Jim Cogley Reflections: Tues 8 April – Mon 14 April 2025

In receiving these reflections you are invited to be part of a much bigger picture where each recipient is invited to pass them on to others, who in turn do the same. In this way there is no limit to how far they can travel or how many lives they can touch. This is  one way we can  spread some truth and allow light to dispel darkness.

Many thanks for your participation in this work that seems to be very much of Spirit.

Tues April 8^th – History Repeats Itself

There’s a very short poem by Steve Turner of just three lines with a very succinct message. It simply says: History repeats itself. Has to. Nobody listens. Therein lies a deep truth that is so self-evident as to be hidden in plain sight. Yet it is staggering as to how few are aware of it. It is true both at a personal and at a collective level. In the US at present, we see the emergence of another phase of an age-old historical pattern. It began with the genocide of the indigenous peoples, followed by the acceptance of slavery by millions of kidnapped and trafficked Africans. Then came American Apartheid and resistance to the Civil Rights Movement. This age-old pattern of authoritarianism is again being witnessed under the presidency of Donald Trump where, as things begin to unfold, it looks as if millions will be sacrificed on the altar of his ego.

Wed April 9^th – Do we learn from experience?

The precise way the past that is not resolved and integrated, manages to replicate itself in the present and make our tomorrows like our yesterdays, is quite mysterious. It even seems quite unfair. We are naïve to think that we always learn from experience, but we don’t. We only learn from reflection on our experiences and in this way, we grow in wisdom. While we say wisdom comes with age, the reality is that age generally comes on its own! Yet when we do reflect on our past and learn from it we find that it no longer exercises such a stranglehold over our lives as to always live in fear that what happened in the past is likely to rear its ugly head yet again. Those who run from their past generally find that it not where they thought they had left it but is always in the present and staring them in the face. Where they are in denial it becomes even more visible to others

Thurs April 10^th – Evasion but no Avoidance

To try and evade our past, as so many do, is to erode our future. Our fears are rooted in our past and belong back there. Yet they haunt us in the present when challenges arise. When we refuse to face our fears and give in to them, our present world becomes smaller and smaller. Life continually presents us with challenges to grow and mature but this demands placing courage in front of our fear and exercising faith. The alternative is to stagnate. Most of us will have been hurt in relationships in the past but if we operate on the basis of ‘once bitten twice shy’ we never take the risk of reaching out and remain in splendid but lonely isolation. Fear of failure can cause us to always play it safe but in so doing we not only never succeed but also compound our failure in the present.

Fri April 11^th – Where we come from……

There is a very profound truth that resonates in every fibre of my being, that the place where we are coming from, without awareness, is also the place we are going. How can this be the case? It would seem that the past we try to deny, remains embarrassingly persistent and will return to haunt us until we deal with it adequately. Most of us know a fair deal about our personal history but few have awareness which is quite different. I may know that my mother was in grief while I was in the womb but have no awareness as to how that sadness has accompanied me through life. I may know that I was adopted or unwanted as a child but have no awareness as to how that is linked to my present insecurity and fear of rejection. I may know I was abused as a child and yet have no awareness as to how it is affecting my relationships. I may know I was a parent’s favourite but not be at all aware of how that is now affecting my relationships with siblings.

Sat April 12^th – Lack of Awareness

Without awareness the place we come from is the place we are going. Lack of awareness is the key component of this truth. Many believe that having told their story to a friend or someone in a counselling capacity that it is now sorted. Others believe that having journaled past events, they now live with awareness, but this may not be the case because it might just mean that emotions have been compartmentalised into a mental space. Awareness is a heart reality and unless we have allowed ourselves to feel something we are not yet healed and so are condemned to having it represent itself under a different guise. This is how the unhealed past replicates itself, not in a totally obvious manner, but under a different guise, much like different dramas that present the same message.

Sunday April 13^th – Psalm Sunday – Passion

Today the account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem marks the beginning of Holy Week that ended in his Passion and Death on the Cross. The Passion of Christ might best be understood as the passivity of Christ. Up to the time of his arrest Christ was very much his own man. He went freely where he willed, he associated with those whom he wanted, he ministered to the sick, he preached to the multitude and he taught in the Temple. After the Last Supper all that changed. He was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the Temple guards, he was tried, he was sentenced, he was condemned and he was crucified. In all of those events he took a totally passive role. No longer was he doing as he had done before, as when in Nazareth the crowd wanted to stone him, but he just walked through them all unscathed. Here there is no sign of him doing anything miraculous, he is just allowing things be done to him, and taking a totally passive role.

However, beneath all his apparent passivity there is his unconditional Yes to drinking the cup of suffering that the Father had given him. It is this incredible level of acceptance that allows him to take the very worst that is inflicted upon him and in the process to transform it.

First, he had the betrayal of Judas that was probably motivated by disappointment that Jesus wasn’t the political messiah he was expecting.

There was the denial by Peter who feared being deemed guilty by association.

There was the desertion of his closest apostles because of cowardice.

Then he had a string of lies and false accusations levelled against him.

The crowd that once hung onto his every word were crying out for his crucifixion.

After that came his disgrace and condemnation to death as a criminal.

Next, he was stripped and scourged before being forced to carry his cross.

Finally, he was nailed to the cross where he was to breath his last.

All of that constituted his Passion but during none of it was he any more than a dumb lamb that was being led to its slaughter. He never once opened him mouth to defend himself or to protest at the injustice of his treatment. So, in effect his Passion was also his passivity, he just went with what was, he allowed it to be, and endured what needed to be endured.

My reason for presenting the Passion in this way is because it has huge implication for all of us in the way we deal with any form of pain, discomfort or suffering in our lives. Christ in his passivity and acceptance of suffering actually transformed it. When he arose on Easter Sunday morning he still had the wounds of suffering, they weren’t healed, but they were transformed and became sources of healing for others.

In our own lives we tend to run as far as we possibly can from every form of suffering or discomfort. The idea of being passive and sitting with our emotions seems quite foreign. However, is Christ not teaching us a radical alternative that to sit with what is, no matter how uncomfortable, is the path towards transformation?

Someone said recently that she was no longer praying to be healed from something painful in her life but she was praying for the grace to sit with it long enough for it to be transformed. That’s a radical truth that not many practice.

As a society we are all drug addicts in the way we try to block out pain. Every addict is trying to numb out emotional pain but it doesn’t go away.

Carl Jung once said that all neurosis is an avoidance of legitimate suffering. With OCD it’s easier to keep checking the locks or wiping our feet than to stay with what is really causing us pain. With a phobia it’s much easier to talk about our fear of mice or spiders than to express the real cause of our suffering.

For all of us today the real distraction, and always at hand, is our mobile phone. The least trace of loneliness and we phone someone. A bit of anxiety and we look through texts or go to U-Tube. Instead of striking up a conversation with a stranger in a waiting area, it’s easier to pick up our phone and go virtual. In a younger generation this is beginning to express itself as new psychiatric disorder known as ‘social phobia’. This is where people can no longer engage in normal conversation, except via social media.

In life there is only one given apart from death and that is that we are all going to suffer in some form or another. This is something that no matter how much we try to escape from, we cannot avoid. No matter how much we put things off with our evasion techniques we cannot avoid it long term. However, we can transform it and the radical message of Christ at his Passion is just how we transform it. It’s in the acceptance or allowing of what is, that change occurs. Emotions always want to be over and done with, they never want to be stay forever. However, what we resist will always persist, while what we face up to and embrace, we can transform. The Passion message is totally opposite to the way we normally operate so this is not a message that we really need to hear for the times we live in.

Mon April 14^th – The need for Reflection & Integration

What we are not prepared to look at behind us largely determines what we see in front. It is our past that we try to avoid that projects itself onto our future and as in driving, what we see ahead determines where we are going. To see a wall is to head towards a wall and crash or to see a tree is to drive towards it. This does not mean that we need to become introspective and self-absorbed, but it does require courage and reflection. Again, to use a driving analogy we can’t spend the time looking in the rear-view mirror but if we don’t keep an eye on it whatever is behind will creep up, pass us out, and perhaps be the cause of a collision. This is how where we have come from, without awareness, will determine our future and where we are going. We create our future depending on how well we have come to terms with and brought healing to our past.