The Need to Focus:
After we have established
consistency, our
next step is to reach
spiritual poverty during
each prayer time. As Jesus said to
Martha, we are nervous and
distracted about many things, and
as in the "Song of Songs", we need
to grow quiet to experience a
close encounter with God. Of
course God is not limited to this
environment. God would, however,
ultimately override our free will,
if we kept experiencing God above
our nervous distraction. Since we
can expect God to respect our free
will, we can, therefore, conclude
that our focus will determine our
success or failure on this next
step.
|
Common Sense:
By using our common sense, we can
conclude we need to focus on God
during our prayer time. If we
showed up for work each day and
let our thoughts drift from one
thing to the next, the quantity
and quality of our work would
suffer. We can't expect our prayer
time to be that much different
than every other part of our life.
|
Structured Prayer:
Prayer times will advance faster
if they do not randomly wander
wherever our fantasy takes us (such
as in talking to God with whatever
pops into our mind). It could be
argued that the purpose of the
prayer time is to build a
relationship with God, and a
relationship can't be reduced to a
formal structure. While this
attitude is certainly prayer, a
formal structure addresses the
issues and problems we are dealing
with much faster. When God
establishes relationships, He
usually does so with a formal
structure of a covenant. We find
theses covenants in both the Old
and New Testaments. To be in
relationship with God, we are
given a series of steps. In the
New Testament covenant, Jesus
established the sacraments and
Church, and He even went so far as
to choose the first pope. God
knows we have many appetites in
our
intelligent recursion, and
structure is needed to bring these
in line.
|
Intelligent Recursion:
Before we look at the reform we
need, let's take a look at who we
are. Aristotle (or perhaps someone
before him) proved that everything
is made up of smaller parts, and
Aquinas demonstrated that the
smaller parts would have to have
the same nature and intellect as
the larger parts. Modern science
has born out the accuracy of these
proofs. We therefore are billions
of small things that have their
own ideas, opinions, appetites,
and free wills. It has been
philosophically proven and
scientifically verified.
We are made up of certain DNA.
This DNA will identify us, and the
DNA itself is made up of even
smaller parts that haven't been
discovered. We know that DNA
communicates in an intelligent
fashion by passing RNA. Since we
find both identity (the DNA
identifies the person) and
communication in our DNA, we can
easily show that our intelligence
flows from our DNA which was
proved by Aquinas (he didn't call
it DNA). As shown by Aquinas, if
we are comprised of DNA, then our
DNA has same problems that we do.
DNA is passed from generation to
generation. The DNA carries sinful
appetites that we call original
sin. While Baptism gives us the
grace to overcome original sin, it
doesn't take away the appetites.
If it did, no one would commit
sins after they were Baptized or
at least not very often. Children
of Baptized parents have original
sin because Baptism doesn't remove
the appetites. DNA couldn't have
orginal sin and the propensity to
commit more sin unless it had a
free will. Only intelligent beings
have free will. DNA is not just a
blue print that is passed from
generation to generation, it is an
intelligent living being that has
its own free will which can and
does sin.
As Aquinas pointed out, we can't
be much different than our parts.
The parts which constitute our
being would bear our identity and
traits. In other words, the
smaller parts would have the same
appetites as the larger parts. We
can't be different from our DNA.
We can't become better people
unless we can get better DNA.
While we might think that we are
stuck with the DNA that we have,
it is easy to show that the DNA
changes all the time. We can't
learn, forget, or experience
without our DNA respectively
learning, forgetting, or
experiencing. We change and adapt,
and our DNA changes and adapts
along with us. We are unique, and
the DNA in one cell has a
different identity than the DNA in
any other cells. We draw our free
will from the fact that the DNA in
each cell has its own free will.
We have many different appetites,
and so does the DNA in each cell.
We are the composite of our DNA,
we can't expect to be different
from it.
Any system of prayer has to work
across the DNA in billions of
cells with all of their different
personalities, if it is to work
for each of us individually. In a
large organization with many
different personalities and
agendas, we can only make progress
by working together through an
organized structure, lest the work
of one group being ruined or
contradicted by another group. The
organization will need a
direction, objective, and a plan
to be organized. The focus in our
prayer time needs to become these
things for us.
The organizational plan can not
simply be marching orders for
mindless pawns. The DNA has its
own free will, and we derive our
intelligence from it. Our system
of structured prayer needs to be
one that draws out the genius from
our DNA. Genius only occurs in an
extreme minority of our DNA. We
need to find a way to let the
genius speak.
We can often find what we are
looking for by looking deeper. Any
change that debuts on the outside,
is already old news on the inside.
As molecular biology, nuclear
physics, and many other
disciplines have shown, the best
predictor of the future or
diagnosis of the present is to
examine what is happening at a
lower level of recursion. The
phrase "central intelligence" is
an oxymoron. For example, in the
market place it has been proven
(at a tremendous cost) that
centrally governed economies are a
stupid way to do business. In
fact, Aquinas proved that freedom
at the lower levels produces the
strongest aggregate military.
Within this proof, Aquinas
effectively proves that everything
happens from the inside out.
|
Inside Out:
Let us reduce this philosophical
concept to a more specific example
or ramification. As a people, we
don't say that intelligence of
mathematics comes from the masses
of people who are ignorant of
mathematics. We know instead that
basic mathematical principles were
the contributions of Pascal,
Newton, Pythagoras, and others.
Inside each of these brilliant
minds were a few strands of DNA
which advanced the mathematical
ability for the whole human race.
As they are being realized, all
concepts start as an extreme
minority of an extreme minority
and avalanche through the
population. Our prayer times need
to facilitate this process. If the
whim of the mob always runs
roughshod over the thoughts of the
minority, the little that we have
will be taken away from us.
Without the discipline of free
speech and individual rights,
democracy is an ignorant and ugly
tyranny.
Before the voice of the minority
can be heard, the din of the crowd
must be reduced if not silenced.
Then a single topic is introduced
as the focus of discussion. Order
must be held, so only one person
is speaking at a time. Within a
discplined structure, the genius
of the extreme minority can become
common knowledge to the masses.
Jesus did not go to the
marketplace to pray, He instead
went to desolate places where all
was quiet and He was alone with
God. We need to follow our Lord's
example in this. If Jesus, in His
perfection, needed quiet time with
God, we, in our sin, have an even
greater need to feel the presence
of God. We begin to pray like
Jesus prayed by going to some
desolate place where all is quiet
and we are alone with God. In
other words, we won't get regular
and sublime results from
unstructured and inadequate
discipline.
In our stillness, we introduce the
presence of God. We know what the
presence of God feels like because
it has been witnessed to us by
Jesus, Mary, and the Saints. While
admittedly these witnesses are in
the extreme minority, we want the
concepts they represent to ripple
through our being in the same way
that all intelligence is realized
by the masses. As Jesus put it,
the mustard seed is the tiniest of
all seeds, but it can grow into a
Faith that moves mountains. Our
young Faith needs to be nurtured
in a relationship that is fed by
discipline and virtue.
|
Self Consciousness:
Why does a God, who cares about us
so much, seem so inaccessible to
us? Before the fall of Adam, God
visited with Adam each day. By
cherishing curiosity more than
God and eating the apple, Adam
violated the relationship he had
with God. The apple gave Adam the
knowledge of right and wrong. This
knowledge made Adam self
conscious. Then Adam hid from God,
so God would not see him naked.
Adam was too self conscious to
relate to God, and as sons and
daughters of Adam, we still make
the same mistake. We are too
nervous, upset, anxious,
interested, and absorbed in our
self consciousness to feel God's
love for us. In other words, God
doesn't hide from us, we are too
absorbed in our humors and affairs
to feel God.
Of course, our mistakes are not
limited to a strategic flaw. With
a little searching, we could find
many other things wrong with the
picture. All good things go
together. If we mess up in one
area, we can expect many other
(actually all - this is the
concept of good and bad) things to
be affected in a negative way. On
a brighter note, the reverse is
true as well. If we do well in one
area, all other parts of our lives
benefit from it. As proven
philosophically by Aristotle
(ranking of domains) and
mathematically by Einstein (theory
of relativity - I doubt that he
understood the philosophy) all
things are connected together
through our relationship with God;
so when we mess up in one area all
things about us begin to unravel.
We are still making the same
choice that Adam and Eve made. By
choosing knowledge over love, Adam
lost paradise. Across thousands of
years, we have gained many
appetites that keep us away from
love, but we haven't completely
forgot the love of God. A part of
us still knows the divine. When we
experience, beauty, truth,
discipline, order, or any of the
attributes of God, we can still
feel what paradise was like.
The focus in our prayer time is an
attempt to reverse the mistake of
self consciousness that has been
made all through the ages. In our
prayer times, we focus on feeling
the presence of God rather than
following our wills, emotions, or
thoughts.
To put this another way, God did
not hide from Adam, but after Adam
sinned, he hid from God. Adam was
too self conscious to relate to
God. If we are to reverse the
embarrassment of sin, we need to
concentrate on building a
consensus to feel God. As we feel
God, we will realize that God
doesn't condemn us in our
embarrassment, He saves us from
our guilt.
The sacrament of reconciliation
is a good way to get past the
embarrassment of sin, because we
remember our sins and ask for
forgiveness. While we will receive
grace with the help of this
sacrament, we may not consciously
feel the presence of God which is
what allows us to build an
appetite for God. In other words,
the sacrament of reconciliation is
a necessary start but not
necessarily the finish.
We still need to be able to relate
to God by feeling God's presence.
Within each of us, there is an
extreme minority that still knows
God. We feel the presence of God
by giving this small part of us
our attention. In due time, the
appetites of the small minority
will ripple through our being and
become common knowledge to the
masses that make each one of us.
The masses still won't have a
personal experience of God, but at
least we have opened the door of a
possible relationship which leads
to paradise.
The purpose of the focus is to
quiet the competition for the
consciousness. We all know we need
to be quiet in church, so we can
hear the Word of God. When the
church is not quiet, there are
many conversations about many
different things. The few people,
who are praying, are probably
distracted. The process is no
different inside of us. The quiet
helps us to pray.
|
Receptive Cooperation:
In our culture, we seem determine
to let our attention drift.
Television, radio, and other
electronic sedatives enforce the
notion that focus is no fun.
Movies and in some cases books
also set the theme of
undisciplined focus. We do try to
concentrate or focus at certain
times at work or school, but even
at these moments of focus, a part
of our body overrides another
part. This becomes tiring after
several hours, and we relapse into
the recreational activities that
have no focus.
While suppressing a certain part
of ourselves might seem successful
in the short term, it is a poor
strategy for several reasons. The
following reasons are not
exhaustive, but they serve to
illustrate that suppression is
unhealthy.
We can't expect to be at our best
when most of our energy is spent
on keeping another part of us at
bay. The conflict is similar to 50
men rowing a ship. If 24 row the
wrong way, it will take another 24
to offset the wrong rowing. The
ship is operating at 4% of its
capacity. If 8% percent of our
work is maintenance, we can expect
for everything to become worse
with a 4% effort.
It is hard to give God our love
when we are uptight and tense.
One of the more common phrases
from the Old Testament is God
complaining that His people are a
"stiff necked people." If we have
"stiff neck", we are probably
tense. Stress and tension come
from one part of our body trying
to rule another. If every part of
the body was doing as it pleased,
why would we be tense? On the
other hand, happiness is not found
by indulging the appetites. Since
we can not let our appetites run
amok and we can not enforce order,
we are left trying to preach (not
enforce) the Word of God. In other
words, our job is to explain to
each appetite in our body how it
can have a relationship with God,
but we can not demand that our
appetites love God because love
must be free. When faced with the
temptation of ungodly appetites,
we tend to work against our free
will by demanding compliance which
introduces a competition for the
consciousness. One part of us
screams for one thing and another
part is yelling for something
else. The thought that reaches the
consciousness is the one that has
won a yelling match. Of course,
this is a very intense
environment, and we can not expect
God to be screaming to get
through which would only make
everything worse. To hear the
voice of God, we need to turn our
appetites to God through
persuasion (not by enforcement).
Within a competitive environment,
the thought that reaches the
consciousness tends to be a hard,
driving, and insistent thought.
Even when the thought is holy,
there is a good chance that the
winning thought is too much of a
control freak to listen to God.
The love of God is a relationship
not a discipline. Another word of
advice that is repeated a number
of times in the Old Testament is,
"If today you hear God's voice,
harden not your hearts." The goal
of the focus is
spiritual poverty which
has a strong sense of humility in
it. To reach spiritual poverty,
the ego that is driving the
consciousness turns the keys over
to a different kind of
consciousness where humility and
obedience are predominant. These
attributes are not love, but they
take us to the place where we can
be receptive to a relatitionship.
God is more likely to speak to the
poor and unfortunate than to the
current ruler. God goes to where
the need is the greatest. If the
thought that presides over the
consciousness does not respect the
rights of the rest, we will not
profit fully from what God said to
the least among us.
By respecting the rights of all,
the competition for the
consciousness will become less. We
will begin to draw our
intelligence from more varied and
diverse sources. Respect decreases
the tension of competition and
increases the intelligence that
comes from cooperation. We gain
respect by informing rather than
enforcing.
Relationships require two way
communication. Besides informing
others, we need to listen. We are
not likely to know what God has
said unless we listen to the poor
and unfortunate. Besides receiving
this communication, we need to be
poised to be inspired by it, lest
God speaks to us in vain.
In many ways, we are like Mary and
Martha. While Mary was listening
to Jesus, Martha was nervous and
upset about many things. Martha
did not ask Mary what Jesus told
her, she only asked Jesus if He
would send Mary in to help her. In
fact, Martha thought Jesus was
less than considerate because He
allowed Mary to listen to Him!
It is no better for one part of us
to take a superior and ruling
position over another part of us
inside our body than it is within
society. Overriding the will of a
certain part of us is a violation
of the minority rights. The
minority needs to be involved in
the works of the majority before
the minority can find their own
worth and identity.
Contemplation requires
spiritual poverty. In spiritual
poverty all parts of us are
seeking the same thing, God. We
can never reach spiritual poverty
when we are war with ourselves.
Spiritual poverty is achieved by
winning the cooperation of all
parts. To put this another way,
our will is the aggregate of many
smaller wills. If these wills are
not with us, they are against us.
We gain little benefit by
resolving the conflict through
force. Our best chance is to
launch a campaign that is designed
to win the will of the masses.
Spiritual poverty comes through
cooperation rather than conflict.
|
Holy Will:
While it is often masqueraded as
something else, the will is
intrinsically linked to the
predominant appetites. An appetite
is a desire or tendency in some
part of ourselves. The appetites
of one cell have an affect on the
appetites of the next cell. The
congruence of appetites forms a
more public opinion among groups
of cells. These opinions work
their way into the consciousness.
The conscious thoughts then form
the will, where the will is
similar to public policy. Of
course, policy can be opposed, and
with our fallen state, the will is
never set in stone.
To restate this in a more
classical sense, the will is the
rational appetite. The will rules
the sensitive appetites, but
through a sort of political
command (as Aquinas puts it). The
sensitive appetites are broken
into irascible and concupiscible.
Thirst, hunger, sex, and other
appetites which have a biological
component are grouped into
concupiscible area.
"All the manifestations of the
sensitive appetites are called
passions." There are six passions
for the concupiscible appetites:
love and hatred, desire and
aversion, joy and sadness; and
five for the irascible appetites:
hope and despair, courage, fear,
and anger (Summa Theol., I-II, Q. xxiii, a.
4)." (from New Advent).
Before the fall of man, these
appetites led us to God, but since
we have sinned, we can no longer
be so certain. All appetites are
influenced by habits, and some
habits are sinful. It takes a
large amount of time (perhaps 40
years) to convert the habits and
appetites. While we can't expect
immediate results from deep
prayer, we can get success by
practicing successful strategies.
To demonstrate this with a
negative example, we need to
resist temptation at the first
opportunity. We can't enjoy the
temptation for as long as possible
and hope to turn away from it at
the last instant. As Jesus pointed
out, the enjoyment of the
temptation is a sin by itself.
Sin can only feel good by
indulging a sinful appetite. Years
of sinful habit by ourselves and
our ancestors have twisted the
appetites to long for something
sinful. To become holy, we must
change the habits, but our will
power will not be able to do so.
Since these appetites are the
tendencies of our intelligent
recursion, we can't escape them,
because we are no more than our
parts. Jesus said that for man it
is impossible, but for God all
things are possible.
We begin to correct these bad
habits by taking a solemn vow to
reject them in our Baptismal vows.
In Baptism, God also changes the
character of the appetites to be
more receptive of the Divine
relationship. Baptism gives us a
chance, but it is only the
beginning.
The Baptismal vow is an attempt of
a holy will, but most of the work
still lies in front of us. By
fully participating in the Church,
we gain the graces that will
definitely help, but we know from
experience that many sinful things
still remain within us.
As we begin deep prayer, we need
to remember our ongoing struggle.
Our will is not strong enough to
save us, but it is strong enough
to establish a relational strategy
with our Saviour. As we have
strong experiences within holy
relationships (especially Jesus
and Mary), we will begin to have
the power to change some of our
sinful habits which in turn
correct our appetites. For sure,
the power is from the relationship
and not from our will.
When we focus to reach
spiritual poverty, these
same unholy appetites distract us
from our quest. The prayer
solution is no different than the
stategy we deploy to save our
souls. In other words, we strive
to reach spiritual poverty by
stimulating our relationship with
God. We will never reach spiritual
poverty through concentration
because the will does not have
absolute control over the
sensitive appetites. Spiritual
poverty can only be reached
through our relationship with our
God. To be more precise, spiritual
poverty occurs when our sensitive
appetites begin to long for God.
From above (the
quote from
Aquinas), we know the sensitive
appetites are engaged in holy
pursuit when we have a passionate
prayer time. To put this another
way, we know we are beginning to
have success when our prayer times
become more passionate. We have
all experienced something similar
to this; when we are the most
passionate, we are the least
distracted.
Passionate prayer experiences
occur when the sensitive appetites
voluntarily join the holy will in
the quest for spiritual poverty
which begs the question of how we
encourage the sensitive appetites
to volunteer. We don't want to be
too quick to assume that we appeal
to the sensitive appetites through
the senses, because sensitive
appetites are a feature of the
soul. On the other hand, the soul
is not divorced from the senses.
Our key is that the sensitive
appetites longed for God before
the fall and still primarily
belong to their intended function.
This is why music, nature, and
other sublime experiences often
take our minds to the spiritual
realm. With the exception of
diabolical influences, humans are
universally attracted to certain
sensual experiences that relate to
one attribute of God or another,
and even in diabolical cases, the
original intent seeks a divine
attribute. With these things in
mind, we know that we can petition
the sensitive appetites with
practical techniques and
supernatural practices. The
practical techniques are the
subject of the focus, and the
supernatural practices will be
left to the section dedicated to
virtue.
|
How to Focus:
"Give me your undivided
attention." How many times have we
heard that? Unless God is
speaking, however, it is actually
impossible because the sensitive
appetites only have a common (but
not exclusive) longing for God. Of
course in our prayer time, an
undivided longing for God is
possible, and we call it,
"spiritual poverty." In this
section, we cover techniques that
we can use to persuade our
sensitive appetites to participate
with our holy wills as we pursue
spiritual poverty.
Beginning Tactics:
The "Beginning Tactics" are not
necessarily things that we
graduate from; they are practices
that don't require any experience.
|
|
Meditative Plan:
Meditation is a very large
category that involves a number of
different things such as
personality,
simplicity,
timing,
and
history.
While this list is not exhaustive,
it does give us some objectives to
work with with.
Personality: As we pursue
spiritual poverty, we will want to
find meditations that work for us.
The Church has a rich history of
meditations that include the
Bible, Rosary, Eucharist, icons,
and many more specific meditations
such as inner healing, saintly
devotions, spiritual exercises,
and the Jesus prayer. We want to
keep sampling different
meditations until we find one that
works for us. The more that we
find to our liking the better our
chances are. The meditations can
be mixed together, and we can
invent our own. Picking a
meditation is similar to buying a
pair of shoes; we need to find
what we like and then own it. As
we practice our meditation, it
should become a part of us.
Simplicity:
As we progress in prayer, the
meditation will necessarily need
to become more simple. We want to
be still like Mary and not
distracted like Martha. Nearly all
meditations can be simplified. For
example, if the rosary is our
meditation, we would gradually
work towards meditating on one
mystery per day. If we read the
Bible for a meditation, we can
gradually work toward meditating
on a single sentence. While this
might seem rather boring if we are
beginning, we need to keep in mind
that the passion does not come
from the content. It comes from
the relationship with God. As our
appetites become familiar with
God's presence, we won't want all
the distractions that remind us of
God, but we will want some simple
meditation even after we are in
spiritual poverty.
Timing:
We are all one body. We feel what
other people feel, and it is very
important to pray to the same
feeling as the rest of the Church.
In other words, the meditation
should fit well into the calendar
of the larger Church. For example,
if our meditation involves the
mysteries of the Rosary, we
wouldn't want to do a Nativity
meditation on Good Friday. In fact,
we would want to spend some time
to make sure our meditation is in
harmony with the rest of the
Church on any given day.
History:
Our meditation is a tool that we
use to relate to God. We want our
relationship to grow each day, and
our meditation should reflect this
growing relationship. In her
perfect state, Mary was a master
of relationships, if there ever
was one. She reflected on past
events that were important to her
relationship with Jesus. As she
grew in her understanding, she
began to know Jesus in a deeper
way. We can follow Mary's example
by remembering our past meditative
experiences to add to our
experiences each day.
|
|
Initial Meditiations:
As we begin the spiritual journey
some meditations are nearly
universal. The following two
categories are very common, and
they make popular retreat topics.
|
|
|
Asset Privation:
Jesus covers this theme in the
"Pearl of Great Price" parable
(Matthew 13:45), but let's add an
analogy. The theme involves
surrending all that we have. In
our material state, we are like
living in a diseased oasis. We are
not dead, but we are not thriving,
either. To become healthy, we have
to leave the oasis, and head for
verdant mountains. We have
accumulated emotional baggage at
the oasis, and to make it across
the desert to the mountain of the
Lord, we are going to have to
leave it behind us. The following
two meditations speak to this
analogy, but of course, we could
find many other themes.
|
|
|
|
Sanity:
This is clearly a "let go let God"
meditation. Many times we verbally
commit to God, but within our
emotions, we set conditions that
makes our oaths little more than
formalities. When things don't go
our way, we complain that God has
deserted us. In reality, we have
some sinful appetites, and we
can't expect to feel good all the
time. We are not in the Garden of
Eden anymore. As we develop a
personal relationship with Jesus,
we often (perhaps usually) ask
ourselves if we would give up
everything for God, and we can be
sure that we are being prompted
by the Holy Spirit. We usually
start with material possessions
and work our way towards health
issues. For many of us, one of the
last things we want to offer up is
our sanity. God wants friends who
are going to "stick tight" and
keep the Faith. We should consider
this meditation a covenant with
God.
|
|
|
|
Family:
If we want to give up everything
for God, we will also have to give
up our family. This does not mean
that Jesus wants us to abandon
those who depend on us, but it
does mean that our foundation
needs to be built on our
relationship with God. Familial
relationships are God's way of
creating and nurturing life, but
God needs to be our central
relationship (not our family). The
strongest relationships are those
based in agape; and no
relationship is based in agape,
unless it is based in God. As
Saint John puts it, "God is
agape." A relationship, that is
based in agape, can never be lost,
and therefore, God is not in a
relationship that fear causes us
to cling to.
|
|
|
Inner Healing:
During the early phases of deep
prayer, we almost always go
through an inner healing process.
Since we have many good books that
cover inner healing, we don't need
to spend much time on it here, but
we do want to emphasize the affect
of inner healing on the spiritual
journey. Jesus said that, before
we approach God, we need to be at
peace with others. It is
unrealistic for us to expect to be
a channel of God's love when we
have these outstanding issues with
other people or within ourselves.
Inner healing shows us how to get
past these impasses.
|
|
|
|
Childhood:
If our early years were less than
perfect, we will probably need to
drop some of the baggage that we
are still carrying from that
period. We can get so used to
carrying it that we can forget we
have it or remember why have it.
It is possible or even likely that
we don't remember issues from our
childhood, although they may be
nearly dictating the way we live
today. For example, some emotional
trauma that we suffered during
birth could be causing severe
headaches on a daily basis, and
after we deal with this trauma,
the headaches disappear. We can go
through inner healing with other
people, but deep prayer will
certainly cause these issues to
surface. How we deal with these
issues is well covered in other
books, but the fundamental is to
go through the experience with
either Jesus or Mary. We feel
their presence while we relive the
problem. We know we have some
problems if we experience fears or
agitation as we try to meditate.
If we want to drop the baggage, we
will have to face the problem.
|
|
|
|
Family:
As we grow closer to others we
become more vulnerable to them,
and in most cases, the members of
our family can hurt us the most.
For these reasons we often need
healing in our family
relationships. All of our problems
have the same solution. We revisit
some of the more disturbing
events, and feel the agape of
Jesus or Mary as we relive the
times that trouble us. Since we
have often spent a large amount of
time with our family, we can
probably expect that the inner
healing will take regular sessions
over several months. The time it
takes is well spent, because the
process is a very liberating
experience which will make our
family relationships stronger and
healthier.
|
|
|
|
Enemies:
Of course, God forbids us to have
enemies, but we are likely to
suffer from resentment, anger, and
other types of emotional distress
which are the sequel to social
conflict. We can be sure that this
emotional baggage will be too
heavy for us to carry on the
spiritual journey. Inner healing
helps us to past these issues, but
it might be helpful to put a
different twist on it by sorting
through the reasons that we
dislike our enemy. If the bad
feelings come from an injury, then
the normal presence of Jesus or
Mary at the time of the injury
will be good. In other words, the
same exercised we used in other
areas. In many cases, the dislike
comes from real or perceived
personality flaws in the other
people or in ourselves. For
example, we might dislike the
person because they are fat, lazy,
or (God bless us) all of the
above. On the other hand, we might
have the problems and dislike
someone else because they don't
suffer from them. In either case,
we should not give up hope. We
should pray for person who has the
problems. If we pray with
confidence, we will feel like we
are in control of the situation
and helping someone. These
feelings indicate that we are on
the road to recovery.
|
|
Diabolic Possession:
At the beginning of the spiritual
journey resident demons will
sometimes protest in a vehement
way which makes the focus all but
impossible. For our momentary
purposes, let's break the
possession into two catergories of
lower and upper possession. For
the most part, if we have a
personal relationship with the
demon, it is an upper level demon.
When we have lower level demons,
we seem to have a bad side; but we
are not sure why it happens. If we
have upper level demons, we are
unlikely to attempt the spiritual
journey. We would need to find a
very good exorcist to get rid of
upper level demons. The possession
of the lower levels, which
includes the occult, can be cast
out by most priests by using the
triple rites of exorcism. If we
seemed to have been possessed from
birth, we will need to be
unconscious during the exorcism.
We are often tempted to play the
exorcism card too fast. Those of
us who don't need exorcism are
usually the ones who seek it. If
we need exorcism, it is likely
that we would be able to explain
how we came into possession. If we
practice sin (e.g., sexual
prostitutes, drug dealer) on a
regular basis or the occult even
experimentally, we would have a
good chance of being possessed. In
terms of the spiritual journey, we
won't get very far while we are
possessed.
|
|
|