Category Archives: Spirituality

1. The violence and threat to the world is located from inside each human-self

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He who attempts to act and do things for others and for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them only the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, and his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. Thomas Merton

So this is my first of ten important thoughts for spiritual reflection. For the last year, I have been influenced by the incredible wisdom and gift of the 12-Step movement throughout the world.  One of its core insights, indeed the thought akin to many forms of contemplative religions including Christianity for which I am a part, is the key idea that the violence and problems of human society and systems, comes from within each one of us.

Many have written about the importance of the human ego as an essential tool for survival. But it is a two edged sword.  The human ego can also be that which becomes obsessed with the seven deadly sins of Greed, Anger, Fear, Lust, Envy, Pride and Sloth. If we become fixated with these things, then we literally become ‘adult children’ and we literally become distorted and addicted to these various intense behaviours that lead to forms of insane narcissistic violence.

This is why in the Christian contemplative tradition, forms of Buddhism, Sufism and other mystical religious traditions, the taming of the ego is an essential human discipline, because if we stay too aligned with the ego it leads us to put our identity into a false-self.

Merton makes clear that the self-proclaimed autonomy of the false self is but an illusion:

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love—outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves—the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin. 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 34-5.

In fact, what ever we do no tame and immerse in the love of God to enable us to find spiritual freedom in our deeper true-selves, then we will unleash egoic violence on those around us and the natural order.  What ever we do not own from within ourselves, we wreak on others and the natural order of this world.  This is why we have so many adult children who struggled with boundaries and power in the world of Donald Trump and Boris Johnston as examples.  This is why we increasingly find ourselves in forms of society with increasingly authoritarian regimes.  This is why we have seen forms of the worlds religions formed for being vehicle’s for the love of God, human cooperation, peace and for the stewardship of nature, have been distorted by the violence of religious fundamentalism advanced by the egoic tendency to the deadly sins. This is why our human societies seem impotent to face the drastic threat of global warming and ecocide.  We are destroying the planet and self-harming all people and all life through the deadliness of the unrestrained human ego, which ultimately has to be expression of madness and evil, and we are often so ensnared we can not see it.

I believe the only true escape is by appealing to the Higher Power of the 12 Step Movement, the God of world religions, that through the love of God, and through our desire and intention to live another way,  that we can reveal and face the consequences of egoic selves through self-awareness, prayer, meditation and spiritual practices, and then through forms of healing and formation, shift our focus of life away from the ego to the true self, or away from the brokenness and self-harm of the deadly sins, to the virtues or the focus on the true-self, through endurance and by being immersed in the love of God. without this focus, I have no hope for this planet, as the evil dark violence within us, can only be subdued through the power of love and humility.

This is why I am so committed to the Christian contemplative tradition and the 12 Step Movement.  Both have been for me essential for me to shift away from a life time of self-harming egoic forms of behaviour and living, to something more self-loving, more peace-giving, and more in harmony with the natural order of things.

If we do not face this, then we will continue to destroy, setting up even more despotic regimes, violence to all living things, and an insatiable and unmeetable hunger for power, experience and greed.

I do believe this is what people mean when they say they are spiritual not religious, because they are seeking to go deeper with this striving to take the egoic into the the true self, but I don’t believe you can only do this out of self-will, this is the lesson of the 12-step process.  And we are so obsessed with our thinking and feeling and blind to our delusions, that we need forms of loving contemplative spiritual practicing communities who are transformed by the love of God.  This is my one hope and trust.

The essential truth is, that only true surrender of the human heart and will can lead to non-egoic spiritual freedom, for which, we all need to do the work.

But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasure and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 35.

 

NEW INTRO COURSE ON A CONTEMPLATIVE & MISSIONAL NEW MONASTICISM

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To give people the heads up, I will be running two online courses on New Monasticism starting in September, the first I am facilitating on my own which is a 4 week introduction to a more contemplative and missional understanding of New Monastic Community, and the second is a course for people wanting to set up New Monastic Communities which I will be leading with MarK Berry of the Safe Space Community. So see below details for the Intro course and please do send this onto anyone else who may be interested. Intrigued and what to know more about contemplative and missional new monasticism?? Why not try out this short online course I am leading. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/intro-course-to-new-monastic-missional-communities-by-ian-mobsby-tickets-115539526835

End of the Day Wellbeing Prayer

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This contemplative prayer is aimed at helping us become centred, and attending to the different parts of us to and with God to help us again find our strength and centre in the source of all life.  Again this is a great form of prayer and meditation if you feel anxious and find it difficult to switch off before sleeping.

End of Day well being prayer

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Dealing with Anxiety & Being Overwhelmed: The Welcoming Prayer

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We live in tough times, made even harder by the current viral pandemic.  If you like me struggle a bit with anxiety and getting overwhelmed, then I commend this form of contemplative prayer. It’s approach of focusing on emotions, the body and surrendering elements of your life to God a powerful combination of embodied meditation and prayer that bring spiritual relief, wellbeing and deep connection to and with God. I highly commend this, so please do see the audio below and the attached doc in words.

 

Text for Welcoming Prayer

If you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by what is going on, I recommend doing this form of prayer at least twice a day

A New Beginning in Southwark amongst the Tate Modern and Oxo Tower

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Pleased to be able to say that I have finally moved from Peckham to Southwark SE1 to an ancient parish of Christchurch Southwark, with the aims of revitalising an ancient church with a contemplative focus to being an ecclesial community with a focus on mission being contemplative action. I hope to found a residential new monastic community in the parish, and instigate a focus on Christian spirituality for those who live and work in the area.

For more information see Christchurch Southwark on Facebook see: https://www.facebook.com/chrisdtchurchsouthwark/

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Stations of the resurrection

So now we enter into the 6 weeks season of the resurrection as Easter, and I think we don’t focus enough on ways of engaging with the season after the intensity of Lent, the Passion and Holy Week.

One way to keep focused on the spirituality of the season of the resurrection is by keeping Stations of the Resurrection in the life of the ecclesial community: a good example is here.

Easter 4: I AM The Good Shepherd: Freedom & Obedience by Ian Mobsby

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In this podcast Ian Mobsby explores the Gospel of John Chapter 10 where Jesus describes himself metaphorically as the ‘Good Shepherd’.   This biblical passage is part of a large text where Jesus uses a number of ‘I AM’ phrases and metaphors to enable people to begin to understand his divinity.  This was recorded at the Parish Church of St Luke’s Church (Camberwell) in Peckham on the 4th Sunday of Easter 2018.

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Maundy Thursday: Ecclesial Community & Betrayal

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And so we start to reach the climax of Holy Week as we enter into Maundy Thursday when we remember Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, gathering the disciples together in the upper room for the Last Supper, and the torment of his praying and betrayal by Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus as Messiah is birthing in these actions the Church in the context of the Kingdom of God he has been talking about up to this point. He washes their feet as a sign that they will be Apostles of the new Church.   Jesus, in gathering the disciples, performs of the feast of the new Ecclesial Community, the Church, in the first Holy Communion, Eucharist or Mass depending on your tradition.  In doing so he not only births the Church but also, through the Holy Spirit enacts a reconnection where people and the persons of the Trinity are brought close through the actions of Jesus.  But even in this wonderful moment of the beginning of the Church, not that the disciples knew it was the beginning of the Church, there is also a spirit of anger of betrayal as Judas feels such disappointment in what he believes is a failed leader, and goes off to begin the betrayal.

In Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, we encounter Jesus in a dark place, the inner conflict between Human and God must have been intense – and we know this because Jesus sweated blood – a biological sign of extreme distress. And so Jesus there experiences the pain of so many humans then and now who are in places of despair and no hope. Jesus the human is sorely tempted not to enter into Tridium – the three days when Jesus will suffer, be crucified and then the paradox of part of God being dead for 3 days.  So we remember the great sacrifice that Jesus makes on our behalf, and for the salvation of the world, which even now in the 21st Century doesn’t understand or accept the greatest gift someone can give you – life through their own suffering.

So today we begin the great humiliation of God, where the institutions of the Temple and the Roman Empire think they are winning – because they to still believe in the myth of violence as a way to control and win.  They do not realise the Jesus had a different agenda, the way of the Cross, the way of love, the way of redemption through love, not violence, and the gift of the Kin-dom of God and the beginning of the Church.  There is no greater love than this, for someone to lay down their life for a friend… Amen.

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