I have been reading Richard Rohr's The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, and last Friday and Saturday I joined a sold-out crowd of other spiritual directors, ministers, and seekers, to hear him "unpack" his call to spirituality that is contemplative and non-dualistic. I (and many others) sense he is on to something as he writes and speaks about the need for both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking, about the importance of contemplative practice for moving beyond the "pigeonholes" of duality.
Duality is either/or, comparative, labelling thinking, that we need as we grow up and discover who we are in the world around us. We can't know what "short" is unless we know what "tall" is; we can't know what "up" means unless we learn what the word "down" means. We need these words and many others to try to make some sense of the world and who we are in relation to that world. The problem with duality comes, as Richard says, when we confuse words with reality: we become imprisoned in the illusion that our words are adequate to describe the essence of things. And the tragedy of dualistic thinking is that we use it to label and judge and distance people and groups and values, so that we believe we are "in," they are "out," we are "right," and they are "wrong," we are "good" and they are "bad." These distinctions can help us feel superior, safe, better about our selves (that we know deep down are really not that different from the "other"). But they are also terribly limiting...how do we transcend the boxes in which we find ourselves trapped?
What if that was what Jesus was trying to teach us when he said things like "anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave" (Matthew 20:25, referring back to the story of those who "unfairly" received the same wage for working one hour as those who had worked all day, verses 1-16)? And the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is full of sayings that are so hard to understand that most of us for most of Christian history, have thought, "oh, that's nice" while we bypassed trying to hear what Jesus was calling us to: a life that goes beyond the labels of words, the categories that make us comfortable, the fuller, more abundant life that God was calling us to in that ultimate paradox of God becoming human, as a BABY (how fragile, how risky, how very strange).
Jesus the teacher of non-duality, trying to get us to transcend (go beyond the limits of) our labels and categories and comfort zones: what a concept! And how hard it has been for us to "get it." So hard, in fact, that his ultimate act of non-duality was to accept crucifixion as a consequence of his love for us, and then, THEN, come back to life after his disciples thought their world had ended. And we have had such a hard time understanding the deep implications of this, that (among other ways of trying to understand), Catholics have focused on the crucifixion (using the crucifix for all images of the Cross) and Protestants have focused on the resurrection (the "empty" Cross).
I'm not saying I really "get" the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus more than anyone else. But it's where words fail me and I have moments of utter awe and glimmers of how great Jesus' love for me, you, the world, was/is, to take his commitment to us to that extreme, that I move, a little, out of the boxes and categories into an experience, even if it's just for a split second, of just how much God loves me--and you, and the world. And that's also where contemplative prayer, just sitting and focusing on God, brings me, beyond the words to the deeper reality that words can never adequately express. That practice, which is simple but never easy, has become the "place" to which God keeps drawing me back, to reach the deepest parts of my being, beyond words. I long for companions with whom to share this practice; will you join me, once in a while?
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