The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation by Richard Rohr

Author:Richard Rohr [Rohr, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whitaker House
Published: 2016-10-04T04:30:00+00:00

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150. See also, for example, Matthew 9:9–13; Luke 14:15–24.

151. Psalm 139:7–8 (niv).

152. Haldane, “Possible Worlds.”

Accessing the Divine Force Field

As we “tune our hearts”153 to greater perception, we’ll begin to experience God almost like a force field, to borrow a metaphor from physics (gravitational, electromagnetic, light itself—they all work!). And we’re all already inside this force field, whether we know it or not, alongside Hindus and Buddhists and every race and nationality. God doesn’t stop or begin at the Mexican/American border, the Israel/Palestine border, the border between North and South Korea, or any such line in the sand. These man-made “force fields” pale in energetic strength to the divine force field, which is all-encompassing.

When you see people protecting their small tribes and self-constructed identities as if they were lasting or inherently meaningful, you know that they’ve not yet experienced substantial reality. When you allow the flow of substantial reality through your life, you are a catholic person in the truest sense of the word, a universal person living beyond these tiny boundaries that human beings love to create. Paul puts it creatively: “Our citizenship is in heaven.”154

As I grow older, faith for me has become a daily readiness to allow and to trust the force field, knowing that it’s good, that it’s totally on my side, and that I’m already inside of it. How else can I really be at peace? I’ve never figured out a long-lasting alternative. Only in a very basic trusting and allowing can I stop fixing things in my mind, even creating mental problems so I have something to work on! The human mind lives inside of such a hamster wheel. Early-twentieth-century teacher P. D. Ouspensky invited us to “divide in [ourselves] the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical: mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires.” Most of our deepest gifts and deepest wounds lie in our unconscious; only prayer forms that touch us there do much good.

A Trinitarian way of entering this invitation would be to renew your mind through the observing awareness of “the Helper” (Spirit) to see what’s on autopilot within you, relying on the Father to give you the upgraded consciousness inherent in the mind of Christ!155 Let’s try to unpack this.

There are many ways to describe this underlying reality of awareness, letting go, and how to enter the flow. There are so many good teachers emerging today who use different vocabulary, but who each are teaching us how to rest in this quiet holding place that watches the mental commentary rush by and also lets go of it.156

Picture this position as the “mercy seat” situated above the ark of the covenant, the portable presence that traveled around with God’s people, an open-ended horizon that had to be guarded and protected by two golden cherubim.157 Such guarding of presence is exactly the way that one becomes aware that the force field even exists. You must guard and protect your inner space.

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