More quotes from Richard Rohr’s Breathing Under Water:
Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were 'worthy.' As if any of us are.
It is this human pain that we are afraid of? Powerlessness, the state of the shipwrecked, is an experience we all share anyway, if we are sincere, but Bill Wilson (author of the 12 Step Programme) found we are not very good at that either. He called it 'denial.' It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.
It is not necessarily bad will or even conscious denial on our part. We just can't see what we are not forced to see. As Jesus put it, we 'see the splinter in our brother's or sister's eye and miss the log in our own' (Matthew 7: 4- 5). The whole deceptive game is revealed in that one brilliant line from Jesus. But we seem to need something to force us to deal with that log. For many, if not most people, the only thing strong enough to force them is some experience of addiction, some moral failure, or some falling, over which they are powerless.
We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone. Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking…
… It seems humans would sooner die than change or admit that they are mistaken…
… Some form of alternative consciousness is the only freedom from this self and from cultural lies. If the universal addiction is to our own pattern of thinking, which is invariably dualistic, the primary spiritual path must be some form of contemplative practice, once just called 'prayer,' to break down this unhelpful binary system of either-or-thinking and superiority thinking. 'Praying' is changing your operating system!
When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever. It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of 'sinner.' At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peace making. When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation…”
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