REUNITING OUR SPLIT SELF! I mentioned earlier this year that there are four splits that we humans go through in the process of creating our mental ego, our False Self. First, we split my self from other selves, and over-identify with this separate self. We split life from death and try to avoid death. We split mind from body and soul, and we give mind pre-eminence. Finally, we split our acceptable self from our unacceptable self and identify with an idealized acceptable self-image. In the experience of suffering and death, those four splits are overcome, often in reverse order. It is probably another description of enlightenment. Many of us put this off until our deathbed. But the mystics overcome the splits early and are able to live as truly whole people (not necessarily psychologically always whole) ahead of time, and do not wait until their deathbed. Francis of Assisi is a wonderful example of this realisation. • Embracing the shadow: After his major conversion, which is where he embraced a leper whom he had previously avoided as nauseating, Francis identified with the poor, the marginalized and those on the bottom, which you normally cannot do until you embrace the wounded leper within yourself. • Putting the mind in its place: Francis was a bit of an anti-intellectual and in no way idealized the mind. He was all about living his faith, not conceptualizing it with words. Although he did confess and repent near the end of his life that he had rejected “Brother Ass,” his physical body. • Dying before you die: Rather than avoiding death, he dove into it through chosen poverty and powerlessness. Francis knew that life and death were not two, but one. You can’t have one without the other. That’s the mystery of Christian faith. • What you do to another, you do to yourself: Francis overcame the first split of self from non-self by truly following Jesus’ commands to love his enemies and to love his neighbor. What you do to your neighbor, you do to Christ. And you must love your neighbor as you love yourself. In the end, it all becomes one, single love, and how you do anything is how you do everything. ~ ~ ~Father Richard Rohr
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 04:51:55 +0000
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