Book of the Month | The Contemplative Writer

Featured Contemplative Book: 100 Days in the Secret Place

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Three: Turning to God First

Whether you are encouraged or discouraged, living in holiness or living in sin, the first step in spirituality is always the same: turn to God. In fact, Jeanne Guyon suggests that fighting temptations directly is the sure way to lose.

How is this so? Because temptations flee in the presence of God. As we abide in Christ, we are protected and renewed.

Gene Edwards, author of Divine Romance, has gathered together key writings from three notable Christian mystics from the seventeenth century: 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards. Here are several quotes to consider today:

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“The more clearly you see your true self, the clearer you also see how miserable your self-nature really is; and the more you will abandon your whole being to God. Seeing that you have such a desperate need of Him, you will press toward a more intimate relationship with Him.”

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“If you attempt to struggle directly with these temptations, you will only strengthen them; and in the process of this struggle, your soul will be drawn away from its intimate relationship with the Lord. You see, a close, intimate relationship to Christ should always be your soul’s only purpose.”

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“What does a little child do when he sees something that frightens him or confuses him? He doesn’t stand there and try to fight the thing. He will, in fact, hardly look at the thing that frightens him. Rather, the child will quickly run into the arms of his mother. There, in those arms, he is safe. In exactly the same way, you should turn from the dangers of temptation and run to your God!”

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“Once the heart has been gained by God, everything else will eventually take care of itself. This is why He requires the heart above all else.”

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Learn more here.

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For Reflection

Featured Contemplative Book: 100 Days in the Secret Place

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Two: Overcoming Distraction During Prayer

When I ask subscribers about their greatest struggles for prayer, I routinely hear about distraction. If we aren’t already struggling with feeling worthy before God, focusing our attention on prayer is extremely difficult. The quotes from our book of the month should prove helpful with their simple advice.

The short version is this: Are you distracted during prayer? Of course you are. Just try again.

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Your imagination may ramble over an infinite number of thoughts, yet, I assure you, the Lord has not left. Continue your perseverance in prayer. Remember that He prays within you, and He prays in spirit and in truth. The distraction of the mind—which is not intended—does not rob the prayer of its fruit.

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Faith and intention are always enough.

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If you should sin (or even if it is only a matter of being distracted by some circumstances around you), what should you do? You must instantly turn within to your spirit.

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Do not become distressed because your mind has wandered away. Always guard yourself from being anxious because of your faults. First of all, such distress only stirs up the soul and distracts you to outward things

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For Reflection

Featured Contemplative Book: 100 Days in the Secret Place

Posted on May 2, 2016April 30, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week 1: Healing through Our Suffering

If you’re looking for a book that will offer a challenge to seek the deeper spiritual life with God and to make prayer a higher priority, 100 Days in the Secret Place is at the top of my list.

Gene Edwards, author of Divine Romance, has gathered together key writings from three notable Christian mystics from the seventeenth century: Miguel de Molinos, Madame Jeanne Guyon, and Francois Fenelon: 100 Days in the Secret Place: Classic Writings from Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon, and Michael Molinos on the Deeper Christian Life by Gene Edwards.

This week I’m highlighting a series of quotes on the ways that God works with us in the midst of suffering, failure, and disappointment.

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Do you want to experience true happiness? Submit yourself peacefully and simply to the will of God, and bear your sufferings without struggle. Nothing so shortens and soothes your pain as the spirit of nonresistance to your Lord.

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Let God use trials to help you grow. Do not try to measure your progress, your strength, or what God is doing. His work is not less efficient because what He is doing is invisible.

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With people you love you do not need to continually say, “I love you with all my heart.” Even if you do not think about how much you love Him, you still love God every bit as much. True love is deep down in the spirit—simple, peaceful, and silent.

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Do not disturb yourself by trying to manufacture an artificial sense of God’s presence. Slowly you will learn that all the troubles in your life—your job, your health, your inward failings—are really cures to the poison of your old nature. Learn to bear these sufferings in patience and meekness.

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God wants to build a relationship with you that is based on faith and trust and not on glamorous miracles.

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These mystics don’t suggest that God intentionally brings suffering to us. Rather, God remains with us in the midst of our sufferings, bears our burdens, and ministers to and through us as we bear hardships.

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How is God reaching out to you today?

Featured Contemplative Book: Immortal Diamond

Posted on April 18, 2016April 8, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week Three: Transformation

It’s one thing to realize that we have been living out of a false self, but it’s quite another matter to allow God to transform us with the affirmation of his love. Too much of our unhealthy religious practice focuses on what we should not do or not be rather than what we should become.

Healthy religious practices detect and remove the obstacles and distractions that keep us from God’s loving and affirming presence. Our tools are spare and simple with practices such as:

Bracing honesty
A quiet mind
A heart turned toward God

Spiritual masters such as Jeanne Guyon often noted that we enter into prayer by simply turning our attention toward God. That act alone is a prayer, and it is a prayer that we can gradually build on.

As we learn to turn toward God, we’ll find our identities gradually transformed by God’s love and presence. Richard Rohr shares some particularly helpful quotes and insights in Immortal Diamond.

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“Our ongoing curiosity about our True Self seems to lessen if we settle into any successful role. We have then allowed others to define us from the outside, although we do not realize it… Thomas Merton said, ‘If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.’ Success is hardly ever your True Self, only your early window dressing.”

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On incarnational religion and Spirit-based morality: “You do things because they are true, not because you have to or you are afraid of punishment. Henceforth you are not so much driven from without (the False Self method) as you are drawn from within (the True Self method). The generating motor is inside of you now instead of a whip or a threat outside.”

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“God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.”

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Featured Contemplative Book: Immortal Diamond

Posted on April 4, 2016April 4, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Week One: The Search for Your True Self

Richard Rohr’s book Immortal Diamond offered a lifeline at a point in my life when I was discouraged, somewhat aimless, and deeply insecure. What was the root of my insecurity and overall misery? My false self that hinged on my accomplishment and what other people thought of me.

The false self requires constant reinforcement and progress in order to remain content. There may be no greater threat to contemplative writers than the false self.

Keeping the false self happy feeds into so many other pitfalls, such as pride and envy. Who has time to pray when there’s a false self that must be maintained? Who can do the deep observation and painstaking editing that good writing requires while ensuring the false self is placated?

Richard Rohr grounds us in the wonderful news about who you are and where you can find rest as you approach God in prayer and then set about your work for the day:

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“Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God . . . The great surprise and irony is that ‘you,’ or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It’s sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time, isn’t it? All you can do is nurture it.”

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“The soul, the True Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things, you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go. The False Self cannot do this.”

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“I promise you that the discovery of your True Self will feel like a thousand pounds of weight have fallen from your back. You will no longer have to build, protect, or promote any idealized self image. Living in the True Self is quite simply a much happier existence, even though we never live there a full twenty-four hours a day. But you henceforth have it as a place to always go back to. “

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“Find God, the primary source, and the spring water will forever keep flowing (Ezekiel 47:1-12; John 7:38) naturally. Once you know that, the problem of inferiority, unworthiness, or low self-esteem is resolved from the beginning and at the core.” Pg 31

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“In ordinary language, the True Self is held together by the glue of a universal love. ‘For God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him” (1 John 4:16). When we live in such abundance, we do not need to fight or defeat our False Self. It naturally fades into the background in the presence of absolute abundance and absolute allowing.” Pg. 55

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If you’ve read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, and I hope you will soon, you know that the key struggle we all face is believing this: “I am enough.” Rohr completes this mantra: “I am enough because of God’s love.”

The truth that I have found is this: Nothing in this life will ever be good enough or offer a peace and security that compares to God’s love.

Read more about Immortal Diamond.

About Featured Books: Each month I’ll share weekly posts about the month’s featured book.

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