Please Support The Show With a Donation This week we talk to Richard Rohr, again Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard’s teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized. Fr. Richard is the author of numerous books, including The Naked Now, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, His newest book is The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. In This Interview, Richard Rohr and I Discuss... That the normal two paths for expanding the soul are great love and great suffering Suffering = whenever you're not in control That Jesus is a map of the human journey That if there's no good reason for suffering you have every right to be negative and cynical How the honeymoon period and the grief period are non-dual states What you're learning in these times is how to stay there and if you don't do this you loose the wisdom that comes with suffering If you don't transform your suffering you transmit it That growth occurs when an individual has just the right amount of feeling safe and ok within the conflict And friendship and love give us this safety to hold us Order - Disorder - Reorder How we don't really want to see the pattern of loss and renewal in life When you hear truth, don't ask "who said it?" Just ask, "is it true?" And if it's true, it's always from the Holy Spirit How important the undeserved nature of Jesus' suffering is Grief = Unfinished hurt How we grow up in a world that is disenchanted That it's hard to heal individually when the culture one lives in is so dysfunctional Clear seeing means seeing the whole picture without our filters in place How love applies to imperfect things, and it's a terrible mistake to wait for things that are "worthy" of our love and perfect The reality and wisdom of "carrying the burden of the self" The greek word for sin literally means when you're shooting the arrow and you miss the bullseye which doesn't mean a culpable thing that makes God not like you How the clergy haven't been very motivated to move beyond a simple, punitive version of God because it keeps the laity codependant on the church Relationships based on Guilt and Shame and You Owe Me are largely co-dependent in nature - it passes for love but it isn't Much of religion - the church, catholic and protestant is built on codependence between the laity and the clergy It has been job security for clergy to keep things this way because you keep people coming back on shame and guilt (the lowest level of motivation) The truth is that God is infinite love. Any other version of God cannot continue and it doesn't lead to God's true nature Evil is almost always absolutely sure of itself - it suffers no self-doubt That faith is balancing the knowing and the not knowing How fundamentalist Christians have moved too far away from this That the great sin of America is superficiality How democracy only works if the people have some degree of awareness and critical thinking The incarnation is finding God IN things, in this world Christian meditation is freeing yourself of yourself so that you can see God in everything The "true self" is unique for every person and is also completely united The "false self" (not the bad self) is the raw material God uses to break you through to your true self. It's cultural, it's passing Please Support The Show with a Donation
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