Prayer of the Heart: The Three Steps

There's a pretty broad consensus in the classical Christian tradition around the three essential steps or stages of prayer. I repeatedly return to the classical tradition for the same reason many of us return to Mozart or Bach, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and U2. These artists are classic because they've proven themselves over time.

So too with the historic prayer tradition. That it's old doesn't make the ancient teaching valuable---there's plenty that's old, but worthless. It's valuable precisely because it's proven to be true over the ages. That is, those who've awakened to the spiritual life have found the teaching not only consistent with their experience, but competent to guide them on the path.

Okay, for those interested in digging around in the dust a bit, here's a list of just a few of the old ones who essentially agree: St. Dionysius, Evagrius, Maximus the Confessor, Nikitos Stithatos, and St. Isaac the Syrian. They speak of the stages or steps of prayer with several different terms such as "the purgative," "the illuminative," "the mystical" (Dionysius), or the "carnal," "psychic," and "spiritual" (St. Isaac).

For our ears today, I'll identify the steps in the Prayer of the Heart, the practice of the Jesus Prayer, in this way:

1. Letting go

2. Becoming aware

3. Resting

There's little new in what I'll show you. It's old as dust. But it's a tested path for all who seek a deep and continual experience of intimacy with God---who want to pray in such a way that they live with a nearly continuous sense of the Holy no matter what they're doing or where they are.

More on each of these stages or steps to come . . .

Enter the theater of your mind and take a seat

You're realizing that entering into the silence before God which is prayer awakens a riot in your brain.  Thoughts and images come from all over to distract you.  You might fight them off or drown out the noise by focusing on a text of Scripture or using words for your prayers.  And that's not a bad path, but it won't bring you ultimately into the presence of God where you must be absolutely still and enter the silence which is the language of God (see the Bible's story about the Mount of Transfiguration). So, today, enter the stillness of prayer and as you do, watch the thoughts your ego parades through your mind.  Get some distance from this riot of sight and sound.  Treat your thoughts like movie images cast upon the screen in the theater of your brain.  Sit down with your popcorn in a seat half way up.  Before you know it, you'll be sucked in, plastered to the screen itself, fully identified with what's taking place there.  When you are, peel yourself off the screen, and troop back to your seat and sit down again and watch your thoughts.  You'll get pulled out of your seat again and again and again.

Be kind to yourself.  This isn't easy work.  Again and again, take up your seat a good distance from the images on the screen of your mind and watch them until you get a little distance between the you who watches the thoughts and the self who thinks them.

You're on your way to "taking every thought captive to make it obey Christ," the Beloved, who is the source and goal of all prayer (2 Corinthians 10.5).

As you begin to pray, there's one who stands in the way

As I promised, I turn now toward the actual practice of the Jesus Prayer. But first, a warning: be wary of the way your thoughts will want to turn the Jesus Prayer into a mere method. When prayer becomes identified too closely to a method, it's no longer prayer. I've written about this earlier.

That said, there are three simple steps that can guide you as you enter your interior landscape---the kingdom within---and meet with God.

But notice what happens when you read the words, "three simple steps."  See how your thoughts are roused to action.  Even now they're planning ways to climb the ladder of prayer, achieving success, so you can congratulate yourself on becoming good at prayer.  On the other hand, it's possible that they're berating you instead, saying things like:  "That's stupid; there aren't three steps," or, "You've tried this kind of thing before and it never works."

You've come face to face with the ego, the false self---the "mind-made me," or, in the language of the Bible, the "flesh."

Before moving further in the practice of prayer, you must recognize the terribly familiar opponent who now stands ready to bar the way . . . your self.

Avoid gravity

Advent and Christmas are spiritually intense and sobering seasons. They ought to be. We are awakening to God as if from a dead sleep or from a drunken stupor. We awaken to the light, but doing so means we must face the darkness within and around us. Some on this path can become overly serious. Others, aware of the spiritual depth present before them, slide into a hot critique of the material excesses of the holidays. A few get grumpy because we ate too much and exercised too little. Before I return to some guidance on entering more fully the interior, spiritual life through the Jesus Prayer, I invite you during this Epiphany season to:

• Do something, otherwise worthless, that brings you pleasure today,
• As you do, become aware of the muscle tension in your face and jaw,
• While you give yourself to something pleasurable, feel yourself smile,
• And if your smile tilts toward laughter, let go and give yourself to a good chuckle.

Remember this: G.K. Chesterton said, "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."  But devil fell by sheer force of gravity.

The Twelfth Way: Return

Day Twelve in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" You've come at last to the full mystery of Christmas. "Divinity became humanity that humanity might become divinity," said St. Athanasius in the East and St. Augustine in the West. God in Christ and Christ in us, the full presence of God (Colossians 1.27). Your heart is now the home of God, and God the home within your heart. Before this mystery your mind stands dumb; reason cannot think its way across this chasm and bring you home.

But love can.  Love will carry you into the intimate union you were made for.  When you love you cannot be anywhere else but present.  Up till now you've lived far, far away---always somewhere else, distant from God and from your true self, not present to the Presence. But that's changed now.

You've come all this way to Bethlehem only to realize that what you sought in this far away land was not far away after all. It was in you, but you were outside yourself.  You were conscious of everything else but absent to the one thing that really matters. Now you're different---you've entered your inmost self and found the sacred center, the place you can enter wherever you are and whenever you want.  You're more present now to the Presence.  This is the essence of prayer.

So you needn't stay on this mountain.  You can return to writing emails and going to meetings, changing diapers and washing dishes. Go ahead, paint a wall, teach third graders, walk in the woods. But as you do, take another approach (Matthew 2.12): be present.  When you are, everything changes.  When you're present, you're no longer anxiously looking everywhere else for happiness or fulfillment.  You're no longer resisting this moment, even if it's awful; it's awful largely because you want to be elsewhere. When you're present, no longer haunted by the past or obsessing about the future, it's very hard to be unhappy.  When you're present, you're as near as you can be to God---who's as close as your next breath, near as the beating of your heart.

Today, when I get knocked around or confused or sucked too long into the past or future, I'll return to the present---the face before me, the task at my fingertips, the breath filling my lungs.  And in this moment I'll return to the happiness of Christmas: God in Christ and Christ in me.

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