Building Your Sacred Life, Part Five...

                   Conscience is the knowledge of the heart. -- An Anonymous Cistercian Monk, Twelfth Century 

​We must penetrate into the interior of our heart if we are to find the door that opens on Paradise. -- St. Isaac the Syrian 

​These two quotations summarize the sunlight, soil, and water, if you will, that make it possible for the plant of your sacred life to grow and to flourish: without which, growth is impossible. First: conscience: without a deliberate, rugged, self-reflective process that is employed daily, you might as well move into a dumpster, for you will surely start propagating an odoriferously false sense, or knowledge, of your self... You will stink as a human being: until you will no longer be able to discern truth from falsehood: in fact, lying will become your identifying trait. Depending upon your station in life, you might have fans, but you will be without friends as life companions... Conscience is the knowledge of the truths of your heart...

​Secondly: we must penetrate into the interior of our heart: this is what building your sacred life is all about! Wonderment, gratitude prayer, breath prayer, creating your environment, and honest self-reflection are the initial building blocks: to be practiced daily for the rest of your life! Now, another perhaps disturbingly intimate question, have you ever fallen in love... or its variation, are you still gloriously in love? I understand that not everyone has experienced the reality of these questions, so there are others that might work, like: have you ever loved a pet, a book, a river, a mountain, a beach, or anything else that somehow transported you out of yourself? Right here, in this exact place, we encounter the absolute requirement of annihilation... Our sacred life, our chosen environment: everything is not about us! Mystic-enlightenment, if that is what you seek, is not never nada about you...

​When we have fallen in love, thoughts of the beloved flood our mind way too often to count. In a sense, we become incapacitated. When we are able to see, touch, hold, kiss, make love with: we are catapulted into a bliss-realm that, in point of fact, begins to re-configure our consciousness into a being all together different from before... Orgasm is, as it were, a mirror held out to us of a captured moment that indicates the possibility of transfiguration... The point is simply this: loving -- simply loving -- emptied of the illusion or desire for possession, control, or domination -- is the flight of the straight arrow we follow into the interior of our heart... Monk, nun, or householder: the same arrow will fly for anyone...

​Building your sacred life is the creation of possibilities for your disappearance into becoming loving... 

​Here's a little practice, something that is common to lovers in their embrace: love whispers... As you read the Scriptures that are holy to you, pause every-once-in-a-while, pause into the interior of a word: hold it, embrace it, cling to it as to a lover: whisper the word to your inner ear... rest in that contemplative moment... disappear into that contemplative silence... follow your breath-word into your opened heart... surrender to the infinite love that is the Home of the One Infinite Love... if even only for the tiniest fraction of a moment, embrace your true identity as Love Alone... Together, with every part and particle of creation... Here on the portico of Paradise, there is No One and Nothing Separate from the Oneness...

​Of course, if you are blessed with the beatitude of this tiniest fraction of a moment, you have to let it go... this moment is meant for everyone, never just for you... the gift that is freely given is supposed to fly away... a true lover can never possess, control, or dominate the Beloved... just love, just love, like the ocean wave loves the shore... just love, your sacred life will take care of itself...

​Plunge into the Ocean of Love, where heart meets Heart...  (Psalm 137, version by Nan C. Merrill, Psalms for Praying)

​Building Your Sacred Life, is this enough?