Prayer: a few choice words

We've entered a turbulent century, but it's not the first time in history people have faced such difficulty. The 14th century (see this excellent book on the subject) was every bit as challenging and yet it produced some of the most enduring spiritual teaching in history. In this brief video I explore the gifts of the 14th century English Christians who excelled at interior prayer--in particular, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.

A few choice words are mighty expressions of genuine prayer. Learn to utter simple words and awaken a profound experience of prayer in the midst of your active life.

Prayer of the Heart, Step Three: "Being"

Step one, "Letting go." Step two, "Watching." Now, step three: "Being." You're opening more fully now to God, moving past distractions, even beginning to see your false self. What I mean is that you're beginning to become aware that you are not your thoughts. Sitting and watching them in the light of Christ helps you realize that the part of you that sees your thoughts is not the true you. It cannot be. The mere fact that you can observe your thoughts means that there is a you that is someone other than the thoughts that rumble round inside your head.

This would be liberating (and one day will be). But for now, you're still haunted and sometimes feels hunted by your thoughts. You can't yet move beyond them to the union with God that is pure rest---the highest or deepest form of prayer.

Don't worry. Don't hurry.

Practice steps one and two, and gradually your mind will learn that it doesn't always have to be "on." As you sit prayerfully before God, calling on the Name of Jesus, inviting the Holy Spirit to guide you deeper into this interior landscape, your mind will learn to trust that you have no intention of obliterating your mind or being irresponsible to the demands and obligations of your active life.

Instead, your mind will learn that it too functions better when it lives more fully in union with God. Your mind will begin to taste the fruit of prayer, and it's own God-given brilliance will shine more fully than when it knew only duty and obligation, the grinding and groaning way it used to go about its work.

Step three is a reward for your deep, inner work to disentangle yourself from illusion and falsehood. And because it is reward, no mortal can instruct you here. In fact, I can't tell you what to do as you journey into this final step---the place of divine encounter. St. John Climacus, like all the teachers of interior prayer, mention this stage only in a veiled way---cautiously, hesitantly.

This is real wisdom.

You could easily get hooked on getting here, achieving the reward, engineering certain outcomes, winning a gold star, and standing in front of your class: "Best at Prayer." No, no, no. Step three is a gift of the mystery of God's grace, the kiss of the Holy Spirit who alone can consummate the union of your life with God's.

Here's the only advice I can give you about this final of three steps:

Bind yourself to one and two, and leave three to God alone. Three will surely come to you, but it's way you'll never own.

Step three is "Being" in the strictest sense.  Or perhaps better, it is "Nothing" at all.

Prayer of the Heart, Step Two: "Watching"

You've spent some time now just Letting Go. Perhaps 5-10 minutes. You are still, your body relaxed, your breathing natural, not forced. The Jesus Prayer is riding on your gentle breath. In---"Jesus." Out---"Mercy." Or some other simple prayer that doesn't arouse the mind. Now move on into the second step or stage. The ancients (St. John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, Dionysius, and others) called the first stage by various names, but they all agree that it is essentially the work of "letting go," or "purgation." The second step then is "illuminative." You simply observe or watch your inner landscape by the light of Christ.

So practice now a presence-of-mind. St. Romuald says, "Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watches for fish." Simply observe your thoughts and feelings without identifying with them. Let them pass through your mind, one by one. Your breath remains effortless. Return to the Jesus Prayer when distracted. If you become dull or bored, refocus your attention. If you become scattered, relax, let go of what pulls at you.

It's as if you've entered a movie theater. You're alone. The projectionist is playing your thoughts and feelings on the screen of your mind.

• Take a seat half way up the rows of seats.
• Sit down with your popcorn, and simply watch.
• You'll find yourself sucked into the drama on the screen and before you know it you're no longer in your seat but plastered on the screen itself trying to get into the drama.
• When you do, simply peel yourself off the screen and walk calmly back to your seat, sit down, pick up your popcorn again and watch.
• When it happens again (and it will)---when you get pulled back in, identified with your thoughts or feelings---walk back to your seat, sit, watch. Again and again without frustration or judgment.

You'll notice what's played on the screen is quite random. One moment you see something you did yesterday. At another, an image comes from childhood. Then a car door opens on the street outside, and suddenly your mind's wondering who's there; you feel excited, interested. You want to stop praying and look. This is normal. With this practice you'll realize how you've spent your whole life with very little distance between your true self and your thoughts; you've nearly always simply gone wherever they've told you to go. This exercise begins to set you free.  You realize you are not your thoughts, nor do you have to follow them slavishly.

Your goal is God. God alone. God is not your thoughts---even lovely thoughts about God.

In this exercise, you're moving past all that's not God so that you may rest in God, knowing God, touching eternity. This is what you seek.

Next post, step three---"Being".

Head Trip: How to Bring Your Thoughts Down to Earth

You can't not think. But thinking can run you ragged. In this brief video I talk a bit about the avalanche of thoughts that came at me pretty fast and furious the other day, and I invite you to practice drawing the mind down into the heart, bringing your thoughts to rest (even briefly) before Christ within you.

Such a practice moves you toward St. Paul's counsel that we are to bring every thought captive to Christ and that we learn to pray without ceasing.

Prayer: Freeing your ego from mass insanity around you

When I talk about the spiritual life and your practice of prayer, I may come off as a bit hard on the ego---that precious little one within us. I suppose I do so because I find we’re so ignorant of its tyranny. We’ve all been around families whose little children are unruly, unmanageable, and frankly, rude, because they’ve not learned as you’ve said so well, to submit “to that which it understands to be for the good of the whole being.” Little children need to be loved and welcomed with space to grow, but they if they are never disciplined they become unhealthy. So too with the ego.

So, I probably exaggerate a bit much, but all with the purpose of bringing the ego back into its place—like helping a two year old know she’s loved but is not the center of the universe. Salvation is about this kind of wholeness. And people who practice interior prayer---deep inner union with Christ---will find their ego reordered and redeemed by Christ within.

They become agents of healing in a world tyrannized by the mass insanity of collective egos run amok.