What Might A Joyful Mind Be?

The Naked Now, Richard Rohr, 2009. Appendix 8: Walking Meditation. A Joyful Mind

What might a joyful mind be?

• When your mind does not need to be right.
• When you no longer need to compare yourself with others.
• When you no longer need to compete -- not even in your own head.
• When your mind can be creative, but without needing anyone to know.
• When you can live in contentment with whatever the moment offers. [Snow piled on the roads after a snowstorm resulting in horrible traffic on Feb 3, 2015, such that I could not get to my home for an hour!]

What Every Good Leader Knows

The Naked Now, Richard Rohr, 2009. Chap. 29

Here are some insights into what every good, nondual leader knows and practices, whether in the workplace, at home, or in the classroom. Good leaders:

• See alternatives.

• Influence and inspire people more than by ordering or demanding.

• Know ahead of time that every one-sided solution is doomed to failure. It is never a final solution but only a postponement of the problem.

• Learn to study, discern and search together with their people for solutions.

• Know that total dilemmas are very few. We create many dilemmas because we are internally stuck, attached, fearful, overidentified with our position, needy of winning the case, or unable to entertain even the partial truth that the otheer opinion might be offering.

• Work for win/win situations by searching for a middle ground where the most people can find meaning. (This is hard to do if you assume you are the higher, the more responsible, the in-charge, the senior, the more competent -- or once you have made a harsh judgment about the other.)

Ego Driven Vs. Authentic God Experience

Wanting to be thought holy, special, right, safe, or on higher moral ground has a deep narcissistic appeal to the human ego. These false motivations are, ironically, the surest ways to actually avoid God--all the while using much God talk and ritualized behavior.

The great irony of faith is that authentic God experience does indeed make you know you are quite special, favorite, and chosen--but you realize others are too! That is the giveaway that your experience is authentic, although it might take a while to get there.

Confusing the Edge with Essence and Claiming the Superficial as Substance

More gems from Richard Rohr (Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. Chap. 1: Center and Circumference) (italics and bold mine):

We are a circumference people, with little access to the center. We live on the boundaries of our own lives...confusing edges with essence, too quickly claiming the superficial as substance. As Yeats predicted, things have fallen apart and the center does not seem to be holding.

If the circumstances of our lives were evil, it would be easier to moralize about them. But boundaries and edges are not bad as much as they are passing, accidental, sometimes illusory... Our "skin" is not bad; it's just not our soul or spirit. But skin might also be the only available beginning point for many contemporary people. ...we can remain on the circumferences of our lives for quite a long time. So long, that it starts feeling like the only "life" available.

The path of prayer and love and the path of suffering seem to be the two Great Paths of transformation. Suffering seems to get our attention; love and prayer seem to get our heart and our passion. But most of us return (to our center and to our true selves) by a more arduous route... usually three steps forward and two steps backward...

The Ego/Self Hates Change More Than Anything

We need to deeply realize how limited, helpless, and powerless we are to truly change or to be truly changed, even after we may have been sincere Christians for decades. From Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (Chap. 1: Powerlessness), Richard Rohr, priest and author, nails it when he writes about our frail and fragile humanity that is being constantly dictated and ruled by our ego, even as Christians. The ego hunkers down and becomes even more (self-)deceptive when we experience any degree of growth or success in the church, or as a Christian.

Until you bottom out, and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel.

Self-made people, and all heroic spiritualities, will try to manufacture an even stronger self by will power and determination---to put them back in charge and seeming control. ...not realizing the unbending, sometimes proud and eventually rigid personality that will be the long-term result. They will then need to continue in this pattern of self-created success and defenses. This does not normally create loving people, but just people in control and in ever deeper need of control.

Dualistic Thinking

In Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, Franciscan monk and national bestselling author Richard Rohr writes:

Dualistic thinking is operative almost all of the time. It is when you choose one side, or temperamentally prefer one side, and then call the side of the equation false, wrong, heresy, or untrue. It is often something to which you have not yet been exposed, or it threatens you or your ego in a way, or is beyond your education. The dualistic mind splits the moment and forbids the dark side, the mysterious, the paradoxical. This is the common level of conversation that we have in the world. Basically, it lacks humility and patience, and it is the opposite of contemplation.