[MD] adios

[kgt83dr at yahoo.com]

All,
  
I first subscribed to MD last July.  Since then I've had the great pleasure to learn
a little about many of you through the messages you post here; your thoughts
and feelings about your experiences, your beliefs and your philosophies.  Thank
you.  I hope the experience has been as pleasurable for you.
  
Lately though I find myself spending more time here but for the wrong reasons.
So I have decided to take my leave.  Best wishes and Godspeed to you all.
  
Please accept the following as a gift.  It is from chapter two of Richard Rohr's
book, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer.
  
     Jesus calls us to exactly what the Zen master calls his students to. I once
     stayed in a Zen monastery in Japan. The master was calling monks who had
     been there for years to what they called "beginner's mind." Similarly, one of
     Jesus' favorite visual aids is a child. Every time the disciples get into head
     games, he puts a child in front of them. He says the only people who can
     recognize and be ready for what he's talking about are the ones who come
     with the mind and heart of a child. It's the same reality as the beginner's
     mind. The older we get, the more we've been betrayed and hurt and
     disappointed, the more barriers we put up to beginner's mind. We must never
     presume that we see. We must always be ready to see anew. But it's so hard
     to go back, to be vulnerable, to say to your soul, "I don't know anything."
  
     Try to say that: "I don't know anything." We used to call it tabula rasa in
     Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be
     written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption
     that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the
     grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "I want to see."
  
     Spirituality is about seeing. It's not about earning or achieving. It's about
     relationship rather than results or requirements. Once you see, the rest
     follows. You don't need to push the river, because you are in it. The life is
     lived within us, and we learn how to say yes to that life. If we exist on a level
     where we can see how "everything belongs," we can trust the flow and trust
     the life, the life so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its
     opposite, death. We must do this, because it is the only life available to us,
     as Paul wrote to the Colossians, "You have died [the small ego self], and the
     life you now have is hidden with Christ in God [the Godself]. When Christ is
     revealed - and he is your life - you too will be revealed in all your glory with
     him" (Col. 3:3 -4).
  
Thank you all.
   
  
Kevin

			
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