Dear People Whom God Loves,
I am reading the introduction to Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. The thoughts in this series of columns are inspired by this introduction with some of my own thoughts as well. I can’t wait to read the rest of the book.
Richard writes about the two halves of the spiritual journey. We are all called to embrace both halves; but all too often, we never embark on the second journey. Why?
We might not even be aware of the second part of the journey. The first half of the journey is about building an identity, about building a strong ego, about learning to do and accomplish. We usually don’t know about anything else. The culture around us usually doesn’t know anything about the second journey, so we are not helped to discover it . . . much less enter into it. Indeed, when we are in such a culture, the culture will try to ostracize people who are on this journey.
It is similar to the stages of moral growth. A society will try to bring people up to the moral level that the society is at and will block people from growing further. This is why prophets—religious or secular—are almost always persecuted or stifled. Society does this not because the society is evil but because second journey people look dangerous. They are dangerous to where the society is at but are not dangerous to what is good.
We, as individual people, also block ourselves. The ego journey we are on is familiar. We don’t want to leave the comfort out and thrill of our ego journey. It is scary not to have our ego in charge. We don’t realize that our ego is the superficial soul and that our ego is meant to serve the deep soul. The problem is our ego wants to be in charge and serve itself.
More next time.
Smile, God Loves You,
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