Breathing Under Water

We welcome guest blogger Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, who blogs about his just-released book, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, now available with a free online study guide.

I wrote Breathing Under Water because I believe this theme allows me to put tested experience, good psychology, effective therapy, spiritual healing, very common sense, and the Christian Gospel together in one and the same place! Really!

I know that must seem like a mighty ambitious agenda, but you will see it is true.

When you grab onto “the perennial tradition” from the universal font of wisdom, you find that it validates itself from all sides. If it is true, then it will be true everywhere, in different ways, at various times, and at different levels—for the addict, the spiritual seeker, the emotionally codependent, the victim, the student of prayer, the morally entrapped, and the mystically liberated all at the same time. That includes just about everyone. As Jesus put it, “From this storeroom a good householder will bring out things both old and new” (Matthew 13:52)—and good!

We are all addicted

When I wrote this book during my Lent hermitage in 2011, I suggested as a subtitle “The Twelve Steps for Everybody,” which I surely and still hope this book is. It has been my own contemplative teaching and attempts at practice, which have made me sadly aware that we are all addicted to at least one and the same thing—our way of thinking!

This was already discovered by the desert fathers and mothers and much clearer in the early Church than it is now. Maybe that is why we are having so many spiritual problems today. What they called liberation from your “passions,” what the New Testament called exorcism, we are now calling “doing the Steps”!

It is clear to me that none of us is free to see rightly until we are each freed from this primary and universal addiction to our own repetitive, compulsive, and self-referential way of thinking. In fact, it is hardly worthy of the word “thinking” at all. This is surely what it means to “die to oneself,” and our resistance to it is major. The Twelve Step folks of Alcoholics Anonymous just call it what it is: denial. And Step 11 says that we have to develop a “practice” of meditation—or the new mind and heart will not be sustainable or go to any depth.

So my hope and desire is that Breathing Under Water can be a spiritual “takeaway” for just about everybody, what the medievals called a vade mecum (“it goes with me”).

Essential breathing lessons

I made this book short so that you will not be overwhelmed. It is a little lay breviary as it were, for how to breathe in a polluted environment, with most of the essential breathing lessons there for the taking. Breathing Under Water is written for Christians and non-Christians alike, Jew or Gentile, Muslim or Hindu, full-fledged believers, those still on the journey, and even those who have given up on “spiritual talk” altogether. The only real prerequisite for reading this book is that you must know you are not there yet! Or anywhere close.

Thanks for traveling with me, and I hope and trust you will not be disappointed.

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Richard Rohr’s latest book, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, has a free online study guide, an ideal resource for groups. Richard spoke about Breathing Under Water during a live webcast on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011. Click here for more information about that webcast.

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Franciscan priest Richard Rohr is founding director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He considers the proclamation of the gospel to be his primary call, and some related themes he addresses include eco-spirituality, Scripture as liberation, non-dual thought, the integration of action and contemplation, peace and justice issues, and male spirituality. Author of numerous books, including Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality. Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr: Daily Meditations for Advent, and Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, he gives retreats and lectures internationally. He is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines.

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Featured photo by Andrea Danti/PhotoXpress