Monday, November 11, 2024
Veterans Day in the USA
Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop
Miles’ 8th birthday
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Prayer of relationship
Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?
In her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening Cynthia Bourgeault writes that if you wish to ascend the mountain, you must first “pull the plug” on your ordinary awareness. Why?
The more you think from ordinary awareness, then the more you experience yourself as a separate egoic identity, defined by your own aptitudes, needs and desires. Ordinary thinking and egoic identity go hand in hand, they go round and round in a completely closed circuit.
Intentional silence enables me to pull the plug, but this is neither easy, normal, comfortable or acceptable for my ego. This kind of silence feels “like a vacuum.” Even death.
But learning to shift to seeing with your spiritual awareness is a lot like learning to see in the dark.
And this dark is not riddled with nightmare but rather a place where my awareness of God, the divine presence of God within me, is more available.
Paul said, “Whether I live or die, I am the Lord’s.”
This is really not a statement that can be made from the level of ordinary awareness; I am just too frightened! Because my ego perceives itself as separate, it will always perceive itself as somewhat endangered. “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4). Spiritual awareness must be deeply engaged before this underlying abundance of love can be seen.
When it is seen, my life is transformed, and whatever of God’s ultimate Divine Presence He might want to share with me becomes the joy of this new life. My prayer becomes a prayer of relationship, more intimate and meaningful than my vocal prayers before, more powerful, more attractive, more personal, and more continuous. Pray without ceasing.
Fr. Keating calls this kind of prayer “taking a vacation from yourself.” The thoughts and decisions of my ordinary self don’t stop on a time. But over time (and not so long a time as that), these acts of my ego become more solidly planted in the lasting contentment of being with God in his kingdom. I no longer need to invite him into my own kingdom.
Lord, we are the people who long to see your face.
For sure, this can become “quietism” in some, who then are “so spiritual they are no longer any earthly good.” Supernatural confidence and unperturbable calm come and go in my life, and it comes much more often in the midst of spiritual awareness than when my ego is busy running things.
Then the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
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(Titus 1, Psalm 24, Philippians 2, Luke 17)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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