What the Mystics Know by Richard Rohr

Author:Richard Rohr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

A RIVER MEDITATION

Most of us have lived our whole lives with a steady stream of consciousness, with a continual flow of ideas, images, and feelings. And at every moment of our lives we cling to such ideas or feelings: I don’t have the idea; the idea has me. I don’t have a feeling; the feeling has me. We have to discover who this I really is, the one who has these feelings or these thoughts. Who are we ourselves—behind our thoughts and feelings?

I’m sure that most people in the Western world have never really met the person who they themselves really are. Because at every moment, all our life long, we identify ourselves either with our thoughts, our self-image, or our feelings. We have to find a way to get behind our thoughts, feelings, and self-image. We have to discover the face that we already had before we were born. We have to find out who we were all along in God before we did anything right or wrong. This is the first goal of contemplation.

I ask you to imagine a river or stream. You’re sitting on the bank of this river, where boats and ships are sailing past. While the stream flows past your inner eye, I ask you to name each one of these vessels. For example, one of the boats could be called “my anxiety about tomorrow.” Or along comes the ship “objections to my husband,” or the boat “Oh, I don’t do that well.” Every judgment that you pass is one of those boats. Take the time to give each one of them a name, and then let it move on.

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