Richard Rhor - "The Naked Now" - Movement and Stillness

On page 23 of Richard Rohr's book "The Naked Now" “God becomes more of a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more a personal relationship” (ref a message by RR on the Trinity)
This  has been reminding me of some thoughts I have had recently about prayer being a dynamic participation with a Living God. We all instinctively relate contemplative prayer with stillness and there has been at least within me the intention of looking for that ‘still point’. However in prayer we are entering into ‘perichoresis’ (“ dance around") of the Trinity and therefore also entering into movement - a self emptying movement (kenosis). This became very clear when I heard a message by Cynthia Bourgeault on Kenosis as well as reading her books. My intention now in prayer is not static or containable but to, in the stillness,  recognise ‘not the noun but the verb’ and 'not the conclusion but the process’ referred to by RR. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 46 ‘Be still and know that I am God’ indicating stillness ... yet earlier on there is the verse that says ‘There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God’ indicating movement. Furthermore on reading TS Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’ from the 4 quartets he says so brilliantly ...

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving ....

In the mind of God stillness and movement are not opposites but are held together in a way only He can do!
Praise Him!

Cataphatic Apophatic a healthy mix

Perhaps the distinction between the two is unnecessary but for academic purposes some like myself like the distinction as it relates to prayer. Basically apophatic approaches to prayer are more contemplative including alot of silence and appreciation of God who transcends the limitations of rational thought. Cataphatic is more related to what is called discursive prayer which is verbal and involves rational thought. Because of the over heavy leaning of our western culture towards cleverness and headiness it is natural for a spiritual seeker to gravitate at least at some part of her spiritual life towards the apophatic prayer. however when the dust is settled we realise it is unnecessary to put one against the other but rather to value both as important aspects of prayer. One informs the other. we need to think about the fact that God is bigger than we can imagine. We need to think about who it is we believe in. we need to recognise that worship does include our mind. Conversely we need also to take one step back and in awe and wonder recognise Go's transcendence. After a little excursion away from the Cataphatic I am now seeing its value and have decided to incorporate it (if I had ever really not) into my daily prayer life and not regard it as something inferior. Most 'sensible' people probably do both without realising it. It is only the anal types such as myself who feel the need to make these distinctions!

Welcoming Prayer

It has been my first day without pain killers for my recently poorly back. I entered into centering prayer tonight and knowing that it is important not to allow physical sensations to distract, when the backpains started I almost gave up. Shifting from one position to the next was just not working! However the idea of "Welcoming Prayer" came to me. Basically it involves first entering into a feeling or emotion you wish to release from and then welcoming it. After moving from one to stage to the other the last stage is to let go of the desire for security, approval and control and finally the desire to change the situation as it is. (Cynthia Bourgeault excellently devotes a whole chapter to this in her book 'Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening' she sums up the process thus: 1:Focus & Sink In 2:welcome 3: Let go)
I decided to apply this to my backache. I focussed on the pain and welcomed it ocscillating between these two stages. At times feeling the pain without qualifying it as good or bad took the sting out of it. In the letting go I focussed specifically on the letting go of the desire to change the situation. In short a total acceptance of the discomfort which I felt prompted to use as my 'Sacred Word' (please note this is not a mantra but a word which simply is used to return to Centering Prayer when the mind has strayed - nothing more than that)*. Using this as my sacred word to return to His Presence was quite enlightening.
This welcoming prayer gesture being at the same moment the essence of my participation with presence seemd to mirror if not participate in the same spirit with which Jesus approached the Cross. The Central core of this specific time was an acceptance of pain which when let go of became the entry point of a deep participation of Jesus acceptance of the Cross at Gethsemene - 'Not my will but thine be done'.
Did the back ache ease or go? At times. In fact the 20 mins seemed to rush by but that was not the issue - one cannot at one and the same time welcome something and want it to go away. However it does raise the issue taht much of our suffering is caused by not accepting things as they are - being at odds with that which 'is'.

*The sacred  word  expresses our intention to be in God’s presence and to yield to the divine action (T K)

Centering Prayer - Letting go of thoughts

When I release my feeble sense of what I feel or what I think I should feel and the limited thoughts I have and every other scattered thought - not that I can 'get rid' of thoughts - but when I allow them to be as something other - detached from these things then His presence becomes all that there is. All I have left is my consent to His activity within - but what does that mean? whatever i think it means I let go of and allow Him to interpret what He means by it. Jesus in me surrendering to the will of God ... 'Not my will but Thy will be done' ... I am taken up into the Kenotic movement of the Triune God ...there is nothing that we surrender that He does not more than compensate for either im-mediately or in greater measure further down the line.

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.

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?


 

Centering Prayer

I have spent 20 minutes this morning and 20 minutes this evening being simply still in God's presence. Many distracting thoughts and feelings overtook me but the wonderful advice given by Thomas Keating is that we should not be phased by this. I find that thoughts and feelings are as imposing as we allow them to be. If we allow ourselves to be frustrated by them the more imposing they become. So the secret is to 'Let them be' ... accept them. When I do I find a detachment takes place. There is a space between the me that is thinking/feeling and the 'true self' that seeks to focus on God .. a releasing takes place and I am able to as TK suggests consent my will to the love of God.  We are never to evaluate our time with God as good or bad, successful or unsuccessful. Just being with Him is sufficient. I use my mobile phone as a timer so I dont keep having a quick peek to see how time is going.

Intro

Hi!

This is the beginning of my first real blog although I did make my own using dreamweaver but it got so inundated with SPAM that I have had to resort to this with all the bells and whistles that keep the spammers away! It is a kind of personal experiment with the whole idea of blogging. I understand that a general theme would be fitting and I will choose the word 'spirituality' ... I will be sharing my explorations and developments along the way and welcome feedback.

Why Urban Mystik and why the wrong spellink? Well ... Urban Mystic had been taken so I plumbed for the closest I could find. My belief is that spirituality should not be reserved for those who may be considered to be the elite ... the cloistered ... surrounded with nature's resonating language of God's handiwork. (I say 'considered to be' because i am sure that they themselves do not regard them selves as'elite' - furthermore God is a rather loaded word I know but rather than unpacking it I hope it will 'unpack' itself along the way.) ... hence the idea of a mysticism which is on street level available to the most ordinary and the most unassuming in the least expected places.

I will stop there and in my next post tell you a bit about myself and where I come from and where I have travelled. (spiritually speaking)

(24/8)I am 56 years old (yesterday!). More than 30 years ago I remember my spiritual search beginning having left the repressive confines of a boarding school and launching into a drug fuelled few years at University - they were good times and bad times. I took LSD which disorientated me but also awakened me to an altered state of consciousness. Recognising the damage such drugs could do I determined to seek the same experience without the use of drugs. I took up Buddhist Practice and meditative techniques using the I Ching for guidance. While my usage of such things was as much to do with being trendy than anything else there was a genuine search taking place. Total acceptance was key and I remember being perturbed by the fact that Jesus Christ while being someone I admired was at the same time someone I could not accept. Furthermore (how I dont know) I recognised that to accept Jesus was more than just to value his teachings or even his historical activities but to accept him as the centre of my life. After much trepidation and persuasion I finally accepted him in this way.

My experience of God at this point was so great my life was turned around. I gave up the drugs immediately and started to attend church. It seemed to me reasonable at the time that all relations to my past life were to be rejected which included my whole mode of seeking prior to this experience. 'Be here now' was one of the catchphrases I embraced prior to becoming a Christian. I labelled that concept with the passivity / existentialist tag and left it behind. Being still and being 'present' were ideas which I had left behind with the old life.

It is only over the past few years that I have begun to re embrace some of these ideas and considered them consistent with my Christian experience. It is thanks to books such as 'Practicing the Presence of God' by Brother Lawrence and 'Cloud of Unknowing' as well as techniques such as 'centering prayer' introduced by Father Thomas Keating that have enabled me to discover new Christian areas of prayer not too inconsistent with my previous approaches.

Further down the road I have looked into teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and the 'Sedona Method' with Hale Dwoskin. Under which label I would put these I dont know (If a label is necessary)- Esoteric, New Age, Buddhist - I dont know but I have found them extremely helpful in my spiritual growth. I am now asking such questions as: How distinctive is the Christian revelation from modern spiritual approaches to God? Where is the overlap? Is there room for dialogue? Can we afford to use new concepts to define God, sin, salvation etc without compromising the central tenets of the faith thus becoming more relevant to the present modern spirituality? I hope that this blog will contribute to research into this .... who knowzzzzz