Sunday 31 July 2016

“God isn't someone else” - Thomas Merton, Monk 1915-68

The question of what we mean by ‘I’ really matters for happiness, because what most of us trust as 'I' is actually only a mirage, a mental self-image, and if we prefer this to unconditional happiness, we have conditional happiness – it depends on the transient weather of approval, control, health, and success. 

The selfless wonder of being, on the other hand, is eternal.  If it seems to me there is no such thing as unconditional happiness, ‘seeming’ and ‘me’ may be the problem. Psychiatry knows this. It drugs self. Psychology retrains it. Spirituality says there isn’t one. Deny self, said Jesus (Matt 16:24). 

So if one believes in a separate life, one will suffer it. Nor can we maintain good body sensations and deny bad ones. They all pass, transient processes, perceptions with them. People who can’t let go of 'I' don’t see groundless unity. But a person who can let go of ‘I’, enters the Being in relationship whom no-one has ever seen (John 1:18).  

This is an act of faith in the infinite mystery who really is. The only way to find this ‘I’, who is the true I am, and also God's name to Moses, is to go through life's desert +

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