intentionally a piece of cake ...

What is the difference between Centering Prayer and other forms of prayer? I continue the struggle of maintaining a clear view of Christian distinctiveness when it comes to the mystical experience and the approach to prayer but I'm getting there. Thomas Keating in his book "Intimacy with God" distinguishes the usage of a sacred word or a sacred symbol from other Eastern Methods. "Rather than paying attention to these symbols we use them to express our intention."... again ...  "It is intentionality that distinguishes Centering Prayer from other forms of prayer" Here we have no attempt to focus attention on an object (like a flame) or to concentrate on a particular word. The usage of a sacred word is not its meaning but a simple stimulus to re-align our wills to the love of God. Here we have not a mental exercise or even an emotional experience but an exercise of the will to consent to the love of God. I find it easy to recognise an emotion and a thought but an act of or 'consent of the will' as something separate from thought, emotion or activity is a hard thing to recognise.
It all makes sense that love is essentially an act of the will. You can feel love, think love, say you love something or someone but wisdom is justified by her actions. We all know how cheap thoughts, feelings and words can be without any action to prove it. However here we are in total stillness so the only expression of the will in love is simply being in God's presence without any action. How can one discern any willfulness without action? Perhaps what is meant is this: I consent to God's love by simply allowing it to be here in this moment and simply availing myself to it as I am in this moment. No other action is suitable but non-action. This submission or consent is the essence of all true forms of Love that will follow.

fabrik8ed reality ...

I read somewhere that we think on average 12,000 thoughts a day. If we are writing intensely it can be up to 25,000! Apparently over 90% are repetative and unecessary. 
I have discovered that alot of thought is involved in problem solving but also distressingly it is involved in creating its own little fantasy world - imaginings, scenarios, and downright improper thoughts. The reason for this is that we are not satisfied with things as they are so we live in our own little heads to create a different reality which will stimulate us emotionally or even physically. We must make friends with the present moment if we wish to engage with reality and not only so but the present moment as it is and not the one in our own little heads! Why? What's wrong with the imagination running wild? As an escape from what is present it is merely strengthening our own ego. In which way? It is strengthening 'Control' ... to live in the Now is to become vulnerable. When we open ourselves up to what 'is' then our imaginations can be inspired and effective in the purpose of true loving being. Jesus became vulnerable so that He was responsive to the call of love from his Father. He did not strengthen his own egoic identity through controlling His own fabricated reality.

heavy mental noise ...

Much of my thought life is engaged with anything but the Present Moment. There are too many extra thoughts! I have been trying to categorise them in order to recognise when I am not engaging with and simply 'being' in the Present Moment. All these thoughts clearly and not so clearly work with the false self to perpetuate an unconscious existence, an unreal world in which 'I' take centre stage caught in the autonomous (non) existence of thought forms thus robbing me of realising Essence! (What is the fall of man but the separation of Form from Essence - the loss of spirit, living in the flesh - the preoccupation with external at the expense of internal reality). So lets look at what constitutes this 'Mental Noise':

PAST RELATED:
Re-living past achievements and successes - this builds up the ego.
Re-living past failures and embarrassments - this too builds up the ego. If I cannot be important with a sense of achievement I can certainly get centre of attention with my sense of failure!

FUTURE PLANS:
Things I ought to do / Things I intend to do / Things i must not forget to do.
Projected fantasies of success
Fears of a future real or imagined event
Future Spiritual attainment ... Practicing the Present Moment as a means to an end.
INTERNAL THOUGHTS:
Fabricated Reality - little alterations to past scenarios, fantasies ... 
Analytical - Introspective circular thinking. Not to be confused with observational as one recognises the false egoic self.
Problematical - the false self thrives on problems - they give it meaning.
Distracting - I'll go and eat something. I will check Facebook for the nth time!
Internal conversations - things I would say if I could.

A GENERAL SENSE OF 'I'M NOT WHERE I SHOULD BE'. Space
A GENERAL SENSE OF 'NOT HAVING WHAT I THINK I NEED TO BE MORE FULFILLED'. Possessions

All these things can be seen as a frantic attempt to keep ourselves 'alive’. We are performing a kind of juggling act wasting energy and making so much 'noise'. All the time we are robbing ourselves of true life which comes from 'quietness', 'stillness' and an 'awareness' of all that we have and are NOW. ... and in that awareness we lose ourselves in Another ... there is no room for little 'Me' in the Present Moment which is not perceived through the conceptual work of the mind but intuitively through the 'spirit'.
I thought this. imagine that you are in a noisy factory in the middle of nowhere. The noise is deafening. You decide to walk out into the open air. What a relief! The noise is there but distant and the more you engage with the quietness of 'outside' the more distant the noise becomes until eventually you are so taken up with the view and the sounds of outside the noise in the factory seems no longer to exist. However, a quick blip and you begin to hear the noise again ... the distraction becomes so irritating you decide to go back in to try to shut it off but begin to be consumed by it again. 'Whatever we resist persists' - by trying to fight against and subdue noise we increase our awareness. By allowing it to be it ceases to persist.
Father Thomas Keating said our thoughts are like noisy children in the background. When we engage in Centering Prayer we are like adults focusing outside- perhaps looking out of the window - the noise of the 'children' recedes into the background. Until eventually the children, aware of your 'awarenes' become quiet and come to join in with what you are engaged in! Focussing on the Present Moment marshalls eventually all our faculties into its own alignment. This is nothing spiritual but natural - what we do with what we have NOW in relation to God is another thing!

Lose yourself ... find Yourself!

I have been snailing around listening to an interesting commentary on Tolle's 'New Earth' book on the Oprah website (forgive me -slight cringe there!) . My conclusions have been that Eckhart Tolle and many self help methods coincide most in the whole area of acceptance ... In acceptance lieth Peace. Listening to Eckhart Tolle I find myself doing what I did with the Sedona Method... taking one step back from the 'false me' (The egoic, unconscious self) thus creating 'space', recognising the 'true conscious self' from the standpoint of one observing. With this detachment which the 'space' allows I am able, from an objective standpoint, to hold lightly (accept) all the feelings/thoughts without having any attachment to them. That acceptance = release. (It took me a long time to realise that RELEASE in the SM meant to ACCEPT.) This has been a great help to me. I am also aware of how I gravitate to allowing such negatives as worry, punishing myself, and even torment at the expense of PEACE in the MOMENT. 'Why?' I ask myself. Simply because in doing so the egoic self is strengthened. The Egoic Self (or Ego or self life) uses problems to attach to and constantly wants to find some hook on which to draw energy - anything but the present moment which brings an end to my 'little story' and the ME identity I build upon it! (Thanks ET for the terminology!) I am struggling with the 'pain body' concept but I guess I'm close to some idea of it with my explanation above.

I find great similarities here with my religious experience in that for the Christian there is a 'death to the old self' through the Cross and a 'rising to new life ' through the resurrection.

My one concern is the whole matter of introspection. With alot of these ideas and methods there can be an increasing amount of 'navel gazing' perhaps symbolised by the Buddhist eyes closed looking within. I find this disconcerting as the whole process of seeking release from the egoic self can in itself 'bite you in da bum' and simply be strengthening it! The only answer I can give to this without sounding incredibly pious is having found our way to escape personal egoic caused suffering to look away from ourselves, pick up the suffering around us and with proactive compassion make a change for those powerless to help themselves - even through small acts of kindness. The ultimate goal I think of all approaches to spiritual health should be therefore to lose ourselves for the sake of others and in so doing we shall find ourselves.

(This is an adjustment to a post elsewhere)

Essence and Form

Listening to more of Eckhart Tolle (ET which might be appropo!) I took on board the idea that to appreciate the essence of things we must relinquish 'labels'. I sent a post on a group I belong to thus:

I think sometimes our idea of God is deficient in terms of His greatness, and His Grace. We can never limit him within the finite restrictions of our own minds. And why do we wish to do this? For our own security and Control. If we label something we in some way possess it but we also lose the potential life we would have got from it of we had simply let it be. A walk in the park or in the countryside loses its impact because we look at a flower and say 'That is a flower' ... we have labeled it, boxed it, contained it within our conceptual framework and in so doing we have in a sense 'killed' it (we may even literally do so in order to make it our possession by plucking it and taking it home!). If we could simply like a child look at nature without labeling it - just allowing it to be we connect with it and are stimulated by it - as we do so these things never lose their vitality - we continue in praise and thanks to our creator God. And so with people - when we label them we have contained them within our conceptual framework but also the vitality we would have received otherwise is lost ... and also with our relationship with God - whatever revelations we have of Him (esp. in Centering Prayer) must be held with open hands ... not be used to analyze and contain but to let Him be. Whatever we release to Him in this way will be more than compensated for as He multiplies back to us - even if it is in the form of 'rays of darkness' ...

I shared my ideas with my good friend Ross Kendall and he disagreed and we discussed a bit. When I got home there was a response to the post. Excitedly (asudo) I opened up the mail hoping someone would affirm my erudite contribution but (asithappenz) I got this:

I'm going to pipe up here and offer a counter argument to the one presented here: From earliest times - even in the book of Genesis, God has Adam naming the animals as they are brought before him - we  have had labels of all sorts for our environment. I would like to offer that it is not so much to delimit, or box, or even certainly  'kill', as to recognize that those things are particular to us in some way. When I go out into nature, first I see the beauty before me, the myriad of colors, shapes, textures, patterns, but I also find  myself saying "that's a red oak, that's a swamp white oak, that's a  bobolink, that's a monarch butterfly, there's a tall goldenrod" and  so on. Because I have a special, even intimate, relationship with these things, I have taken the trouble to know their names, perhaps even their preferences, what they say about their habitat and all their other interconnections to other beings in nature. While his point is well taken that we also tend to 'analyze and contain' but that we must also let God (and Nature) be, I would like to assert that the process of becoming intimate with something - whether a plant, animal, person, God, idea or other thing - involves full participation in all our senses and our intellect. Our curiosity drives our interest in finding similarities, distinctions, patterns, and relationships, and this richness contains within it the seeds of letting go of all of that and seeing beyond. 

What's a bobolink thought I? I realise either I'm wrong, misunderstood or ET is wrong and misunderstood .... I looked deeper into this and have given it more thought ...

If by "labeling" we mean an embracing of form without essence (The outward shell rather than the life of the thing) we can see some references in the Bible.

Jesus made the distinction between form and essence in the way we approach the scriptures:
John 5:39 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.

Through focussing only upon the outward form of words we rob ourselves of the essence. I guess this is what Lectio Divina is all about. Looking beyond the literal towards the deeper essential meaning which brings the words to life? 

Again Paul refers to the outward form of religion:
2 Timothy 3:4ff ... lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Here he is comparing religious outward form with the Life of the spirit which does not dismiss the form but gives it life.

Again to the early legalistic Jews whose legalism strengthened their (blind unconscious) sense of self Paul says in Romans 2:2 ... that "they have... in the law the form of knowledge and truth — you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?"

Ideed the idea or existence of form is not a bad thing: Col 2:9 ...For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form ...
Jesus said in the gospel of John "No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.. and He who has seen me has seen the Father"
 
but (here is the nub) we mustn't hold onto form without embracing the essence.
Paul says: 2 Corinthians 5:16
Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.

The form of Jesus humanity can only be fully appreciated by looking beyond the form to his deity and as it says in Romans 8 ... The same spirit (essence) that raised Jesus from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies (form).

and again .. 2 Corinthians 4:16 ... For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man (form) perish, yet the inward man (essence) is renewed day by day

This is not to say I hope it makes clear that essence is opposed to form (or names) but that essence gives form its life and power. This I know is going far beyond the original issue of looking at flowers ;o) but I guess we may be permitted to ponder the essence of all created things which will enhance our appreciation and hence our thankfulness without denegrating the tremendous variety and distinctiveness of all things.
What do you think?