I have been athletic all my life. I have had no small number of coaches and teachers. Each time I learned a new skill, it began by mimicking what the coach said to do. But it did not become a very useful skill until I made it my own. That is to say, I had done it enough that it started to be natural to me and that skill became an expression of myself.
This same idea is active and alive in my classrooms at the college. I can give insight, instruction and information in every class (and I think I do, with a touch of humor) but until my students “make it their own” it is just information. They have to use what I have given them, have to see for themselves that it can work and then they have to use the information from their own perspective of it. The fancy name for that is critical thinking or critical analysis.
As the professor, I often get to see that moment when all of the knowledge that I have given comes together in the student and the “light bulb goes on”. I confess that as a teacher, I live for that moment and it brings a wonderful, quiet satisfaction. It is, at that moment, theirs. After that moment, when the student “owns it”, wisdom can begin. Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge in effective ways.
Apply this to the Christian path (or any religious path for that matter). You can read scripture and follow the rules, but until you “own it” (often called insight) it is just that, following, not being. If one follows the rules for the sake of following the rules or perhaps to avoid bad consequences, that person has not owned their knowledge. Until they own it, it is someone else’s path, not theirs’.
Jesus came to teach us how to own it, the spiritual life that is. He did (and does do) that by telling us to get past the rules, the rituals and begin to live out the intention of the scripture. It is what got him killed. You see, people get comfortable with the rules, with obedience to the rules because it is safe and secure. Most of all they don’t have to own it, so if it goes wrong they have the “devil” to blame.
The Christian path (again, any spiritual path) isn’t our own until we make it our own. The New Testament teaches to “work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling”. Think of that, salvation is not a one time, one moment thing according to the Scripture. We, each one, have to work it out for ourselves. The fear and trembling actually reference the ideas of awe and humility.
That is how we make this path our own, by paying attention to it every day. By not blindly following but instead, owning this life and doing it with a deep sense of awe and a deep sense of humility. For you see, dear ones, when you see every day as a gift you don’t deserve (trembling) and that it is awe-some (fear), you own your own life. You have become a mystic.
TMM