A negative spirituality is a spirituality in which the image of God bore very little relation to the God that we find in the teaching of Jesus, to a God who loves. In this negative spirituality, where we focus upon our sinfulness – our jealousies, our lusts, our pride, our anger, all these negative emotions or negative forces in us, our egotism – in a spirituality that focuses self-knowledge only upon our negative side, God can only be understood as a God who punishes or who condemns. That is why one of the most dramatic changes that meditation works in our life is a re-visioning of our understanding of God. It is why many people will say, after they have been meditating for some time: “You know, nothing happens during my meditation, I’m just plodding along day by day, but for the first time in my life I am able to understand what it means to say that God is love. I begin to understand what all this religious teaching and all of Christianity is really about. I’m just beginning to see the light through these years of darkness.”
( Aspects of Love 2, by Laurence Freeman )
