The Emptiness Within - Part I

Welcome:

The struggle continues... ... ...

What is this place where God does call me forward?

The voice within answers -- "Nothingness"

Each day I become more and more aware that I don't know where God is. It seems that I have lost my sense of balance -- God is and God is not. God is fullness and at the same time, God is total emptiness.

God is passionate love and God is at the same time piercing pain; pain that cuts the very center of the soul.

It is a fiery movement that strips the inner chambers of the soul and leaves one with a sense of abandonment, yet not an abandonment of despair but an abandonment of readiness to be filled with something new.

It is in this passion, pain, and emptiness that I experience God, but not the God of my youth or the God I was familiar with in years gone by. It was as if a new awareness and a new reality was being born within me.

My life, at present, is one of complete stripping of anything I recognize; it is as if a totally new Danyel is present in the vessel of the old Danyel. Something has been emptied and at the same time is being filled with an unfamiliar presence.

At the present time, I am most emptied of God. Yet, I find myself wanting to seek God even more intensely.

I cannot turn from this God -- I cannot leave or dismiss God away from myself. No matter how I try to see or experience the movement of the Holy -- I find only silence.

I don't know what God really wants or who God really is. I only know that I have this deep longing to be embraced by this God of madness and confusion.

........................ All this longing has led me to nothing.

God is nothing

God is emptiness

God is God always unending -- nothing.........

The awareness of being nothing is on one hand, liberating but on the other hand it is filled with deep pain.

This experience of nothing puts me back in touch to the time when I was conceived in the womb.

Littleness, smallness.....

Dependence upon the life cycle to continue to live.

This "Nothingness" is the actual experience of myself as an adult reliving what it was like in the womb.

It is a return to total and complete surrender to the cycle of elements outside of one's ability to understand movement of floating in a dark liquid. This darkness is the essence of the life force; this liquid is the nourishment that ensures life.

This womb-like experience is the NEW MYSTERY of GOD - Being born within.

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggested Reading from Liguori Publications

God-Birthing by Michael Dwinell

Sister Wendy's Meditation on the Mysteries of Our Faith by Wendy Beckett

Stories of God by John Shea

Fulfilling Emptyness

Welcome:

Please note that this is the last in a series of 3 posts. You will benefit most if you will begin reading Fire in the Soul: The Path of Mystical Poverty.

January 1991

This January 11, 1991 I celebrate my 44th birthday. More than any other birthday this has been quite an experience in awareness of depth in my life.

God has allowed me to enter into the real depths of relationship with Him.

Questions - Many of them …..
Doubts - many and intense
Silence - profound
Sin - intense awareness
Love - passionate and painful
Surrender – constant and fearing
Mystery - deep and empty

“What good is it to me if this eternal
Birth of the Divine Son takes place unceasingly
But does not take place within myself?
This then is the fullness of time
When the Son of God is begotten in us.”
-Meister Eckhart-

At last in my life I have come to the place where I thirst intensely to experience this birth of God within me. At 44 years of age I accept finally without any hesitation, the call within myself to live a mystical experience of God.

No longer will I deny this movement of my soul. Too many years I have dismissed this invitation from God.

I am truly nothing. Nothing – this has been my reality this past year. God has led me to this time and place. I have been invited into the desert of the inner Soul. This desert is my dwelling place where I will become the beloved of God.


The desert is about – nothing
The desert is - empty
The desert is - void
The desert is - life and death
The desert is - silent
The desert is - alive
The desert is - God

“Where is my dwelling place?
Where I can never stand
Where is my final good, toward
Which I should ascend?

It is beyond all place
What should my quest then be?
I must, transcending God, into the desert flee.”
-Angelus Silesuis-

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggest reading from Liguori Publications

Introducing Meister Eckhart by Michael Demkovich

Search for the Meaning of Life by Willigis Jager

15 Days of Prayer with Meister Eckhart by Andre Gozier

The Writings of a Fellow Struggler of God - Danyel Christodulos

Welcome:

Please note that this is the second in a series of 3 posts. You will benefit most if you will begin reading Fire in the Soul: The Path of Mystical Poverty.

As I walked alone in a park one day in deepest melancholic thought, I was stirred within my inner being to stop, close my eyes, and listen only to the sounds around me, allowing the warmth of the sunny day to soothe my aching, empty self.

You see, after years of contentment in my faith life, I suddenly experienced an emptying of all belief and feeling of anything Godly. In the flash of a minute all feelings of spiritual well-being seemed to have abandoned me, and I found myself in what I can only symbolically say was a feeling of empty darkness.

For weeks I lived in this stupor of nothingness and void. I went through the motions of my job, which happened to be in a religious setting, with absolutely no sense of belief, even though I had to speak and teach on religious subjects.

One day I awoke, sat in a chair and began to feel a sense of losing myself when I noticed the Bible setting on the lamp stand. Suddenly I found myself opening the bible to the Book of Daniel purely by chance. I began to read the following as if the words were addressed to me personally.

Daniel 19:23
“From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth; and I am come to show it to thee, because thou art a man of desire.”

Daniel 10:11
“And he said to me, ‘Daniel, thou man of desire, understand the words that I speak to thee, and stand upright.’ ”

Daniel 10:18-19
“Again one having the appearance of a man touched me and strengthened me and he said, ‘O man greatly beloved fear not, peace be with you; be strong and of good courage.’ And when he spoke to me I was strengthened and said, ‘Let my Lord speak, for you have strengthened me.’ ”

After reading these passages I was moved to take up a notebook and write the following thoughts which flowed out from me whenever I was inclined to write about the stirrings in the depths of my soul.

“ I am nothing, I have nothing,

I desire only one thing,

And that is the love of Our Lord Jesus,

And that is to be with him at peace in Jerusalem.”

-Walter Hilton, English Mystic-

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggested Reading from Liguori Publications

Contemplation: A Christian Path by Willigis Jager

Here Now in Love: The Roots of Contemplative Spirituality by Philip St. Romain

Nourished by the Word: Reading the Bible Contemplatively by Wilfrid Stinssen

Fire in the Soul - The Path of Mystical Poverty

Welcome:

Please note that this is the first in a series of 3 posts.

Transformation into the path of Sole Deo – only God – through the way of mystical alchemy is a walk into the inner chambers of the soul where we encounter the shadow side of our “ego.” It is not a journey that many are willing to make.

Mystics of all traditions sooner or later walk the path of mystical “poverty.” The process is one of a burning purification in the Soul. No example is more obvious than the twentieth-century mystic Francesco Forgione, most commonly know as Padre Pio.

This modern-day saint presents the depths to which one can enter the “Fire in the Soul” in hundreds of letters to his spiritual director and to his spiritual children A quote from a letter to his former teacher sums up what it is like to come into contact with this mystical fire.

“Dear God! Who can describe the martyrdom I went through in my innermost being? Even the memory of that internal combat makes the blood freeze in my veins, although almost twenty years have passed since then. I heard the voice of duty telling me to obey you, O true and good God! But your enemies and mine tyrannized over me, they dislocated my bones, they mocked me and caused me to writhe in agony.”

Padre Pio writes in symbolic language trying to express the movement that takes place in the soul of one who walks the path of mystical love. The closer we get to the mystery of God in the depths of our souls the more there is a “burning” sensation that rises up from within and causes what can only be described as purifying fire.

This is classically described from the tradition of St. John of the Cross as the “dark night of the soul.” However, caution is necessary because the ordinary suffering we experience externally is incorrectly referred to as a “dark night,” when the darkness that John talks about is actually a deep movement of tremendously burning light that feels to our senses like profound “darkness.”

If we walk the path of Sole Deo sincerely, eventually we will experience that powerful purification, that powerful darkening light that comes from being totally in God. This is not just for specially chosen souls. Anyone who focuses the energy of their body, mind, and spirit on offering themselves to the transformation of God’s fiery Love can, and will have these same experiences.

As we continue this reflection on the movement of God from the inner regions of the Soul I will share with you the writings of a hidden mystic I met in 1990. He shared with me the most intimate movements of God in his soul. His name is Danyel Christodulos. I believe that his experiences are ones we can relate to in our own journey into the depths of the mystery of God.

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggested reading from Liguori Publications

Padre Pio: In My Own Words by Anthony F. Chiffolo

An Hour with Saint Padre Pio by Anthony F. Chiffolo

Sole Deo - Part III

Welcome:

Please note that this is the third in a series of 3 posts. You will benefit most if you begin reading Sole Deo

Fifth – “Patience obtains all things.”

This is a foundation statement proven by many people, not only religiously minded individuals following a spiritual path. If we can develop a practice of patient thinking and expectation in daily life we begin to live life with a sincerity that attracts the attention of others. We sow the seeds of peacefulness and kindness by our very presence.

How to be a person of patience? Develop the practice of waiting a few seconds before responding to people and events. Be careful of useless chatter. Think before acting. Remove the desire to always be right. Listen to what others are saying. Try to listen beyond their actual words. Notice their body language and look into their eyes and see what is happening.

After developing this skill with and others we will acquire an attitude of softness toward our own sufferings and difficulties. We become rooted in an attitude of calmness and sincere acceptance of the circumstance of our own lives. We are no longer ruled by the anxieties of the moment. Rather we are peacefully in charge of our own destiny.

Sixth - “Nothing is wanting to the one who possesses God.”

The whole flow of Teresa’s of Avila prayer is arriving to the point of being absorbed totally in the mystery of God. In this phrase nothing is wanting to the one who surrenders totally to the presence of the Divine One. No matter what is happening in our lives at this moment, rather positive or negative, we are firmly planted in the Divine Mystery of God if we follow the flow of this prayer. Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you, for God never changes for the one who places his or her trust in the Divine Mystery.

Seventh - “God alone suffices.”

The road to living in the world mystically is centered in our belief in and behavior of desiring the heart of mystical alchemy, which is the transformation of our very being through the path of mystical action into the living mystery of God.

"Sole Deo" is the third part of what I call the mystical path. In the archives of this BLOG site I have written about two other paths of mystical alchemy, the Passio Christi and the Anima Christi . "Sole Deo" is the third part in this system of mystical living. These mystical pahs do not necessary follow in any particular order, but rather, they are inner spiritual movements that occur in the daily living of the mystical life.

This first part of “Sole Deo” is a simple meditation on the bookmark prayer of Teresa of Avila. This prayer provides a simple outline for understanding the process of the “Sole Deo” path through living our lives totally dependant on the presence of God alone. Many mystics of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have experienced and written volumes on what it means to live “Sole Deo.” I hope to continue to unfold this traditional path in future writings on this BLOG.

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

************************************************************************************** Suggested reading from Liguori Publications:

Shaking a Fist at God by Katharine Dell

An Invitation to Centering Prayer by M. Basil Pennington O.C.S.O

Sole Deo - Part II

Welcome:

Please note that this is the second in a series of 3 posts. You will benefit most if you begin reading Sole Deo

Fourth – “God never changes.”

If we have entered the mystery of Godliness, we know through our experience that God is the foundation of reality. God is always faithful and loving. God is a rock of safety. This is a hard truth for those who may have grown up with a stern understanding of God, i.e. a God who is always looking for the wrong moves we might make and punishes us accordingly.

If we have an image of God as vengeful, which is not the image that Jesus proclaimed, then we might not have believe that God is never changing, especially if we have had a dreaded experience of God. There is hope, however. If you are a person who struggles with the loving kindness of God, stop reading right now, center yourself and repeat slowly – “God is Love.”

Pray it again slowly, God is Love ….. God is Love ….. God is Love …..
God is ….. God is ….. God is ….. God ….. God….. God.

Let your breathing pray this statement. Breathing in God is ….. Breathing out … Love.

Do this often throughout the day and I assure you that you will begin to experience the loving tenderness of God. You will encounter the reality that “God never changes.” God is total Love, Peace, Compassion and Forgiveness. If you doubt, you can add to the above mantra prayer each of these attributes of God as you pray. I suggest you try it. I am one of those who suffered from a vengeful God image, yet I have made this part of my regular prayer practice.

We have often heard the theological maxim, “We are made in the image and likeness of God.” To accept that we are truly made in the “image” of God is a life-time practice. So much in our modern society is absent anything spiritual and so many cruel tactics are used by institutional religion. These result in a tremendous wave of negative religious experience.

One has to constantly make sure that the forces of negative God talk and religious institutional fundamental theological and spiritual babble, does not create a under current in one’s spiritual life of discontent for the concept of God.

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggested reading from Liguori Publications:

A Place Apart by M. Basil Pennington O.C.S.O

You Can Know God by Marilyn Gustin

Sole Deo

Welcome:

Please note that this is the first in a series of 3 posts.

Sole Deo, “Only God” or in the words of the prayer of Teresa of Avila: “Nothing is wanting to the one who possesses God. God alone suffices.” Over the past year I have written much about what I have come to experience as Mystical Alchemy, the mystical transformation of our being through many different practices into the living Christic energy. If you have been reading my BLOG you can find in the archives material I have written over the past year treating what I mean by “Mystical Alchemy.”

This is the third section of what I call my definition of the mystical experience of life. I have framed my thoughts in what I call two ‘visions’, The Passio Christi is the first and the second is the Anima Christi. Now in this presentation, the Sole Deo, or “only God” summarizes my three paths to mystical alchemy.

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Nothing is wanting to the one
Who possess God.
God alone suffices.

Prayer of Teresa of Avila

Sole Deo is about the total summit of the mystical state. It is about living, breathing, and acting totally in God. Yet, how does one arrive at such a profound experience? Not by one single action or way of believing.

Rather, sole Deo is a way of living and thinking. It is a gradual process that takes in a whole different view of life. It is living with an intention of awareness and focus. It is an attitudinal change in our thinking and the way we process the experiences of life.

The prayer of Teresa of Avila gives us a summary of this intention, a kind of road map to follow in achieving the principle of “God alone suffices.” Let us examine her prayer more closely.

First – “Let nothing disturb you.”

This is not an easy reality. I find that some temperaments can more easily accomplish this maxim of Teresa’s spirituality than others. But I have never found it easy to be undisturbed by events. I usually have to really practice the mantra, “Let nothing disturb you” over and over again in the midst of disturbances. It is possible and I have over the years become better at acceptance of my own faults and the faults of others.

Second – “Let nothing frighten you.”

As we advance on the road of mystical love and embrace, we begin to not let ourselves be ruled by fear. Attraction to and love for the Divine Beloved has the benefit of surrounding one with protection from fearful things. The important thing is remembering that God alone is what is important – not what is happening within or around our selves. Love and devotion toward the Divine One makes life more balanced and secure.

Third – “All things are passing.”

Remembering and praying this statement is the antidote for disturbance and fear. All things are passing, like the great mystic Julian of Norwich said, “All will be well, and all matter of things will be well.” Whatever I am facing at this moment, if I center myself and focus my attention on the God within, all will pass. And in my intention of living Divine Love, I will not be overcome by anything – God alone truly will suffice.

I wish you peace and love,

Secundo Pia - Mystic Alchemy

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Suggested reading from Liguori Publications:

15 Days of Prayer with St Teresa of Avila by Jean Abiven

Resting in God’s Care by Word Consultants

Letting Go of Fear by Carlos G. Valles