The Naked Now

Study Guide developed by Gil Stafford

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Study Guide The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See By Richard Rohr Begin and end each session with a prayer. Allow for a check-in period where each person can share for two minutes. Ask for people to share what they thought/felt about the readings for the session. What new insight did they learn? Was there something in the reading they found disturbing/disagreeable? General study questions for each chapter: Part One 

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(12) “The non-dualistic way of seeing the moment…is living in the naked now, the “sacrament of the present,” that will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. When you can be present, you will know the Real Presence.” What ways or means have you discovered that allow you to be present (intimacy with ourselves, with life, and with others {17})? (15) How has thinking about the future inhibited your ability to be present? (16) “Union and perfection are two different journeys with very different strategies. Common religion seeks private perfection; the mystics seek and enjoy the foundation itself—divine union, totally given.” How have you experienced what Rohr calls “shared knowing?” (18) What do you think it means to be caught between profound desire and the question, “Where is this going to take me?” (23) What might it mean for your relationship with God if could imagine that, “There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.” (23) How is that we do not pray to Christ but through Christ? “Or even more precisely, Christ prays through us.” (25) What might it mean for you to “breathe the name YHWH”? (28) How might using our three sets of eyes impact or practice of being mystic Christians? “The first eye was the eye of the flesh (thought or sight), the second was the eye of reason (meditation or reflection), and the third eye was the eye of true understanding (contemplation).” (29) Reflect on Rohr statement, “The true mystic is always humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.” (29) What do think Rohr means when he says that the word mystic means, “one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience.” (31) What do you think are the important “mythic meanings for the soul, for sanity, for culture”? (33) How is judgment antithetical to “dying to self”?

Study Guide developed by Gil Stafford          

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(36-38) What it mean for you to live like a mystical Christian? (39-43) What is your goal of being involved in a religion? (45) How is Christianity working for you? (46) What are your major “wondering” questions? (52) Why do you think complaining, rejecting, and fearing strengthens our sense of ego? (53) Do you think there is one God? What difference does it make if there is or isn’t one God? How might it change us, the world, if we have one God, or not? (54) Have you experienced God is the silence? If so, how? (55-56) Of Rohr’s “Yes, But” statements which do you most/least identify with? (59-60) In what ways can we practice the wisdom of presence in our daily lives? (64-65) How would you describe the wisdom of the “dark path,” the “journey into the shadow lands”?

Part Two                 

(68) How might it be different for Christians if we read the text as “son of man” and not “Son of God”? (69) What do you think about Rohr’s statement, “most Christians are very good theists who just happen to have named their god Jesus.”? (69) What would the integration of the divine and the human look like in your own life? (74) If we prayed with the intention that we would become transformed in the act of praying, how might that change how we pray? (75) How does the Ultimate Reality manifest in your life? (80) According to Rohr, “Here is the problem. We impose our either-or-mentality onto God and largely make much of Jesus’ central teaching on grace and mercy an impossible concept to process.” What do you think about Rohr’s statement? (85) What does it mean to you to be “authentically converted”? (87) Discuss the three levels of conversion and how that might have meaning in our lives today? (89-97) Why do you think people, the church, are so resistant to change? (96) How do you think is “totally into change”? (100) How can we, “be Jesus”? (101) What would it mean to live out Rohr’s statement, “The kingdom of God is the naked now—the world without human kingdoms, ethnic communities, national boundaries, or social identification”? (105) Discuss Rohr’s “one major idea; “immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union; naked, undefended, and non-dual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence.” (106-107) How do we hold the tension of the dark side of things and the attractive side of things in order to begin the experience of non-dual consciousness? (108-115) How do we live and practice the spiritual ambiguity of not knowing? (116-121) How is faith more about how to believe that what to believe? (120) Have you witnessed what Rohr calls “authentic faith” in others? How?

Study Guide developed by Gil Stafford    

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(112-123) How are love and suffering “the main portals that open up the mind space and the heart space,” into deeper communion? Carl Jung asks the question, “can we see the beauty in suffering?” What that might mean for us? How is that possible? (125) How can it be that when “impossible contradictions are staring us in the face” we experience the “window of the naked now”? (126) What is your experience of mercy?

Part Three       

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(129-133) How do we practice non-dual thinking and self-detachment? (135) How have you experienced “being conscious or aware”? (135) Have you ever felt like you were living in “the soul,” “the collective unconscious,” the “True Self” and how so? (137) Do you feel like you are “absolutely free to be your own self”? (137-139) Have ever experienced “absolute attention…thinking without thinking”? (141) Discuss Rohr’s definition of radical grace. “What I let God see and accept in me also becomes what I can then see and accept in myself. And even more, it becomes that whereby I see everything else.” (145) What do you think means when he says, “Reality is paradoxical”? He goes on to say, “we must even learn to love paradox, or we will never be wise, forgiving, or possessing the patience of good relationships.” Do you agree? Why or why not? (147) What do you see in Jesus that is the most difficult paradox to accept? (148) What is your sincere inner journey? (150-153) If you have read any of Ken Wilber would you be willing to share it with the group? (154) What do you think of Rohr’s statements that, “ We worshipped Jesus instead of following him. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God”? (156) How do you see Rohr’s statement that “At times, spiritual wisdom does not harmonize well with the goals and practices of the world”? (156-159) Study and discuss the non-dual practices of leaders on pages 156-159. (161) Look at the practices on page 161 and discuss how you might implement these in your life. (164-166) Discuss the Levels of Development Rohr outlines on pages 164-166.