Love & Unity - 6 Stages of The Spiritual Journey
A reading from the Book of Prophet Isaiah; 58:1-9a
………
This rather, is the fasting that I wish:
Releasing those bound unjustly.
Untying the thongs of the yoke.
Setting free the oppressed.
Breaking every yoke.
Sharing your bread with the hungry.
Sheltering the oppressed and the homeless.
Clothing the naked when you see them.
And not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.
And your wound shall quickly be healed.
…Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer
You shall cry for help,
And he will say: Here I Am!
As we begin the first full week of Lent, I would like to introduce a map of the spiritual journey that Jim Finley introduced to me in conversation almost 15 years ago. I continue to use it as a helpful frame for the journey, I also want to give credit to Jim for his analysis and reflection. I dedicate this post to him and his teachings which have impacted me deeply.
One spiritual master still with us, Jim Finley, who spent his early adult years with the late Thomas Merton as his spiritual director, has helped provide a clear structure for our spiritual journey. In our conversations together, he helped to clarify a certain understanding that the great mystics & spiritual teachers of all traditions have seen consistently. When I use the term mystic, I do not mean other-worldly, visionary, or beyond human. One of the main invitations of these Letters from a Contemplative is to ask all of us to really take ownership of our humanity and by doing so, take responsibility for our own awakening to Truth. Each of us has the capacity to see clearly, love more tenderly and live out of our true nature. This is not just for the so-called mystics and saints, why would we think Truth/God/Ultimate Reality was reserved for just some of us? We must really shed this belief if our transformation is to happen in this life to whatever degree possible. The following structure forms the basis of the spiritual journey as revealed to me by Jim Finley:
Six Stages of the Soul’s Journey:
1. Oneness – Oneness with God is already perfectly present. God is loving us into the present moment. We can feel and sense this underlying unity at any moment, in this moment as you read this. Sense into it…does this resonate with you at this moment?
2. Forgetfulness – We tend to forget this underlying unity - the seamless unity of existence - our fundamental union with the Divine and this causes much of our suffering, violence, sadness, despair, and disconnection.
3. Glimpses – There are moments of experience where we see as God sees all of the time. (Thomas Merton, among so many others, beautifully captures this in his now famous glimpse at the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville, KY. A marker indicates this moment and this spot today. I will conclude this post with Merton’s glimpse.)
4. Holy Longing – We do tend to forget but in those glimpses, a holy longing, a dis-ease awakens us. We despair, go unconscious, distract ourselves or we go deeper. (I will add that it is so much easier to distract ourselves with mini-computers in our hands 24/7 with access to anything and everything.) A certain discipline to practice contemplation is essential and a community to connect with is a key support.
5. The Path – True Self/False (Separate) Self – We seek out a path that allows us to live habitually in awareness of the oneness with God, oneness with what is. Each day, each moment, we are cultivating an attitude and awareness that leads us to what is true or false about who we really are. This is the fork in the road in all of our lives, in each moment that we are living. One path leads to deeper levels of union and compassion. Another path leads to deeper levels of division, aggression, violence, separation and loneliness. As humans impacted by our cultural and social conditioning, we often live in the tension of these 2 paths until we create enough habitual awareness to live with the daily connection of divine love - or whatever term you use to point to the underlying unity that binds us all. - See prior post on Rev angel Kyodo williams
6. Love – At the most basic level we are loved through and through no matter what. Love sustains us and all things regardless of what we do. Oneness and Love are two sides of the same coin. No matter what path we choose and how we live it, the unitive love grounds all things, all of the time. We see this and sense this more than we want to admit. It is hard to take in as it changes everything. We would drop 99% of our agenda, rightness, and belief. At other times, it is quite easy to take in, let go and surrender to it. Anyone who has witnessed the birth of a child or the death of a loved one knows this. It is the love that breaks us open and allows us to see the unity of this 4 billion year old Earth and 14 billion year old universe.
I want to conclude with Thomas Merton’s Glimpse…notice the implications of what he realizes and he knows this more than anything up to this point in his life. I would also like to welcome more feedback in the comments. So, in addition to a daily practice, which I may move to weekly to deepen the practice, I will also end with a question for you to respond to in the Comments, if you feel so called.
For your practice, I include The Contemplative Mind’s Tree of Contemplative Practices…choose one to explore this Lent or this month if you are not Christian, and allow it to open you to the underlying unity of this moment. As Jim Finley says, “God is loving you into this present moment…”
Notice Merton’s glimpse of both love and unity:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
―Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Does this 6 Stage Spiritual Journey resonate in your own experience? If so, how? If not, what would you tweak or add based on your experience?
https://jamesfinley.org/
http://www.contemplativemind.org/
http://snowmassmonks.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2464342-in-louisville-at-the-corner-of-fourth-and-walnut-in