More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Richard Rohr
Read between
February 25, 2022 - May 10, 2023
The flat assertion one hears from many Christians that the Eastern ways are nothing but self-redemption reveals crude ignorance. It is true that there is more agreement among the religions on their analysis of the question than on the answer.
everything valuable in the thoughts and experiences of nations and religions belongs to the one God. We can gratefully lay claim to these gifts. The transfer of wisdom between religions is in my opinion one of the most essential contributions to world peace.
The Enneagram is only a cognitive model—though an amazingly comprehensive one.
Religious people are even harder to transform because they don’t think they need it. They are “Catholics”! I find much more openness and response at the county jail than among the typical group of churchgoers.
In The Living Bread, Merton wrote: The great tragedy of our age is the fact, if one may dare to say it, that there are so many godless Christians—Christians, that is, whose religion is a matter of pure conformism and expediency. Their “faith” is little more than a permanent evasion of reality—a compromise with life. In order to avoid admitting the uncomfortable truth that they no longer have any real need for God or any vital faith in Him, they conform to the outward conduct of others like themselves. And these “believers” cling together, offering one another an apparent justification for
...more
Ken Wilbur, says that the vast majority of religion is “translative” rather than transformative. It is concerned with bolstering up the separate self with meanings, rituals, moralities, and group conformity rather than “dismantling” the separate self so it can fall into the Great Self of God.
we would sooner have control than real conversion; we would sooner have well-oiled church societies than transformed people.
We substituted law and authority for the ancient and much more difficult path of spiritual warfare, that subtle discernment of spirits, passions, and “energies” that the Desert Fathers and Mothers took as normative.
Being informed is different from being formed,
We are all partial knowers; all verbalizations are filled with biography, preference, genius, and past hurts. We are always invested in our knowing.
What we have done for centuries in the West is give people new moral and doctrinal teaching without rearranging their mythic worldview. It does not work.
The Enneagram does not disguise the pain, the major surgery, or the price of enlightenment.
There are two utterly different forms of religion: one believes that God will love me if I change; the other believes that God loves me so that I can change!
Many church officials thoughtlessly step forward in the name of God and claim they have understood him. In such cases one can usually tell at once that they’re not transmitting a whole lot more than their own temperament and prejudices, or what they already know anyhow. This is one of the reasons why the Christian religion has lost so much credibility.
Many church officials thoughtlessly step forward in the name of God and claim they have understood him. In such cases one can usually tell at once that they’re not transmitting a whole lot more than their own temperament and prejudices, or what they already know anyhow. This is one of the reasons why the Christian religion has lost so much credibility.
We are destroyed by our gifts because we identify too closely with what we can do well. Once we were told that we are destroyed by our sins. That’s true, but the issue is more subtle.
In some ways there is nothing more difficult than working with religious people! We have such a moralizing bent that we’re incapable of accepting reality and directly confronting it.
When we commit our “favorite sin,” we are “fully there.” That is why we can’t simply “give it up”: it belongs to the specific way that we give our life a goal and a direction. It belongs to the survival strategy that we adopted as children.
how enriching it could be if we could get there internally, if we were capable of putting on all nine pairs of shoes and to look on reality from all nine sides. Then we would contemplate the world, as it were, with the eyes of God.
I see that these nine deep knowings also correspond to the nine qualities of God in the Jewish Kabbala. God knows something in us and through us; God is something in us and through us.
ONEs are angry because the world is so imperfect. They’re made still more aggressive by what they find in themselves. Anger is the root sin of ONEs. Paradoxically, however, ONEs have a very hard time looking these deep-seated aggressions in the eye or even acknowledging them. Their sin and their avoidance coincide.
Model children are not full of rage. That is their chief dilemma. Internally they are boiling with rage because the world is so damned imperfect. But they do not articulate these aggressions as such.
we need binding fellowship with other people. When we are alone, we can easily surrender to the illusion of being true saints.
Little souvenirs and keepsakes help them as props for memory and afterward can serve as release mechanisms for reawakening the whole event in their imagination. Some FIVEs have a collection of “totems” that cover all the important phases and events of their life.
“When I do my work and deal this way with my fellow men and women, it’s a part or the continuation of my prayer life.” Normally FIVEs keep their energy to themselves, but this woman gives up to nine massages a day. It’s a step toward her own integration.
They find psychic nurture in every encouragement that awakens inner messages, such as: “You can feel safe here. We’re glad that you’re here. You have a right to be here. You’re welcome. You belong to us.”
THREEs and SIXes have a special importance for us because their root sins were not recognized in Western Christianity as such: fear (type SIX) and deceit (type THREE). So long as these two sins remain unrecognized, they are the source of great danger for our society.
