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.

Prayer: Entering the Interior Landscape

To live a life of prayer means live with as much awe and wonder and curiosity toward the vast inner landscape within you  as any scientist looks the earth or sky.  It means you live with as much respect and honor toward the beauty within you as any artist shows toward a desert landscape or jagged seacoast. John O'Donahue's a praying poet you ought to know.

The Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue was beloved for his book Anam Cara, Gaelic for "soul friend," and for his insistence on beauty as a human calling and a defining aspect of God. In one of his last interviews before his death in 2008, he articulated a Celtic imagination about how the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible worlds intertwine in human experience.

Here's a link to this remarkable interview on the audio program Speaking of Faith (which you also ought to get to know)

Stop dreaming, start living

I admit it.  I've got a thing for old things.  Old is certainly not always better, but I've not found much wisdom yet in the new.  So, when I'm looking for wisdom to help me in the spiritual life I mostly look to the past.  The past holds wisdom that's been tested by time. Here's a little tidbit that helps me awaken to real life from the dream of the illusions that want all my attention:

"Human life is a mostly a dream.  In our dreams we look without seeing, we listen without hearing, we taste and touch without tasting or touching, we speak without saying anything, we walk without moving.  The mind invents realities that are entirely imaginary."  Philo of Alexandria (50 BCE-20 CE)

It's awfully easy to look without seeing the person right in front of me.  To listen to the sound of traffic or the song of the bird in the tree outside my widow, but not really hear.  To taste and touch . . . and miss it all.  And of course, to utter something that has no life behind the words because I'm not really in my words.

I might as well be dreaming, because I'm not really living.

Changing that's not hard; but it means no longer allowing my thoughts to render the rest of me unconscious.

The Richness of Christian Meditation

To enhance your spiritual life and to learn how to pray more deeply, here's an audio resource for Christians who want to drink from the richness of the Christian meditation tradition or for those who want to understand how Christian practice meditation. From Publisher's Weekly:

James Finley PhD, a spiritual counselor who studied with Thomas Merton, presents a clear introduction to meditating as a Christian. He situates meditation—by which he principally means "a form of prayerful reflection, using thoughts and images"—in a historic tradition of Christian spiritual practice.

The book's first seven chapters examine some major themes of Christian meditation, e.g. "entering the mind of Christ" and "hearing the Lord's voice." Finley is to be commended especially for the way he interweaves theology and practice, as in his examination of the role of the body in Christian meditation. Through meditation, we learn to inhabit our bodies better, he observes, and gain insight into the true meaning of the Incarnation—the Word becoming flesh.

Another section that deserves special mention is the treatment of "Trinitarian mysticism." Many Christian titles aimed at a broad market skip over the complicated doctrine of the Trinity, but Finley suggests that meditating on the triune nature of the Christian God is crucial. These heady discussions are rounded out by concluding chapters—a revision of portions of Finley's 2000 title The Contemplative Heart—that are full of practical instruction. The evangelical market may find this title a bit too New Agey, but many other Christian readers will delight in it.

Find the audio collection here.