God in prayer

From Fr. Donald Haggerty’s Contemplative Provocations via Contemplative Day Book:

The question whether God is experienced in prayer may seem unanswerable. How do we know? Is there some way to measure within the experience itself? Perhaps not, but there is the traditional test of fruitful prayer, observable in the urge to self-giving when prayer is concluded. Generosity toward others upon leaving prayer, a soul turned humbly and charitably toward others, a tendency to self-effacement, these are among the reliable signs of graces given during prayer. If a soul has loved God during a time of prayer, the same love requires becoming a servant to the needs of others outside of prayer.

The eye of the storm

Bernadette Roberts (emphasis mine):

So the storms, crises, and sufferings of life are a way of finding the Eye. When everything is going our way, we do not see the eye, and we feel no need to find it. But when everything is going against us, then we find the eye. So the avoidance of suffering and the desire to have everything go our own way runs contrary to the whole movement of our journey; it is all a wrong view. With the right view, however, one should be able to come to the state of oneness* in six or seven years—years not merely of suffering, but years of enlightenment, for right suffering is the essence of enlightenment.

Loving what is

HT Bree

 
It strikes me that "loving what is" is one way to view Matthew 22:37 ... "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

C. S. Lewis on the devotional life

Source

Practice

This post from Same Old Zen on renunciation has a Buddhist slant, but it speaks to the same "life here" vs "life with God" theme from my post yesterday. Highlights for me:

We walk the path, we know the benefits, and yet we still feel like we're missing out. We want to be be Buddhists, not BUDDHISTS.

In other words, we want to practice hard enough to realize awakening, but not so hard that we can't get trashed on weekends. We want to meditate long enough to take Instagram photos. But not so long that we get bored, or tired, or miss our favorite TV shows.

WE WANT TO HAVE OUR CAKE, AND EAT IT TOO. BUT THAT'S NOT HOW BUDDHISM WORKS.

Our path is one of renunciation. If I wanted to describe it simply, I'd say we work to stop doing the things that cause suffering for ourselves and others. ... This is the exact opposite of what our egos want us to do. Our minds are veritable cesspools of desire, and the wish to accumulate more. So we must practice. We must practice renunciation.

One way to do this is through seated meditation. ... The more we practice, the more we create a sort of container for ourselves. ...

Eventually, we become skilled enough that we can take our renunciation practice off the cushion ... we realize that we're not really losing anything by devoting ourselves to Buddhist practice. Rather, we're gaining the ability to provide peace and contentment to both ourselves and others.

The first and great commandment

Interesting quote from Bernadette Roberts' What Is Self? that I found on one of my regular reads (here and here; emphasis mine):

I saw that to follow Christ meant to have his same interior experiences and to follow the inner, not the outer, movement of his life. ... Christ’s first commandment to love God above all things is the sole key to his interior life and his experience of God. As beginners we aim for love by the practice of virtue through self-discipline, but later the practice of virtue arises automatically out of love and is not a matter of self-discipline or curbing the ego-self. So I realized the priority of coming to Christ’s own intense love of the Father; everything else, including love of neighbor, was seen as secondary.

Somehow realizing this priority is, I think, the essence of the contemplative and how he differs from a non-contemplative. The latter strives to do two things at once: to be of service to God and to this world at the same time. This is why he travels more slowly toward union with God. Though he sees no dichotomy between God and involvement in human affairs, his whole struggle is centered on bringing them together.

The contemplative, on the other hand, is sooner able to get things together because he is acutely aware of this dichotomy from the outset. Thus he follows the first commandment until it leads automatically and perforce to into the second.

This quote suggests to me that if I'm struggling with trying to figure out how to best be of service to this world, then the best tack to take is primarily one of loving God.

Somatic spirituality

This is FASCINATING ... it's Stephen Porges (father of the Polyvagal theory) on the intersection of his theory and how contemplation works (emphasis mine):

In the early 90’s, I went to India to study yogis and learned some interesting things from them. Many of their practices are designed to trigger the older vagal shutdown response that drives the faint or freeze reflex.

The idea is that through training, you can begin going into these immobilizing states normally linked with faint and freeze, but more aware and less frightened. In my own model, the older evolutionary part of the vagus —with is circuits in the back-facing dorsal side of the brainstem—is a very powerful system of calming that enables the deepest forms of connectedness and intimacy. But it can only be consciously recruited for social life when our bodies are in safe states. That’s where the newer vagus literally is your shield. It’s the protector that says, “It’s OK now to explore this and go there.”

Yogis who hold their breath, like deep-sea divers, are in a sense saying, “If I can master this biological shutdown reflex by controlling my breath, I can now visit these powerful physiological states.” When we visit these states without fear, it’s a type of “self‑intimacy,” the ability to go deep inside oneself and feel secure that it’s not going to be life‑threatening.

If we think of religion as a human practice of group connectedness, we see why even the structures that were used for religious worship enabled people to experience their body without being hypervigilant. In massive churches, they have large organs that play very low sounds. The extremely low notes from these organs produce in the listener a natural response that dips us into the older vagal state. When this happens in an internal state of safety and connection, it evokes a sense not of fear but of awe.

Invoking this state of awe offers one type of self-intimacy, of going into that deep part of our body in safety and awareness. These practices are exercises that simultaneously stimulate the newer part of the vagus, based in the ventral vagal complex, which function to promote social engagement behaviors. If we survey various religions, the Sufis use dance, the Buddhists chant, and the Muslims and Jews use posture and vocal prayers. These are all vagal triggers that promote self-intimacy, but they are framed in contexts that promote social engagement, it’s not only bodies moving, it’s bodies moving in a social context. This socially engaged movement helps stimulate both parts of the vagal system, evoking a deep state of connection of the kind that fosters not just awe but also empathy and love.

Oh, the implications!

Seeing

If you haven't seen it, put Netflix's The Little Prince on your to-do list. It's quite the lovely adaptation/extension of the book.

Awareness

Today's message from The Assisi Institute:

An essential truth is this: the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our awareness. If our awareness is fixated on fear, anger, illusory perceptions, and other forms of darkness, our experience of life will be steeped in suffering. On the other hand, if our awareness is permeated with the energy of truth, beauty, and goodness, our lives will be meaningful, joyful, and positively generative. ... Remember that we become what we focus on, what we absorb into our spirits, and what we ingest into our souls.

Vocation

Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks—we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

What a great and timely message from Parker Palmer via Richard Rohr this week!

Be a warrior in recovery

Just heard Darrin Donnelly on the radio talking about his book, Think Like a Warrior. It's written as an inspirational fable, and in it, the main character, Chris, is visited by five of history's greatest coaches: John Wooden, Buck O’Neil, Herb Brooks, Paul "Bear" Bryant, and Vince Lombardi, who help Chris figure out how to overcome obstacles and achieve his dreams. Their lessons:

• Focus on the things you have total control over – primarily, your effort and your attitude in the present moment. 
• Love what you do and attack each day with joy and enthusiasm. Find your purpose and live the life YOU were born to live. Don’t be afraid to dream big. 
• Follow the dreams in your heart and ignore the naysayers and cynics. Keep reminding yourself of all the reasons your dreams CAN come true. 
• Be relentless and never, EVER give up on your dreams. Expect problems, but know that you have what it takes to overcome each and every one of them. 
• Choose faith over fear. Most failures are a result of fear and worry. Be fearless and know that you have everything you need to become the person you were born to be. 

It's interesting how applicable these are to recovery. See more with Donnelly here.

Trying to pray is prayer

From Contemplative Day Book (emphasis mine):

Our part of prayer is to try to raise our minds and hearts to God, to spend time making the effort. “Trying to pray” is prayer, and it is very good prayer. The will to try is also his gift. -- Bishop Basil Hume

No mud no lotus

See also: the pearl of great price.

In the ocean

drift by demandaj

"You may feel that you have a long way to go before realizing the degree of habitual meditative awareness of oneness with God exemplified by the great mystics. But the intention of your heart ... bears witness that a transformative journey, not of your own making, is already under way. Imagine that you go to the ocean, take off your shoes and socks, and wade in ankle-deep. It’s true that you are in only ankle-deep, but it’s also true that you are in the ocean."

-- James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God

Patient trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability — and
that it may take a very long time. 

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

    -- Teilhard de Chardin (HT IgnationSpirituality.com)

Choosing freedom

More from Broken Door Ministries.

3x3 Journal Exercise

A cool idea from Catholic Mindfulness doc Gregory Bottaro: "Every morning 3 things you are grateful for from yesterday, 3 things that went well yesterday (What Went Well), and 3 goals you will accomplish today."

Only adaptive responses

From an interview with Stephen Porges, the father of the polyvagal theory and its implications for trauma:

That is the other point I always make: there is no such thing as a bad response. There are only adaptive responses. The primary point is that our nervous system is trying to do the right thing and we need to respect what it has done. And when we respect its responses, then we move from this more evaluative state and we become more respectful, and we functionally do a lot of self-healing.

4-7-8 breathing

See background info from Dr. Weil, including a video demonstration.

Beautiful

Photo by Michael T. Ruhl via Washington Post

Careful cooking is love

St Benedict: On food and drink

From the Rule of Benedict, three chapters on food and drink:

• Chapter 39: On the Measure of Food 
• Chapter 40: On the Measure of Drink 
• Chapter 41: At What Hours the Meals Should Be Taken

See also commentary (Lawrence: 39, 40, 41), St Ignatius: Rules with Regard to Eating, Christian Fasting: A Theological Approach, and food in early monastic rules.

Fruits of prayer

Today's late-day Centering Prayer session was filled with lots of thoughts (as usual), but many/most of them could be categorized as thinking about either 1) what I could eat for dinner after prayer or 2) why my "progress" in CP was so slight and whether I was doing it wrong somehow.

But the founders of CP note that it's about intent -- "to simply be in the presence of God and engulfed in that divine sense, whether felt or unfelt." Thus "if you don’t do it correctly, it doesn’t matter" ... the "principal method of Centering Prayer really is to sit down."

So there I was, with about five minutes left and I was very aware of an internal craving/itch to eat to soothe. And I'm not exactly sure what I did (or what was done to me), but in those last few minutes I had a very clear awareness of that itch being replaced by a sense of peace.

That's a first ... in nearly 60 years.

Coincidentally or not, it has been six months (today) since I attended the CP workshop I took to begin my practice in earnest.

St Ignatius: Rules with Regard to Eating

From the third week of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, his Rules with Regard to Eating. See also commentary (Simmonds, Shano), St Benedict: On food and drink, Christian Fasting: A Theological Approach, and food in early monastic rules.

Psoas, stress, and fear

If true, this could be a big factor in the growing level of anxiety I've experienced after I moved to a full-time teleworking position that, along with a fall or two, definitely contributed to my experiencing some mobility issues:

The muscle that is most central to our fight/flight response is the psoas. When we don’t respond, these stress hormones go unspent and become stored in the body. This can bring many health problems including insomnia, lowered immune system, anxiety, eating disorders, depression, and living in a constant state of fear or alert.

Because the psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions, a chronically tightened psoas continually signals your body that you’re in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system. – Liz Koch, Author of The Psoas Book

Thanks to this, I'm off in search of some physical therapy to address an issue with one of the hip flexors that has been problematic for me.

Reality of God

From Unbelievable by John Shelby Spong (emphasis mine):

If God is the Source of Life, then the only way I can appropriately worship God is by living fully. In the process of embracing the fullness of life, I bear witness to the reality of the God who is the Source of Life. ... 

If God is the Source of Love, then the only way I can worship God is by loving “wastefully,” a phrase that I like. By “wasteful” love I mean the kind of love that never stops to calculate whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient. It is love that never stops to calculate deserving. It is love that loves not because love has been earned. It is in the act of loving “wastefully” that I believe I make God visible. ... 

If God is the Ground of Being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be; and the more deeply I can be all that I can be, the more I can and do make God visible. ... 

So the reality of God to me is discovered in the experience which compels me to “live fully, to love wastefully and to have the courage to be all that I can be.”

All shall be well

Gray area drinking

I was a high functioning drinker like Jolene Park, and like her, I didn't have a "rock bottom" per se before I stopped drinking. That said, I'd have to categorize my drinking as really, really, really dark gray.

But her video is a great one, particularly for women who may be using drinking as too much of a crutch. And her NOURISH guidelines to support a more healthy lifestyle are good ones (starts around 6:50):

• Notice nature
• Observe your breath
• Unite with others
• Replenish [helpful neurotransmitters] with food
• Initiate movement [yoga is particularly good]
• Sit in stillness
• Harness your creativity

Connection, trauma, and resilience

I may come back to do more on this, but want to make a note about this very interesting interview by On Being's Krista Tippett of psychiatrist/neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda: How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations.

The topic is epigenetics and how what's happened before we were born can wind up being expressed by our genes later in our own lives. This is the money quote for me (emphasis mine):

What I hear from trauma survivors ... is how upsetting it is when other people don't help, or don't acknowledge, or respond very poorly to needs or distress. ... And I'm very struck by how many Holocaust survivors got through because there was one person that became the focus of their survival, or they were the focus of that person's survival. So how we behave towards one another, individually and in society, I think, can really make a very big difference in, honestly, the effects of environmental events on our molecular biology.

The Knot Prayer

Food and theology

I may have found my calling.

New forms of ministry become possible when eating together is understood as witnessing to the kingdom of God. Jesus was in the food business. Churches should be too.

-- Norman Wirzba, as quoted by Kendall Vanderslice in Farminaries

The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina has a short course -- A Theology of Food: What We Eat and Why It Matters -- available online. Here's the first video with links to the others.

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

A sign

Photo by Bruce Hallman/USFWS

I was listening to the Catholic Channel on SiriusXM yesterday, and heard one of the callers share a story about asking for a sign and receiving one. Apparently it stuck with me, as before I fell asleep last night, I asked for my own sign: seeing a cardinal today.

I asked for a cardinal in part because of the lore of cardinals and deceased love ones and in part because I had a longish drive in a rural area for an appointment today. I thought I'd tilt the odds in my favor.

As I drove to the appointment today, I started thinking about how silly I was to be looking for a sign considering that I wasn't in distress ... mostly just impatient to progress in my spiritual growth (next week will be five months since I began my Centering Prayer practice in earnest).

So as I neared town after my appointment, I thought to myself "well, so much for seeing the cardinal today" and not 30 seconds later, a cardinal flew across the road in front of my car. Well then.

Thank you.

Blest Are They

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God

Richard Rohr has been doing the Sermon on the Mount on his daily meditations recently. Today's entry is "blessed are the pure in heart" and he shares Cynthia Bourgeault's description of the connection between the 'heart' and seeing God (emphasis mine):

The heart in the ancient sacred traditions has a very specific and perhaps surprising meaning. It is not the seat of our personal affective life—or even, ultimately, of our personal identity—but an organ for the perception of divine purpose and beauty. It is our antenna, so to speak, given to us to orient us toward the divine radiance and to synchronize our being with its more subtle movements. The heart is not for personal expression but for divine perception. . . .

The ancient Wisdom traditions all saw (I do not mean they theorized; they directly perceived) that the physical world we take for our empirical, time-and-space-bound reality is encompassed in another: a coherent and powerful world of divine purpose always surrounding and interpenetrating it. This other, more subtle world is invisible to the senses, and to the mind it appears to be pure speculation. But if the heart is awake and clear, it can directly receive, radiate, and reflect this unmanifest divine Reality.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing

If only we knew what we wanted

Spiritual transformation and interspirituality

Threshold Society founder Shaikh Kabir Helminski on spiritual transformation and world peace:

The Threshold Society is focused on spiritual transformation, self-knowledge and applied spirituality. ... Inevitably, souls that are transformed and hearts that become purified have an influence – both seen and unseen, both in practical ways and in ways that are described as “spiritual influence.” Every human soul that frees itself from the toxicity of egoism is contributing vibrationally to the state of humanity, often much more than it is apparent.

And on interspirituality:

What I mean by “interspiritual” are people who are practicing contemplatives from various traditions. When they come together there are no arguments and no disagreements. There is only an extraordinary amount that we have in common. This realization is extremely rewarding.

Check out the whole article for much more.

Path to serenity, happiness

- From The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

Geneen Roth's eating guidelines

Here are Geneen Roth's seven guidelines to eating more mindfully:

1. Eat when you are hungry. 
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car. 
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music. 
4. Eat what your body wants. 
5. Eat until you are satisfied. 
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others. 
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure.

The need for 'right effort'

In the December 2017 issue of Meditatio (p 4) Fr Laurence Freeman (WCCM) points out that while contemplation is a gift of grace, that doesn't mean we get to wait for it while sitting on the couch eating bon-bons and watching crap TV:

In Christian wisdom, contemplation is felt to be gift or grace, not the result of will power, scholarship, imagination or spiritual technology. Yet, because contemplation involves an ever fuller participation in reality, not an observer’s distance, it does ask for ‘right effort’. We need to do something in order to learn what it is to be. Then being shows itself as pure action and we return to the mundane world of work with new motivation and insight.

The way I look at this is that we don't "earn" this gift by our actions, rather, our efforts are meant to remove the impediments to receiving it.

Rohr on trust

Some thoughts from Richard Rohr. First, on fear, grace, and trust:

Ask yourself regularly, “What am I afraid of? Does it matter? Will it matter at the end or in the great scheme of things? Is it worth holding on to?” Grace will lead you into such fears and emptiness, and grace alone can fill them up, if we are willing to stay in the void. ... To stay in God’s hands, to trust, means that we usually have to let go of our attachments to feelings—which are going to pass away anyway (which is the irony of it all). 

On trust and surrender (emphasis mine):

Surrender, yielding, trusting, and giving are never going to appeal to the ego. We have to be taught this deeper wisdom soon or civilization will continue its rapid downward spiral. The key, of course, is to Whom we are surrendering: a Trinitarian God. The life of faith is learning how to rest in an Ultimate Love and how to draw upon an Infinite Source. On a very practical level, you will then be able to trust that you are being held and guided. In fact, you can trust after a while that almost everything is a kind of guidance. ... [What] I am saying that what first comes to your heart and soul must be a yes instead of a no, trust instead of resistance.

Finally, a homily: Trust is a Rock You Can Build Upon (start ~7:30).

Word for the year: TRUST

"Provide love; trust will be born from it.

Demonstrate your trust, and it will awaken love." (link)