27a ¿Qué es la terapia divina? parte 1
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[The Spiritual Journey With Fr. Thomas Keating]
[What is the Divine Therapy?]
>> Jesus has another strong saying
that directed to that aspect of the false self
that we were describing in the last conference,
namely, the tendency to be identified
with the particular group that we come from.
You only have to think of times past
where parents used to choose
who their children had to marry.
So that, that was...
all through the ages,
there's been the stratification of society
in which you had to fit in to certain values
that were preprogrammed.
And anyone who didn't do that would be ostracized
or wouldn't be very popular, to say the least.
So this, the cultural straightjacket
of over-identification
is something that Jesus invites us
to break with this saying...
"Unless you hate your father, and mother,
and relatives, and property,
and your own self too, you cannot be my disciple."
And so this saying is another way
of saying repent.
That is change the direction
in which you're looking for happiness,
change your over-identification with your group
so that you can be free to follow the values
of the Gospel in your own conscience,
and not be unduly fearful
of unsettling the group you're in
or as they say, rocking the boat.
So much of later life
after we've attained a certain settlement
with our families and our profession
or business of someone...
Leads to these challenges to let go,
to let go of our over-identification
with who we think we are.
This is a problem for parents, for ministers,
for people with a special role,
I suppose, for politicians,
certainly in older times
with kings and noble people
who felt that they were,
they totally identified with their position,
whether social or otherwise.
Jesus on the contrary, in the parables,
tends to undermine
all the social structures of his time.
And to subvert the unquestioned values
of the way things were.
So the movement of Jesus' parables
is to take down barriers of any kind
and to enable people to experience
their unity with the whole human family
and not just with family or ethnic group
or a nation or even religion.
So as life goes on, you have people come
to what is called the midlife crisis,
which is simply a time
when all the great aspirations we had for success
or fame or fortune,
whatever the symbols in the culture appeal to us
as the perfect gratification
of our emotional programs, the happiness,
begin to get upset or shattered.
Actually, right now here in New York,
with the tragedy of the Twin Towers,
people are asking themselves,
"Why do I go to work?
Why am I climbing the economic ladder?
Why am I going to all this trouble
if every place I move or every place
I go is hazardous or dangerous?"
The security systems that we were familiar with,
the fact that no foreign wars
had touched our shores since the Civil War...
Cause people
to put a disproportionate sense of security
in a number of things,
especially in the economic situation
or domination of the United States.
So as the onset of the midlife crisis comes,
people's families are often upset,
the children have moved out often,
and couple are back
to living with just each other.
It's a time when a lot of people get divorced.
It's a time with their second careers are new.
In other words, people have not found
in their programs for happiness,
expressed in the symbols of the culture
of their daily life
what they had hoped for.
And so there's...
it's a time for some psychotherapy I guess,
a lot of people do this, or you take Prozac
or whatever the more contemporary pill is
that helps us to feel somewhat calm
when we're not calm.
And we'll never be calm
until we face head on what the problem is.
And no amount of chemicals
is going to heal this problem.
That's why psychotherapy
is not just an issue of chemicals
as it's tending to become in that profession,
because there's no money
for extended psychotherapy.
The whole purpose of chemicals is
I was taught to understand it as,
that it puts the patient
in a certain level of calm
that you can begin to deal with the real issues
which are basically emotional or spiritual.
So if the midlife crisis doesn't work
then nature has
one more possibility of disengaging us
from the roles that we played or thought
we had to have in order to be happy.
And this sometimes occurs
or is expressed with old age,
you just can't do it anymore, you become feeble,
you become a little senile,
everybody is trying to make jokes
about your lack of memory.
And so your whole human level of expertise
and of people relying on you
and then as it gets worse,
then the children wind up taking care of you,
and sometimes to the point of taking care of you
as if you were actually an infant.
And then comes the crisis of the old age home
or the nursing home, and the senility.
And this is one way
in which we, a person loses their role
because it's forcibly taken from them.
Well, the question arises,
why not let it go a little sooner,
so that you could enjoy
the freedom of choosing the measure
in which you're going to belong to certain groups.
And the freedom, if they have values
that are offensive to your conscience,
well, you can move out peacefully and graciously.
Well, if all of these don't work,
there's always the possibility
that the dying process may be helpful.
Because when the brain dies,
that's the end of the false self,
that's the end of the individual self
and all its support systems.
So we don't know much about the dying process.
When it actually take, occurs or how long
the soul lingers close to the body,
it seems to be a whole variety of possibilities
according to some researchers
that have put time on this.
But whatever it is, that it may be the moment
in which for the first time in our lives,
we could make a free choice,
because we're not influenced
by any of the baggage,
the emotional programs for happiness,
or the over-identification with our group
or our role that we had carried with us
all through life.
So from this perspective, sickness,
tragedy, disaster even, natural disasters,
even man made disasters are not unmitigated evils,
because for many people,
they may be the only way that their unquestioned
interiorization of the values that they absorbed
from four to eight are
ever really reevaluated questions
and hopefully, put in the waste basket.
Now this is not to say
there're not real values in one's role,
but it is the over-identification with them
that makes it difficult or impossible
to fulfill those roles correctly.
So you might almost say
the only way to become a great parent
is to be willing not to be one.
Or to be willing to let the children go
and become whoever they want to be,
without being crushed, or humiliated,
or feel rejected.
All of these things, emotions,
simply reflecting an over-identification process,
which obviously the children would be wise
to disregard.
So this, the strength
and energy of Jesus' wisdom sayings,
again, not to be taken literally,
it's simply you got to let go
of the support systems for your false self
because it's basically an illusion, it can't work,
it's fouling up your relationship with God,
with other people, with yourself.
And so along with the invitation to repent,
change the direction
in which you're looking for happiness,
comes Jesus' invitation
that we have been looking at quite closely.
Take the divine therapy.
If you want to be free, if you want to pray,
if you want to heal your relationship with God,
enter your inner room.
It's a kind of office.
It's where the divine psychotherapy takes place.
Close the door so you don't run away too fast.
Quiet your own interior mind
and so that you can listen to what the Spirit
is saying to your particular little cell,
the little holon that you are,
within the greater holon
of Christ's mystical body.
And the whole purpose of this therapy
is to enable us to become who we really are.
And I don't know what else you think you can be.
But it...
we're scared of being who we really are.
In any case, Jesus has a wisdom saying
for this suggestion and it's this one.
He says, "If you try to save your life,"
that is to say your false self,
seems to be the meaning of life in this context,
"you will bring yourself to ruin."
Okay.
So the false self has no future.
It's death that enables us
to discover the true self
and who we really are.
And then comes
the second half of the wisdom saying,
which is, "If..." I'll just repeat the first part
to keep the context clear,
"If you try to save your life,
you will bring yourself to ruin.
One who brings himself to nothing
will find out who he is."
There is the promise.
That means bring yourself to no thing,
that is no particular object,
because the true self is limitless
in its spiritual capacity.
And one of the things within us that is limitless
is the desire for happiness.
So to let oneself become no particular thing,
no over-identification,
no over-identification with the body,
our feelings.
We have these things, our friends,
our relatives, our property, our roles,
and our innermost self too.
That is to say
our idealized image of who we think we are
or should be or want to be.
This is what Jesus invites us to let go of
and the divine therapy is designed to enable us
to do this in a humane way
over a period of time
and with all kinds of other helps,
and with enormous intelligence
to guide us through this process,
and with love that is absolutely unconditional,
and determined to bring this about
at all costs to himself.
And so seen in this way,
the redemption of Christ
is not so much the atonement for sin,
but the work of healing the wounds of human nature
so that we might enter with Him and be co-heirs,
to use Paul's phrase, of the divine nature,
that is to share inherently in the divine light,
life, and love,
which is not only transforming of human nature
but glorifying in the sense that
it opens us totally to the presence of God,
which is what glory really is.
So the next question,
now that we've laid this foundation
is to say, well, what is the cure?
What is the therapy?
What, in other words, goes on in the inner room,
in the office of the divine therapist
in which we faithfully, day by day,
and twice daily, expose ourselves to the spirit,
to the language of divine silence,
and to the negativity
or dark side of our personality,
or whatever in us is suppose to likeness of God
in which we were made.
So there are two things
that need to be distinguished
but emphasized as part of this therapy
or profound healing process.
And the first one that takes place is normally,
and in most situations or cases,
is the affirmation of our basic goodness.
I touched on this
earlier in this section
of our spiritual journey tapes.
And it was to say that when we begin this therapy,
the first thing that God does
is to reassure us that it's okay,
that it's good for us, and that we ourselves
are respected and honored by God
as truly being created in God's image.
So the very idea that we're no good,
that some people brought with them
from early childhood
or unlovable or unworthy
is itself an insult to God.
Because God does not make junk, we make junk.
But God not only supports
and honors this inmost being,
this image within us that reflects His goodness,
but nothing can ever take it away.
It's...
hell itself can never destroy this basic goodness.
So any amount of failures on our part,
any amount of subjugation to the human condition
and the amount of personal disregard
for our own conscience, and the needs,
and rights of other people
and whatever our complexity or complicity rather,
in human affairs, or violence, or brutality,
and even torture, this is...
Never can take away our capacity
to recover from the wounds of the human condition
that hide from us the beauty
and the purity
and the essence of who we really are.
And so the affirmation of our basic goodness
is sometimes expressed very simply
by the piece that we notice that
during the time of prayer,
that even when there are a lot of perceptions
coming down the stream of conscious, consciousness
or a lot of thoughts or unpleasant memories
or worries about the future.
The, this reassurance about our basic goodness
gives us the courage and the strength
to drop those tempting thoughts,
to drop, so to speak,
our interest in their content,
so that we don't think about those thoughts
but simply allow them
to pass through our consciousness
during the time of prayer
and on out the other side.
Here is where time is a great friend.
If you just wait long enough, everything passes.
And so these thoughts that are so distressing,
if we don't identify with those thoughts,
then right away we begin
to experience a certain peace.
Because it's our complicity,
our over-identification, our concern,
our immersion in the ordinary
psychological awareness of everyday life
and in our own interior dialogue
with its endless commentaries.
This is what is disturbing.
And as that comes down, the number of thought,
at least under normal conditions,
begin to diminish.
And we begin
to sense the presence of God within us,
to feel this delicate attraction to go deeper
manifested by a devotion
to the periods of centering prayer,
where we even feel drawn to it
in many cases as it develops,
people feel they cannot not do it.
That if they don't do it,
they feel uneasy throughout the day.
So this therapy is very real, very reassuring,
and it manifests itself basically
in the feeling that everything is okay.
Even though I feel awful
and completely unregenerated,
and still under the influence
of all the energy centers
in my over-identifications,
and I know there are some things
I should change in my life
but I'm not quite ready to,
I don't, and a lot of other things
I'm beginning to see that should be changed
that I was never aware of
until this process began.
And so, basically, it's entering the private room
and that's a clear expression of good will,
which is all that God wants.
Come in and be healed is the invitation.
And the first experience is usually,
normally a period, fairly extended,
in which we are finding a new world,
and it reflects and is manifested in daily life
by a greater peace, greater calm,
sometimes joy and a capacity
to be more concerned for others,
and not just mentally concerned
but practically concerned for others.
So all our relationships are healed
are beginning at least to be heal
through the process of unwinding
our emotional programs for happiness.
And of dis-identifying
with our over-identifications,
with our group, but this includes
also our over-identification
with all the other aspects of our body
and our nature
that we tend to get duly concerned about.
Suppose now, that we're doing this prayer
on a regular basis,
centering prayer as you know is a discipline
leading to contemplative prayer.
That is to say,
it's a discipline to foster the relationship
that gradually becomes contemplative prayer
in which the Spirit of God
more and more takes over our prayer.
And through the contemplative gifts
of the Holy Spirit, knowledge,
understanding, and wisdom
begins to modify our view of reality
by the divine view,
to modify our perception of what is a value,
and our belief systems.
And I refer here
not so much to religious belief systems
but to the belief systems
that were part of the socialization period,
when we absorbed
the values of our particular group,
which could have been as trivial as having
your hair parted on the right instead of the left.
But usually, those human being
acts out of a belief system.
And so if you think
that you always have to please everybody,
if you think or have been taught
that you always have straight A's,
if you're a high achiever
because of the encouragement of parents
or the competition of peers and those things
then that's why you function, or act,
or if you have identification with status,
or if you're ambitious.
All of these things are belief systems
that are unquestioned.
And probably we picked up
in that socialization period from four to eight.
And they're a straightjacket
and they're hindering
our inner freedom of choosing
what we really think or believe or know
as some case may be, is right
or is congenial to our conscience
and to our faith.
So this process then can...
can deepen,
and the centering prayer method
normally consists in introducing a sacred word
or can also be the sacred glance
or a gaze towards God, not as an image
or as a particular concept,
but simply as a mysterious presence
that we know is there and that we love.
It can also, at times...
Take the form of noticing our breath
as the pouring
into our spirits of the Holy Spirit.
Spirit means breath
and exhaling divine love into the atmosphere
for the healing
of all the social ills of humanity.
But it's not a reflective act,
it's simply a symbol, an expression,
a gesture of maintaining our intention
to consent to God's presence within,
or more exactly,
to consent to God's intentionality,
which is to heal us of all our wounds
and to transform us
in the process of divine union.
So as we practice this prayer on a daily basis,
twice daily,
the capacity to let go of interesting
or attractive thoughts,
or perceptions, or feelings,
or for that matter,
thoughts that inspire an aversion,
because they're, both of them
are emotional interferences
with the movement towards interior silence.
So as we let these go,
the habit of letting go becomes more prompt.
And as this becomes a habitual,
there are moments in which we are aware
that we're not interested in the thoughts,
even the most interesting
or those that are of immediate concern,
or those that we really have to decide
in the next few days,
or those that we have to deal with
because of their importance,
they all maintain their importance,
but the process of the therapy
that we're taking is more important.
And we know that through those moments of silence,
our mind will be clearer
to make the right choices.
And that the spirit will be with us
through the gift of counsel
to help us to make
at least reasonably correct decisions.
And that capacity to make ever better decisions
related to our growth in the prayer.
And that capacity of being aware
that one is not interested
in the thought is not a judgment,
it's not an evaluation,
it's not an act of reasoning,
and still less, is it a choice?
It just happens spontaneously
and intuitively at times one is aware,
that the thoughts are going by perceptions,
feelings, memories, plans,
all that we call thoughts
in the centering prayer practice.
And yet, we feel, at some deep level
that's mysterious to us, we can't name it,
a certain freedom and that easiness
that they are not interfering
with the movement of our communion.
So centering prayer
than is experienced as a movement
from conversation to communion,
as a movement from activity to receptivity.
And it's this receptivity
that enables contemplative prayer to take root
and to take over the whole process and the method.
And then the Spirit of God
becomes the only method,
that is to say, guides us
during the time of prayer from start to finish.
And so this experience of freedom from thoughts
during the time of prayer is the beginning,
in my view, of contemplative prayer.
It's still tenuous,
so there's an alternation of our own activity
returning to the sacred symbol,
usually the sacred word.
And then being silent
and then experiencing
may be not silence but thoughts,
and yet being still free from following them
or being interested in them.
This is the beginning of the healing process
and a taste of what true happiness really is.
And it's this taste that is to be encourage
and to grow
and begin to take over all our attitudes
and to manifest in all our activity
and faculties and bodies,
souls, relationship, roles, and everything else
to manifest God's presence.
[Intermission]