Thomas Keating; Centering Prayer

“If you want to be free, if you want to heal your relationship with God, with others, and yourself, enter your Inner Room– The Office, where the Divine Therapy takes place. Close the door so you don’t run away.

Quiet your interior dialogue, so that you can listen to what the Spirit is saying to you.

An enormous intelligence is guiding us through this process with a love that is unconditional and determined to bring about this healing, whatever the cost to Itself. Gregory the Great expressed it as resting in God.

Don’t judge Centering Prayer on the basis of how many thoughts come or how much peace you enjoy.

The deeper one’s awareness of one’s powerlessness and the more desperate, the more willing one is to reach out for help.

This help is offered in the next two steps. You turn yourself over to a Higher Power who you believe can heal you and work with you in the long journey of dismantling the emotional programs for happiness. They are the root causes of all our problems.

How should we handle these afflictive emotions? By facing them. By feeling them.

Feelings that are being repressed have to be allowed to pass through our awareness once again, in order to be left behind for good.

The radical healing is the acceptance of the situation. Because in some way, God is present there.

The real work of prayer is just to get rid of the very assumptions that was the foundation of all these other modes of prayer. It is a matter of shifting the location of the sense of identity.

The false self is deeply entrenched. You can change your name and address, religion, country, and clothes. But as long as you don’t ask it to change, the false self simply adjusts to the new environment.

For example, instead of drinking your friends under the table as a significant sign of self-worth and esteem, if you enter a monastery, as I did, fasting the other monks under the table could become your new path to glory.

We have to accept that the word “I” does not have a fixed, and clear, and obvious referent.

This is where the transformation that we undergo becomes more and more radical with each breakthrough or illumination.

The contemplative journey, because it involves the purification of the unconscious, is not a magic carpet to bliss. It is an exercise in letting go of the false self, a humbling process, because it is the only self we know.

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Nothing is more helpful to reduce pride than the actual experience of Self-Knowledge. If we are discouraged by it, we have misunderstood its meaning.

Contemplative prayer is a deepening of faith that moves beyond thoughts and concepts. One just listens to God, open and receptive to the divine presence in one’s inmost being as its source.

One listens not with a view to hearing something, but with a view to becoming aware of the obstacles to one’s friendship with God.

God has not promised to take away our trials but to help us change our attitude towards them. That is what holiness really is.

In this life, happiness is rooted in our basic attitude toward Reality.

For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine.

The Spirit calls us to transformation of our inmost being, and indeed of all of our faculties, into the Divine Way of being and acting.

Divine Love picks us up when we sincerely believe nobody else will. We then begin to experience freedom, peace, calm, equanimity, and liberation from cravings.

A total surrender of ourselves to the Spiritual Journey is required.

When the Presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, Divine Life is pouring into the world.

God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of this Divine Life in us.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit grow in direct proportion to the depth and sincerity of our love.

To live in the Presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives.

Silence is God’s first language, everything else is a poor translation.

Whatever we say about God is more unlike God than saying nothing. If we do say something, it can only be a pointer toward the mystery that can never be articulated in words. All that words can do is point in the direction of the mystery.

Let Love Alone speak.”

https://youtu.be/-PRtg_Nle2c?si=d-VXZTf2vRg-wcrf

Prayer in Secret

If you want to be free

If you desire union with God in perfect love

Always point the arrow inwards

For God is always within us

Patiently waiting for us to listen

As Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew

“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

We must enter our inner room where the divine therapy takes place

Focus on your breathe till your mind is calm and at ease so you can hear his spirit

Contemplate God’s love and words within your heart and you will be healed, restored, and guided

Born in the Image of God’s Love

As I walk with the homeless

I see the divinity within them

What the world sees as unclean and unworthy

I see through the lens of compassion, mercy, and unconditional love

They are my brothers and sisters

They are worthy of love

I Walk With You Christ

Narrow is this path my lord

Stay near me as I walk into the darkness of this world

For you are the light of the world

May I drink with you at your well

The everlasting source of love within my own heart

May I eat with you

For you are the bread of life

O’ Christ

My soul only strives to be with you

And rest within your love

Love Your Neighbor

Jesus’s one commandment to his disciples was to love your neighbor

What is your neighbor?

Your neighbor is the poor, sick, and homeless

Your neighbor is the immigrant

Your neighbor is the LGBTQ community

Your neighbor is the pig, chicken, cow, and sheep

Your neighbor is the rainforest and it’s many wildlife

Your neighbor is the Earth

Love them with all your heart and soul

Don’t let fear, hatred or greed keep you from expanding your circle of love and compassion

Look Within

Many look for the Kingdom of God in Church

Many look for the Kingdom of God in the afterlife

Many look for the Kingdom of God in rituals

Those who look outside of themselves only dream

Those who look within their own heart and soul awaken to God’s love right here and now

A Kingdom where love reigns supreme over fear

The light transforming the darkness within and around us

A everlasting spring of love

A sanctuary of healing

Be still and know

🧘🏻❤️🙏🏻

Total Surrender

A total surrender is required on the spiritual path

Surrender of our fears, worries, and doubts

A total surrender of our will to the power of unconditional love within our heart and soul

We must surrender our addictions, destructive habits and wrong views

Let the power of love transform you from within

Let it heal you and shape you in its image

Humble yourself and you will be free

Surrender everything and you will be liberated from fear, hatred, greed and addiction

My Travels

Over the last 8 years

I have traveled all over the world

Lived in tropical and exotic places

Met thousands of travelers in 18 countries

From Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Italy, Greece, New Zealand and many more

Had great adventures with new friends

Explored beautiful islands and mountains

Explored my inner spiritual world

I have fallen on my knees in surrender at my lowest points of my life

But I have resurrected my life into something much more deep and beautiful (thanks to God of my life understanding)

I have basked in the true freedom of the unknown adventures

Both outward and inward

I am only 35 years old

But I have lived a full life

With many mistakes, triumphs, adventures, and rebirths

If my last breath is today

I am truly satisfied with a life truly lived

My heart is at peace

With love,

Johnny

Beginners Mind

When you have a beginners mind

You become as fresh as a flower

Your mind becomes like a still pond

An empty canvass

Open to the infinity possibilities of life

With a beginners mind

You can find joy in fresh mandarin

You can experience nirvana looking deeply at a bird

Find peace and serenity right here and now

When your mind becomes rough and demanding

You will lose your beginners mind

And life will become dreary and meaningless

Your mind will need more and more stimulation

Leaving you depressed, numb and anxious

In a beginners mind there is true love, compassion and insight

A beginners mind is fresh and alive

In a beginners mind there are many possibilities

For an expert mind, few

To be a beginner, we must practice deep humility

With no thought of attaining enlightenment or any self centered ideas

Everything is Holy

When you realize that everything is holy

That everyone deep down is divine

You will not steal

You will not lie

You will not cause harm to others

When you realize through meditation that all is born in the image of God, divinity, and love

You will be truly blessed

Many parts of us forget this noble truth and stray us away towards greed, hatred, and fear

Causing much necessary suffering and pain in the world