You already know. The Spirit is with you, and the Spirit is in you.

~  John 14:17

Jesus seemed to caution his contemporaries to humility and patience before the subtle mystery of who He was:  ¢â‚¬Å“You do not know where I came from and where I am going ¢â‚¬  (John 8:14). He seemed to know that this mystery of being both divine and human would take a very long time to absorb, understand, accept, or reconcile. It is the ultimate paradox, and every Christian and every human being struggles with it anew, both in themselves and in Him, and every day.

We could not hold the mystery together in Jesus, despite being assured that He is  ¢â‚¬Å“the one single New Man ¢â‚¬  (Ephesians 2:15), the Archetypal Person who reconciles and recapitulates everything inside Himself (Colossians 1:15-20). The sad result is that we could not then see, honor, and reconcile the mystery inside of ourselves or in one another either! We could not let Jesus  ¢â‚¬Å“save ¢â‚¬  us, you might say.  It is the third eye that allows us to say yes to the infinite mystery of Jesus and the infinite mystery that we are to ourselves. They are finally the same mystery.

Adapted from  The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See,   pp. 69-70

~~

From now on, we must look at nothing from the ordinary point of view. If anyone is in Christ, they have become a completely new construct, and the old construct must pass away!

~ 2 Corinthians 5:16

Today the unnecessary suffering on this earth is great for people who could have  ¢â‚¬Å“known better ¢â‚¬  and should have been taught better by their religions. In the West, religion became preoccupied with telling people what to know more than how to know, telling people what to see more than how to see. We ended up seeing Holy Things faintly, trying to understand Great Things with a whittled-down mind, and trying to love God with our own small and divided heart. It has been like trying to view the galaxies with a five-dollar pair of binoculars.

Contemplation, my word for this larger seeing, keeps the whole field open; it remains vulnerable before the moment, the event, or the person ¢â‚¬”before it divides and tries to conquer or control it. Contemplatives refuse to create false dichotomies, dividing the field for the sake of the quick comfort of their ego. I call contemplation  ¢â‚¬Å“full-access knowing ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬”not irrational, but pre-rational, non-rational, rational and trans-rational all at once. Contemplation is an exercise in keeping your heart and mind spaces open long enough for the mind to see other hidden material. It is content with the naked now and waits for futures given by God and grace.

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 33-34

No man can say his eyes have had enough of seeing, his ears their fill of hearing.

~ Ecclesiastes 1:8

Third-eye seeing is the way the mystics see. They do not reject the first eye (thought or sight); the senses matter to them, but they know there is more. Nor do they reject the second eye (the eye of reason, meditation, and reflection); but they know not to confuse knowledge with depth, or mere correct information with the transformation of consciousness itself. The mystical gaze builds upon the first two eyes ¢â‚¬”and yet goes further.

It happens whenever, by some wondrous  ¢â‚¬Å“coincidence, ¢â‚¬  our heart space, our mind space, and our body awareness are all simultaneously open and nonresistant. I like to call it presence. It is experienced as a moment of deep inner connection, and it always pulls you, intensely satisfied, into the naked and undefended now, which can involve both profound joy and profound sadness at the very same time.

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, p. 28

Starter Prayer:

Open my eyes.

Let us make humans in Our image.

~ Genesis 1:26

Our DNA is divine. The divine indwelling is never earned by any behavior whatsoever or any ritual, but only recognized and realized (Romans 11:6, Ephesians 2:8-10), and fallen in love with. When you are ready, you will be both underwhelmed and overwhelmed at the boundless mystery of your own humanity. You will know you are standing under the same waterfall of mercy as everybody else and receiving an undeserved radical grace, which waters the  ¢â‚¬Å“roots ¢â‚¬  of everything.

Without that underlying experience of God as both abyss and ground, it is almost impossible to live in the now, in the fullness of who I am, warts and all, and almost impossible to experience the Presence that, paradoxically, both fills the abyss and shakes the ground.

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See , p. 22

by Richard Rohr

 ¢â‚¬Å“God, you were here all along, and I never knew it ¢â‚¬  (Genesis 28:16), says Jacob on awakening from his stone pillow.

The essential religious experience is that you are being  ¢â‚¬Å“known through ¢â‚¬  more than knowing anything in particular yourself. Yet despite this difference, it will feel like true knowing. This new way of knowing can be called contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or  ¢â‚¬Å“third-eye ¢â‚¬  seeing. Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety about figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations.

At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not so afraid of making mistakes. You know even those will be used in your favor. At that point you also have awakened from your stone pillow, and you know with a new clarity what you partly knew all along!

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, p. 23

Starter Prayer:

Open my eyes.