Page 1 - 2020 January Listen - 14-1 FINAL
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A SEEKER’S
                    RESOURCE
                         FOR                             Listen
                    SPIRITUAL
                   DIRECTION




                  JANUARY 2020    VOLUME 14    ISSUE 1


     THE MIDDLE WAY OF SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP

       In our spiritual journeys, we all experience moments    And as they do, we will shift to the mountaintop, filled
       of unforgiving darkness, times when we are lost to      with joy, as we align more closely with the Universe,
       ourselves, and where we may feel hopeless and forsak-   and everything flows with ease, leaving us giddy with
       en.   On these occasions, many of us withdraw deep      hope.  We will then celebrate, and savor the happy
       within, in an attempt to envelop and buffer our pain by   occasion.  And our spiritual companions will celebrate
       separating from the world.  And as we cut our links to   with us.
       the outside, we may become increasingly isolated and
       unmoored, spiraling further and further into blackness.   These moments of transcendence, ephemeral as they
       We become lonely souls, rowing across a forlorn Uni-    may be, will also motivate and inspire us to either initi-
       verse, empty of purpose and redemptive meaning.         ate or reinvigorate our efforts as spiritual companions
                                                               to others.
       Of course, this is a perfect time to reach out to a spiritu-
       al companion/director.  During these dark periods, they  And yet, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we
       can be wonderfully nurturing sounding boards, rebal-    might be swinging between extremes.
       ancing us with trust, acceptance free of judgement,
       great understanding, compassion, and deep listening.    The ancient Greek philosophers spoke often of the
       And by being able to exteriorize some of our sorrows    “Golden Mean,” by which they meant positioning
       and longings, we will begin to realize that our dreadful   ourselves away from the utmost ends of a dichotomy,
       moments are actually the springboards for great awak-   so as to avoid falling off the edges into recklessness, or
       ening and insight.  The darkness then turns from bleak   intransigence.  “Beauty,” as they conceived it, was all
       to warm, from lonely to all-encompassing, from fear to   about symmetry, proportion and harmony.
       courage, and from despair to Pure Love.  And instead of
       torments, we will experience God’s gentle caresses, and  Christian Scholastics, in particular the Aristotelian
       our hearts will lift.                                   steeped St Thomas Aquinas, went further, arguing that
                                                               “moral virtue observes the mean.”
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