An excerpt from A Way to God by Matthew Fox

Even though he passed away in 1968 at the young age of 53, the pioneering ideas that Trappist monk and social justice activist Thomas Merton shared throughout his lifetime are still very much alive. So much so that Pope Francis recently declared him one of four exemplary Americans who provide wisdom for us today — along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, and Dorothy Day.

Pope Francis is not alone in his deep regard for the contributions Merton made to the history of spirituality. In his new book A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey (New World Library, May 12, 2016), bestselling author and theologian Matthew Fox celebrates Merton’s work and explains how thirteenth century mystic Meister Eckhart profoundly influenced both Merton and Creation Spirituality, which Fox has long espoused and written about.

We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book about Merton’s perspective on silence.

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What does Thomas Merton have to say about silence? A lot. Consider the following poem:

Be still

Listen to the stones of the wall

Be silent, they try

To speak your

Name.

Listen

To the living walls.

Who

Are you? Whose

Silence are you?

Such an invitation! To listen to the stones of the living walls and learn who one is, to whom one belongs. I cannot read this poem without thinking of a sweat lodge where, thanks to the ancient wisdom of the indigenous peoples, a ceremony is created wherein the rocks themselves, the oldest beings on earth and our elders, speak to us when they are heated up and glowing. I do not know if Merton ever experienced a sweat lodge, but I remain profoundly grateful for the numerous ones I have been blessed to attend. And in them all, silence is honored.

Another poem by Merton speaks to silence as well.

The whole

World is secretly on fire. The stones

Burn, even the stones

They burn me. How can a man be still or

Listen to all things burning? How can he dare

To sit with them when

All their silence

Is on fire?

Here, too, Merton evokes a sweat lodge. But he is also speaking to a profound truth revealed in postmodern science, which is that every atom in the universe contains photons or light waves. Thus, all atoms and all beings are on fire. All beings are a burning bush. One does not have to travel to Mount Sinai to encounter the Divine in a burning bush — every bush is a burning bush, every leaf, every stone, every fish, every bird, and every person. We are all on fire. But we have to “sit with them” and be receptive to them. We have to dare to sit and to listen. We have to dare silence. That is the contemplative way. Merton says: “Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy.” All beings are, in Eckhart’s words, “words of God and revelations of God.” Merton knew this as well. But it takes silence to grasp it.

For Eckhart, emptying the mind is:

the most powerful prayer, one almost omnipotent to gain all things, and the noblest work of all is that which proceeds from a bare mind….A bare mind can do all things. What is a bare mind? A bare mind is one which is worried by nothing and is tied to nothing, which has not bound its best part to any modes, does not seek its own in anything, that is fully immersed in God’s dearest will and goes out of its own.

A bare mind dwells in the now. Merton advises us to “love winter when the plant says nothing.” Even nature enjoys darkness and solitude. Winter is that Via Negativa time of the year.

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Matthew Fox is the author of over 30 books including Meister Eckhart, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, Christian Mystics, and most recently A Way to God. A preeminent scholar and popularizer of Western mysticism, he became an Episcopal priest after being expelled from the Dominican Order by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. You can visit him online at www.matthewfox.org.

Excerpted from the book A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creative Spirituality Journey. Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Fox. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com

This is an excerpt from the book “Loving on Me!: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Mess to Message,” by Katrina McGhee.

One of the great benefits of dealing with the unaddressed issues of our past is that it clears up mental space in the present. It allows the whole of ourselves to focus on what’s before us, viewing life through a broader lens of possibility rather than pessimism, confusion, and defeat. It’s from this vantage point that we are best poised to explore life beyond our comfort zone.

After a few months of rest and reflection, I felt that shift happen for me. It was as if the fog surrounding my brain slowly began to recede, allowing my mind to fill with random thoughts and ideas. I couldn’t put it all together yet, but it felt like glimpses of the future.

Looking back, I see how God was taking me through a process of reshaping my thinking before he’d allow me to take those first steps. Bit by bit, spending time with Him evolved my beliefs about who I am and who He is. Knowing my true self, defining my worth based on who He created me to be, and accepting this one truth greatly expanded the prospects for my life:

I am because He is, and because He is, anything is possible.

Believing this meant I didn’t have to be confined by what I had been or knew how to do. I could be whoever He wanted me to be, and I could know that whatever He asked me to do, it would be enough. But what was it?

Journaling was the best way for me to get quiet enough to hear God’s answers. Through daily writing, I was able to slow down my constantly racing thoughts and drop into a space where it was He and me alone. It was there where my imagination took flight in a more cohesive manner.

Soon a cornucopia of ideas—both new and dusted-off old ones—emerged. My transition coach called it a creative tornado, but for me it felt like I was finally alive again, awake and ready to reengage with the world. What got me especially excited was a concept for a new women’s community. I referred to it as Do Good Girlz, a place where young women could connect their passion with their true purpose.

My idea was to get someone to write a program that would serve as the “brain” for our website, the goal being to use technology to match a woman’s unique gifts, talents, values, and resources with a variety of causes and organizations that, based on her responses, would be of interest. After completing our survey, each “Do Good Girl” would receive a unique plan to put her passions into action, and together we would change the world.

It sounded so wonderful, marrying all my loves—mentoring young women, creating communities, and supporting great causes. It also met a need. For years, young women had been asking me, “How do I know what I’m supposed to be doing? How do I take what I’m good at and help other people?” Well, here was the solution! Do Good Girlz would revolutionize the way women engaged in supporting local and global communities.

The best part was this was a natural next step for what I had been doing all my life, what I was good at. So I started getting all my ducks in a row. I secured the website, graphic designer, and a project manager. I even put together a small focus group and started meeting with them regularly to test out my ideas.

There was just one problem—they didn’t get it. What seemed so obvious on paper fell flat in the telling. They kept asking me hard questions like, “What’s the goal? What are you trying to achieve? Why would women engage, and why would they come back after the first time?” My answer was always, “Let me think about that.” What I really wanted to say was, “Look, this is an inspiration from God. Just go with it!”

But my gut was telling me they were right. There was something missing. It felt incomplete, like I had snatched up a piece and tried to make it the whole picture. You know how we do, so eager to get started we hear a smidgen of something and then take off running like we know the whole story, only to have to stop a few steps later to get the rest of what we need.

That’s what I ended up doing, going back to the journal to ask God what I was missing. And that’s when He started showering me with additional pieces to the puzzle.

It’s a movement, about women for women. It’s built on the spirit of abundance.
It’s a partnership and a platform.

It’s where inspiration meets opportunity. It’s about choices that change our world. It’s a blog. It’s a business. It’s a community. It’s a place of healing and restoration.

Honestly, I felt a little all over the place and yet still on the right path. Although “it” didn’t completely sync up with my original idea for Do Good Girlz, it totally lined up with this leg of my journey. Even the affirmations I scribbled in the margins of my journal were reflections of what God was teaching me about me.

I can change the world.
I was created for a unique purpose, something only I can do. I care about myself, my village, and my world.
I am mighty. I am strong. I am enough.
I choose to do good!

It seemed this message of being enough, which was so central to my own healing, was at the core of what God was asking me to share with the world. Whereas I had latched on to the “do” part, God backed me up once again to “be.”

About the author
Katrina McGhee is the founder and CEO of Loving On Me, a global movement to encourage women to love themselves more. She is a women’s advocate, non-profit leader, mentor and social responsibility pioneer whose desire to make a difference led to 20 years in leadership roles at two of the largest non-profit organizations in the world, including serving as executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For more information about Katrina, visit http://katrinamcghee.com.

Q & A with author Matthew McKay

What were some of the ways you sought to make contact with your son?

In the beginning I looked for signs he might be present, anything unusual in our environment. Family and friends kept track of dreams or messages from Jordan. We went to a medium, we went to a psychologist who specializes in Induced After Death Communication, and I learned how to do Channeled Writing. In the end, I found that channeled writing was the most effective way to make contact with Jordan—literally any time I wanted.

What is Induced After Death Communication – how does it work, and what happened when you tried it?

This is based on research by psychologist Alan Botkin. He discovered that by making a small change in a well known protocol for treating trauma, that his patients spontaneously received direct messages from the dead. He worked primarily with vets who experienced traumatic losses in war. After the first “accidental” IADC (Induced After-Death Communication) Botkin did the revised procedure with 83 vets who were being treated for trauma. None were told what to expect, but 81 (97%) heard the voice of someone they loved who had died.

I saw Botkin in Chicago, did the trauma process, and heard Jordan say these words to me: “Dad . . . Dad . . . Tell Mom I’m here . . . I’m all right. I’m here with you . . . Tell her I’m OK.”

What is Channeled Writing, and how did it help you to communicate to your son, Jordan?

Channeled Writing, also called automatic writing, has been used for hundreds of years as a means to communicate with the spirit world. Spiritual seekers and famous poets have used it, including W. B. Yeats. The Channeled Writing process I learned includes using meditation to get into a receptive state, writing out a question, and listening for the answer (often heard as a whispered voice inside one’s head or simply a thought). You just write the answer down, and move on to the next question. All of Jordan’s words in the book came from Channeled Writing.

How did you come to write a book with your son – after his death?

Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who taught me to use Channeled Writing, suggested that I could use Channeled Writing to do a book with Jordan. I asked Jordan if he was

interested in a book project, even though I had no idea what it would involve. He was not only willing, he outlined the first 10 chapters of the book and established the entire scope of the project—within 5 minutes.

What did you learn about the spirit world – life after death – from Jordan?

Souls reincarnate for hundreds of lives. Between lives they are home—in the spirit world. Immediately after death, souls are met by guides and loved ones in an environment created to look familiar and reassuring. Following a brief transitional period, souls begin a life review where they examine every significant moment of the just completed life. Life review helps us learn how each decision we make affects everyone around us. After live review, souls join their soul family—a group of souls who both learn and reincarnate together. Guides (teachers) oversee the learning process—both on earth and in the life-between-lives. Each soul’s lesson plan for what they will learn on earth is called karma.

Why are we here – did Jordan say anything about that?

We are here for one purpose only—to learn.. We are not here to be redeemed or to earn a place in heaven by doing good works. The reason we reincarnate, living hundreds of lives, is to learn the lessons that each life teaches. In the same way bees bring honey back to the hive, we return to the spirit world after each life, carrying all the wisdom and new lessons we have learned.

What did you learn about God from Jordan?

Jordan says that all of consciousness—collectively—is God. As consciousness grows and evolves, God develops and evolves. As each soul learns, because we are all a part of God, God learns. And not a “person,” a specific entity. We don’t see God in the spirit world. God is us.

Can anyone contact the dead, or do you need special powers?

You need no special powers to talk to the dead. I have no special powers.   I’m not a medium. I am not clairvoyant or clairaudient. Channeled Writing is something anyone can learn. It requires doing a brief meditation to open the channel and help you become more receptive. Have an object with you that connects you to the spirit on the other side. After the meditation, write out questions. Start with questions that will have simple yes or no answers. The answer will come as a thought—write it down. As the process becomes more comfortable and familiar, write out questions that require a more complex answer (thought).   Find words for whatever answer (thought) shows up in your mind.

Why is there so much pain in life – according to Jordan?

Jordan indicates that all the pain in the world is necessary for our mission of learning. We come to this planet to learn how to love with, and in spite of pain. These are lessons that CANNOT happen in the spirit world where there is no pain and we love without effort or cost.

We come to a physical planet to face resistance and obstacles. As Jordan says, “You can’t learn to throw a curve ball in heaven. First of all, you need a physical ball. Then you need gravity and wind resistance. There are no great pitchers in the spirit world.”

Every lesson we learn here is taught by pain and resistance.

You’ve used hypnosis to lead people on past life and between life journeys—and you’ve been on them yourself. How do you do it? What did you learn?

I learned an hypnotic induction, from the work of psychologist Michael Newton, that allows people to return to past lives, and the life-between-lives (the spirit world). It takes about four hours, but offers profound truths about our individual life purpose—what we came here to learn and what we came here to do.

Later, in order to take these journeys myself, I consulted psychologist Ralph Metzner, who helped me visit past lives I had shared with Jordan. I also witnessed experiences I’ve had in the life-between-lives, including life review, meeting the “council of elders” and reuniting with my soul family.

Did Jordan make contact with others after he died? How did he do it?

Jordan made contact with many family and friends after his death. These contacts included vivid dreams with specific messages, visions, the overwhelming feeling of his presence with telepathy, and my own experiences with channeled writing, induced after death communication, and mediums.

What are you and Jordan doing and talking about now?

Right now Jordan and I are collaborating on a new process for creating spiritual growth. It’s something that can be learned in an 8-week group workshop. He has laid out all the steps of the protocol, and I’ll soon be testing to see how it works (I’m still a researcher, after all). This may also turn into another book we’ll work on together.

Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay

October 1, 2015 • Metaphysics • Hardcover/eBook • 232 pages

Price: $22.95 • ISBN 978-1-60868-367-3

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

Time moves us downstream from each loss. The living relationship is further away, left on the bank where we last embraced, where the last words were spoken. Across that distance stretches silence, the helplessness of what can’t be fixed or undone.

The last time I saw Jordan was at lunch at Saul’s, a deli he was fond of. I can’t remember what we spoke of. He was doing well — a job he liked, a lovely young woman he’d recently moved in with. I do remember the corner where I hugged him goodbye, feeling his thick, wiry hair against my cheek, his strong arms around me. I said, “I love you,” as I had thousands of times, and then I began half-running to my car, late for something.

I had no inkling this was the moment we were leaving each other, and that every moment since would bear me further from his arms, his eyes, his sweetness. It was so ordinary, so embedded in our daily lives, that it held no portents of loss. And when I look back, I feel as if we are still there, still hugging on that corner. I can feel him holding me, and sometimes I can believe the embrace still exists — that I can have it, reenter it anytime I want.

But time moves us downriver. I craved more than memory, more than the few words I’d heard in Chicago. I wanted a two-way conversation, like we’d had at the deli. I wanted to ask questions and hear answers. I wanted to know my boy again.

In hopes of having that conversation, I consulted Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who has learned the art of channeled writing — an ancient technique for reaching across the divide of death and communicating to souls in the spirit world. Ralph himself lost a son, and he spent years searching for ways to reach him.

There was another connection: Jordan and Ralph’s stepson, Eli, had been best friends. I knew instinctively that anyone I connected to through Jordan could be trusted. And Ralph had known Jordan well.

***

His office is set up in the former dining room of an old Victorian. High mahogany wainscoting reaches to a shelf near the ceiling; there is a crystal chandelier. Ralph, a thin man with wispy white hair and eyes that have a wounded look, explains the process so I can learn the steps and do it at home. Channeled writing works best when it is done in the same place with a set ritual. It helps to have an object that connects you to the dead, and it is also beneficial to first engage in a practice that helps you enter a receptive state. Breathing meditations work well, as do candles for focusing attention.

“How will I know I’m not making it up?” I ask him.

“You can’t escape uncertainty,” Ralph replies. “There will always be doubt. Just listen to Jordan; see what he says. Your feelings about it will guide you.”

***

I have a desk that my parents gave me when I was eleven. Whenever I sit at it, I feel how objects connect us to people who are gone, and sometimes to an earlier version of ourselves. I sat here as a child, doing homework, distracting myself with small toys, and looking into the enticing darkness of my backyard.

Now I sit here alone, assembling objects: A cobalt blue glass mask, with a lit candle behind it, that my daughter, Bekah, brought from Mexico. And a blue business card Jordan created while he was in high school. It reads, Jordan McKay, CEO, Omega Technologies. There was no Omega Technologies, but it got him into countless trade shows for Apple and other technology giants.

I begin with my breath, counting the exhalations till I reach ten, then starting over. I focus on my diaphragm, the genesis and center of the breath. Some spiritual traditions recognize this spot as the locus of “wise mind,” where we can access the deepest truth of our lives. When thoughts arise, I notice and label them — “There’s a thought” — and return attention to my breath. After a while my mind settles, and a calm begins that touches every part of my body.

I suddenly wonder if this is some kind of hokum I’ve fallen prey to. Then I worry that I haven’t done it right, that I haven’t prepared sufficiently to hear Jordan’s words. “There’s a thought…and another thought.”

I stare at the flickering candle behind the mask. I imagine that it is Jordan’s presence, like the sanctuary light in the Catholic churches of my childhood. And now my mind begins to quiet again. I open my notebook and write the most urgent question: Are you happy?

The answer is instantaneous; it arrives before I’ve finished the question. It comes in the form of a whispered thought, with the timbre and pitch of Jordan’s voice. I write:

More than you can know.

Then I write more questions and record the answers.

Do you miss me? I have you with me.

What are you doing? Studying. Learning things. Getting ready for what I have to do next time.

Next time? I’ll be back soon. I want to help the planet. Last time I wasn’t going to have time to do anything, so I practiced focusing my will, finding beauty.

How can I connect to you? Watch for me when I come to you. Watch the signs. Feel me inside. Trust that feeling when you sense I’m with you. The circle stays strong with love. Just remember your love for me. Open the channel so you can hear — just like you’re doing now. This is the circle, letting me through. I love you, Dad. That’s how it is. I’m right with you. I’m here with you and Mom. Just feel it. It’s real. My arms are around you. Always.

What is the circle? The practice of love keeps the circle. It’s like a discipline. Practicing love isn’t collecting sad memories. It’s feeling the whole person, without thought, without judgment. It’s holding all of them at once.

The circle is all of us, living and dead. All connected, all talking to each other. It’s no different now than when we talked at Saul’s. Our relationship is the same, Dad.

I’m exhausted; I blow out the candle. I want to believe everything I’ve heard, but I hate self-deception. It’s a response I inherited from my father, a man who despised the ways people lie to themselves to justify their needs and actions. But suddenly it’s clear: I will have to live with that remembered contempt in order to keep listening. If I want to open the channel so my boy can talk to me, then I’ll also have to live with doubt, perhaps even ridicule.

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Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright ©2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com