A Different Sense of Self...

Someone on one of the e-groups where I hang out, posted a devotional by Richard Rohr. There are three or four someones who regularly post thoughts from his daily devotionals…the ones that they think are particularly edifying. The recent one was on contemplative prayer….but it also addresses this christ in us/as us theme.

He says:

Paul uses that wonderful phrase, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). It is a different sense of self. I think until I have come to that realization, I have not been transformed.

Contemplative prayer draws us to our true self. This is the only self that’s ever existed. We came forth from God and our deepest DNA is divine. We are not human beings trying to become spiritual, we are already spiritual beings and the profound question is how to be human. I believe that is why Jesus came as a human being.

from Contemplative Prayer

Richard Rohr

I guess I never thought of it from that angle…that Jesus came as a human being, in part, to show us how to be human. Not a carnal human….not flesh ruled by the egoic mind…but as the new creation man ….an expression of the divine here in the temporal realm. The hybrid….a term I borrowed from Ron on Gary Sigler’s H2H message board. I wrote a post about it a while back.

So…we are originally spiritual beings whom God lowered into the physical realm….as humans. Why? There must be something about being human…something about the conjoining of spirit man and human man that will bring about an end result that God desires. I don’t know the answers…but it does not stop me from musing about it.

The line about a "different sense of self" is also intriguing. It goes along with what Eckhart talks about...not living out of the egoic nature but rather basking in the Presence..or...to put it more biblically....walking in the spirit.   

Gary Sigler says this:

We were created to be full of the glory of God and to be the manifestation of God on the earth. That was God’s original purpose for man. God wanted a body through which to express Himself. He wanted to experience all the different aspects of life that He could bring forth, so He created man and then breathed His life into that body.

Francois du Tuit says it puts it this way….

Not a saved man and a glorious God. But man fused into God and God fused into man, one divine creation. One in heart, one in mind, one in soul, you and God as one.

Still musing….