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April 29 - May 4, 2020
high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.”4 That is the essence of contemplative practice. And that is where our transformation is activated.
that contemplative spirituality carves the posture of surrender (letting go) into the fabric of our being, making us receptive to transformation.
She led with contemplative prayer, and goodness came forward.
Solitude, silence, and stillness are the lifesaving corrections to the absurdity we’ve fallen into—the addictions or whatever is out of control in our lives. Adopting contemplative practice is crucial to living into the transformation and wholeness reflected in the Enneagram.
Solitude, intentional withdrawal, teaches us to be present—present to ourselves, present to God, and present with others.
God is not as hard on us as we are on ourselves.
But we have to stop the busyness or we will be stopped by burnout and exhaustion.
Stillness teaches us restraint, and in restraint we are able to discern what appropriate engagement looks like.
leading us back to a return of intentional, missional communities much like the traditional monastic and friar communities.
Confronting the mirror of True Self-awareness was painful. But this honesty was the only thing, I’m convinced, that was able to usher me into healing.
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” but most of us never really learn to love ourselves, thinking we can make up for this deficit if we practice loving others.
Today I know that Sabbath is for rest, retreats are for reflection, vacations are for recreation, and sabbatical is for renewal.
When we become awakened to these hidden motivations,
we’re able to mitigate some of those unintended harmful consequences; we’re able to “do good better”
competence all need to find freedom from the ways they deal with their inner dread.
belongs.” By pressing into our Basic Fears, we center ourselves more deeply and find that we don’t have to react to those fears but can respond
toward wholeness, toward growth, toward awakening.
So many of us spend much of our time trying to defend our beliefs, to come up with better arguments to convince someone that the way we think, live, act, or worship is superior. In those efforts we tend to gravitate toward arrogance.
“To cast great light in the world also requires a long shadow.”
“I am what other people say about me.”
security and survival.
The self-awareness that the Enneagram generates, paired with contemplative practice, helps us hear these affirmations.
In self-deprivation he gave himself to the prayer practice of fasting in solitude, silence, and stillness, confronting any claims these lies or programs for happiness may have on the rest of us.
construction phase of identity, followed by an earth-shattering deconstruction of who we thought we were, which finally brings us to the necessary reconstruction of something truer.
Other times we lack presence because we are fixated on our past, regretting what is now out of our control.
When Jesus reminds us to be like children, it is a clue that all of us will be lifelong beginners on the spiritual journey. Moving from practice to discipline is where we start to
receiving it as the ultimate source of goodness (One),
Ones to stop fixing everything, themselves included, and relax.
Practices marked by stillness help dismantle the lie “I am what I do” and loosen the addictive grasp that power and control have in and through this center.
stillness requires a practice of grounded presence and receptivity.
For type One, resting in stillness is the tender gift of permission—permission to take a break from all of their inner frustration and resentment.
but they end up having to pick up the pieces of the damaged relationships resulting from such misdirected frustrations.
and releasing the mental vise grip in which their resentment holds them.
Love. The person who hurt us isn’t the desolation, but rather the resentment we might feel toward that person;
the painful memory we’ve tried so hard to forget isn’t the desolation, but rather our inability to receive healing for it.
