THE TOUGHEST TEST

[The following is a reprint of my blog of September 12, 2009]

Going against the reasoning mind. That is the toughest test...going against what my best thinking tells me...actually, going above my best thinking, deeper. I think it is the toughest because it feels like the riskiest...when, in fact, there is no risk (we find, after we’ve learned the how of it).

As Thaddeus Golas wrote, “We must go beyond reason to love.”

Pema Chodron says, “When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.”

Fr. Richard Rohr calls it “holding the tension.”

It’s all about learning to trust the Spirit within. Holding the tension between thinking, which too often is simply worrying, and intuiting...waiting to hear, to know the still, small voice. The resistant mind will usually throw up any number of awful possibles so that waiting cannot possibly be an option.

But it is...and we learn it through practice, through disciplining the mind, through practicing the art of patience.

Thank you.