Intention

When you awaken spiritually, you awaken to the power of intention. My friend, Jim Brannan, a savvy pilot and trainer of some of the world’s top pilots, knows this. After our writer’s group last Wednesday he sent me an email that helped me see it more clearly too.

“So where’s the answer?” he wrote. “I believe it’s in your statement, ‘To live a life wholly devoted to God in the midst of this distracting world requires a determination that is not only fierce, but that’s intentional and examined.’ As you say, ‘unexamined life is not worth living.’ To live the life you’re describing requires the power of intention, the power of intentional prayer, focused purposeful prayer. It is praying with expectation, it’s taking God up on his promises.”

Jim’s a pilot. I’m glad he knows the power of intention. He’s not only responsible for those he ferries through the skies, but he’s responsible for training the women and men who vault hundreds of thousands of us every day into the dizzying and dangerous heights.

“An intentional spiritual life,” he says, “means knowing how to live in the presence of God, focusing our attention, sustaining our awareness, checking in with God when our blood pressure goes up, or our anxiety increases. It means being aware of our inner lives in the midst of distraction. It’s living consciously in the Presence.”

The 14th century English mystic we know only as the one who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing—one of the most influential works of Christian devotion—says much the same thing. Those who awaken the power of intention focus their lives around an irrepressible Force for good in the world (chapters 37 and 38).

What’s even better, these lives are not just good, they’re generally happy and pleasant to be around.

In the state we’re in today, we could use a few more of them.

The Power of a Spiritually Awakened Life

When you awaken to a vibrant spiritual life you're entering the fullness of life. You're not hiding yourself away in some interior cul de sac, avoiding the demands of daily obligations and roles. Spiritual transformation is not a dead-end street nor is it a private party. The heart is the abode of God . . . not exclusively, of course. The whole earth is full of the glory of God. But our bodies, our beings, our lives are a shrine. And when the light of God shines from within us, all things around us are affected.

The Butterfly Effect, or the ripple effect a single butterfly's wing movements on the whole cosmos, is now common science.  It shouldn't surprise us then to hear St. Seraphim of Sarov say, "Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation." It's one thing to hear such words coming from a monk. It's quite another to hear them coming from someone like Dag Hammarskjold, General Secretary of the United Nations (1953-1961), and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1961).

Hammarskjold said, "Understand through the stillness. Act out of the stillness. Conquer in the stillness."

This was spoken by someone deeply involved in global politics and who lived a very busy and demanding life.

"Acquire inner peace." St. Seraphim of Sarov

"Act out of the stillness." Dag Hammarskjold

"The kingdom of God is within you." Jesus

There is no action more powerful than the action arising from a single spiritually awakened life.

Learning to Breathe All Over Again

How do we reconnect spiritually with our deepest selves? How do we get out of our heads and move past our relentless thinking? How can we find our hearts again when we’ve neglected them for so long? Your gut will tell you when you’ve over eaten, had too much to drink, or swallowed some virus that turns you inside out. Much the same way, I think many of us know when we’re screwed up spiritually. Sure our thoughts can pummel us relentlessly, but it’s the absence of a deep, inner peace that’s a telltale sign that we’re not finding what we need most.

“I’ve ignored my heart for so long,” someone said to me today, “that I don’t think I know how to find it again.”

The best way to begin is with the breath. Seriously. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Not just into your upper lungs so that your shoulders bunch up around your neck. But deep . . . into the lower reaches of your lungs. Your guts, entrails, bowels . . . feeling the life-giving breath fill you, then leave you again. It’s little wonder that the Hebrew word for spirit/Spirit is breath.

Breathing is a spiritual practice. If we’re not breathing well, chances are we’re not well—physically and spiritually.

There’s more to prayer than breathing. But without breathing, I can assure you, there’s no praying. When you breathe, you’re awakening your heart. You’re finding your center. And when you start praying from here, you’re coming alive spiritually again, and who knows what will happen then?

Breathe.

Spiritual Recovery Takes Guts

Dr. Michael Gershon has spent his career studying the gut. He calls the bowel the "second brain." Your core, your physiological center, the heart of your being holds as many nerve endings as that organ that sits on top of your neck--your brain. The two brains, the one at the top of your body and the one at the center, must work together if we're to live well. If they don't, well . . . you know what kind of misery and mess come your way when your gut is out of whack.

What's true physiologically is also true spiritually. If we live in our heads we neglect our hearts, our core, our center . . . the second brain. And the result is, well, you know . . . a miserable mess.

Most Americans experience some kind of gut trouble each day, and half of all Americans say their digestive problems affect their daily lives.

The basic point is this: take care of your gut, honor your second brain . . . or suffer. Too many people choose to suffer. We don't eat well. We don't relax well. We let our thoughts drive us relentlessly as if they command the helm of our lives.

It's little wonder, then, that our spiritual lives are out of whack.

The road to recovery runs through the center of us, and it'll take some real guts.

The first step is simply to acknowledge that you seek peace deep in the bowels of your being.

The Center is Not Where You Think

You know what it’s like to look in the wrong place…like the last time you looked for your car in the airport parking lot after a long trip.  Sometimes we think we know just where to look but we’re off by a mile. Most of us think our thinking is the center of who we are.  At least that’s what our thoughts would have us believe.  But when Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” he wasn’t talking about your skull.  St. Paul was more explicit.  He said that our hearts are the dwelling place of God (Ephesians 3.17-19).

For most of us the heart is a kind of airy-fairy name for our emotions.  But for a Middle Easterner, and therefore for the writers of the Bible, the heart is not merely emotion, nor is it the life-pumping organ in our chests.  The heart is the core, the guts, the abdomen, the true center of the body.

So, the center of who we are, the place where God dwells within us, in not in the head.  Despite what your thoughts want you to believe.

We modern people are not the only ones to be troubled by distracting thoughts that think they rule the roost.  But we modern people certainly weren’t helped out of that trouble by the 17^th century thinker, Rene Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am.”  Most of us also think that thinking defines who we are.

It doesn’t.  Our hearts do.  And the sooner we learn to draw our thoughts down into our hearts, but more whole we’ll be.

Remember, your center is not where you think.

So long as you think it is, your praying will be off by a lot more than a mile.  And you’ll not likely know much intimacy with God either.