A dream-world is where most people live

We spend a great deal of our lives living somewhere other than where we are. Our minds dwell mostly on the past or walk around in the mind-made world of the future. But no one meets God anywhere but where they are now. The past was, of course, very real, but it’s not real now. And the future will be real, but it’s not here yet.

The past is only a memory and the future is merely a dream.

And so long as you spend the bulk of your time in these two dreams worlds, you’re essentially sleep walking through the present; the present moment is the only time you really have. In this "dream" state (which seems very real to you) God will be merely a head-trip—ideas and doctrines—no more real than the phantoms in your dreams.

Sadly, this dream-world is where most people live, it’s likely where you’ve lived for quite some time.

It's time to wake up.

The power of solitude in the midst of a busy life

To discern the emptiness, and the vain pursuits of those who are strangers to Love, you need space, real freedom . . . solitude, silence. Not solitude that is a flight from all this in order to escape into some peaceful realm.  Rather, a cleft in the rock, a place to take your stand for the sake of others---for Love---rather than against them in judgment of them and their empty pursuits (which frankly, are often your own).

This is the path of the "peacemaker" Jesus wills you to be (Matthew 5.9)---who you really are when you are free from such spiritually alien compulsions.

This solitude is most of all a condition of the heart, and inner disposition and can be embraced anywhere with practice---though it needs the support of real solitude; a lonely place you habitually go where no one and nothing can disturb or call on you for awhile; a place where you can let go, unplug . . . be.

Says Thomas Merton: "it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin.  It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity" (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 81).

The spiritual intelligence we need

Some readers have expressed interest in the line of thought in my previous post, and especially my reference to Aristotle.

I’d suggest a longer treatment of the argument in Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Slim book by a strong Catholic philosopher. About it the New York Times Book Review says, “Pieper’s message for us is plain…. The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind-all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society…. Pieper’s profound insights are impressive and even formidable.”

On the first page Pieper writes: “It is essential to begin by reckoning with the fact that one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure. That much, at least, can be learnt from the first chapter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. And even the history of the word attests the fact: for leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English ’school.’ The word used to designate the palce where we educate and teach is derived from a word which means ‘leisure’. ‘School’ does not, properly speaking, mean school, but leisure.”

This is an important philosophical critique of Modern culture and our captivity to endless doing.  It plumbs the classic tradition inviting us into the spiritual intelligence necessary not just to survive but to thrive.

The best things come to those who dare

Without leisure, contemplation, reflection, and worship, society is impoverished. Aristotle commended those who dared to shift the practice of their vocation so they had space to step back and reflect; he named them vital for society. Leisure alone can sustain the wisdom we need. Hence the necessity of contemplation, rapt attentiveness, living in the present.  It's a path too few really try; they assume it's too difficult. It is difficult, but the best things come only to those who dare. There is an inner geography of utter freedom. Find it.

There's a glorious desolation of your falsehoods and attachments that comes with this abandonment.

Here, in this sheer nothingness and the absolute vulnerability of prayer, God comes and fills the yielded vessel with divine love and wisdom.

You may be sleepwalking and not know it

"Wake up, sleeper!" This same call came to me when I was at the midpoint of my life---married with children and successful in my career, but frankly, troubled by a gnawing sense within me that I'd lost something dear to me. Years earlier, I'd tasted God and that taste made me hungry for more.

But over the course of the next several decades I'd become dull to the hunger once awakened in me. Or maybe it's fairer to say I didn't know where to look to satisfy my hunger for the sacred, so I satisfied myself with lesser things and forgot the real taste of God.

You could say that I was sleepwalking and didn't even know it.

I can't describe how the call came really (who can describe such things?).   All I can safely say is that the call came . . . slowly. Less like lightening from heaven and more like the gentle dawning of a new day.

I'm sure the call had been coming to me for quite some time.

I'm also sure that I'd done very little about it; I wasn't looking for change, so change came looking for me.

Of course, I have no way of knowing how this call is coming to you. Nor do I know what you're doing about it. But this I do know: you might be sleepwalking and not even know it. And God's calling to you, whispering everywhere, "Wake up, sleeper!"

And I know you'll face a challenging decision: awaken to the mischief of God that's knocking at the door of your heart, or push it away, stop your ears, and keep keeping on with life as it is, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger within you for Something more.