Richard Rohr - Immortal Diamond

That Nature Is a Heraclitian Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection

Fall to the residuary worm; world's\break wildfire leave but ash;

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Cover image: Randy Plett Photographs / istockphoto

Cover design: Rule29 Creative

Copyright 2013 by Richard Rohr. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rohr, Richard.

Immortal diamond : the search for our true self / Richard Rohr. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-30359-7 (cloth); 978-1-118-41978-6 (ebk); 978-1-118-42154-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-43414-7 (ebk)

1.Self Religious aspects Christianity. 2. Identification (Religion) 3. Self-knowledge, Theory of. 4. Theological anthropology Christianity. I. Title.

BT713.R64 2013

233.5 dc23

2012030242

FIRST EDITION

Excerpts from They Have Threatened Us with Resurrection in Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan, by Julia Esquivel. Copyright 1982, 1994, Brethren Press, Elgin, Illinois. Used with permission.

Tilicho Lake from Where Many Rivers Meet by David Whyte. Printed with permission from Many Rivers Press, www.davidwhyte.com. Copyright Many Rivers Press, Langley,Washington.

Excerpt from Little Gidding from Four Quartets by T.S Eliot. Copyright 1943 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

The Way It Is from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems by William Stafford. Copyright 1998 by the Estate ofWilliam Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolf.org.

Invitation: The Immortal Diamond of the True Self

The fact that life and death are not two is extremely difficult to grasp, not because it is so complex, but because it is so simple.

Ken Wilber

We miss the unity of life and death at the very point where our ordinary mind begins to think about it.

Kathleen Dowling Singh

In the first aborted ending to Mark's Gospelthe oldest Gospelthe text ends on a very disappointing, and thus likely truthful, note: They ran away from the tomb frightened out of their wits. They said nothing to a soul, for they were afraid (16:58). What a strange response after having just talked to an angel who told them not to be afraid!

Such running from resurrection has been a prophecy for Christianity, and much of religion, just as in these early Scriptures. I interpret this as the human temptation to run from and deny not just the divine presence, but our own true selves, that is, our souls, our inner destiny, our true identity. Your True Self is that part of you that knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you arebut thinking doesn't make it so.

We are made for transcendence and endless horizons, but our small ego usually gets in the way until we become aware of its petty preoccupations and eventually seek a deeper truth. It is like mining for a diamond. We must dig deep; and yet seem reluctant, even afraid, to do so. Note that even the ending that was later added to Mark's Gospel still states three times that the disciples did not believe in the Resurrection (16:1115). And Jesus reproached them for their incredulity and their obstinacy (16:14). This is no high note or happy ending by which to begin a new religion. The first disciples themselves were not the true believers that we now try to be. One can only presume it was historically true or they never would have said it this way. (Or maybe it is a recognition that doubt is the necessary partner to real faith.)

The question the three women ask in this first moment of would-be resurrection is still ours: Who will roll away the rock? (16:3). Who will help us in this mining operation for True Self? What will it take to find my True Self? How do I even know there is an immortal diamond underneath and behind all this rock of my ego, my specific life experience, my own culture? Up to now, it has been common, with little skin off anyone's back, to intellectually argue or religiously believe that Jesus' physical body could really resurrect. That was much easier than to ask whether we could really change or resurrect. It got us off the hookthe hook of growing up, of taking the search for our True Selves seriously.

As many in the Perennial Tradition have said in one way or another, when the wrong person uses the right means, even the right means will work in the wrong way. But when the right person uses the wrong means, he or she will know how to do midcourse corrections and make it right. I would preferably work with the second person anytime. You must get the self right. Otherwise even seemingly good and moral actions will have a tight, stingy, and corrosive character to them. Conversely, the right self can even do the wrong thing, and somehow it can always be worked out. You know this from your own experience. We must know who is doing the action and who is doing the reflecting. Is it your self? The God self? Or a mere chameleon? That question is foundational to mature spirituality of any stripe.