You don’t want to ever feel that this is a strange thing for a human being. What is strange is how we think about it.
If there is anything I would like you to pick up out of today is that “when it comes to chaos is what you do in your head”. We are all taught a certain approach to life. Through families or schools or television. There are all sorts of ways people are taught to think about what life is doing, and what life is about.
One of the interesting things about for people who study how people think and how they understand their life, is years ago people would see something and that’s what their head understood. Now, we understand that we understand that the head actually leads. Largely we only see what we expect to see. It is what you have got going on in your head. That “conception” or “concepts”, actually lead your perception. What you perceive.
A simple example. If I took you to a house and before I take you to the house, I ask you what is your favourite house. Favourite image of a house. You describe it. I go and find one. I take you to this house and I show you. This is the house you would love to see. As I bring, you’re here there are feels of “isn’t this lovely”. Until I tell you “That it is haunted”. The moment I tell you that it is haunted, realise what happens in your head, your whole perception of the house changes because of the meaning of the word “haunted” to you.
If you are a ghost chaser, you would say “Wow!” This adds to the beauty of the house. But, if you are person who hates anything like that, then of cause the house has lost some beauty.
It is crucial that you realise this is going on all the time. No fault as we live each and every day we tend to experience what we think we will experience. You can imagine anything fresh and new is always frightening to us, because in actual fact our head has not worked out what we will do.
If I was to bring an alien or person from somewhere else into this room right now, and their visual look and appearance was so out of our experience. We probably would not see them. It is difficult for the human person consciously in their heads to admit to data which is outside our way of thinking. There are study’s on the work on the mind show us how important you see. Often parents say when they are bringing up children or teachers working with students, they think that they are looking at the same thing. They call it the same thing. That experience is one and the same. This is not necessarily so at all.
For a child who has grown up with a dog as a family member, I put a dog in the room and it is a lovely thing. For a child that has grown up and was bitten dangerously, this is a terrible thing. So if I bring a dog into the room I think I am doing a lovely thing, but the child goes eradicate or crazy. I am thinking what is wrong with the child. Well, in fact I have introduced what is wrong with the child. It is in the action I have done.One of the things I would be arguing with you today is the meaning of the word “spirituality”. That most people do not use. Most people come to understand spirituality out of their religion. Christian, Catholic, Buddhist. They derive spirituality from that. But there is another way of thinking about spirituality. It is essentially human. It precedes all religious traditions. It is actually in every human being to be spiritual. The very nature of who we are. I believe in that form of spirituality. That it is profoundly human to be spiritual.
The purpose of spirituality is actual fact how you think life works including spirit. My definition of spirituality is your view of life which includes spirit. There are a lot of people in the world who have a view of life that does not include spirituality. They have what I call a life view or a world view.
For anyone who wants their life view to include spirit or spirituality. That is what I call “a spirituality”. Every one of view here probably has a spirituality. A world view that includes spirit or God and how things work.
What made Mary’s experience of chaos different from most of the people around her was simply the way she understood life and including God. She understood life including God in a radically new and fresh way. That made her experience of chaos significantly different.
What was profoundly different for her, essential human experience of chaos, but her mind and spirit frame that she brought to understanding the chaos that came through. That is what changes everything. That is what spirituality does for us.
St Paul recommends that you put on the mind of Christ. Typically, when I speak to most people what they hear is “to put on the behaviours of Christ”. They think that I should go out and act like Jesus. St Paul implies that if I can get my mind working like Jesus, the behaviours would just happen. It is my “conception”, or my thinking that actually influences everything else that happens.
There are a lot of people who will give you better explanations of chaos. There are many people who can teach you more about Mary than I. All I can get you to do is to realise that it was her spirituality, her understanding of life inclusive of God, that changed everything for her.
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