Jim Cogley – Reflections – Tues 14 Jan – Mon 20 Jan 2025

• Our Lady’s Island: Weekday transmissions of services take place at 10am and Sunday at 11am
• emails to – frjimcogley@gmail.com
• Website: jimcogley.com (Wood You Believe books available online)

Each service is recorded and available on ourladysisland.ie or Church Services.

A seminar entitled:  Getting the Past out of the Present – Healing our Damaged Emotions facilitated by Jim Cogley and Luba Rodzhuk will be held in the Edmund Rice Centre in Westcourt, Callan, Co Kilkenny on Saturday the 18^th January from 10 – 4pm. The cost will be €50 with refreshments included. This is the first such event in the area and in a venue that is ideal as a healing centre. Bookings may be made by phone or text to Jim Maher on 086-1276649 from 10am – 12noon most mornings. As there is already a large waiting list you might like to have your name in for the next seminar that will be scheduled shortly.

There is also another Wood You Believe seminar entitled A Journey into Wholeness scheduled for Saturday 25^th January in Our Lady’s Island. Community Centre Cost €40 with light refreshments included. Bookings by phone or text to 087-7640407

Tue Jan 14^th – As we think, So we are

The following is a quotation I came across recently that resonated deeply and something well worth reflecting on:

As you think, you travel; and as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape the results of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad. You will realize the vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love.

Into your hand will be placed the exact result of your thoughts; you will receive that which you earn . . . no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will then become as small as your controlling desire or as great as your dominant aspiration.

James Allen

Wed Jan 15^th – Emotional Intelligence – The key to inner strength

There is no doubt that people handle crises very differently, some remain strong and resilient while going through the fiercest of storms, yet others fall apart at the slightest turbulence. Surprisingly, it is often the most deeply committed Christians who lack inner strength when engulfed by a storm. Equally surprising, and perhaps related, is the fact that those of high IQ (intelligent quotient) have been shown to not fare as well as those of modest IQ. The foremost reason seems to be that those who fall apart have not learned to handle their emotions properly. People coming from a strong faith background tend to spiritualize how they feel, or ‘offer it up’ which is, in effect, to suppress their emotions. Similarly, those who have a high IQ tend to live more in their heads, and this becomes their defence mechanism against how they might be feeling. Being able to admit our feelings and not pretending we are experiencing something when we really are is the measure of our EQ or emotional intelligence. This equates to living from the heart and is a different way of being smart that is far more valuable than having a good intellect. (Even if the pay is not as good!)

Thurs Jan 16^th – Thinking how we are feeling

Why do so many of us live in our heads far too much, and why are we so identified with our thoughts? Western society, based on Descartes philosophy, ‘I think and  therefore I am’, has prized the head for centuries, but at the expense of the heart. We became more adept at finding solutions through our heads than navigating our heart space. Emotions can never be processed by thinking, they can only be suppressed or stored in our heads temporarily. Always they will seek an outlet in order that they can be recognized and integrated. This we will find in our spontaneous, unrehearsed reactions that trip us up (that we put down to just having a bad hair day!) We will even find ourselves creating situations of déjà vu and wonder why on earth does this always keep happening to me? Our repressed emotions will not allow us to sleep properly. Waking up in the morning for so many is dreadful because our buried emotions have come too close to consciousness that they are close to breaking through. This of course can feel like a breakdown and then we struggle so hard to get our ‘thoughts’ back together to face the day!

Fri Jan 17^th – No heart by-pass

The piece shown that somewhat resembles a honey pot is in fact a three-tier box. The dark top can be removed exposing a tiny space that can hold no more than a few grains of rice. The second lid reveals an area that is far larger and the third is so much more spacious. If we were to consider the top box as representing our heads or intellectual capacity, it is so small in proportion to the other spaces. Yet when we live in our heads, we become very alienated from who we really are. The second box represents our emotional capacity, or heart space. Placed at the middle, this suggests that in order to connect with deeper realities, slí an chroí, the way of the heart, is our only route. The third and large box then represents Spirit. For far too long, especially in religious circles, and in formation programmes, it was thought that we could do a ‘heart by-pass’ and move directly from head to Spirit and omit all that lay in between like our emotions, childhood issues, personal and ancestral backgrounds etc. Conversely, we thought we could figure out God in our heads. Just slowly we are only now coming to realize that we are so much more than being rational animals as we were taught in school. A more comprehensive definition might be ‘we are a speck of intellect, on a sea of emotion, floating in an ocean of Spirit.’

Sat Jan 18^th – External control V Internal lack of control

Tony from his childhood years had been an out and out computer genius. There seemed to be no problem either with hardware of software that he couldn’t solve. Naturally in our world of technology he was a very useful man to know. One day I asked him how he had become so engrossed in the world of technology. A family tragedy had happened while he was still young with three family members being killed. The emotional onslaught and fall-out in the home was too great to handle so he needed an escape. The world of computers had opened out and while he couldn’t control what had happened at home he could be in control while sitting at his computer. He freely admitted that his virtual world wasn’t the real world and that it was very difficult for him to now be in relationship and cope with having children. So many years later the world of emotion was still foreign territory and he suspected that sooner rather than later it would catch up and it wouldn’t be just his computer that would ‘crash’.

Sun Jan 19^th – The Wine has Run Out

Its very easy to turn wine into water and many of us are quite adept at that, but the reverse is not quite so easy! The miracle of Cana was once about water being changed into wine but it is not about that today, rather it is about something far deeper and much more wonderful. It’s all about each of us being offered a new source of inner life at a time when the old wells have run dry; a connection to our deeper selves that is, in essence, divine.

Over the past few years and particularly since Covid the old wells have literally run dry for many as layers of societal conditioning, and what we considered normal, have fallen away. Much of the beliefs that held us together for centuries were shown to be inadequate in that time of crisis. Covid was like a tidal wave that swept away so much in its path leaving us looking for something we coud hold on to. Before that we could look without for fulfillment or distraction, but that doesn’t work like it used to and we now have to dig deeper and look within our own well. In other words we are being forced to come home to ourselves.

What Jesus did at Cana was really a pointer to what would happen throughout his ministry. Everywhere he went the old was to be made new. For the widow of Nain he changed her tears into joy. For Zacchaeus he changed selfishness into love. For the thief on Calvary he changed despair into hope and on Easter morning he changed death into life.

It was his presence that could change beyond recognition the lives of all those with whom he came into contact with and that is still his desire for us today. Prudish people may look at the wedding feast of Cane and say what was he up to; imagine making a hundred and fifty gallons of vino, that’s six hundred bottles. Surely that was way over the top. Yet here was God’s right hand man performing a miracle that had the potential to leave them all plastered. It was a powerful symbol of the kingdom breaking through into the human reality of a wedding and bringing a whole new level of excitement and joy. Many saints and sages in their estatic moments have been accused of being drunk with alcohol when in fact they were alive with Spirit.

In one of the Eucharistic prayers there is a sentence which goes, ‘You inebriate our inner being with the gift of the Spirit’. There are some who can identify totally with those words because it is their experience. Unfortunately that is not true for many because there is nothing of an experiential nature for them to connect with. It may well be that the part of the story the vast majority of Catholics connect with is ‘We have run out of wine,’ or we are fast running short.

What might that old wine that is running short represent in our lives? In the story the young couple no doubt believed that the wine they had provided would be more than enough to see them through the celebrations. The thirst of those they had invited must have been far greater than they had anticipated. Could it be that the thirst of this generation is of a much greater and of a different order than that of earlier ones.

Up until recent times most people had to struggle hard to make ends meet and were satisfied if they had something left over for the rainy day and enough to bury them. For the majority survival is no longer an issue, but an inner emptiness that gnaws at the heart and whispers, ‘Is this all that there is’, and a search for meaning and purpose is a big deal. As the doughnut has got bigger so has the hole and many are either falling into it or feeling like it. Could it be that the wine of materialism is running low and our real thirst is for spirit?

For so many today the wine of traditional devotions and religious practice has run dry. The age old belief was that if I did my best to live a good life and did my religious duties then my eternal salvation was assured and I would go to Heaven. The wine jar that once overflowed with that belief in now sounding quite hollow and badly in need of a miracle.

Likewise, the wine of enthusiasm, for whatever we undertake, will always run dry but by staying true to our commitments we grow stronger and break the stranglehold that negative emotions can have over us.

We could go so far as to say that life is such that just as our time runs out so the wine will always run dry. What inebriated us at one stage will not have any kick for us in the next. It has to be that way or else we would never go a deeper journey and look for the new wine of Spirit?

Finally in response to the crisis, ‘They have no wine,’ Jesus told them to do something quite specific before they could witness the miracle. If we listen to our innermost selves what specifically might he be asking of us?

Mon Jan 20^th – Integration of Abuse Trauma

Listening to someone recently who had been seriously abused as a teenager there were a number of things that stood out as having wider relevance. 1) How long it had taken her to speak about her trauma. (Having known her many years, she had never even hinted.) 2) How much guilt and shame she had carried having blamed herself. 3). How many relationships had failed because of her trauma. 4) How deeply she had suppressed her painful memories of those events. 5) What she believed herself to be as a result of what happened. 6) How fragmented she felt as a person.

Working with her it became clear that what was a sacred part of her soul had been split off and hidden in the depths of her unconscious. From there it had exercised a kind of guerrilla warfare in order to get her attention. However, each time she had retaliated and it had retreated for cover, only to reappear at a later date. Now for the first time she was ready to listen to her pain and hear it as a cry for acknowledgement and integration. She was on the journey to becoming whole.