Heaven is not up but in

Several years ago I told my therapist that I often felt disconnected from my limbs; they seemed to tremble inwardly as if always on alert. They felt to me like the floor rumbling whenever a big truck drives by on the street. It was as if they didn't belong to me at all. Then it was a symptom of stress. But in recent days, I've gradually noticed a new sensation beginning with my heart and the inner chest area. Today, I felt it in my limbs, especially my hands---like a gentle current of electricity. They feel so gloriously alive, as if every sinew and fiber is radiant with life. Aware of this, I feel close to tears. It's as if I am finding myself put back together, as if my parts---so long so far away, always busy elsewhere---have come home. The tears feel like tears of homecoming, arriving at that place of inexplicable peace after a very, very long and dangerous journey.

There is nothing, nada, on earth like this. I have touched heaven. And it is not up, but in.

Interior peace is fragile, requiring care

I feel the pull outside myself. Old drives and ambitions and fears scatter my inner poise. The poise of my interior life is fragile. Like a seedling, it requires care. Unceasing mental busyness has given way to unceasing prayer and concentration on the Divine Name, but the newness has shallow roots and needs time. I need time to grow deep roots that will sustain me in the second half of life.  The gate is narrow, yet I have entered it.  The path is hard and few find it, therefore I must be vigilant and uncompromising in my determination to walk it.

Just a tiny ledge of love is enough

Each and every moment when I'm aware and mindful presents me with a choice.  This choice is the great miracle of human dignity restored in Christ. I can choose each and every moment how I shall live, what I shall love, Who I shall worship. The lure of sin is great, but when the soul presents itself before God with even the hint of a desire to choose the good, God sends grace to carry us the rest of the way. Choose then to take your stand on that tiny toehold of love in your heart.  If a tiny ledge of love is all you have, the ledge is enough.

Take a stand there and cry out to God for help. Help will come swiftly to carry you into All you seek.

A deep and interior freedom

I practice loving God alone---who alone satisfies, making every other thought as nothing. This is not rest, but leads to rest. It is in this practice that habits are formed, and from habits comes virtue---that inner freedom from all false loves to love the only thing that should be loved, God, in whom the relinquishment of all other things gives us Everything. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing calls this "forgetting." Julian of Norwich says that "we need to know the littleness of all created beings and set at nothing everything that is made," so we can love God "who is unmade."

I pray this way so that I may be so bound to God and not to myself and the lower loves.  I pray this way so that as Julian also says, there may be "no created things between my God and me"---not even a single thought to cloud my vision of God's glory or shade my heart from God's love.

Contemplation is not quietism

The path I follow in contemplation, the prayer of the heart, is not mere quietism. It is not transcendental meditation or emptying or relaxation. It certainly transcends. It does empty. And it may relax.

But it is active, in fact, it is warfare. It aims at the deepest from of asceticism---an interior renunciation.  It aims to watch rising thoughts like a fly-fisherman watches fish. I take hold of thoughts before they lure me away and pull them down instead, toward Christ in my heart. I draw them in and down, following the breath.

In the presence of Christ, they give up their pretensions; they're made nothing in comparison to the Almighty.