Week 5 - Heights Christian Church

FALLING UPWARDS by
Richard Rohr:
Session 5
Heights Christian Church, Lent, 2013
Joe LaGuardia
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

A Little Levity
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Opening Prayer
0 “Snow Fall,” by May Sarton, Collected Poems: 1930-­‐1993 (Norton, 1992), noted in The Writer’s Almanac, 2.2.213.
0 Snow Fall
With no wind blowing
It sifts gently down,
Enclosing the world in
A cool white down,
A tenderness of snowing.
0 It falls and falls like sleep
Till wakeful eyes can close
On all the waste and loss
As peace comes in and ?lows,
Snow-dreaming what I keep.
0 Silence assumes the air
And the ?ive senses all
Are wafted on the fall
To somewhere magical
Beyond hope and despair.
0 There is nothing to do
But drift now, more or less
On some great lovingness,
On something that does bless,
The silent, tender snow.
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

From WCCM.org:
And just as the mantra is the
sacrament of our poverty in
prayer, so in the community
absolute honesty and
frankness in our
relationships with one
another and above all with
our Teacher is the sign and
means of making the
passover from fear to love.
(JOHN MAIN)
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Tasks for This Week
0 “God is a River,” by Peter Mayer
0 Email responses, if any
0 Issues from last week
0 Where We Are and Where
We Are Going…
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

The Seventh Theme:
0 Seventh Theme:
Reality is paradoxical and complementary. Non-dual
thinking is the highest level of consciousness. Divine
union, not private perfection, is the goal of all religion
(GOAL).
Tuesday, March 26, 13

Amnesia and
Remembering
0 Religion is to help us discover our True Self, NOT
accumulate merits.
0 Otherwise, you push enlightenment off to a future
reward and punishment within which hardly anyone
wins!
0 We have to UNLEARN stuff (“Unless you become like
little children…If you want to be perfect, go, sell…”)
0 “Practice for heaven by letting go of smaller kingdoms
and choosing union NOW.” You are in heaven as soon
as you make this choice.
0 Heaven can’t be based on excluding others
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Your Image of God…
0 “If you accept a punitive notion of God who tortures those
who do not love Him then you have an absurd universe
where most people end up being more loving than God!
0 How could Jesus ask us to forgive and heal our enemies
unless “God is doing it Tirst and always.”
0 We haven’t known how to include the many. The ego
prefers winners and losers—an economy of merit instead
of an economy of grace.
0 [Don’t underestimate the power of these
statements!]
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Whatever Is Simple
and Beautiful
0 Whatever beautiful things we can say about creation or
humanity, we can say that of God multiplied to the
in[inite power.
0 [Say something nice to the person next to you].
0 In the First Half, we can’t know all the parts of
holiness; we need Elders to tell us [Examples?]
0 You can grow in simplicity and not need to know it all
without doubt: the sad, absurd and futile belong to life.
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Bright Sadness; Sober
Happiness
0 In the Second Half, there is darkness, but a “changed
capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety.”
0 You no longer play “holier than thou.”
0 You pray and listen rather than react
0 Law is no longer your guide; you cherish the Beatitudes
0 Your life becomes spacious; you become GENERATIVE
0 God is no longer small, punitive or tribal (or only male)
0 You are no longer full of yourself; you become a
grandparent to the world!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Fall into Brightness
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Your Shadow
0 De[inition: what you do not want to see and do not
want others to see about yourself
0 Your shadow helps your persona die
0 People with huge Personas (often associated with roles
like Minister, Professor, Writer, Philosopher, etc.) live
out of their shadow selves and have great dif[iculty
surrendering to the process of falling upward.
0 Pray for one good humiliation a day!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Shadow Work IS Falling
Upward!
0 Healthy self-­‐criticism helps us spiritually mature
0 Growth is largely a growth in seeing and it usually
makes a big leap in our [inal years, months, weeks and
days of life.
0 Shadow work (shadow boxing) continues throughout
life, but you will become less upset by it.
0 Eventually, you no longer project your fear, anger of
unlived life onto terrorists, Muslims, conservatives, etc.
0 You know who you are without fear of exposure; the
game is over, unless you keep denying your shadow.
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Ken Wilber’s Hierarchy
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Don’t Hate First-­‐Half-­‐ers
0 The young and institutions have to do First Half work.
0 These are ego needs, NOT soul needs.
0 You have to hit some kind of bottom before you can start
your real spiritual journey.
0 And we still have First Half needs (“even hermits have to
eat!”). Holding this tension is the shape of wisdom!
0 Best deTinition of church: “Where two of three are gathered
in my name”—NOT the large institution, which is
concerned with numbers, language, dress, laws and
exclusion. [Can institutions get into the second half? Miller:
“Here I stand in my silly robe!”]
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Wait for Receptive Soil
0 You can bless and encourage First Half people,
but you can’t join them; and they often can’t
understand where you are.
0 Wait for receptive soil, multipliers, change agents,
contemplatives—often they are outside churches.
0 Be prepared for some loneliness (whose cure is often
solitude, a happy aloneness).
0 This unpacking can happen naturally as we age. Even
your politics can become more compassionate and
inclusive!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

The Emerging Church
A sign you’re getting there!
0 You can begin to see it everywhere, in new levels of
af[iliation, dialogue and friendship.
0 You get to be a double or triple “belonger,” (“as colonial
and oppressed people have had to be in order to
survive”)
0 As you learn to incorporate the negative, you begin to
think in “both/and” instead of “either/or” categories.
0 You have done right/wrong, dualistic thinking for
decades and it works in the First Half. But in the
Second Half, you come to know that God creates all and
loves all. This is dif[icult work!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Rohr on Non-­‐Dualism (Both/
And Thinking)
0 See his daily meditation of January 21, 2012, in my PP on
Lever and a Place to Stand, Session 1
0 You no longer divide between right and wrong. It just IS.
0 In the Second Half, what you avoided comes back as a true
teacher and friend.
0 Let life lead you into a practice of overcoming your dualistic
mind or you will remain in the First Half forever and
endlessly argue over facts.
0 “Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go;
split people create splits…”
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

New Slant on Ageing
0 “What looks like falling can be experienced as falling
upward and onward…where the soul has found its fullness
and lies inside the Big Picture. It is Not loss, but gain.”
0 Good people mirror goodness in us
0 You do not take insults OR praise very seriously.
0 You can step out of self-­‐reTlecting mirrors if you have at
least one friend to ground you (could be God).
0 Find at least one mirror that reveals your inner, deepest
and divine image (thank you!)
0 You can’t mirror yourself (or tell how well you sing)
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

God Knows..
0 -­‐-­‐That we will fall somehow. He probably sees little
opportunity to unite us with himself when we have
ego-­‐in[lating successes.
0 Elders need to teach the young who haven’t had
enough experience to know that the dying becomes the
rising and the falling the standing. They’re fragile!
0 God sees us as we are without judgment or distortion!
0 Such perfect seeing transforms us
0 All we can do is receive the loving gaze of God and return
it every day. Then we’ll be free and happy every day.
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

TOGETHER
In this
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Passing It On
0 God has no trouble including, accepting, forgiving all.
0 Then we can pass on his accepting gaze to others
without asking if they deserve it—because we know
that WE didn’t deserve it!
0 No one can keep you from the Second Half of your own
life except yourself; your own lack of courage, patience,
and imagination will do it.
0 Pain is part of the deal. Desire it.
0 When we empty out, God will rush in!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Come, Let Us Find out MORE
Together!
0 Let the capacity of our cup be increased as we dip it
into the ocean which is God.
0 Let us travel into silence and bathe in the void that
exists when the ego is dismissed
0 “Will you also go away?” “Lord to whom shall we go?”
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

The Problem of Voices
0 What if your next Lenten Series was presented by:
1. A Witch or Warlock
2. A Druid
3. An LSD enthusiast
4. A Fundamentalist
5. An Atheist
0 The truth will set you free, but it will make you miserable
Tirst! Does Falling Upward sound true to you?
0 Would any of the above presenters negate the First Half,
Second Half insights? [See Rohr Credibility slide in #4]
0 Read the last paragraphs on page 160 of Falling Upward.
They cannot be summarized!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Next Steps:
0 Try another of Richard Rohr’s Books, such as his latest,
Immortal Diamond
0 Try a webinar or DVD from cac.org.
0 Continue your meditation, either alone or with others.
0 Allow yourself to follow the invitation, to be
transformed!
0 See the world with this new lens!
Thanks for Coming!
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Tuesday, March 26, 13

Closing Prayer for this Series
A Trinitarian Prayer
Meditation 28 of 52
In the name of the Holy Formless One,
In the name of the Son, who took Form,
In the name of the Spirit between these Two,
All things are made one.
God for us, we call You Father
God alongside us, we call You Jesus,
God within us, we call You Holy Spirit.
But these are only names.
You are the Eternal Mystery that enables
and holds and enlivens all things
—even us and even me.
Every name falls short of Your goodness and Your greatness.
We can only see who You are in what is.
In the beginning, now, and always.
Amen
—A prayer accompanying The Divine Dance (CD, MP3) on God as Trinity
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Tuesday, March 26, 13