Soul knowledge sends you in the opposite direction from consumerism.
It’s not addition that makes one holy, but subtraction: stripping the
illusions, letting go of the pretense, exposing the false self,
breaking open the heart and the understanding, not taking one’s
private self too seriously. Conversion is more about unlearning than
learning.
In a certain sense we are on the utterly wrong track. We are climbing
while Jesus is descending, and in that we reflect the pride and the
arrogance of Western civilization, always trying to accomplish,
perform, and achieve. We transferred much of that to our version of
Christianity and made the Gospel into spiritual consumerism. The ego
is still in charge. There is not much room left for God when the false
self takes itself and its private self-development that seriously.
All we can really do is get ourselves out of the way, and honestly
wecan’t even do that. It is done to us through this terrible thing
called suffering.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, OMI Radical Grace: Daily Meditations , p.
46, day 49
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