St. John of the Cross: Session 5

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the fifth session that focuses on the mystic, St. John of the Cross. With this episode, Jim turns to his work on The Dark Night. In this episode, Jim explores the question, "How does a person in today’s world try to understand the ‘dark night’?" Using committed love relationships as the metaphor; Jim explores The Dark Night through the luminosity of falling in love. He then explains how ‘dark nights’ shift as the love deepens, challenges are faced, or love takes a new shape as the beloved dies. Next week we follow up with a dialogue, as well as a follow-up session in our usual format with specific passages from The Dark Night. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about Jim, visit jamesfinley.org  The transcript of this podcast can be found here. The book being used for this season can be found here. Connect with us: We also produce other podcasts you might enjoy. To learn more about them and our other offerings, visit cac.org This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at cac.org/podcastsupport Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation to learn more
0:05.0	visit caac.org.
0:08.0	Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.
0:11.0	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:23.0	Greetings, everyone.
0:25.0	Welcome to our time together, turning for guidance to the Christian Mystics and John of the Cross.
0:33.0	In preparing for today's session, it kind of dawned on me to share with you what I hope will be
0:44.0	the way to help you to recognize the ways that these teachings of John of the Cross pertain to you personally.
0:53.0	That is, he's clearly speaking of a passage through a dark night in the lofty depths that open out upon mystical union with God.
1:06.0	But what's important is to see that those lofty depths of union with God and the flowering of mystical consciousness,
1:15.0	that mystical union is present in all the stages and phases and aspects of our daily life.
1:24.0	And so I want to share with you a meditation to hopefully help you to see how this poetic metaphor of the dark night
1:32.0	is a way of putting words to something that you've experienced or something that you're experiencing now
1:38.0	like the transformative power of the dark night, being transformed into deeper states of unit of habitual love, really.
1:50.0	And so I hope this helps. This is kind of a first draft. This came to me and needs some more work, I guess.
1:57.0	But I trust this together enough, like a contemplative spiritual direction here that will help you kind of tune in to see how this pertains to you
2:07.0	in the midst of your daily situation, whatever it might be.
2:12.0	So I want to start first again by going back to some imagery that we started with Thomas Martin on this contemplative worldview.
2:23.0	And we started with this imagery of imagine you're waiting along the ocean shore, ankle deep.
2:31.0	It's true you're just ankle deep, but it's also true you're in the ocean.
2:36.0	And it's also true if you just head out to deeper water, it'll get plenty deep soon enough.
2:43.0	And in terms of ego consciousness, that deepening as you keep swimming out and the water beneath you's getting deeper and deeper, that depth is a measurable depth.
	...

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