I've been having a lot of dreams lately about not managing to get where I'm supposed to be going.
The troubles are varied. In one dream I forgot to respond to an attractive invitation because I got distracted. In another I missed an appointment because I didn't leave enough time for travel. Another time I couldn't even begin to get on my way because the vehicle I was supposed to drive was too complex and unwieldy, a huge RV full of different systems and gadgets. In the most recent dream on this theme, the street on which I was walking was blocked off because the buildings were on fire.
The images are very telling, but the question arises: what is this troublesome journey which I am either anxious about beginning, making, or being able to arrive at its destination? What increase in vigilance and mindfulness do I need to adopt? What do I need to let go of in order to be free to begin or continue? What old paths need to be re-routed that I might avoid the destructive forces, inside and out, that impede my steps?
The unwieldy vehicle is probably my own soul, and a warning to me that I need to care for myself better in these days full of new distractions and temptations to the dissipation of my internal attention. But I'm also worried that the unwieldy vehicle might be our province of the brothers which finds itself at a contentious moment and needs to find a way to step forward. The burning block of buildings is also full of possibilities. Probably it's one of the old paths of my prayer and interior habits that has become useless and even dangerous. New and less comfortable paths to God always need to be charted. This, after all, is the journey of faith at its dark and searing heart. But I also fear that the burning buildings might have something to do with BC; I walk the paths of that campus and I always remark on how robust, beautiful, and well-maintained the buildings are. (In contrast, of course, to the buildings of other Catholic institutions and parishes.) I worry that the vision of the dream might have been a glimpse into the actual, spiritual condition of BC. In the dream I remarked on two oddities of the scene: there were some firefighters, but they didn't seem to be doing anything, and there were people in the buildings, but they didn't seem to be trying to escape.
More importantly, though, what is the journey which so challenges me? Is it the STD program? Is it my place in the province and my obedience to the brothers, aware as I am aware of certain forces swirling about me, imagining particular outcomes to this course of study I have begun? Or is it something more fundamental and internal in my own interior journey with the Lord? Am I at one of those places in which I am straining to go to the next level of faith and trust, moments that always come with a lot of confusion and vertigo and grief at letting go of aspects of the false self I always thought were irreducible parts of "me" but which have to be jettisoned if I am to take another step into the Mystery?
Showing posts with label Mindfulness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mindfulness. Show all posts
October 17, 2010
December 18, 2009
From My Confessor
Qui bene distinguit, bene docet:
Penance: the old 10, 10, and 10.
As sinners we should keep in mind that our root problem is not that we are people who commit this or that sin, but that we are squanderers of grace. Sin, after all, considered as evil, is the privation of the good or virtue that ought to be there instead. That is why there is nothing delightful or even interesting about sin; when there seems to be it is because we have been deluded or tricked by worldly distraction, concupiscence, or the devil.
We believe in a just God, a God who is Justice, and one of the primary expression of God's justice in our lives is to supply with us with all of the particular grace we might require to live the life to which we have been called with freedom and joy. My yoke is easy, and my burden light. So if we sin, it is because we have missed out on the grace that is offered to live the opposite virtue or to do the opposite work.
This is why vigilance and attention are so critical, to leave our minds and senses free enough to notice and take advantage of the graces that come to us in the course of our days.
Penance: the old 10, 10, and 10.
October 20, 2009
Mindfulness Training
There's an article worth reading in the science page of the New York Times this morning, describing how mindfulness training helped some doctors reduce stress and avoid burning out.
Mindfulness is a virtue for our age. Surrounded as we are by a constant flow of messages and information, speech, images, and noise, it's very easy to also become chaotic and stressed within. In my work I encounter many people who live at the mercy of their thoughts and feelings, batted around emotionally and spiritually, believing--quite erroneously--that this is 'who they are.'
One of the gifts of mindfulness (or of any solid spiritual practice) is to help us to discern our thoughts and feelings as they arise. This way we can keep the ones that are good, healthy, and accurate to our experience, and work against those that are destructive and distorting. A good spiritual director can help us. For example, I once presented to a director some trouble I was having with another friar. My director said that perhaps I had not handled the situation "in the best way I could." Some minutes later, I responded, "So you think I handled this all wrong." Immediately my director jumped on my response, pointing out my distortion: he had described my response as imperfect, but after passing this response through some of my distorting thought patterns, I mirrored back a much more negative judgment.
Our bad habits of mind do these sorts of things to us all the time. I would even go so far as to say that much of everyday misery is caused by distorted patterns of thought. The most common are magical thinking, overly negative (or positive!) interpretations of events and persons that are not in accord with the data of experience, or, as they like to say in recovery circles, 'doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.'
In our world it is a great work to deliver oneself from external distraction and noise, but this is only the beginning of spirituality. The real work is to become free from the interior tyranny, of living at the mercy of our distorted patterns of thought and destructive emotional habits.
Check out the article here.
Mindfulness is a virtue for our age. Surrounded as we are by a constant flow of messages and information, speech, images, and noise, it's very easy to also become chaotic and stressed within. In my work I encounter many people who live at the mercy of their thoughts and feelings, batted around emotionally and spiritually, believing--quite erroneously--that this is 'who they are.'
One of the gifts of mindfulness (or of any solid spiritual practice) is to help us to discern our thoughts and feelings as they arise. This way we can keep the ones that are good, healthy, and accurate to our experience, and work against those that are destructive and distorting. A good spiritual director can help us. For example, I once presented to a director some trouble I was having with another friar. My director said that perhaps I had not handled the situation "in the best way I could." Some minutes later, I responded, "So you think I handled this all wrong." Immediately my director jumped on my response, pointing out my distortion: he had described my response as imperfect, but after passing this response through some of my distorting thought patterns, I mirrored back a much more negative judgment.
Our bad habits of mind do these sorts of things to us all the time. I would even go so far as to say that much of everyday misery is caused by distorted patterns of thought. The most common are magical thinking, overly negative (or positive!) interpretations of events and persons that are not in accord with the data of experience, or, as they like to say in recovery circles, 'doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.'
In our world it is a great work to deliver oneself from external distraction and noise, but this is only the beginning of spirituality. The real work is to become free from the interior tyranny, of living at the mercy of our distorted patterns of thought and destructive emotional habits.
Check out the article here.
September 15, 2009
Stability
Yesterday and today I have had the early Mass at 6:45 in the so-called "friars' chapel," which is adjacent to the left side of the sanctuary of the main church. It's a group of eighteen or so, and I enjoy it very much. I try to get the church open and everything set up by 6:15 or so, and then I get half vested and go to sit in the back of the church, which ends up being the quietest spot leading up to Mass.
Sitting back there trying to pray I have come to know the arrival of the regulars by sound. The first is always the quiet but quick feet of the old woman who has probably been doing this same devoted routine since before I was even baptized. I hear her stop for a moment before passing through the sanctuary into the chapel, and without even looking I know that she is kneeling on the sanctuary step, offering a prayer.
Then come the two early morning chatters, usually audible before they even come in but quieting down right away when they notice that it's me that day and I'm sitting out by the entrance. I hear them begin to make their way up to the sanctuary, after speaking the whispered script about whether Father remembered to bring some missallettes up to the small chapel. I turn my mind to gratitude for the example of their piety and constancy, grateful for the opportunity to mortify my annoyance at their little racket.
Then I hear the quick and purposeful steps of the Italian lady whose granddaughter's wedding is being prepared in Atlanta for celebration next Spring at our church. Her path is intermittent, the sound of her steps coming and going as she stops to pray at the shrine to Fr. Solanus and then again at St. Anthony's altar on her way to the chapel.
And so on it goes until the last rush of folks arrive right before Mass begins. Over my time here I have noticed that I depend on these folks spiritually. The example of their stability and constancy holds up my own prayer, and reminds me to repent of how shallow and fragile is my own devotion. Each morning I am grateful for the grace of their stability and routine, and I pray that I might grow into something of their regularity in my own service to the Lord.
Sitting back there trying to pray I have come to know the arrival of the regulars by sound. The first is always the quiet but quick feet of the old woman who has probably been doing this same devoted routine since before I was even baptized. I hear her stop for a moment before passing through the sanctuary into the chapel, and without even looking I know that she is kneeling on the sanctuary step, offering a prayer.
Then come the two early morning chatters, usually audible before they even come in but quieting down right away when they notice that it's me that day and I'm sitting out by the entrance. I hear them begin to make their way up to the sanctuary, after speaking the whispered script about whether Father remembered to bring some missallettes up to the small chapel. I turn my mind to gratitude for the example of their piety and constancy, grateful for the opportunity to mortify my annoyance at their little racket.
Then I hear the quick and purposeful steps of the Italian lady whose granddaughter's wedding is being prepared in Atlanta for celebration next Spring at our church. Her path is intermittent, the sound of her steps coming and going as she stops to pray at the shrine to Fr. Solanus and then again at St. Anthony's altar on her way to the chapel.
And so on it goes until the last rush of folks arrive right before Mass begins. Over my time here I have noticed that I depend on these folks spiritually. The example of their stability and constancy holds up my own prayer, and reminds me to repent of how shallow and fragile is my own devotion. Each morning I am grateful for the grace of their stability and routine, and I pray that I might grow into something of their regularity in my own service to the Lord.
August 25, 2009
Out for a Walk
If there isn't anything else going on, these summer evenings are a great opportunity for a walk around the parish territory. There is a lot of activity and humanity to observe and lift up in prayer. It's a little spiritual practice that I've invented, imagining as I do that I will held accountable on the day of judgment--to some degree--for the pastoral care of the people of our neighborhood. Here's some of what you can encounter in just an hour's walk around our parish:
Three other apostolic churches--one Orthodox and two other Catholic (Melkite and Ukrainian)--where you can stop and pray outside for a moment.
Two separate gangs of children being put through football drills.
A full teams basketball game.
People waiting for the bus.
A crowd of folks waiting for Chinese food.
Sketchy guys standing on corners, looking suspicious.
A very serious looking tennis match, with several spectators.
An old couple out for a stroll.
Guys acting tough outside of the fried chicken place.
Girl taking out the trash with opera-length black gloves on.
Tired looking men and women smoking outside of bars.
Folks gabbing outside the funeral home.
A friendly black cat, needing very much to be brushed and with an endless appetite for scratches on top of his head.
Four thuggish looking guys having an acrimonious card game.
Three other apostolic churches--one Orthodox and two other Catholic (Melkite and Ukrainian)--where you can stop and pray outside for a moment.
Two separate gangs of children being put through football drills.
A full teams basketball game.
People waiting for the bus.
A crowd of folks waiting for Chinese food.
Sketchy guys standing on corners, looking suspicious.
A very serious looking tennis match, with several spectators.
An old couple out for a stroll.
Guys acting tough outside of the fried chicken place.
Girl taking out the trash with opera-length black gloves on.
Tired looking men and women smoking outside of bars.
Folks gabbing outside the funeral home.
A friendly black cat, needing very much to be brushed and with an endless appetite for scratches on top of his head.
Four thuggish looking guys having an acrimonious card game.
July 26, 2009
Retreat Notes: Meals
The silent meals are a real treasure for me here. I could even do without the "spiritual" tapes they play. (I'm pretty sure it's the same one as last time.) But to be able to eat moderately, slowly, not cutting or forking another bite until finishing the current one, I find it all so refreshing. To consider the food in itself--what is it? From what sort of living creature did it come? How did the nutrients and energy get into it? How did it get to the table? With what loves in its journey? With what sufferings? What am I eating on the spiritual level? What love and care? What injustices?
July 13, 2009
The Holiness of Ordinary People
I guess I've been kind of down on stuff lately; I can see it in all of the ponderous posts and mystifying of my frustrations in my writing. It's true that the parish priest trade--the life in which I now find myself--can be tiring and difficult. The hours are terrible, someone is always mad at you and calling you a rotten priest, wedding paperwork is tedious, sacrilegious "eulogies" at funerals poison your heart with boredom. You have to get up early and work in the evening. Nothing ever seems finished and there are always more fires to put out and another wedding or funeral coming in.
So it all begs the question: why do it? What keeps a person going? Well, the first answer is certainly a desire to love God and to serve him as best you can, responding to the vocation which is a such a gift and so wound up with God's merciful Providence in your own life. But day to day, on the natural level, what keeps me going and what helps me stay positive is the simple holiness of ordinary people.
It's the devotion of secret saints. People of all ages who would wouldn't think of going through a day without Holy Communion, or a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or the afternoon rosary. Thank you. I see you in church and you are my teachers. It's you in the confessional who are working your particular ascesis much harder than I'm working mine. Thank you for your encouragement and good example.
It's the beautiful practices of charity. People who save box tops and can wrappers in order that money be donated to some worthy cause. People who make secret donations to the parish food pantry. Folks who visit and check on their elderly neighbors.
It's the tremendous sacrifices of ordinary Christians. Adult children who give up opportunities, up to and including families of their own, to take care of sick or aged parents and siblings. Poor folks who pay the church's heat bill by the crumpled bills they stuff into the votive light boxes. It's the parents who work so hard because of the opportunities they want their kids to have. May my celibacy never make me ignorant of your sacrifice.
So as blue as I can get sometimes, and as heavy are my own temptations to arrogant criticism, I am humbled and grateful for the chance to work as a servant of the saints.
So it all begs the question: why do it? What keeps a person going? Well, the first answer is certainly a desire to love God and to serve him as best you can, responding to the vocation which is a such a gift and so wound up with God's merciful Providence in your own life. But day to day, on the natural level, what keeps me going and what helps me stay positive is the simple holiness of ordinary people.
It's the devotion of secret saints. People of all ages who would wouldn't think of going through a day without Holy Communion, or a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or the afternoon rosary. Thank you. I see you in church and you are my teachers. It's you in the confessional who are working your particular ascesis much harder than I'm working mine. Thank you for your encouragement and good example.
It's the beautiful practices of charity. People who save box tops and can wrappers in order that money be donated to some worthy cause. People who make secret donations to the parish food pantry. Folks who visit and check on their elderly neighbors.
It's the tremendous sacrifices of ordinary Christians. Adult children who give up opportunities, up to and including families of their own, to take care of sick or aged parents and siblings. Poor folks who pay the church's heat bill by the crumpled bills they stuff into the votive light boxes. It's the parents who work so hard because of the opportunities they want their kids to have. May my celibacy never make me ignorant of your sacrifice.
So as blue as I can get sometimes, and as heavy are my own temptations to arrogant criticism, I am humbled and grateful for the chance to work as a servant of the saints.
June 9, 2009
How Much Should I Pray?
One of my first spiritual directors gave me some advice that I have always struggled with, but in a good and productive way. I asked him how much time I ought to devote to prayer in a day or a week. He said, "More than you want, but less than you think you should."
We should pray more than we want to.
If you're anything like me, you protest right away. But I want to pray all the time! I want to pray always as the Scriptures command! So how could I pray more than I want to? This apparent problem is important for our spiritual self-awareness. Do we want to pray always, or do we want to want to pray always? There's a big difference. To take a simpler example, we may say that we want to eat apples instead of candy, or drink water instead of gin, but it's really that we wish we wanted to change, not that we want to.
Any person who tries to get serious about a prayerful life knows this conflict. We want to be the sort of person who is utterly committed to prayer, but we soon find that this isn't who we really are. Sometimes we feel like praying and sometimes we don't. To keep our rule of prayer and to pray earnestly and intentionally precisely when we don't feel like it is critical to our spiritual growth. This our invitation into the "night of sense." To pray through our dryness of lack of delight in prayer purifies our motivation and offers us the great gift of not becoming attached to the consolations that are meant to help beginners get going.
We should pray less than we think we should
Every serious religious person has a kind of image of herself as the saint she wants to be. This is a good and holy desire, and helps us to strive to go beyond ourselves as we are. Sometimes, though, this gets to be an obstacle when what we really want to worship is the idea of ourselves as a holy person rather than the living God. When this gets really bad someone walks about, missal or breviary bulging with holy cards, in a self-satisfied stupor covered by a kind of affected humility that even a child can tell is fake. He is not in love with God, but with religion and the idea of himself as a servant of God. The religious self can be a powerful idol, and one the devil is happy to encourage.
If we are honest, we will hardly have to try at praying less than we think we should; anyone with even meager self-awareness will realize that he is not living up to his own expectations for devout prayer and religious practice. Instead of letting this produce a self-involved discouragement, this experience of not be able to pray as we ought should invite us to the humility that depends only on God. "The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings." (Romans 8:26)
This is the big "Aha! moment" with prayer, but also one of its hardest challenges: it is not something we do at all. It is not our activity or project. It is the life of the Blessed Trinity come to live within us, the prayer of the Spirit that has made a home in our spirit through our communion with the humanity of Christ. To realize this is a great liberation, for we only have to consent rather than do anything, and we have no credit in it, and thus no occasion for vanity.
We should pray more than we want to.
If you're anything like me, you protest right away. But I want to pray all the time! I want to pray always as the Scriptures command! So how could I pray more than I want to? This apparent problem is important for our spiritual self-awareness. Do we want to pray always, or do we want to want to pray always? There's a big difference. To take a simpler example, we may say that we want to eat apples instead of candy, or drink water instead of gin, but it's really that we wish we wanted to change, not that we want to.
Any person who tries to get serious about a prayerful life knows this conflict. We want to be the sort of person who is utterly committed to prayer, but we soon find that this isn't who we really are. Sometimes we feel like praying and sometimes we don't. To keep our rule of prayer and to pray earnestly and intentionally precisely when we don't feel like it is critical to our spiritual growth. This our invitation into the "night of sense." To pray through our dryness of lack of delight in prayer purifies our motivation and offers us the great gift of not becoming attached to the consolations that are meant to help beginners get going.
We should pray less than we think we should
Every serious religious person has a kind of image of herself as the saint she wants to be. This is a good and holy desire, and helps us to strive to go beyond ourselves as we are. Sometimes, though, this gets to be an obstacle when what we really want to worship is the idea of ourselves as a holy person rather than the living God. When this gets really bad someone walks about, missal or breviary bulging with holy cards, in a self-satisfied stupor covered by a kind of affected humility that even a child can tell is fake. He is not in love with God, but with religion and the idea of himself as a servant of God. The religious self can be a powerful idol, and one the devil is happy to encourage.
If we are honest, we will hardly have to try at praying less than we think we should; anyone with even meager self-awareness will realize that he is not living up to his own expectations for devout prayer and religious practice. Instead of letting this produce a self-involved discouragement, this experience of not be able to pray as we ought should invite us to the humility that depends only on God. "The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings." (Romans 8:26)
This is the big "Aha! moment" with prayer, but also one of its hardest challenges: it is not something we do at all. It is not our activity or project. It is the life of the Blessed Trinity come to live within us, the prayer of the Spirit that has made a home in our spirit through our communion with the humanity of Christ. To realize this is a great liberation, for we only have to consent rather than do anything, and we have no credit in it, and thus no occasion for vanity.
June 5, 2009
Distractions in Prayer
Anyone who decides to get serious about prayer and the spiritual life soon knows the discouragement of struggling with distractions during the time of prayer. They may be useless or even sinful, or just an intruding awareness of the next thing we have to do during the day.
To be distracted when we try to pray and recollect ourselves in the Presence of God is one of the ordinary and most useful trials in the spiritual life. Dealing with the annoyance and disappointment of distraction can help us accept the tutelage of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to draw us deeper into the Blessed Trinity.
That being said, what should we do if we find ourselves unacceptably distracted in prayer?
Outside of the time of prayer
First of all, if we are distracted at the time of prayer, it may be because we are distracted in our life in general. Mindfulness is critical in the spiritual life. Age quod agis, as the saying goes: "Do what you are doing," and not something else.
There can be no hope for prayer if we spend the rest of our day in a state of distraction, with the attention of heart and mind thrown about by every little thing that presents itself to them. A life of prayer demands that we begin to practice "watchfulness of thoughts" and "guard of the heart." We must work with our thoughts, inclinations, and affections throughout the day, practicing the letting go and breathing out of those that are useless, vain, or sinful. If we do not at least begin to discipline our interior attention and affect throughout our whole day, we cannot hope to just turn off the chaos during the time we have set apart for prayer.
Second, we need to practical about planning out our daily prayer. At what time of day is our mind most clear and at peace? For many the early morning is the best time for prayer, when the dawn or pre-dawn--the summo mane as the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours put it--recall the Resurrection and the whole world is quiet. For others the best time is the evening, after the day has been dealt with and stress has been worked out. For parish priests who often have a kind of crepuscular, bi-phasic workday, the best time may be in the quiet of the afternoon. We should seek the time for prayer that suits our particular temperament and circumstances best, so that we set ourselves up for success, praying when our mind and heart are most at peace.
Within the time of prayer
Even when we have organized the rest of our lives in service to our prayer, we we will still have to work with distractions while we are praying. It is good that we have to do this, because it trains us in our prayerful intentionality and will leave us more free from the tyranny of our thoughts during the rest of our day.
The most basic response to distractions in prayer is to simply let them go. Thoughts wander into our consciousness without our consent, and we are under no obligation to pay them any attention. If we don't, they will continue on their way. Images are sometimes helpful here. One that I like compares our mind to a river and our thoughts to little boats. I think I got it from Thomas Keating. Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away.
The purpose of an imaginative exercise like this is to help us learn that one of the real purposes of prayer is dis-identification with our thoughts. Our conscious thoughts do not exhaust our real identity, any more than our body does.
In order to make the letting go of thoughts and distractions work, we need to give up control. As long as we try to force thoughts out of our consciousness, we will only introduce more distraction. The point is not to push them out by force, but to let go of control and to dis-identify with the thought-stream altogether. We are not the thoughts, but the spiritual being that has the thoughts. Just as control is opposed to love in relationships between people, so control is opposed to prayer in the interior person. Let go. If distractions want to be there in our mind, let them be there. It is none of our business. When we don't worry about them or pay attention to them, they will go somewhere else. Control is the opposite of prayer.
Practicing in this way has tremendous spiritual fruit in our life outside of prayer. As we become less identified with our thoughts and feelings, we find ourselves less controlled and determined by our thoughts, feelings, and "tapes" as we go through our day. We become free from what we thought, half wrongly, was our "self."
Now sometimes it happens that we will be overwhelmed. Distracting thoughts come that have such an emotional charge or urgent intensity that they drown out everything else. At this point we sometimes have to simply surrender to the distraction and pray with it instead. As pain in the body is meant to make us deal with an urgent issue, so it sometimes happens with the soul. If distractions are so intense that we cannot let go of them or work with them, we have to start praying through the issue the distraction presents. But we shouldn't resort to this too readily. To let go of thoughts and distractions is a much more fruitful practice.
To be distracted when we try to pray and recollect ourselves in the Presence of God is one of the ordinary and most useful trials in the spiritual life. Dealing with the annoyance and disappointment of distraction can help us accept the tutelage of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to draw us deeper into the Blessed Trinity.
That being said, what should we do if we find ourselves unacceptably distracted in prayer?
Outside of the time of prayer
First of all, if we are distracted at the time of prayer, it may be because we are distracted in our life in general. Mindfulness is critical in the spiritual life. Age quod agis, as the saying goes: "Do what you are doing," and not something else.
There can be no hope for prayer if we spend the rest of our day in a state of distraction, with the attention of heart and mind thrown about by every little thing that presents itself to them. A life of prayer demands that we begin to practice "watchfulness of thoughts" and "guard of the heart." We must work with our thoughts, inclinations, and affections throughout the day, practicing the letting go and breathing out of those that are useless, vain, or sinful. If we do not at least begin to discipline our interior attention and affect throughout our whole day, we cannot hope to just turn off the chaos during the time we have set apart for prayer.
Second, we need to practical about planning out our daily prayer. At what time of day is our mind most clear and at peace? For many the early morning is the best time for prayer, when the dawn or pre-dawn--the summo mane as the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours put it--recall the Resurrection and the whole world is quiet. For others the best time is the evening, after the day has been dealt with and stress has been worked out. For parish priests who often have a kind of crepuscular, bi-phasic workday, the best time may be in the quiet of the afternoon. We should seek the time for prayer that suits our particular temperament and circumstances best, so that we set ourselves up for success, praying when our mind and heart are most at peace.
Within the time of prayer
Even when we have organized the rest of our lives in service to our prayer, we we will still have to work with distractions while we are praying. It is good that we have to do this, because it trains us in our prayerful intentionality and will leave us more free from the tyranny of our thoughts during the rest of our day.
The most basic response to distractions in prayer is to simply let them go. Thoughts wander into our consciousness without our consent, and we are under no obligation to pay them any attention. If we don't, they will continue on their way. Images are sometimes helpful here. One that I like compares our mind to a river and our thoughts to little boats. I think I got it from Thomas Keating. Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away.
The purpose of an imaginative exercise like this is to help us learn that one of the real purposes of prayer is dis-identification with our thoughts. Our conscious thoughts do not exhaust our real identity, any more than our body does.
In order to make the letting go of thoughts and distractions work, we need to give up control. As long as we try to force thoughts out of our consciousness, we will only introduce more distraction. The point is not to push them out by force, but to let go of control and to dis-identify with the thought-stream altogether. We are not the thoughts, but the spiritual being that has the thoughts. Just as control is opposed to love in relationships between people, so control is opposed to prayer in the interior person. Let go. If distractions want to be there in our mind, let them be there. It is none of our business. When we don't worry about them or pay attention to them, they will go somewhere else. Control is the opposite of prayer.
Practicing in this way has tremendous spiritual fruit in our life outside of prayer. As we become less identified with our thoughts and feelings, we find ourselves less controlled and determined by our thoughts, feelings, and "tapes" as we go through our day. We become free from what we thought, half wrongly, was our "self."
Now sometimes it happens that we will be overwhelmed. Distracting thoughts come that have such an emotional charge or urgent intensity that they drown out everything else. At this point we sometimes have to simply surrender to the distraction and pray with it instead. As pain in the body is meant to make us deal with an urgent issue, so it sometimes happens with the soul. If distractions are so intense that we cannot let go of them or work with them, we have to start praying through the issue the distraction presents. But we shouldn't resort to this too readily. To let go of thoughts and distractions is a much more fruitful practice.
June 2, 2009
Paying Attention
The spiritual part of the human being, i.e. soul, mind, spirit, etc., reveals its spiritual nature most simply insofar as it is not bound by time and space. Unlike the body, which (apart from the most extraordinary phenomena) can only be where it happens to be in space and time, the mind, soul, and spirit do not have to be in the same place as the body. Through memory, the mind can place itself in the past, or it can be present to the future through imagination. The inner attention can be somewhere else apart from where our body is; somewhere we have visited perhaps, or would like to go.
That our spiritual nature is not bound by space or time is the means of prayer at the most basic level. We can 'raise heart and mind' to God and be present to the Ultimate and Infinite rather than the contingent and finite things of this world. We can take a peaceful walk and work through our memory, allowing our heart and soul to travel through time in search of a greater understanding and acceptance of the present. These uses of our spiritual power are very good and salutary things, and help us to be more human.
But this powerful faculty of our spirit is also dangerous and the occasion of many pitfalls. The ability of our soul and inner attention to be somewhere else can be misused. We can go through our days with no attention to the moments that God puts before us. The grace of God unfolds before us but we miss it because our soul is somewhere else. To be sure, we might be about something very pious in our mind and soul, like preparing a homily or a pious blog post, but we are nonetheless failing because we are not mindful of the present where God is always revealed in a privileged way. If we are naturally bright and a good multi-tasker, we can even seem like we are listening to someone or working quietly, but all the time we are going over something else and talking to ourselves or running 'tapes' in our head and not really paying attention. And then we find ourselves unhappy and we don't know why. We are unhappy because we have spent all our time living in an unreality.
That our spiritual nature is not bound by space or time is the means of prayer at the most basic level. We can 'raise heart and mind' to God and be present to the Ultimate and Infinite rather than the contingent and finite things of this world. We can take a peaceful walk and work through our memory, allowing our heart and soul to travel through time in search of a greater understanding and acceptance of the present. These uses of our spiritual power are very good and salutary things, and help us to be more human.
But this powerful faculty of our spirit is also dangerous and the occasion of many pitfalls. The ability of our soul and inner attention to be somewhere else can be misused. We can go through our days with no attention to the moments that God puts before us. The grace of God unfolds before us but we miss it because our soul is somewhere else. To be sure, we might be about something very pious in our mind and soul, like preparing a homily or a pious blog post, but we are nonetheless failing because we are not mindful of the present where God is always revealed in a privileged way. If we are naturally bright and a good multi-tasker, we can even seem like we are listening to someone or working quietly, but all the time we are going over something else and talking to ourselves or running 'tapes' in our head and not really paying attention. And then we find ourselves unhappy and we don't know why. We are unhappy because we have spent all our time living in an unreality.
January 26, 2009
Perspective
How we choose to look at things matters so much in the spiritual life. As I practice watchfulness of thoughts and daily mindfulness, which patterns of thinking do I nourish and which ones do I reject or allow to pass by?
This came home to me when I read beautiful reflections here and here on a visit to the house where I live. In the course of a day, do I choose to focus on the difficulties and distractions of parish ministry or worse, on my own sins and failings projected onto others? Or do I watch my thoughts so as not to nourish such as these, but to notice "a long and joyous past" and "a profound sense of brotherhood and self-sacrificing love."
Spirituality, and the spirit of prayer and devotion which must be at its heart, is an exercise of true freedom. And to be free is to be able to choose the right and the best. This goes for our thoughts and perspective on each other and our situation in life as much as it does for anything else. Let us choose God's interpretation of the world around us and see with His eyes. May I learn to watch my thoughts with peaceful vigilance, so that I may see with the Vision of the Holy Spirit.
This came home to me when I read beautiful reflections here and here on a visit to the house where I live. In the course of a day, do I choose to focus on the difficulties and distractions of parish ministry or worse, on my own sins and failings projected onto others? Or do I watch my thoughts so as not to nourish such as these, but to notice "a long and joyous past" and "a profound sense of brotherhood and self-sacrificing love."
Spirituality, and the spirit of prayer and devotion which must be at its heart, is an exercise of true freedom. And to be free is to be able to choose the right and the best. This goes for our thoughts and perspective on each other and our situation in life as much as it does for anything else. Let us choose God's interpretation of the world around us and see with His eyes. May I learn to watch my thoughts with peaceful vigilance, so that I may see with the Vision of the Holy Spirit.
November 4, 2008
Bad Thoughts
I know that this is becoming a bit of a pet rant, but I am increasingly convinced that the problem with our practice of the Catholic religion is that the faithful have not been taught the sacred mysteries in such a way that they become practically portable into their individual lives. I get the feeling that people look upon the great mysteries of our faith--the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of the Lord--as beautiful and miraculous events to which we are spectators. The Word of God descended into our humanity in order to provide our humanity with path into God, not just to give us something beautiful to contemplate in itself.
One area that reveals to me the lack of basic spiritual formation for the average Catholic is the question of "bad thoughts." Many times people say that they are troubled by their evil thoughts and worry that they are sinful. To me this is a very unfortunate situation, because evil thoughts are actually one of the most useful things in the spiritual life.
Every time an evil suggestion pops into our head, whether it comes from the world, the flesh, or the devil (to name the classical suggestions for sources), we have the gift of an opportunity for worship and obedience. By rejecting the evil suggestion rather than nourishing it, we make a beautiful act of worship and recognition of a God apart from ourselves. Even better, if we replace the evil thought with a good one, we are practicing metanoia, changing our minds. This is the practice that the Buddha called "changing the peg." If we practice this over and over in our lives, we will eventually not only convert our minds from evil to good, but we will become that much more free of the tyranny of our thoughts and detached from our own internal discourse.
This freedom and detachment will be invaluable in our prayer. I once went to hear a meditation teacher and during the question period some kid asked him about being frustrated by distractions. The teacher said, "You are too possessive of your own mind." I didn't get it then, but I get it now. The teacher was pointing out that the problem is not the presence of absence of distractions, but being overly-identified with our own thoughts. I'm not exactly my mind, just like I'm not exactly my body. I'm certainly not the stream of conscious thoughts that roll through my head all day. Let go of distraction by letting go of all your thoughts. As Thomas Merton said, "In an age when everyone talks about 'being yourself,' I reserve the right to forget about being myself."
Evil thoughts aren't a good thing, but we can use them to discover the freedom and conversion that God wants to give us.
One area that reveals to me the lack of basic spiritual formation for the average Catholic is the question of "bad thoughts." Many times people say that they are troubled by their evil thoughts and worry that they are sinful. To me this is a very unfortunate situation, because evil thoughts are actually one of the most useful things in the spiritual life.
Every time an evil suggestion pops into our head, whether it comes from the world, the flesh, or the devil (to name the classical suggestions for sources), we have the gift of an opportunity for worship and obedience. By rejecting the evil suggestion rather than nourishing it, we make a beautiful act of worship and recognition of a God apart from ourselves. Even better, if we replace the evil thought with a good one, we are practicing metanoia, changing our minds. This is the practice that the Buddha called "changing the peg." If we practice this over and over in our lives, we will eventually not only convert our minds from evil to good, but we will become that much more free of the tyranny of our thoughts and detached from our own internal discourse.
This freedom and detachment will be invaluable in our prayer. I once went to hear a meditation teacher and during the question period some kid asked him about being frustrated by distractions. The teacher said, "You are too possessive of your own mind." I didn't get it then, but I get it now. The teacher was pointing out that the problem is not the presence of absence of distractions, but being overly-identified with our own thoughts. I'm not exactly my mind, just like I'm not exactly my body. I'm certainly not the stream of conscious thoughts that roll through my head all day. Let go of distraction by letting go of all your thoughts. As Thomas Merton said, "In an age when everyone talks about 'being yourself,' I reserve the right to forget about being myself."
Evil thoughts aren't a good thing, but we can use them to discover the freedom and conversion that God wants to give us.
June 22, 2007
Treasure
Old friend Don has had some good posts on mindfulness and living in the present moment these past few days, and they have helped me to think about the Gospel for today, in which the Lord teaches us that where our treasure is, so will our heart be.
For me it's a good examination of conscience for mindfulness to ask myself where my heart is at some point in the day. What are my preoccupations that day? Where do my thoughts seem to drift automatically? How charged are the feelings that follow upon the thoughts? By doing this, I can figure out where my treasure is, and whether it's with the Lord and his work, or with something else.
For me it's a good examination of conscience for mindfulness to ask myself where my heart is at some point in the day. What are my preoccupations that day? Where do my thoughts seem to drift automatically? How charged are the feelings that follow upon the thoughts? By doing this, I can figure out where my treasure is, and whether it's with the Lord and his work, or with something else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)