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Creating within Ourselves What We Want for the World

by José Luis Kutscherauer, Director of Cafh1                                                                                                                             En Español

Though the address below was delivered to an assembly of members of Cafh in Olmué, Chile, in May 2014, Seeds believes that everyone who is dedicated to spiritual unfolding for their own good and the good of all human beings will find it inspiring and helpful.

Let us create within ourselves what we want for the world. To be a haven of inner stability, to transmit peace, serenity and love, is a yearning we need to concretize every day through a conscious effort to develop these inner goods.

The instability in our society today is reflected in the minds and hearts of every human being. In many cases, the instability of the milieu in which we live throws our life and environment off balance, even when we understand that everything that exists is temporal. As we are so used to being in our comfort zone, seemingly secure and familiar, we feel vulnerable when we perceive this world crumbling, without taking into account that this is an inevitable aspect of becoming. Without our noticing it, this instability nourishes a fear that leads us to withdraw inwardly and experience the pain of a drab existence, without the gleam of light of creativity which a spiritual vision generates.

Let us focus our attention on achieving the inner stability that results from a state of presence, where we remain in the presence of the divine. This is one of the tasks before us. Let us intensify our effort to fuel our spiritual life with energy and conviction. In this way we can increasingly consolidate our inner goods, which are the basis of our unfolding. Let us nourish our attitude of renouncement,2 so that we may be deserving of the goods of Cafh. In this way we will have the necessary strength to attain inner stability and radiate it outward. Without a doubt, the vows of inner silence, which helps us to know ourselves, fidelity, obedience to the inner call of our vocation, and renunciation mark this process, because they express the commitment we assumed with our vocation. When we study the Method3 as a practical means to carry out our unfolding, we encounter apparent paradoxes. When we deepen into them we discover that they grant solidity to our ideas, because they go beyond the duality of reason and are grounded in reversibility which, instead of eliminating possibilities, integrates them. The opportunities life gives us do not consist in choosing between opposites—black and white, good and bad—but in the ability to discern, among all possibilities, those that will help us unfold.

Reserving our energy and at the same time giving ourselves totally only seems like a paradox until we experience the results of the practice of silence.

Each one of us generates countless voices, images, desires, anxieties, doubts, and dreams that we project into society and which invade our minds and hearts on a daily basis. The practice of silence calms us and helps us differentiate between what we are and what comes from outside us and confuses us. With this practice we intentionally create an inner space of stability that allows us to know ourselves and moves us to expand the way we think of ourselves, the world, and life, and to deepen our love for souls and our reverence for the divine unknown. In this silence, which gradually becomes a state of prayer, we start upon the road toward the total offering of our life to the process of inner unfolding.

To seek inner liberation and to confine ourselves faithfully to the framework of the idea of renouncement is, for our intellect, another paradox that is resolved when we integrate both possibilities.

These days we have unprecedented access to information, which has unleashed undeniable breakthroughs in society. While on one hand this has brought about a great deal of progress, on the other, it tends to scatter our attention. This in turn hinders us from stopping to think about our reason for being. Fidelity to Cafh allows us to stop identifying with the various currents of thought swarming around us and to focus our efforts on achieving inner liberation, within the framework of the Idea of Renouncement. Fidelity to our vows is the stabilizing force that allows us to recognize our spiritual identity without being confused by external influences. Fidelity to our choice of life sustains us throughout time, stabilizes us, and moves us to deepen into the meaning of our life and its underlying values.

Exercising our free will, while choosing to practice obedience as a means to liberation may seem like contradictory actions. However, we solve this contradiction when we understand that, once we have committed ourselves freely to our vocation of renouncement, the only thing left is to fulfill that commitment.

Let us fulfill our possibilities thoroughly by exercising our free will to obey the call of our vocation of unfolding. Responding daily to this call strengthens our inner stability. Our peace and serenity are based on knowing that we are obeying the voice of our conscience, which responds to the evident connection that exists between our free will and applying ourselves to fulfill the Mother Idea governing our life. The practice of obedience confers self-mastery. Without self-mastery, it would be difficult to cut the ties that don’t let us dare to discover new possibilities. Obedience, as we understand it in Cafh, joins people’s strengths, wills, and vocations without subjugation or the loss of anything. Obedience is basically obedience to oneself, to what we have decided to do, because it means responding to the commitment we have freely assumed. We may say that obedience is fidelity to that decision, as well as the silence of everything that could interfere with the effort to achieve our objective.

To strive to unfold our potential and at the same time to seek to become nothing might seem like a complex and difficult riddle. Yet the solution becomes clear when we recognize our ignorance and smallness in the universe, and when we accept that the law of life is renouncement.

As Sons and Daughters, we have the mission to unfold an egoent individuality—that is, to attain awareness of oneself and of being; to be oneself without forgetting that one can only be within the totality of existence. At the same time we know that our unfolding has to be integral. We need to unfold our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abilities, and we have to live wisely and productively. To keep this inner balance we have to stop reducing our experiences and dreams to the pursuit of predominance, to being someone special and recognized as such. This renouncement allows us to turn our attention to experience being in the totality that exists. Only in this state can we experience the expansion of our consciousness. To discover renouncement, to embrace it and to have the courage to accept the dimension of what we are and don’t know will doubtless balance us because it frees us. There is no longer room in our hearts for restlessness and, rather than talking about what we want to teach, we seek to be what we want to transmit, so that our presence may speak for itself.

Let us discover the secret of stability: to rely only on our inner wealth. All the rest is here today but may be gone tomorrow. Let us learn how to learn, and not think that we already know everything. Let us learn to always leave room for doubt when we express what we know. Reality or circumstances may be different from the way we see or understand them. This humble attitude gives us access to an ever fuller understanding of reality. Let us learn to put the best of ourselves in everything we do, without depending on our preferences, on what we like or don’t like, and without depending on results. In this way we will not lose the stability that gives us inner peace, because we understand that everything that happens to us and everything we do enriches us. No one can take away the love that we put, the enthusiasm we brought, the strength of the example we gave, or the possibilities we have opened within.

Let us create within ourselves what we want for the world, relying on the power of love, which once given can’t be lost, can’t be limited in space, time or scope, can’t run out, a love that adds to the love of other souls. Nothing can stop the expansion of this love.

© 2014 Cafh
All rights reserved



Notes

1. Cafh: The word Cafh has ancient roots; for the members of Cafh it symbolizes the effort of the soul to attain union with God. At the same time it represents the presence of the divine in each soul. The text "Creating within Ourselves What We Want for the World" is an edited version of the Message of the Director at the Cafh Annual Assembly in Olmué, Chile, in May 2014.

2. Renouncement/renunciation: In the teaching of Cafh, renouncement is considered to be the law of life. When we renounce, we accept that our small life is part of Life itself, that we are an integral part of the whole. We gain perspective on the ups and downs of our daily lives and also on periods of great difficulties. The spirit of renouncement helps us to visualize our strengths and weaknesses objectively and awakens in us a deep sense of participation and love for everyone and everything.

3. Method: The Method of Cafh is based on Cafh's teachings and has an ascetic-mystical nature. It is "ascetic" because it presupposes dedication and regular effort to make a positive impact on habits and personal tendencies. It is "mystical" because its recommendations guide us to traverse the road to divine union through a conscious and progressive participation with all living beings. Click here to view two other articles in Seeds that discuss the Method: Cafh as a Method of Life and What's a Method of Life? To access some of the teachings of Cafh, go to https://www.cafh.org/en/ensenanzas-y-cursos.html