How much time each day do you consciously set aside your thinking brain, emotions, busi-ness and consciously consent to God’s inward presence and action?
An ancient story tells: Once upon a time, the master had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talking about his own concerns and giving his own thoughts.
After a while, the master served tea. He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was full and then he kept on pouring.
Finally, the visitor could not bear it any longer. “Don’t you see that my cup is full?” he said. “It’s not possible to get anymore in.”
“Just so,” the master said, stopping at last. “And like this cup, you are filled in your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
The story urges me to reflect, “Why am I always trying to fill my cup, … in seeking to experience what I have not yet experienced, to travel the road I have not yet traveled, or gain the next bit of knowledge that I do not yet seem to possess?
Not to say any of it is bad but that’s not the point: If my life is always about doing and filling the voids, where is the God-space in my day and being? When and where is my “spirit and soul” offered in silence and dependency?
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul, my God, in you I trust …for you are God my savior, for you I wait all the day long.
In previous blogs I mentioned Centering Prayer. I have found it to be a prayerful form of interior silence that consents and acknowledges God’s inward presence and action. Centering Prayer did not replace any prior practice of sacred reading (lectio divina), conversational prayers (public or private). It simply added to my spiritual practices and better yet, fulfilled something that was missing.
We know we cannot earn God’s Love, Mercy, and Salvation but many spiritual practices still dominate this idea that we have to be “doing” something to connect with God-life within us. We act as though we either have to be thinking about God, voicing prayers, be associated with the “right” group and doing good deeds, etc. In other words, we have to “do” something to earn good graces in order to be close to God.
I believe this flows from the conditioning of our society. We are told (often from childhood) that to be successful and happy we must produce and of course consume. This may serve the ongoing economic cycle of a consumer society but in the spiritual realm we cannot do anything to receive God’s love, mercy, and salvation. It begs the question, “at what point in our prayer/ life do we turn off the mental and psychological switch of “doing” to encounter what we cannot earn by our doing?”
When somebody says “Let’s pray,” it almost automatically means we must engage our minds and tongues to action. Not so much our silence for listening to what God says. It is as though the act of prayer is solely up to our doing rather than the Beloved. There is a great (un) conditioning required if we are to fully encounter the fullness of “God-life” within us. Centering Prayer positions me to turn off that programmed “switch” of doing (ie. thinking, feeling, saying, etc). And it is not an easy thing to set aside: the preoccupations of my anxieties and wandering imaginations. In fact, it seems that it only happens in very, very brief moments.
Centering Prayer is simple but also a most difficult form of prayer. It is different than conventional meditation but similar in the sense of setting in a quiet space for a time period (twice a day). When mental thought or imaginations arise (and it will) never repress it but rather allow it to float like a boat downriver. And when (not if) you catch yourself hooked on a mental thought, the practice employs returning to one’s “sacred word” as a way of letting thought go and renewing your intention to consent to God’s inward presence. I usually have to repeat my sacred word a dozen times within a 15 minute prayer period. I am always having to “let go” returning to consent.
There is not much more to Centering Prayer than positioning one’s whole self for “God to do what God does.” If you wish to gain a better understanding, I have listed Fr. Thomas Keating book titled, “Open Minds, Open Hearts,” in the book recommendations.
The featured image (above) is a derivative of a very famous 15th century icon by Andrei Rublev.
Rublev’s orginal (below) depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–8). It is best known as the “Hospitality of Abraham.” In the biblical story, Abraham and Sarah welcomed divine nature into their house and fed them. Blessings followed.
My rendition symbolizes my alone-ness in the presence of my Beloved. I live in faith that God’s presence is available at every moment. This is Grace freely offered in totality, but I am to consent to it in order to receive its fullness. Centering prayer is a way of saying, “Here I am.”
Welcoming and being hospitable to God’s inward presence is an apt metaphor for Centering Prayer
We all experience harsh and difficult moments of rejection and loss which by default create deep voids in our life. We can succumb to its darkness or seek the gift of Holy Wisdom so to restore a holy and life-giving environment for one’s life – while remaining cautious not to overfill our cup. And if one’s cup has been overfilled: self-emptying is called for.
The act of self-emptying is found five times in the New Testament (Ro.4:14, 1Co.1:17, 9:15, 2Co.9:3, Phil.2:7). Of these five times it is Phil 2:7, in which Jesus is said to have “emptied himself.”
ps. How’s your cup?
