True religion is always about love. Love is the ultimate reality. We can probably see this only through real prayer. For love can be hidden. We don't see it unless we learn how to see, unless we clean the lens. The Zen Masters call it wiping the mirror. In a wiped mirror, we can see exactly what's there without distortion. In a perfect mirror I see what's there, not what I'm afraid of, nor what I need to be there, but what is really there. In fact, some have called Buddhism the religion of mirror wiping. It is the inner discipline of constantly observing my own patterns, what I pay attention to and what I don't pay attention to in order to get my own ego out of the way. But lest you think this is only a Buddhist preoccupation, remember St. Teresa of Avila's stark admonition, "For the most part all our trials and disturbances come from not understanding ourselves" (Interior Castle, IV, 1, 9). I'm afraid we must learn to observe our own stream of consciousness.
"Your conscience is a trick, it don't exist, and if you think it does, then you had best get it out in the open, hunt it down and kill it." - Hazel Motes
What is my agenda? What is my predisposition? What are my prejudices? What are my angers? I meet people in high levels of church and society who don't appear to have asked these questions or undertaken this discipline. This discernment process is often called the third eye or the third ear. It refers to the ability to stand away from ourselves and listen and look with some kind of calm, not judgmental, objectivity...This process can be brutal, but it is absolutely necessary. Otherwise the "I" that I am cannot separate from its identification with its own thoughts and feelings. Most people become their thoughts. They do not have thoughts and feelings; the thoughts and feelings have them. It is what the ancients called "being possessed" by a demon. - Richard Rohr
Landlady: What do you do?
Hazel: I'm a preacher.
Landlady: What church?
Hazel: Church of the Truth without Christ.
Landlady: Protestant, or..or somethin' foreign?
Hazel: Oh, no, ma'am. It's Protestant.
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