The Naked Now by Richard Rohr, Appendices

The Naked Now

by Richard Rohr

APPENDICES

Practicing the Naked Now

 

APPENDIX 1 / LEVELS OF DEVELOPMENT

One of the more important breakthroughs in understanding why some people seem to “get it” (whatever “it” is) while many do not get it or even oppose or distort it, has now come to be recognized by teachers as diverse as Jean Piaget, Lawrence Romberg, Abraham Maslow, James Fowler, Clare Grave, and Ken Wilber. Their insights remind us of Thomas Aquinas’s observation that “Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.”

In simple terms, whatever you teach or receive will be heard on at least eight to ten different levels, according to the inner, psychological, and spiritual maturity of the listener. Level 1 people will misuse the Bible, the sacraments, the priesthood, spiritual direction, the Enneagram, or anything else that is presented to them. Levels 7-9 people will make lemonade out of even sour or unripe lemons (although not without price).

It does little good merely to assert doctrines or passages of Scripture and, because people assent to them, to assume that they have any existential knowledge of what they are talking about. You can perfectly assent to the Catholic belief in the Real Presence, for example, and be totally incapable of presence yourself— so there will be no inner experience and no transformation of the self. One will manipulate or use the very doctrine for ego enhancement purposes and control. This is likely what Jesus is referring to when he quotes Isaiah 29:13 in his Sermon on the Mount: “This people has all the right words, but no change of heart. It is all just a lesson memorized, a human commandment.”

My own attempt to correlate the various schemas of development that I have studied would have me put it this way. In my experience, we move from level 1 to level 9. (Note that this is merely a teaching tool; real life is much more subtle.)

1. My body and self-image are who I am. Leads to a dominance of security, safety, and defense needs. Dualistic/ polarity thinking.
2. My external behavior is who I am. Needs to look good outside and to hide or disguise the contrary evidence from others; I become so practiced at this game that the evidence is eventually hidden from myself, too. This emergence of the shadow is very common among conservatives.
3. My thoughts/feelings are who I am. Development of intellect and will to have better thoughts and feelings and also control them so others do not know, and so, finally, that I do not see their self-serving and shadowy character myself. This education as a substitute for transformation is very common among liberals and the educated.

Normally a major defeat, shock, or humiliation must be suffered and passed through to go beyond this stage.

4. My deeper intuitions and felt knowledge in my body are who I am. This is such a breakthrough and so informative and helpful that many become stymied at this level. Leads to individualism, self-absorption, and inner work as a substitute for any real encounter with otherness.
5. My shadow self is who I am. The dark night. My weakness comes to overwhelm me, as I face myself in my raw, unvarnished, uncivilized state. Without guidance, grace, and prayer, most go running back to previous identities. Time is of the essence here.
6. I am empty and powerless. “God’s Waiting Room.” Almost any attempt to save the self by any superior behavior, technique, morality, positive role, or religious devotion will lead to regression. All you can do is wait and ask and trust. Here is where you learn faith and discover that darkness is the much better teacher. God is about to become real.
7. I am much more than who I thought I was. Death of the false self, and birth of the True Self. But because you are not at home here yet, it will first of all feel like a void, even if a wonderful void. “Luminous darkness,” as John of the Cross would call it.
8. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Henceforth there is only God, or as Teresa says, “One knows God in oneself, and knows oneself in God.” All else is seen as a passing ego possession, and I do not need to protect it, promote it, or prove it — to anyone.
9. I am who I am — “just me.” Warts and all, enough to be human, no window dressing necessary. This is the most radical critique of religion possible, because now you know religion is just a finger pointing to the moon, but not the moon itself. There is no need to appear to be anything but who I really am. Fully detached from self-image and living in God’s image of you — which includes and loves both the good and the bad. The serenity and freedom of the saints. Total Nonduality.

The goal is to keep people moving deeper into faith, knowing they will receive any and all information and experience at their level.

 

APPENDIX 2 / TRAINING FOR THE “THIRD EYE”

The lamp of the body is the eye. — Matthew 6:22

The ego self is the unobserved self. If you do not find an objective standing point from which to look back at yourself, you will almost always be egocentric — identified with yourself instead of in relationship to yourself.

Most of us have been given no training or practice in this, because we thought it was all negative self-criticism instead of calm self-observation (moral examination o( conscience instead of examination of consciousness). Ego is not bad; it is just what takes over when you do not see truthfully and completely. That “lamp” does not illuminate things well.

Much of the early work of contemplation is finding that stance and learning how to return there in all moments of emotional turmoil (positive as much as negative), until you can eventually live more and more of your life there. You will find yourself smiling, sighing, and “weeping” at yourself, more than either hating or congratulating yourself (which of themselves are both ego needs).

Eventually, you will discover a detached place of quiet self-observation.

• It must be without moral judgment, or you will tire of it and rebel against it.
• It must be compassionate and calmly objective.
• It names the moment for what it is.
• It names my reaction without a need to praise or blame — it just sees it.
• To see my reaction for what it is, it takes away this reaction’s addictive and self-serving character.
• It deflates my reaction and disempowers it from “possessing” me.
• Now I have a feeling instead of a feeling having me.
• It maintains the good sense of “I” but without ego attachment.
• It actually fosters much deeper, broader, more honest feelings.
• It also gives me a strong sense of “I,” because there is now no need to totally eliminate or deny the negative part. (My full self is accepted.)
• Ironically, the truly destructive part of the negative is exposed and falls away as now unnecessary. To see the negative is to defeat it, for evil relies upon denial and disguise.
• The Christian name for this stable witness is the Holy Spirit:
  • already in place, and doing all the giving; filling in all the gaps
  • already compassionate and more merciful than we are
  • never demanding the perfection of any technique, practice, or asceticism.

One only needs to constantly connect with our deepest level of desiring, which, paradoxically, is much harder than mere will power and technique. The Spirit bears common witness with our spirit that we are indeed children of God (Romans 8:16). It is a common knowing, a participative event, and feels like you are being “known through,” but with total acceptance and forgiveness. This will change your life! You will then “know as fully as you are known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

 

APPENDIX 3 / LITANY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

When I did a hermitage in the Lent of 2006 in Arizona, I had an enduring sense of the presence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, one that I think is fully available to all of us “if we but knew the gift of God” (John 4:10). I slowly composed this prayer litany to awaken and strengthen this Presence within you. Recite it whenever you are losing faith in God or in yourself.

Pure Gift of God

Indwelling Presence

Promise of the Father

Life of Jesus

Pledge and Guarantee

Eternal Praise

Defense Attorney

Inner Anointing

Reminder of the Mystery

Homing Device

Knower of All Things

Stable Witness

Implanted Pacemaker

Overcomer of the Gap

Always Already Awareness

Compassionate Observer

Magnetic Center

God Compass

Inner Breath

Divine DNA

Mutual Yearning Place

Given Glory

Hidden Love of God

Choiceless Awareness

Implanted Hope

Seething Desire

Fire of Life and Love

Sacred Peacemaker

Nonviolence of God

Seal of the Incarnation

First Fruits of Everything

Father and Mother of Orphans

Planted Law

Truth Speaker

God’s Secret Plan

Great Bridge Builder

Warmer of Hearts

Space between Everything

Flowing Stream

Wind of Change

Descending Dove

Cloud of Unknowing

Uncreated Grace

Filled Emptiness

Through-Seer

Deepest Level of Our Longing

Attentive Heart

Sacred Wounding

Holy Healing

Softener of Our Spirit

Will of God

Great Compassion

Generosity of the Creator

Inherent Victory

The One Sadness

Our Shared Joy

God’s Tears

God’s Happiness

The Welcoming Within

New and Eternal Covenant

Contract Written on Our Hearts

Jealous Lover

Desiring of God

You who pray in us, through us, with us, for us, and in spite of us. Amen. Alleluia!

 

APPENDIX 4 / PRACTICING AWARENESS

• With your senses (not so much your mind), focus on one single object until you stop fighting it or resisting it with other concerns.

The concrete is the doorway to the universal. This is the basic principle of the Incarnation, and Duns Scotus’s theory of “thisness” — or even Tolle’s teaching of the “power of now.”

This should lead to an initial calmness in your body and mind.

• You must choose not to judge the object in any way, attach to it, reject it as meaningless, like it or dislike it. This is merely the need of the ego to categorize and control and define itself by preferences.

You will thus learn to appreciate and respect things in and for themselves, and not because they either profit you or threaten you.

This should lead to a kind of subtle, simple JOY in the object itself and also within yourself.

• Listen” to the object and allow it to speak to you. Allow a simple dialogue to happen. Speak back to it with respect and curiosity.

You will thus learn to stop “objectifying” things as merely for your own consumption, control, or use. You are learning to allow things to take the initiative and speak their truth to you as a receiver instead of the giver.

This will lead to the beginnings of LOVE for the object or event, and a sense of loving kindness within yourself.

• A kind of contented spaciousness and silence will normally This is a form of non-dual consciousness.

The concrete, loving consciousness of one thing leads to pure consciousness or “objectless consciousness” of all things (the contemplative mind as such).

Only after the fact does one look back and realize it was a holy/whole moment. If you do it during the moment itself, it spoils the pure experience, because ego with its judgments and attachments has reentered the scene.

 

APPENDIX 5 / CHRISTIAN TANTRA: THE “WELLING UP” EXERCISE

This exercise is based on a teaching from Fray Francisco de Osuna, O.F.M. (1492-1542), the spiritual “master” of Teresa of Avila. Here is what he taught his students:

1. Dam up the fountain of your soul, where love is always springing forth.
2. It will he forced to rise.
3. Yet it will remain quiet and at rest within you; wait for that quiet.
4. You will see the image of God reflected in your own clear waters, more resplendent than in any other thing — provided the disturbing turmoil of thoughts dies down.

The following is only a commentary and aid on that teaching, so that you can experience it for yourself. It is really quite similar to what the Hindus discovered in tantra, where you hold the powerful gift and do not express it, so that it can be deepened and refined. I think it is also what Jesus is offering the Samaritan woman when he says to her: “The water that I shall give you will turn into a spring inside of you, welling up into limitless life.” (John 4:14)

1. Try to stay beneath your thoughts, neither fighting them nor thinking them.
2. Hold yourself at a deeper level, perhaps in your chest, solar plexus, or breath, but stay in your body self somehow, and do not rise to the mind. Everything you know long-term, you know in your body.
3. Resist any desire to repress or express, just animal contentment.
4. It will feel exactly like “nothing” or just darkness.
5. Stay “crouched” there at the cellular level without shame.
6. Long enough for Another Source to begin to flow.
7. And well up as light or sight or joy. This is the “super-essential life.”
8. From this place you become seeing, and the love flows through you from the Source, as an energy more than an idea.
9. You cannot “think” God. God is never an “object” of consciousness like any other thing, person, or event that you “know.” God is always and forever the subject, the doer, the initiator, “the Prevenient Grace.”
10. You have then “become” what you hope to see. Subject and object are one. God in you and through you, sees and loves God.

 

APPENDIX 6 / THE PRAYER OF THE SELF-EMPTYING ONE

Philippians 2:6-11 is thought to be an early Christian hymn to the Christ journey: a path of kenosis (self-emptying), incarnating in the “slave,” “as all humans are,” and even all the way to the bottom of total “acceptance” and “even humbler yet” (the cross). This allows God to raise Jesus up in God’s time and God’s way, and “name” him anew in a glorious state of transformation.

This hymn can be taken as a rather precise guide for the process of contemplative prayer, if we apply to the soul the same mystery that was in Christ Jesus. As mentioned throughout the book, take it as a rule: “Everything we can say of Jesus, we can say also about the soul.”” This is exactly how he becomes the icon of transformation for us, and why he says “follow me.” Notice how it begins with this verse: “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus— ”

1. Your “state” is also divine. Hold it confidently (the True Self in God).
2. But do not cling to it with any form of self-validation or importance.
3. Instead, “empty yourself” and refuse to self-name — either up or down, positively or negatively.
4. Enter fully into your humble human state of failure and weakness, even to the point of complete detachment, if called to or if possible.
5. Now God can pick you up at the right time, when God is ready.
6. God can “name” you correctly, secretly, truthfully, and always lovingly, by Him and as His (Experienced True Self).

This Self is indestructible, un-offendable, and already in heaven.

Note that shortly thereafter, there is a final affirming and confirming passage:

It is God who for God’s own loving purpose puts both this will and this action into you. (2:13)

Even the sitting down, dying for twenty minutes, and still standing up afterward is a perfect metaphor for what is happening in prayer—always the mystery of death and resurrection.

 

APPENDIX 7 / THE VIRGIN PRAYER

God regarded her in her lowliness. — Luke 1:48

You must seek to be a blank slate.

You must desire to remain unwritten on.

No choosing of this or that.

Not “I am good because.”

Nor “I am not good because.”

Neither excitement nor boredom.

Remaining Nothing,

An unchosen virgin,

And unchoosing too, just empty.

No story line by which to start the day.

No identity enhancers nor losses

To make yourself valuable or not.

Nothing interesting, nothing uninteresting.

Neither against, nor for something.

Nothing to recall from yesterday.

Nothing to look forward to today.

Just me, naked, exposed,

No self to fix, change or find,

Nothing to judge right or wrong,

Important or unimportant,

Worthy or unworthy,

I stand and wait,

neither powerful nor powerless,

For You to name me,

For You to look upon my face,

For You to write my script,

For You to give the kiss,

In your time and your way.

You always do.

And it is always so much better.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn” (Luke 2:7), who was the Christ.

 

APPENDIX 8 / WALKING MEDITATION: THE MIRROR MEDALLION

Toward the end of my Lenten hermitage in 2003,1 began to have a very dynamic experience of the Trinity, as a movement through me, in me, and out of me. I so wanted to thank God for all I had been given during those days, and I realized that the only way I could fittingly thank God was to offer God back to God, just as is happening in the Trinity. I wanted to become the very willing relay station for the breath of God.

Each evening I took a long walk down a steep hill and back up again. Of course, I began to breathe heavily on the return, and I gradually conformed my breath to my steps. I found myself saying the word “beauty” as I took in each breath, and then “back” as I breathed out. Again and again, “Beauty… Back… Beauty… Back.” It soon became my form of walking meditation.

I knew the phrase had come from a line from my favorite poet, the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins. In his lesser-known poem “The Golden Echo” he said:

… Deliver it early now, long before death.

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty back to

God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.

 

In “Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice,” he says,

This, all this beauty blooming,

This, all this freshness fuming,

Give God while worth consuming.

 

I began to think of some way that I could help others to participate in this wonderful flow of life through me. It seemed like a living experience of the Trinity: we are the embodied Christ and the Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, giving praise to the Father by our very existence. I pictured wearing a “mirror medallion¹‘ that would take in all scenes in front of me moment by moment. It would not look like a piece of religious jewelry, but merely a plain mirror that always takes in exactly what it sees, without distortion or judgment or analysis, only love.

The back of the mirror would have an image of the eye of god forever gazing at me with love, respect, and even desire. I had recently come across a largely ignored passage in James 4:5: It said, “The longing of the Spirit that He sent to dwell in us is a jealous longing.” Let’s be a part of that deep and conscious longing for God!

In India, they have the notion of danhan: the Hindus go to the temple, not to see God, statues, or rituals, as much as to be seen by God! This mirror medallion could help us to allow God to look at us as we are, to gaze at us, to delight in us!

So this medallion is to educate you in the flow, in the ability to both receive and reflect back the glory of God, which is why I chose the quote from 2 Corinthians 3:18 for the back. It is actually an exercise in passivity, in allowing, in surrendering, in enjoying what is already happening. Now the eye of God, gazing inwardly at your breast, will be a constant reminder of what is already happening. It will hold you in the Eternal Now and in the flow that is the very life of the Trinity.

A JOYFUL MIND

Joy and mind. Those are not words that you would normally put together, but they inspired the eleventh-century Richard of St. Victor, a Scottish canon teaching in Paris, and became the themes of his two books on the contemplative mind, Benjamin Major and Benjamin Minor. The titles are taken from one obscure passage from Psalm 68:27, where “Benjamin” is described as leading a procession into the temple in mentis excessu, which was translated as “with a joyful mind” or “with an ecstatic mind.” This made me ask:

What might a joyful mind be?

1. When your mind does not need to be right.
2. When you no longer need to compare yourself with others.
3. When you no longer need to compete — not even in your own head.
4. When your mind can be creative, but without needing anyone to know.
5. When you can live in contentment with whatever the moment offers.
6. When you do not need to analyze or judge things in or out, positive or negative.
7. When your mind does not need to be in charge, but can serve the moment with gracious and affirming information.
8. When your mind follows the intelligent lead of your heart.
9. When your mind is curious and interested, not suspicious and interrogating.

• When your mind does not “brood over injuries.”

10. When you do not need to humiliate, critique, or defeat those who have hurt you—not even in your mind.
11. When your mind does not need to create self-justifying story
12. When your mind does not need the future to be better than today.
13. When your mind can let go of obsessive or negative thoughts.
14. When your mind can think well of itself, but without needing to.
15. When your mind can accept yourself as you are, warts and all.
16. When your mind can surrender to what is.
17. When your mind does not divide and always condemn one side or group.
18. When your mind can find truth on both sides.
19. When your mind fills in the gaps with “the benefit of the doubt” for both friend and enemy.
20. When your mind can critique and also detach from the critique.
21. When your mind can wait, listen, and learn.
22. When your mind can live satisfied without resolution or closure.
23. When your mind can forgive and actually “forget.”
24. When your mind can admit it was wrong and change.
25. When your mind can stop judging and critiquing itself.
26. When you don’t need to complain or worry to get motivated.
27. When you can observe your mind contracting into self-preservation or self-validation, and then laugh or weep over it.
28. When you can actually love with your mind.
29. When your mind can find God in all things.

THE SHINING WORD “AND”

1. “And” teaches us to say yes
2. “And” allows us to be both-and
3. “And” keeps us from either-or
4. “And” teaches us to be patient and long-suffering
5. “And” is willing to wait for insight and integration
6. “And” keeps us from dualistic thinking
7. “And” does not divide the field of the moment
8. “And” helps us to live in the always imperfect now
9. “And” keeps us inclusive and compassionate toward everything
10. “And” demands that our contemplation become action
11. “And” insists that our action is also contemplative
12. “And” heals our racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism
13. “And” keeps us from the false choice of liberal or conservative
14. “And” allows us to critique both sides of things
15. “And” allows us to enjoy both sides of things
16. “And” is far beyond any one nation or political party
17. “And” helps us face and accept our own dark side
18. “And” allows us to ask for forgiveness and to apologize
19. “And” is the mystery of paradox in all things
20. “And” is the way of mercy
21. “And” makes daily, practical love possible
22. “And” does not trust love if it is not also justice
23. “And” does not trust justice if it is not also love
24. “And” is far beyond my religion versus your religion
25. “And” allows us to be both distinct and yet united
26. “And” is the very Mystery of Trinity