquire sufficient inner strength to fulfill the beatitudes. . . .Simeon clearly sees that ordinary awareness per se is incapable of carrying out the gospel. Only when the mind is “in the heart,” grounded and tethered in that deeper wellspring of spiritual awareness, is it possible to live the teachings of Jesus without hypocrisy or burnout. The gospel requires a radical openness and compassion that are beyond the capacity of the anxious, fear-ridden ego.
Cynthia Bourgeault

To be able to say who Jesus is we need to know who we ourselves are. How well we can see and recognize him in his spiritual body depends upon the clarity and depth of our self-knowledge.
Laurence Freeman

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Spiritual Practice is an Invitation

To live in the presence of God should be as natural for a Christian as to breathe the air which surrounds him. Furthermore, to live consciously and worthily in this presence should never have for him even the appearance of a duty which he is bound to perform in obedience to some external law. No, for him to live in the presence of the Almighty is a birthright; it is the deepest aspiration of his nature, it is the spontaneous expression of his love for the Lord when he knows that he is a child of God.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p2)

The Christian is not faced with a set of particular problems; for instance, how to love God, how to love and serve his neighbour, how to be disinterested and patient, how to put into practice the commandments of the Lord, and so forth. For it is not out of duty that we have to accomplish all those things, still less out of fear, as was the case under the old Covenant. In the New Testament there is no place for law or slavish obedience, as St Paul takes so much trouble to explain (Rom 8, Col 1:5,18).
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p9)

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Sin is a Separation from Love

Sin is the failure to realize the Self. It is to fall into a separate, divided self, a self which is essentially illusory, since it has lost touch with its real being in God. … This is the meaning of sin; it is a divided consciousness. Redemption – at-one-ment – is the return to unity.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre, p28)

Man sins when of set purposes he directs his action exclusively towards his own petty self, and, as it were, attempts to hold up at himself the stream of things and events on their way to God.
Abhishiktananda (Prayer p14)

We’re not punished for sin, we’re punished by sin.
Richard Rohr

Sin is not something to be condemned but to be wept over.
Richard Rohr

The Fall could be seen as the necessary emergence of ego in human development. The ego is the image we have of ourselves, the persona we try to project. Once the ego was unleashed in them, Adam and Eve became self-conscious. Their self-image suddenly required clothes so that they could present themselves in an acceptable way to others and to God.
John Main

The Greek fathers took “man created as the image of God” to mean that each man, each person, is like a mirror reflecting God. You and I are mirrors, each reflecting God in a unique way. Yet there is only one God shining in you, shining in me. Sin distorts the mirror and obscures the light. When the mirror is purified and the light shines, then each of us perfectly reflects God.
Bede Griffiths (Cosmic Revelation p72)

Whenever you’re cut off. Whenever you’re living inside of your own head, you’re in sin. Don’t keep associating it with sexuality or sexual things, which is what everybody wants to do for some reason. Sin is whenever you live in superiority. Disconnected with your judgements, your analysis, and your critique of life.
Richard Rohr

In man the divine life is received into a conscious capacity, it is reflected in an intelligence like its own. The divine energy is received in a will, a capacity for action, which is illuminated by the intelligence and is therefore free. We can recognize the divine lights and energy in us and recognize our own nothingness, our total dependence on the divine Being. But we can also seek to appropriate the divine light, to make ourselves the judge and master, to act as though our power came from ourselves. This is original sin, this is the great illusion. This is what is always happening in all of us.
Bede Griffiths (Return to the Centre p45)

So if you want to stand and not fall into sin, never let go of your purpose and don’t let anything take away your longing for God… The work of contemplation is the only thing that destroys the foundation and the root of sin… Contemplative work is love at its best.
The Cloud of Unknowing, (Carmen Acevedo Butcher translation p35-36)

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The Body is Sacred

The ‘flesh’, narrowly understood, can have a negative connotation, but the body is sacred. In the letter to the Corinthians, St Paul says, ‘Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.’ The body is sacred. We are learning to appreciate the physical self, particularly through yoga, which is coming into general use more and more. It is a way of harmonizing the body and learning to live in it. There is a great danger of loving only in your mind, in your head, and neglecting your body or the other senses. That has created a negative attitude toward the body, to the senses, to the outer world.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation p15-16)

The body is part of the whole physical organism of nature: the whole earth, the whole planet, the stars and the stellar universe. It is a whole in which we share. We are learning to experience the body as sacred. The Word became flesh. God entered into this human, concrete, fleshly existence and gave us his flesh and his blood to eat and to drink. That is a tremendous reversal of negative asceticism. We are trying to learn to appreciate the body and the world, and to integrate them into our Christian lives. I think this is very important.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation p16)

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Sexual Energy is Surrendered

Unless the sexual energy is present in our prayer we are losing something. If we suppress it, then it either becomes neutral or terribly destructive. There is a very great danger here which many Christians do not realize. They think they must get rid of all their sexual feelings rather than recognizing sex as part of their nature and a gift of God. These feelings have to be surrendered with all the energies of the body and soul, surrendered not suppressed.
Bede Griffiths (New Creation p34)

God’s passion created ours. Our deep desiring is a relentless returning to that place where all things are one. If we are afraid of our sexuality, we are afraid of God. Nor should we equate sexuality with unadulterated lust, which is far too egocentric to care about anybody else.
Richard Rohr

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Darkness is Integrated

Love that does not know of suffering is not worthy of the name.
Clare of Assisi

Let us strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they have not stood before the winter’s storms cannot bear fruit, so it is with us; this present age is a storm and it is only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.
Amma Theodora

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.
Richard Rohr

More suffering comes into the world by people taking offense than by people giving offense.
Richard Rohr

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Kingdom of Heaven is Within

Strive to enter the temple within yourself, and you will see the heavenly temple.
Isaac the Syrian

For we cannot be reconciled with God and assimilated to Him unless we first return or, rather, enter into ourselves, in so far as this lies within our power. For the miracle consists in tearing ourselves away from the distraction and vain concerns of the world and in this way relentlessly seizing hold of the kingdom of heaven within us.
Nikephoros the Monk

Unless within you it already lies. Believe me, you cannot come to Paradise.
Angelus Silesius

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