Pure Love.

I’m sitting here in my apartment in Assisi reading the Scriptures for this coming Sunday. As I read James explaining that all our jealousies and selfish ambitions and conflicts and wars come from our out-of-order passions. We all know that’s true. And election season makes it abundantly clear. Crazed unruly passions seem to dominate. It’s sad, it’s frustrating and it shows that we can often live at quite a superficial level.

So, what’s the solution? Not that there is any quick fix or perfect answer, but I can’t help thinking of one of the reflections I share here on our Peace Retreats. Although it may sound simplistic, the truth of the matter is that regular time spent in silence, meditation, contemplation, heartfulness, mindfulness-whatever name you give it-would go a long way to change our attitudes and behaviors.

The psychotherapist Gerald May tells us that psychology has discovered that beyond each individual person’s own subjective emotional life, beyond their different “feeling tones,” there is what he calls a RAW ROOT ENERGY. This energy is found in everyone deep below the surface of their emotions and May calls it agape. That’s the Greek word for love, pure love, self-giving love. Imagine, at the deepest core of every person lies this energy! In fact, May says, “the Universe runs on this energy that is, at its core, unconditional love.”

This is also what my hero Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist and mystic claimed. After years of working with the material world, he claimed that “love is the physical structure of the universe.”  This love, the agape, is literally built into the universe; it is the pattern of the cosmos!

So, how to we get in touch with this core energy that pervades the universe and is at our core?

Meditation. Yes, contemplation is the entryway into and access to a deeper awareness of and connection with this patter, this energy, this agape.

We even know this now scientifically. We know that how we respond to stimuli in the NOW that we occupy influences what parts of the brain are lit up and activated and what neural pathways are activated. Now the default response for most people is to respond to stimuli (thoughts, comments others make, anything that comes into our brain from outside) by freezing, clinging, hanging on, bracing as if for a hit. In other words, restriction. We tighten up. 

This activates the most primitive part of our brain, the amygdala, with defense mechanisms: danger! Danger!

Yet, we also know that if we learn, during an “initial moment of impact” of a thought or stimulus, when something comes into our world, our mind, to respond with spaciousness, softening, opening, staying present, non-reactivity—then a whole different neurological pathway opens from our more advanced forebrain: the neocortex and pre-frontal lobe. They are activated and the brain and heart rhythms move into what is called ENTRAINMENT: a natural flow.

Well, my friends, this science brings to light what the mystics of every age have known through experience! By not clinging and holding on, by letting go, by being spacious and soft and flexible and open, we generate a new response pattern. This is the pattern of agape that mirrors the energy of the Universe, the energy of God!

We can develop this pattern through a regular practice of contemplation: silent prayer, going deep within, getting in touch with our core, or soul, or true self, our divine self.

And we all know that our world could use a lot less restriction and defensiveness and a lot more openness and spaciousness and beauty and agape.

So, consider starting a daily practice of meditation/contemplation. If you’re not sure how, check out some websites like contemplative.org or wccm.org (World Community for Christian Meditation). Or consider joining our Zoom meditation group which will begin in October. More info to come.

Take it from James: let’s put our passions in order and discover the agape passion deep within ourselves, joining us to what is deepest and truest and most enduring about the entire Universe and the God who created it all to mirror his own unconditional agape love.

Peace and every good,

Father Liam