We must go still further. Our communion with God cannot be limited to set times of meditation and prayer. How can we truly live and love if our relationship with the Source of Life and Love is only on a part-time basis? Now we obviously cannot be explicitly praying 24 hours a day, but there are things we can do to maintain in our everyday life what we have experienced in our more profound moments of communion with God.
These are the “spiritual disciplines” which need to be applied to our daily lives and relationships with God and other people. According to author Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines), there are two basic types: the disciplines of abstinence and the disciplines of engagement. The former include solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, and sacrifice. The latter include study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission to God. Now these cannot all be practiced in the same way and to the same extent by everyone. But it would be quite helpful to incorporate these disciplines into daily life according to one’s own capacities and life-situation.
The effort required by these spiritual disciplines is necessary because we are not angels or pure spirits that enjoy unhindered access to God. We are human beings with many limitations to transcend. Most likely we are hauling around a lot of interior “baggage” that clutters up the inner house of God and hence robs our souls of peace. We have allowed (or have been forced to allow) much to obscure the face of God within us. Others have hurt us and we have hurt others, and so we have become proficient at erecting defenses. Such defenses impede the flow of love and compassion—both to and from others. So there is some interior “housecleaning” that has to be done if ours are to be the hands guided by God’s hands with the touch that heals.
All of us have, to one degree or another, created a “false self” which we present to the world, and out of which we usually live. This false self is egocentric and has been constructed with approval-seeking and survival techniques, with defense and coping mechanisms, and has been conditioned so much by our environment and by society in general, that we usually end up thinking that this is who we really are.
But there is a “true self” underlying that artificial ego-veneer. This true self is the very depth of our being where the image of God is untarnished, where we are in communion with God, and hence where genuine love is born. There is an “I” that is not to be identified with our bodies, our intellects, or our emotions, but which is deeper than them all. It is the vast, profound, and unique center of consciousness and awareness where the divine and the human are in communion. We may experience this true self from time to time, but we don’t often live out of it. But we must do so more and more if we are to live with full integrity and true spiritual vitality, and especially if we are to be effective instruments of healing love.
To live in love is a full-time job. The reward is great, but the investment is also substantial. It will cost you something to bring love to a world that often speaks of love but which has lost the true meaning of it. Love has the power to help us heal wounds and transcend differences. But here’s the rub: for the most part, the world doesn’t live by love and doesn’t encourage us to do so either. Modern industrial, commercial, and technological society has in many ways reverted to the “law of the jungle”: kill or be killed. To survive, one must play the game, beat the system, do unto others before they have the chance to do unto you.
But is survival in the jungle worth the sacrifice of our integrity and of so much of our humanity created in the image of God, that is, in the image of Love? Should we not still strive to live from our true self without counting the cost? Is not the cost of maintaining the false self ultimately much greater? Many are the altars upon which people sacrifice their true selves, and therefore many are the broken places within that cry for healing.
You may find (perhaps to your surprise or dismay) that people actually find it difficult to receive love and compassion, because their defenses are meant to shield them from the vulnerability and openness that love invites. You may even discover that your attempts to bring love into others’ lives will meet with suspicion or rejection. That’s OK. Love anyway. This task is not for the timid. The call to love unconditionally and consistently is for the one who desires to bring God’s presence to others in whatever way He wills.
Let’s attempt to summarize a bit for the sake of clarity. God created the universe and is present in it through love. This love is the power that keeps all creation in being, harmony, and integrity. This divine love is powerful enough to restore the sick to health and the wounded to wholeness. The same power of God is with us to heal. Through faith, prayer, meditation, and spiritual disciplines, we can open ourselves to receive this healing love, not just for our own benefit, but in order to communicate it to others. As we connect more surely and securely with God in our true inner self, we become more “transparent” to the presence of Lord, and hence our capacity for receiving and giving love grows. We find that we are moved with compassion in the face of others’ suffering, and when we stretch out our hands to touch them, divine grace flows through us to heal.
If we aspire to be healers, we can only aspire to be people who love and who open our hearts and souls to Love. We must be people who pray and who listen, who see with eyes of compassion and who bring the hand of God to touch others in need. Then we will “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28) in God and in the eternal rhythm of that Love which moves the planets and stars. Then we will be able to bring the blessing of God upon all creation, and also be the mouthpiece of the praise and thanksgiving of creation back to God.
What would life be like if we were all more loving—and less selfish, fearful, anxious, and calculating? What if we could drop our ego-defenses and, piece by piece, dismantle the whole false-self structure? What if more of us undertook to walk the demanding yet rewarding walk of the healer, and chose love as the basis of our whole way of life? We would become spiritual reservoirs, overflowing with peace, joy, and the fullness of life, despite the inevitable hardships. We would surely renew the face of the earth. And we can do it, for God is with us and within us.
Perhaps we are now becoming aware that we have not yet really learned to love in ways divine and true. I hope that we are also becoming aware that now is the time to begin.
Making All Things New 