PsychoSpiritual Work / Purifying the Pond

Gregg’s Reflection

Special Announcement: Over the last weeks, I have been offering an Invitation to Fellow Travelers:

Over the past years, I’ve been walking what I call God’s Faint Path—a quiet trail of spiritual seeking shaped by wilderness, silence, scripture, and the voices of saints and mystics across the ages. I’ve shared reflections along the way, not as a teacher with answers, but as a fellow pilgrim wondering aloud.

But here’s what I know: the faint path can be a lonely road.

James Finley once wrote of Thomas Merton, his beloved friend and spiritual guide as “an elder brother on the lonely road to God.” I’ve often felt the ache and gift of that truth. And like many of you, I’ve longed for the company of kindred souls—those who hunger not for religious performance, but for depth, transformation, and union with the Living God.

So I’m extending an invitation:

Would you like to journey together in a small circle of fellow travelers?

I’m imagining something simple:
• A space for shared reflections and spiritual conversation
• Periodic Zoom gatherings rooted in presence, silence, and honest sharing
• Occasional audio meditations or contemplative teachings
• An online hub for encouragement and soul friendship

To initiate this effort, I have scheduled a Zoom for June 24 at noon Mountain time. If you would like to join, here is the link. Let’s see what wants to happen.

Now, to my Reflection: In addition to the spiritual work I have done in my adult years, I also spent two years in therapy with my friend and mentor Harvey Cheatham. Early on, Harvey told me, “You need to learn to get in touch with your emotions.” When I told my wife of thirty years at that time, Genie said, “I wonder what that would look like.”

I am an ENTJ and am 90% thinker and maybe 10% feeler. Genie is an INFJ, and is incredibly intuitive about other people’s feelings. So for much of our early marriage, she would say, in times of stress, “You’re angry.” And I would deny it. What I thought of as passion, others received as anger. Took me years to get onto myself about that.

I experienced strong feelings of guilt and shame when I would fall short, and reinforce the belief that I was not good enough. Just going to church and pursuing spirituality was not enough to help me grow beyond these things. It took two years of therapy, and three years of studying structure with Robert Fritz to help me see the light.

So, my question for you is this:

We can only actually experience God in the present moment. Years of meditation and then contemplation helped ground me in the present moment, where we can experience Presence.

I created this illustration for clients who were stuck due to early childhood trauma. The scar tissue restricts the flow of love until it is just a trickle. So, come along with me on the path of psycho-spiritual work, clarifying the pond so we can see God more clearly. Pay particular attention to Thomas Keating’s ideas which I explore in the post. Blessings.

Journaling Prompts:

If you sit in silence, are you flooded with anxious thoughts? What would it look like for you to ‘purify the pond’ and clear out the muck that clouds your vision of God? What stories about yourself do you struggle to bring into the light? How might examining those stories lead to healing?

Scripture

Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation come from him.

Psalm 62:1

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2

And to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:19

Ancient Writings

The mind that has been purified from passions and illumined by contemplation sees the light of the Holy Trinity.

Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 61 (SC 171:628)

The soul that loves God has to make itself beautiful by the labor of virtue, and then it will be able to look upon the Beauty that is God.

Gregory of Nyssa. Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 61 (SC 171:628)

Purity of heart is what enables us to see God. This is the goal of all our efforts and the peak of all virtue.

John Cassian. Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 61 (SC 171:628)

We must cast off all the activities of the mind and be divested of all that is visible and invisible, until we enter the darkness where God truly dwells.

Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology 1.1

Do not seek after visions. Instead, cleanse your heart through humility and love, and you will see God even in the silence.

Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetical Homilies, Homily 64.

Modern Writings

The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. What if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself – that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness – that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then?

As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Chapter 8 (“The Tower”), pp. 234–235.

Like a storm tossed lake, our own waves and agitation get in the way of a clear picture. Training in wisdom has to do with purifying the heart and polishing the mirror of awareness, by gradually freeing it from domination by the small self ego. As the heart becomes undivided, a still and accurately reflecting mirror, it begins to be able to see and swim in the deeper waters of the Divine coming into form. 

Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 87-88

The purpose of the divine therapy is the healing of the roots of all our problems and to transform our attitudes and, indeed, the whole of our human nature into the mind and heart of Christ.

In other words, to introduce us through grace into the interior life of God. This involves a transformation of our attitudes, faculties, and bodies so that we can receive the maximum amount of the transmission of divine life that is possible given the limits of human nature.

The source of our being lies in our innermost center, buried under the emotional debris of a lifetime.

Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation, p. 51-52.

Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom, p. 140.

Perhaps no psychologist has stressed the need of self-acceptance as the way to self-realization so much as Carl Jung. For Jung, self-realization meant the integration of the shadow. It is the growing ability to allow the dark side of our personality to enter into our awareness and thus prevent a one-sided life in which only that which is presentable to the outside world is considered as a real part of ourselves.

To come to an inner unity, totality and wholeness, every part of our self should be accepted and integrated. Christ represents the light in us. But Christ was crucified between two murderers and we cannot deny them, and certainly not the murderers who live in us.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 1/17/21

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.

Henri Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life

As soon as we are alone,...inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediatel;y shut ou all our iner doubts, anxieities, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires.

On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distraction manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important.

Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New and Other Classics

Both therapy and spirituality have an important place in a full life. Much therapy today is a needed way of dealing with our psychological problems. But eventually we must move from exclusively trying to solve our problems to knowing that we can never fully resolve them, but only learn from them.

Sometimes, we can only forgive our imperfections and neuroses, embrace them, and even weep over them (which is not to hate them!). They can never be solved, but only outgrown. Only an in-depth spirituality can fully accept the paradox of our flawed humanity, indwelled by God's presence, where both light and dark are allowed and used by God. This is not a capitulation to our shadow self, but an integration that brings forth what Thomas Merton called “a hidden wholeness.

Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, p. 167

Whatever we fear or fail to see within ourselves we will see in other individuals and groups and hate it there instead.

Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 139

We all have childhood wounds. If we don’t heal and transform our wounds, we will wound others. Wounded people wound others. If we don’t transform our pain, we will transmit it.

Richard Rohr

Too often we think sharing our weaknesses will cause us to lose respect. We think making our weaknesses known will cause us to lose the honor to be able to proclaim the Word of God in our congregations or our businesses. I know longer believe that is true. Not today, in our post modern culture.

What I do believe is the more you tell the truth about yourself – appropriately, winsomely, age-appropriately, within a context – the more effective your leadership will become, the more you will develop a true leading character. The more you tell of your own failure of character, the more God will use that for His purposes.

Dr. Dan Allender, Leading Character

We're in the presence of a good story when the flaw that shatters shalom is also the doorway to redemption... Whether it be our own flaw or the sin of others, God uses the raw material of sin to create the edifice of his redeemed glory.

Dr. Dan Allender, To Be Told: God Invites You to Coauthor Your Future

We can be instruments of peace if we ourselves have peace within. We can best heal others and the world if we ourselves are healed.

David Cook, Oneing