|
SPIRITUALITY
Meditations
Below are some
thoughts or ideas that may assist at times of quiet prayer.
Be still. Breathe gently.
Read a paragraph, a sentence or a word that catches your attention.
Allow the words to sink into the recesses of your mind.
Relax in the love and light of the Spirit.
Receive with gratitude the gifts that fill your heart.
Spirituality is embraced by every human being
in response to a desire
awakened in the heart by the transcendent Other/God
from early childhood onwards.
Thus begins a sacred quest.
Recall your earliest experience of the Other.
What desire was awakened in you?
As one responds to the experience of the transcendent Other/God
one grows into one’s spirituality
with awareness and strength,
with depth and quality.
So one’s spirituality develops in the process of responding to life;
it is recognizable in one as a way of life.
The relational nature of one’s spirituality,
(the human’s response to the desire awakened by the Other/God)
makes it unique to oneself,
though archetypically universal.
God comes to us disguised as our life (R Rohr).
God named Godself for us humans (in response to Moses’ request):
“There where you are I am” (Ex.3:14).
It is in the experiences of one’s personal life that the Other/God is to
be found.
William Barry from thirty years of experience in spiritual direction
names three aspects common to experiences of God:
1. the experience is, directly or indirectly, one of desire and/or
union;
2. the experience includes a sense of well-being;
3. the experience is of something happening now (in this life).
J S Mackenzie, a psychologist, holds that
the enjoyment of God
should be the supreme end of any spiritual technique
for deepening one’s spirituality
and that
in that enjoyment
one is conscious of belonging to God
and not alone.
|
