Gazing with the Eye of the Soul

Perception. It's how we live our lives. And it can be so faulty. Richard Rohr speaks of the need to see like the mystics see. He explains: In the West, religion became preoccupied with telling people what to know more than how to know, telling people what to see more than how to see (The Naked Now 33) The results? We have fewer and fewer contemplatives, real contemplatives, whose vision is formed by silence, reflection, and wisdom.

So often we make our faith a matter of believing in mysteries, and tell ourselves that it is impossible to understand, that we must just accept. Such an attitude robs us of knowing our God. Because when we believe we can't know, we don't search.

Or we make it a matter of deep theology, something academic, agonizing, only open to intellectuals. As though God were some kind of snob that only an elite few can know.

To see like the mystics sees implies stepping back, not stepping up. It requires not so much a willingness to dig into the mysteries in search of knowledge as it does a watching that discoveries a personality. And just as we form friendships over time, so too, the mystic gaze allows us to "know" God over time, and understand him with the eye of the soul rather than with the mind. For if it is true of anyone, it is true of God, to know him is to love him.