Using the tools of science and psychology to deepen your spiritual growth.
Please Note: These newsletters are meant to be read in order.
39: The Problem of Non-dual Meditation
Edition #39: Inside the Invisible
Some months back, I promised you a new and exciting form of meditation. After making the promise, I realized that I didn’t really know enough about this new form of meditation to share it with confidence. So, I dithered and delayed.
My general rule of thumb is to share only those meditation practices that I know are effective. I typically rely on history and usage to determine this. If a meditation practice has been developed by our forebearers and used over a longish period of time, I tend to feel more confident in putting my trust in that practice. Then I realized, after promising this new form of meditation, that it didn’t have the historical antecedents that I usually use to guide my teaching. As a result, I held off from sharing this with you.
So let me begin by addressing a central issue in all forms of meditation. It is an invisible problem and a subtle one, one that is typically overlooked. It is a problem inherent in the use of language – the problem of subjects and objects. While the goal of meditation is union with the Divine, almost all meditation practices operate within the dualistic paradigm: that is, we are here and God is somewhere else, apart from us.
This leaves us with the paradox. We are seeking union, but we are using tools that reinforce the dualistic paradigm that rules our lives.
Let me try and put this in more concrete terms. You no doubt remember the story of getting the donkey to pull the cart by dangling a carrot in front of its nose – a carrot that it can never reach. In our case, however, by using dualism to try and overcome itself, it is more like you and me chasing an ice cream cone in the hot sun that is constantly three or four feet ahead of us. We run and run and run, but still the ice cream cone stays ahead of us. And should we ever manage to catch up with it, we will find that the ice cream has melted, leaving us a cone full of divine No – thing! (Sorry, but I have a weird sense of humor!)
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the very best example. But here is the dilemma: I am right here, and as I meditate, I postulate that God is somewhere over there, apart from myself. Either I have set up a dualistic framework for my meditation, or I have simply participated in the dualism that guides most of our waking hours.
At issue is how to overcome this too-familiar dualism. As long as we maintain this dualism, we will be unable to connect with the Divine. As long as we postulate that God is out there somewhere, we can think and talk about the Divine, but we will be unable to enter into union with the Divine.
Let me walk you through this for a moment:
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray to our Father in heaven – a Being who is in a place – heaven – far apart from us.
When we pray the Jesus Prayer, we ask Jesus, who we believe is apart from us, for mercy.
When we pray with Centering Prayer, we still find ourselves in that dualistic framework – we are here and the Divine is elsewhere.
The logic of this is terrifying! No matter what we try, we cannot draw closer to God. We cannot use language – either in thought, or in written or spoken word – because language is built on the subject/object duality. While this framework is quite handy for getting things done in our day-to-day life, it absolutely sabotages our attempts to draw closer to God.
This is a dilemma that haunts all forms of meditation and all forms of prayer. It’s not the exclusive province of Christianity or Buddhism, or any of the major world religions. It’s a dilemma that is faced by all.
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When I was in college, I remember reading a science fiction story about a two-dimensional world. While I remember neither the title nor the author, I do remember being struck by the dilemma of trying to describe experience using only two dimensions rather than our customary three. This dilemma is very similar to the dilemma faced by all spiritual seekers. How do we overcome the perceptual limitations imposed by our frame of reference?
As always, when I face a dilemma like this, I turn to the spiritual literature. Our problem has been faced before, and with great success by a few. So, what do our great saints have to say about this? How did they resolve this problem?
Let’s start with the gospel of John. In chapter 14, Jesus says, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” In effect, Jesus says, ‘I am in my father and my father is in me; just as I am in you and you are in me.’ When we stop and truly listen to this passage, we realize that there is no distance between the Divine and ourselves. Jesus already exists in us. There is no abyss to cross; no distance to cover.
We see from this that the dualism that besets us is just an artifact of our own minds. We project this mental artifact onto the world and ‘discover’ that the world is inherently dualistic. This is simply not true.
Other scriptural evidence suggests the same. In the gospel of Luke, in chapter 17, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” In our dualistic thinking, we project that the Kingdom is outside of ourselves. We create a duality between the material and the spiritual worlds, but the creation of this duality traps us in the material. The gospel of Luke indicates, according to Jesus, that this is a profound error. The Kingdom is right here, within our deepest selves. We only need to wake up, i.e., to drop our dualistic thinking, in order to experience this profound and marvelous Unity.
Moving outside of the canonical books of Scripture, we have the gospel of Thomas. This book was found in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, and it contains 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. The third saying in this collection states, “The kingdom is inside you and it is outside you. When you know yourself, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the child of the Living Father.”
Here, Thomas asserts there is no boundary between the inner and the outer. Drilling down into the meaning of this saying, Thomas states that the Divine has no boundaries. The Divine is found everywhere: in subjective experience and in objective experience. There is no place where God cannot be found.
Moving back into the canonical Scriptures, we have a passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. In chapter 3, Paul states, “Christ is all, and in all.” This may be the most explicit non-dual affirmation in the New Testament. There is nothing that can exist that is outside of Christ – “Christ is all.” Not only can nothing exist outside of Christ, but Christ is “in all.” In this passage, we hear echoes of Thomas, who stated that the kingdom is inside and outside of us.
So, what does this mean? It means that we are inextricably part of the Divine. Our pain comes from our failure to recognize our true nature – that Christ is within us and within all of Creation around us. That there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God!
There are many more passages in the New Testament that point to the non-dual nature of Reality. These passages are typically overlooked because they do not fit our typical frame of reference which is dualistic. There is a massive tragedy hidden in this oversight.
Most Christians and most believers of all sorts adhere to this dualistic framework. They have literally put connection with God out of reach. In some ways, it’s like the gold held in Fort Knox. We delude ourselves by saying that it belongs to all of us, but good luck trying to get your hands on a single bar of bullion!
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In this edition of Invisible, I have tried to make clear the dangers of our commonly held dualistic frame of reference. I believe that our dualism literally prevents us from seeing and experiencing the Divine – the Divine that is all around us and deeply within us, in our innermost depths.
Our dualism even extends to our meditation practice and our efforts to experience God. In our next newsletter, I hope to introduce you to a meditation practice that transcends this pervasive dualism. Until then, please don’t stop your meditation practice. Even within the dualistic paradigm, meditation prepares us for the experience of God. It trains our minds to focus and to maintain that focus over extended periods of time. It calms our emotional turmoil, and it introduces us to that Great Silence in which we find our Lord.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
P.P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
38: Linearity and the Materialist Worldview
Edition #38: Inside the Invisible
One of the challenges that we believers face today is how to respond to a scientific worldview that posits that God does not exist. This worldview is pervasive; we find it everywhere we turn. The computer on which you are likely reading this newsletter is one of thousands of examples of the technology that has come from this worldview. Yet, this perspective denies the existence of God and denies anything that might be considered ‘spiritual.’ Prominent intellectuals have written best-selling books on the ‘foolishness’ of believing in God. How are we, who are believers, to respond to these challenges?
From my perspective, it seems best to meet these challenges head-on and examine the commonly held components that underpin our prevailing scientific worldview. To this end, I would like to explore some concepts that are likely unfamiliar to most of my readers. While the read below may be a bit difficult to follow, I think you will find it helpful as you deepen your spiritual journey.
Linearity
Earlier this week, I got to thinking about the difference between linearity and non-linearity. From our human perspective, most of the world appears to be linear; that is, one discrete object or experience is followed by the next, and then the next, in a linear fashion. Briefly, linearity is characterized by observable data from which we can abstract verifiable rules that guide behavior.
In this linear world, we are able to identify causation because we repeatedly observe one thing causing something else to happen. We have seen this from our infancy, over and over again, and there is very little that could make us believe in something else. There are so many examples of linearity in our daily lives. We use numbers in a linear fashion: 1… 2… 3… and so on. We believe that if you take one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen, place them in the presence of a catalyst, they will form a molecule of water. The examples seem endless.
Sir Isaac Newton developed the mathematics to describe our everyday experiences, and since then, we have trusted our scientists and mathematicians to describe and clarify the reality we see around us. On balance, they have done a splendid job. To verify this, all you need to do is look around you. The car you drive, the dwelling you live in, your everyday experiences at work – they all support this linear perspective.
Linearity, for the most part, describes the world as we experience it. However, when you look more closely, you begin to find an increasing number of things that cannot be described from this perspective. When you leave the realm of our daily experiences and look at the macro-world, the cosmos, you find that linearity no longer works very well. In parallel, when you look at the micro-world, at the level of subatomic particles and beyond, you find that they cannot be described with our linear perspective. We have left the realm of our ‘normal’ and entered into a realm that appears fantastic, where all sorts of strange phenomena occur.
If you will, we appear to live in a three–part world. At the cosmic level – including stars, galaxies, and so on – the perspective is nonlinear. At the human level – our sensory experience of the day-to-day world around us – the rules of linearity appear to govern our experience. At the micro level – the world of subatomic particles and beyond – the perspective again becomes nonlinear. The subatomic particles just do not behave like we expect, given our linear frame of reference.
These data suggest that our linear perspective may be incorrect. Does it really make sense to have a three-part world like this? Doesn’t it seem more likely that the apparent linearity of our everyday world is actually nonlinear?
Scientific Materialism
Our prevailing scientific paradigm has been one of scientific materialism. This philosophy states that only matter and energy exist. In this view, every phenomenon we experience is caused by matter and energy interacting in its several forms. This perspective has been highly effective as a means for transforming our world. Most of our technological progress has been driven by this paradigm. The combination of linear thinking in the context of this materialist worldview has been responsible for pulling humanity from subsistence living to the relative luxury we enjoy today.
There are, however, phenomena that materialism cannot explain. Scientific materialism postulates a Big Bang that started our cosmos, but it cannot explain what existed before the Big Bang or why the Big Bang occurred in the first place. It cannot explain how the spectrum of vibrant life arose from nonliving elements. It cannot explain what is called ‘the hard problem of consciousness,’ which is how our consciousness came into being from nonliving elements.
As you might suspect, scientific materialism is adamantly opposed to the notion of God or anything that might be termed ‘spiritual.’ Thus, there are serious limits to the explanatory power of this philosophy. To date, it has been unable to explain many of our most important human experiences. Experiences like our conscious awareness. Experiences like love – that strange invisible force which binds us together and which allows us to endure unimaginable suffering, and can lift us to astounding heights.
Over the last 50 years, a large array of data has been collected which are inexplicable from the perspective of scientific materialism. With the advances in medical science – advances which were created out of the materialistic perspective – we now have records of thousands of ‘near-death experiences.’ These are experiences of individuals who have died on the operating table, remained lifeless for a period of time, and then been restored to life. Many individuals who have experienced this have reported that their conscious awareness left their body and observed what was happening while they were clinically dead. These experiences indicate that the physical body is not necessary for conscious awareness. How else can you explain a verifiably dead body and a person’s consciousness existing apart from that body?
Near-death experiences are not the only phenomena that give lie to the philosophy of materialism. How do you explain the spiritual experiences of the great mystics? They regularly describe seeing God, angels, and other spiritual beings. So-called ‘miracles’ seem to occur in their presence with some regularity. Because these phenomena cannot be ascribed to material causes, scientific materialists deny their existence. To my mind, it would seem more reasonable to question the validity of the materialist perspective. To simply deny the impact of the Divine seems like cheating. Instead of taking these phenomena seriously, the way scientists take every other experience, they simply deny that these phenomena exist. In my view, this is sloppy thinking.
God and the Nonlinear
The Divine, to our continued consternation, doesn’t seem bound by linearity. The Burning Bush that Moses experienced will never be understood by observable rules. The person of Jesus Christ, likewise, cannot be understood by observable rules. How do you account for all of his miracles? His coming to life again after being crucified? How can it be that an ignorant peasant from a conquered Roman province, some 2,000 years ago, is the most famous person in the world today? None of this makes sense from a linear perspective. Yet, the facts are there, and they are incontrovertible.
Of interest, we tend to expect God to act in a linear fashion. For example, many believers pray for healing, either for themselves or for others. In general, those who pray for healing seem to want God to respond in a very specific and linear way. Their prayers go something like this: “Please, Lord, heal Aunt Mary of her cancer and restore her to health.” In effect, they are asking God to respond in a linear fashion with a specific healing for a specific person, often within a specific timeframe. Of note, these prayers are rarely answered in this manner.
As a believer, this constantly challenges our beliefs. Why would the Divine not respond according to our petitions in the way we ask? Perhaps it’s not a matter of a nonresponsive God. Perhaps, instead, we are expecting a linear response – 1 leads to 2, which leads to 3, and so on – from a nonlinear Being.
And this brings us to yet another question. How can we – creatures living in a linear framework – come to know the Divine? It seems clear that approaching God with our linear expectations is likely to be problematic. How can we move beyond these apparent limitations? This, I think, is best left for another day and another newsletter.
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Before we finish for the day, let’s look at the data we have compiled to see what conclusions we might draw:
1. While scientific materialism has contributed greatly to our material well-being, it does not answer many of our deepest and most serious questions.
2. While scientific materialism masquerades as objective truth, it is not. It is simply one philosophy among many. That being said, in a conversation with a friend of mine, a quantum chemist, he stated that “scientific materialism actually does a pretty good job of (discerning) objective truth within the bounds of the scientific method, which requires that physical explanations of phenomena must be supportable by reproducible observations.”
3. Many of the proponents of this materialist philosophy appear to be intellectually dishonest. Rather than face the serious questions raised by their philosophy, they dismiss them out of hand. These are questions like the hard problem of consciousness, what came before the Big Bang, and what precipitated the Big Bang, and many others.
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Well, I think that this is enough for this week. If you brain doesn’t feel all twisted around and upside down – well, I guess it means that I haven’t done my job well enough. LOL! On a more serious note, I hope I have helped you sort through some of the conflicting information that we get on a daily basis about what is real and what is not. The bottom line – we are all trying to get to the truth. I believe that our ultimate truth will take us into a remarkable realization – that the Divine is within us and has never, ever been apart from us.
In the certainty that we are firmly held in God’s love,
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
P.P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
37: Our Mistaken Notions of Sin
Edition #37: Inside the Invisible
I would like to focus today on the notion of sin. I have found that many run for the doors when a priest starts talking about sin. Let’s face it, it's not the most appealing topic for many. Now, I expect if I decided to categorize our many sins and went into lascivious and graphic details, perhaps that would probably attract listeners. But I'm just not going to do that. Instead, I want to talk about this most important Christian doctrine.
I want to talk about sin because it is so misunderstood. Today, the only place we use the word "sin" is in a church setting. When you greet your friends, you don't say, "Hey there, you old sinner. How's it going today?" You don't go up to strangers and start talking about your own sins… or theirs. We don't use the word, and as a result, it's meaning has drifted far from Jesus' original meaning. What I mean is that our understanding of sin is radically different from that of our Lord.
Today, if you happen to be in a church where sin is being discussed, or if you tune into a church service being broadcast that talks about sin, the chances are the speaker will refer to sin as something morally repugnant, something disgusting, something that a good Christian wouldn't be caught dead doing. Especially in public!
I expect that many of you were exposed in your youth to the sermon of that great colonial preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who spoke of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." In this sermon, Edwards describes our wayward behaviors from God's point of view. He talks about sinners being suspended over the fires of hell, held by a single strand of spider silk. Just imagine flames leaping up around the poor tormented sinner – dangling from God's hand over the fires of hell – literally a nanosecond from being released into the flames to a horrid death.
It makes for a great image, doesn't it? I guess this is what preachers had to do before movies and television – to make things so graphic and horrible that they captured everyone's attention. But this understanding of sin is as far removed from Christ's understanding of sin as the East is from the West.
* * *
The sad fact is that our understanding of sin has drifted away from its original meaning. Our present-day understanding of sin is radically different from Jesus's understanding. So, let's go back in history and find out what Jesus really meant, shall we?
To understand this passage, you need to go back a couple of thousand years. The term that was translated as sin is the Greek word, hamartia.Hamartia is a military term. It refers to the distance between the center of the bull's-eye and where your arrow or spear hit. So that distance was the hamartia. The best one-word translation for hamartia would be the English word, separation. But when the original Greek, which was the lingua franca of the day in the Mediterranean world, was translated into Latin, it came out as sin. In the early 1500s, the word sin was lifted straightaway and plopped down into English. So now we have sin as an English word.
What happened next is quite fascinating. The meaning of sin in English began to drift. A word keeps its original meaning when it's used in multiple contexts. But when it's only used in one context, that meaning can drift – and that's what happened to sin.
For example, the word chair is used in multiple contexts, so it’s meaning stays fairly constant. There is the dining room chair, the living room chair, the dentist’s chair, and so on. The idea of chair is pretty constant throughout. Even when we refer to the chair of a meeting, it refers back to the special chair that the chairperson is sitting in.
In contrast, because it is only used in church settings, the word sin has drifted from meaning separation to mean something morally reprehensible, even despicable. Contrast these two flavors in your own mind: separation versus something vile and despicable.
* * *
So, let's go to a gospel story and see if this understanding of sin holds up. Let’s use the story of the woman caught in adultery. The scribes and Pharisees bring her to the town square and get ready to stone her. Then they remember that the weirdo prophet Jesus is in town, so they send someone to fetch him. Jesus arrives, and there are all the men standing around the accused woman with big rocks in their hands. The Pharisees then say to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, the law of Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say?"
Instead of responding immediately, Jesus bends down and begins writing with his finger on the ground. The scribes and Pharisees kept questioning, and finally, he straightens up and says, "Let the one among you without sin cast the first stone." When they heard this, the crowd slowly melts away, one by one, beginning with the elders. Jesus was left alone with the woman. He asks, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She replied, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."
* * *
There are two important transitions here. The first is Jesus' comment to the scribes and Pharisees. You'll notice he doesn't accuse them of sin. He doesn't accuse them of being sexist creeps. He makes a simple declarative statement – "Let the one among you without sin cast the first stone." What a simple and elegant way to handle these judgmental and bloodthirsty guys.
The second important transition occurs when he speaks to the accused woman. He asks, "Is anyone here to accuse you? If not, then go your way and sin no more." Let's drop our new English translation into his comments: "If no one is here to accuse you, then go your own way and be separated no more."
I find his restraint here amazing! At the very least, I would have excoriated this woman – "Don't be stupid! This is a small town, and everybody knows everybody else's business!" I would have lectured and gone on and on… and Jesus doesn't do that. He didn't shame her. He didn't excoriate her. He simply said, "Go and sin no more."
Go, and don't be separated like this from your husband. Don't be separated from your community by violating the rules and standards because it hurts the community. It damages the fabric of agreement – that we act in these ways and not in those other ways. And ultimately, "Don't be separated from your Father in heaven. He constantly extends himself to you. He invites you to participate in the riches of the world around you and the riches within yourself – the riches involved in that profoundly deep connection you already have with the Divine."
You see the vast difference between our current understanding of sin and the sin that Jesus spoke of. He didn't speak to condemn sinners. He doesn't speak to condemn you or me. His admonitions, if you can even call them that, are to return to our relationship with God, our connection with the Divine. He calls us with the deepest love to remember our true nature – to remember that Christ, the son of God, lives within us. To remember that we, too, are his children. His beloved children!
* * *
Again, let's put a point on all of this. Take a moment and reflect on your own sense of separation. How do you find yourself separated from those closest to you? Let me give you an example from my own life. I'm married to a wonderful woman who, in my view, talks too much. Checking in with my male friends, I find this is a common problem for us guys. The women in our lives often chatter on and on and, "Frankly Scarlet, we just don't want to listen to all that!" – at least most of the time. I find my wife's constant chatter rather irritating. What I mean by this is that I complain to myself that she's all the time blah blah blah. Look at what I have done by means of my thoughts: I have literally separated myself from the woman who loves me most in all the world. Can you think of anything crazier than that? Anything stupider than that?
When I reflect for a moment, I catch myself in my own stupid, grumpy thoughts. And I remember, "She loves me more than anyone else in the world." And the irritation melts away. The separation that I have put up – evaporates.
* * *
We find ourselves separated from our neighbors. We find ourselves separated even from ourselves. How many times have you caught yourself saying, "Maybe I should do this, but on the other hand, maybe I should do that." That's separation, isn't it? So, we are separated not only from the people around us – we also separate ourselves from our very own selves.
And, of course, the most horrendous separation is our separation from God – our Father in heaven. We forget that we are God's children. We're like the Prodigal Son, wandering the world trying to find satisfaction and fulfillment – but no matter where we go, that fulfillment always seems to elude us.
* * *
Here's an example of how it works for me. I think I need to do something to please God, so I say to myself, "I need to be a better Ken. I need to be a better psychologist. I need to be a better writer. I need to be a better husband. I need to be more compassionate." You get the idea.
I'm forgetting that our Lord loves us just as we are. Instead, of being who God created us to be, we actively separate ourselves from ourselves. We literally tear ourselves apart trying to be acceptable.
And in the process, we forget that Jesus is already dwelling in our hearts. In the process, we forget that we are already home. And if we're already home – if you and I are already home – then there is nothing we need to do to return home, is there?
As Christ uses the word, sin is not a condemnation. He never says that we are despicable or awful or bad or any of the other things that we tell ourselves and each other. When he uses the word sin, it's an invitation to attend to the multiple ways we have separated ourselves.
It's an invitation to let loose of these separations and return home.
It is an invitation to open our hearts in love – love for our broken, torn-apart selves, love for each other, and love for our Father in heaven.
* * *
So, if I may be so bold to say, here at the end of our newsletter today, 'Go and sin no more.' And take a moment to remember that you are deeply and truly held in the love of Jesus Christ, our Lord!
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
36: Does Meditation Lead to Passivity?
Edition #36: Inside the Invisible
I had an interesting conversation recently with Father Ian, an Episcopal priest who serves a nearby community. Father Ian carries on a significant social action ministry and is very committed to social justice. As we talked about this newsletter and the Christian forms of meditation, he posed a significant question. He asked, “Will your efforts to teach meditation lead to a withdrawal from the social problems we are currently facing?”
This question is especially important now, as our country and the world seem to be roiling with political and social turmoil. The newspapers this morning are reporting that President Trump has been bragging about “taking away the freedom of speech.” This is simply the latest of many elements in the political disruption caused by the new administration. In the face of these kinds of challenges, Father Ian’s question must be taken very seriously.
* * *
Father Ian’s concern is made more poignant when you understand the history behind it. In the 17th century, in both the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, two complementary movements arose and gained great traction with believers. Pietism for the Protestants focused on devotional Bible reading in small groups for the purpose of deepening one’s personal relationship with God. Inner transformation was valued here over theological precision. The early Methodist movement, with its emphasis on small groups meeting with a spiritual elder, was an example of this Pietist movement.
Quietism was a similar movement within the Catholic Church, emphasizing inner stillness and contemplation. The notion here was that the soul should remain passive and receptive, letting God do his work within each believer’s soul. Here, especially, there was a focus on surrendering one’s personal, ego-driven desires, and contemplative prayer was seen as the highest form of Christian devotion.
With both Pietism and Quietism, followers tended to withdraw from the world and worldly activities. In contrast with those around them at the time, their activities seemed passive. Rather than actively participate in social or political controversies, these followers of Jesus withdrew from the events of their day. Father Ian’s concern, if I understand him accurately, is a concern that the events of our day call forth a very different response from the faithful.
There is indeed some truth to the notion that the more one deepens in meditation, the more one withdraws from the events of this world. That being said, the situation is far more nuanced, and these nuances cry out to be explored, given our current fragmented political situation.
The central teaching that permeates our Lord’s work on this earth is the centrality of love. Jesus enjoins us to love God with all our hearts, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. In case his followers didn’t understand exactly what he meant by love, he showed them by consorting with the most despised members of his society. He broke bread with the poor. He hung out with tax collectors, including the tax collector Matthew who is reputed to have written the gospel.
Jesus appears to have avoided both the political and religious aristocracies of his time. There are no accounts of Christ having dinner with the powerbrokers, the elite, or the wealthy. In fact, he tells the story of a rich man wanting to throw a party and sending his servants to invite the powerful and well-to-do. These so-called ‘fortunates’ all refuse his invitation, so he sends his servants out a second time to invite the poor and the destitute. These are the people with whom Jesus typically rubs shoulders.
* * *
So let’s bring this to the present day. In virtually every newsletter I have written, I have encouraged you to meditate daily. Given Jesus’s example, we need to look at what meditation does. Does it, in fact, open our hearts to the kind of love that Jesus describes, or does it push us, willy-nilly, into an avoidance of the world around us? Here is what I have found from my own experience of meditating for decades.
I started to meditate in the late 60s, another period of great political and social upheaval. During those days, I saw myself as a revolutionary; I took part in marches and demonstrations, and I called for the violent overthrow of our government. In addition to these political proclivities, I had the explicit of agenda of wanting to draw closer to God. In my understanding at that time, this also meant withdrawing from the political agitation I had been involved with. My pursuit of a closer relationship with God was clearly ego driven; I wanted that experience for my own selfish gratification. As a result, I felt I had to turn my back on the world and the needs of others.
This isn’t something I am proud of, but I suspect that this ego-centered approach probably underlies most people’s turning to God. We simply find that the world is not satisfying, so we turn to God for our own self-satisfaction. If you can step back a pace, it’s really kind of ironic. You begin your spiritual journey to satisfy your ego’s drive to be special, but as you continue, you discover your connection with every other living thing. You realize you’re not so special after all, and as a result, you end up relinquishing the ego.
As you continue to deepen your journey, you find your heart being opened in strange and unexpected ways. You see a video clip on television of a building being bombed or a starving child with a distended belly and tears falling from his eyes, and you weep. Slowly, and without noticeable markers, you find your heart being changed. When you see someone else’s pain, you find yourself being touched more and more deeply. You find that their pain has become your pain too.
Ultimately, this pain forces you to change your ego-driven ways. You find yourself more and more concerned with the needs of others. You begin to change your selfish behaviors, and sometimes you even surprise yourself with these changes. It’s no longer enough to have your precious quiet time with God. You have to DO something. You feel called to make a difference in some way.
This is the result of your efforts to be more and more open to the Divine. Your spiritual practice has opened you to an awareness of your ego’s domination over your behavior. As you become aware of your extreme self-centeredness, you are naturally repulsed. You find yourself backing away from these self-centered behaviors. The love which has been engendered in your heart starts finding ways to express itself. Maybe you find yourself signing a petition; maybe you find yourself donating money to alleviate someone’s pain. Whatever the means that this love is expressed, you find yourself caring less about your own needs and more and more for the needs of others.
The central feature of all spiritual journeys is an increasing openness to the interconnection of all living beings. That is to say, the central feature of the spiritual journey is the development of love – putting the satisfaction of our own personal needs aside so that we can address the needs of others. As Jesus summed it up so concisely, “Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another.”
This kind of love is diametrically opposed to rock throwing and slogan shouting. It’s diametrically opposed to masking your face and hiding. It’s diametrically opposed to running away from confrontations with the authorities and those in power. These behaviors are simply ego driven, and that’s clear for everyone to see.
The kind of love which Jesus describes is open and comes from the heart. It’s slow to anger. It is nonviolent, just as Gandhi and Martin Luther King have shown us. And it’s far more difficult to love in this way, because it requires a change of heart. It doesn’t find its origin in anger; its origins come from opening our hearts and receiving God’s love.
So, the bottom line as I understand it is that regular meditation will slowly and gently open your heart to God’s love. This involves a twofold behavior change. First, we change our behavior by incorporating meditation as a regular part of our daily life. This change is typically driven by our desire to draw closer to God. The important point to notice here is that we start meditation as a result of our egos’ desires.
Second, as God gently opens our hearts, we find that there is more love in our lives. This increase in love sensitizes us to the pain that others are experiencing. The more we feel this pain, the more we are moved to address and resolve it. We are moved in this way because it is no longer somebody else’s pain – somebody out there. It has now become our own pain. And, like Gandhi and Dr. King, we find that we cannot rest as long as others are being persecuted.
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Examining this process, we find that the love that Jesus speaks of is quite different from our popular conceptions of love. The popular conception of love seems to revolve around butterflies and happiness, and looking at the world through rose- colored glasses. It has nothing to do with self-sacrifice, and often revels in self-indulgence. It is the opposite of Christ’s sacrifice of himself on the cross.
Going deeper, Christ’s most significant sacrifice was not so much the sacrifice of his body. Rather, the deepest and most difficult sacrifice was that of his ego. We see this in his prayers in the garden of Gethsemane, when he reportedly sweats blood and asks his father to take the cup he is about to drink, namely his looming crucifixion, away from him if possible.
It’s strange, isn’t it, that if we truly follow Jesus, we will need to submit to a crucifixion. Ours is not a crucifixion on a visible cross; rather, our crucifixion happens, moment by moment, as we relinquish our selfishness and the demands of our ego. As each of you know, this is a difficult road that we travel. However difficult it may be, we can be confident in our Lord’s continued guidance and care.
I hope this addresses Father Ian’s concern, and any concerns that you might have had about the path that lies ahead and our ultimate destination. We are the Lord’s people, and we are his possession, not our own. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
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That’s all for this week. Again, I encourage you to continue with your daily meditation practice. You will find instructions in this regard in some of our previous newsletters. So, if you are one of our newer subscribers, you may want to dig into our archives. In our past newsletters, specifically in #5, 7, 21, 27, and 33, you will find instruction in several of the traditional forms of Christian meditation. All of the practices you’ll find in this newsletter have been developed by those spiritual elders who have come before us. You can trust that their continued practice will ultimately bring you into union with God.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
35: Clarifying the Idea of Karma
Edition #35: Inside the Invisible
The notion of karma is widely accepted at present. The problem is, our popular understanding is quite different from the notion of karma as it was originally conceived in Hinduism and Buddhism. Additionally, while contemporary Christians may use the word karma, the traditional Christian conception is somewhat different. Personally, I suspect there are elements of truth in both conceptions, and that neither the Hindu/Buddhist nor the Christian concepts are fully accurate.
The popular idea behind karma can be summarized in the familiar saying, “What goes around comes around.” Basically, this refers to the everyday understanding that all actions have consequences. Both the Hindu/Buddhist and the Christian concepts of karma agree on this point. Beyond this agreement, they diverge.
The Sanskrit word, karma, literally means action, deed, or work. Originally the word karmareferred to ritual actions, often without any hint of a moral dimension. Over time, however, karma begin to carry both moral and causal connotations. In addition, Hindus developed the notion of the transmigration of souls. This meant that the consequences of one’s actions today might be played out in a future lifetime.
Over time, the notion of karma evolved into a kind of cosmic accounting system. Thus, when a person did something good, a mark was made in the ‘Plus’ column. Conversely, when someone violated an ethical standard, a mark was made in the ‘Minus’ column.
Over time, many of these Eastern schools developed this understanding further. They posited the notion that intention is an important factor in this kind of accounting. Thus, a negative or a positive action that was deliberate and intended carried more weight than an action which was incidental or inadvertent. Of note, we find this principle embodied in our current laws.
In my experience talking with Buddhist teachers, they say that our popular understanding of karma is very different from its Eastern roots. In their understanding, there is no self-existing soul that travels from lifetime to lifetime. Instead, there is an ever-changing aggregation of karmic consequences without any personal memories or identity. Thus, in their view, our present fascination with past-life regressions is simply fantasy.
Of note, I was a member of the Association for Past-Life Regression and Therapy for several years at the start of my psychological career. Typically, the membership of that group acknowledged that their work could be explained by a number of very different hypotheses – including the fantasy hypothesis. That being said, it was also quite clear that past-life regressions were very therapeutic for many of their clients. What actually happens during these sessions is still an open question.
I suspect that we will develop more empirical information on these questions as our science explores these unknown depths in the human soul. In my first class in seminary, our professor, Dr. Edward Hobbs, suggested that we create a box in our heads much like the inbox or outbox on an executive’s desk. Instead of ‘In’ or ‘Out,’ he suggested that we label the box, “Awaiting Further Revelation.” I put matters like this into such a box. You might consider doing the same.
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Our contemporary Western experience with the idea of karma revolves around the notion of “cosmic justice.” Typically, people use this idea without the implication of reincarnation or multiple lifetimes. This, I think, shows the impact of traditional Christian thinking on these very Eastern ideas.
Christianity affirms the notion that our actions have consequences, and thus we all bear full responsibility for our actions. This is embodied in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures in multiple places. In Hosea 8.7, for example, we hear, “They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” In Galatians 6.7, we hear, “Whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” These passages clearly affirm the moral principle that our deeds, both good and evil, have clear consequences.
That being said, traditional Christian theology qualifies this with several important additions. First, there is no implication that the consequences of one’s deeds in this life carry over into future lives. Christians typically do not believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of souls.
Second, there is the important qualification that it is God the Father who sits in the final judgment over all, not just some kind of impersonal accounting system. While Christians acknowledge cause and effect, they add the notion of grace and forgiveness. Thus, even monsters like Hitler may, at God’s discretion, be forgiven their many and horrible sins.
Third, traditional Christian theology understands our journey in this life, not as an accrual of merits and demerits in some sort of cosmic accounting, but rather as the transformation of our sinful nature through both works and God’s grace. Thus, for many Christians, there is a very personal interaction between God and the soul that is quite different from the rather impersonal system of karma as it has been developed by the Eastern religions.
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So, what are we to believe? Let’s start with the agreements between East and West. It seems to me that when we find any agreement between these very different systems of belief, we can put a great deal of trust in them.
Both East and West agree in the notion that our actions have consequences. In addition, they agree that our intentional actions, both for good and ill, have more weight than casual or incidental actions. We do indeed reap what we sow!
In addition, both the East and West agree that the soul continues after the physical death of this body. While the East believes in an almost endless progression of lifetimes, the West affirms that there is only this lifetime and we will be judged by God after our death.
Thus, we see that the major divergence between Eastern and Western thought has to do with the transmigration of souls. So, what does science have to say about this difference? Here is where things get very interesting…
We need to begin by acknowledging the many and conflicting points of view that science brings to this matter. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explore all of these perspectives today. That being said, I do want to share a scientific perspective that I find persuasive. Quoting Joseph Selbie,
Over the span of the 20th and now 21st centuries, branches of physics have produced an astonishingly vast and predominantly nonmaterial view of the cosmos, a cosmos of which our enormous physical universe is only a tiny part. Current theories in physics (and) quantum theory… relegate our physical universe – which is essentially organized energy held in stable patterns – to be a small, self-contained, three-dimensional energy “bubble” in a virtually infinite two-dimensional ocean of energy – what I like to call the energy-verse.
Physicists are not alone describing a much larger, nonmaterial cosmos beyond the physical universe. Saints, sages, and near-death experiences have also described heavenly worlds of pure energy: luminous, nonphysical realms that permeate our physical universe.
The saints and sages arrived at this view through transcendent experience. Physicists arrived at this view because they have been forced to conclude, for a variety of reasons (to be explored in future newsletters), that the measurable matter and energy in our universe cannot fully explain why the universe behaves as it does. Any mathematical model that includes only the universe’s visible matter and measurable energy in its equations simply doesn’t “add up” to the actual behavior of the universe.
-If Joseph Selbie. The Physics of God. New Page Books. 2021. p 51.
Selbie goes on to say:
We inhabit simultaneously our local three-dimensional physical bodies and our nonlocal inter-penetrating, two-dimensional energy bodies. When we feel our life force, our vitality, we are feeling the subtle energies of our interpenetrating, nonlocal, two-dimensional energy bodies. Our local, three-dimensional physical bodies are the holographic projections of our nonlocal, two-dimensional holographic energy bodies. Our two-dimensional energy bodies are the source of most of what we experience as ourselves – our awareness, feelings, motivations, memories, and life energy. -p 133
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I know that I am dumping quite a basketful of new ideas on you. I promise, I will explore these ideas with you in future newsletters. What Selbie is saying is that the best minds in science appear to be hypothesizing that we exist in two very different ways. First, we exist as the three-dimensional physical person you know as yourself. This apparently real person, however, is actually a holographic projection of a two-dimensional energy body, which is the second way we exist.
Thus, if I understand this correctly, we exist as both a physical body and as an energy body. The physical body dies, but the energy body does not; it continues to exist and manifests a long succession of physical bodies.
If this is accurate, then both the Eastern and the Western spiritual traditions are both correct and incorrect. They are both correct and agree that something – the self – persists after the death of the physical body. The East misunderstood this as a transmigration: apparently there is nothing that migrates – the ‘soul’ (aka energy body) has existed all along and continues to exist after the physical body dies. The West’s misunderstanding revolves thinking that, in death, we are judged and then ‘sentenced’ (my word) to a relatively permanent place – heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, etc.
This is a lot to take in, isn’t it? When I started writing about karma, I had no idea it would take us to this place. For now, I would encourage you to sit with these data and just let them percolate for a while.
I would also encourage you to read Selbie’s book, The Physics of God. It provides a thorough summary of much of the recent research in physics and quantum physics. I am always amazed when I read the recent research in these areas. Basically, there seems to be a growing consensus among physicists that matches or integrates with the understanding of the great spiritual teachers from all of the major religions.
I find this convergence both exhilarating and validating. For most of my life, 77 years to date, science has been in opposition to religion and spirituality. Scientists have typically held that spiritual knowledge, which comes from interior exploration, in large part is vastly inferior because it is subjective. Atheists and agnostics have hammered religious views by claiming they are based on subjective, rather than objective data. Now we are seeing the physical scientists acknowledging the importance of these subjective data.
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I hope that this newsletter has answered some of the questions you might have had about karma and its implications. I also hope that our brief foray into the physics of God has stretched your minds a bit and left you somewhat uncomfortable. There is much that we still have to explore and I look forward to sharing with you in future newsletters. For now, remember to meditate daily, for that is the clearest means for our spiritual transformation. If you are new to our newsletter series, please refer back to our archives for traditional Christian methods of meditation.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
34: Interior Movement During Centering Prayer
Edition #34: Inside the Invisible
As you begin Centering Prayer, you may be disappointed as you become aware again of all the internal noise and distraction. The inner noise, however, is to be expected. You are loading the mind with less and less technique. As a result, your mind tends to wander more. Expect this, and gently bring the mind back to center with your sacred word.
After a time of practice, you will find your mind growing calmer and less distracted. The purpose of these deep forms of interior prayer is hesychia, or stillness. You may enter into a profound stillness during the time of your Centering Prayer. This is a place that has no words, thoughts, or images. When this occurs, rest here at the center and enter the Mind of God. What we are doing in our prayer is letting go of our mental constructs, letting go of our 'ideas' of ourselves and God, so that we can experience ourselves and our God directly. This is the difference between experiencing the map and experiencing the territory it covers. While the map is helpful in many respects, we can never truly know the territory from a map.
You will have noticed, as we progress in our description of different kinds of monologistic prayer, that Centering Prayer is a relatively advanced technique. As we have sequenced the preceding prayers, from the Jesus Prayer to the Cloud to Centering Prayer, there is less and less to occupy the mind. As you progress in your practice, you are able to hold your attention on the Divine with less and less loading.
People usually expect to encounter fewer problems with interior prayer as they progress to more advanced techniques. It rarely works out this way. Indeed, it sometimes seems like we are constantly starting over. In our subjective experience, it seems that the more we practice, the more aware we become of our wandering mind. When we notice this at an advanced level, there may be some despair about making any real progress.
We must understand this phenomenon of wandering mind in order to prevent despair. Father Keating likens this process to shining a light of progressively greater intensity on the surface of a carpet. Under dim light, the carpet looks clean. As we increase the intensity of the light, we begin to see big specks of dirt. When we put thousands of watts of light on a small patch of the same carpet, we see even the little tiny specks of dust.
It is the same with the mind and meditation. As we attempt to settle our wandering minds, at first, only gross interruptions interfere with our concentration. The neighbor's dog barks, we compulsively think about an upsetting event: these are the sorts of things that disturb us. As we gain strength in our practice, we find that we no longer notice these things. Instead, we notice a subtle flow of thought in the back of our minds. This often seems like the same kind of interruption, but it is not.
As you continue with your practice, you will find progressively finer flows of thought. Each of these has always existed in you, flowing in steady streams. However, due to your involvement with the larger, more significant events, you have just never noticed the more subtle streams. When we can disengage from our obsessive self-absorption, only then are we free to engage with the Divine.
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The Results of Practice. Intensive practice of Centering Prayer serves as a kind of divine therapy, allowing the false self to surface and the compulsive, destructive patterns to resolve. While this process should never substitute for psychotherapy, it can have a remarkable impact in ways that are quite similar.
The power of this divine therapy is illustrated in the story of a colleague of mine. This woman, in her early forties, came from a dysfunctional family and was unable to affirm herself in any meaningful way. She found herself compulsively attending to the needs of others and sacrificing her own well-being in the process. Despite five years of psychotherapy with very skilled therapists, she was unable to resolve the false-self complexes that drove these behaviors in her. While she obtained some relief, there was no lasting behavior change, despite her best efforts and those of her therapists.
After learning meditation and practicing for some years, she went on a ten-day Centering Prayer Intensive under the direction of Father Keating. During this time, she had a series of transformative experiences. After four days of intensive Centering Prayer practice, this is what happened:
While chanting, I became aware that all I need to do is to say "yes" and God will be a part of my life forever. It was so simple. I said "yes" and was immediately flooded with an intense feeling of love and the gift of tears. There are no words to describe what the tears are; they are not tears of grief, sorrow, pity. Perhaps the best way to describe them would be to say that they are tears of coming home, similar to the tears one has when one has been away from home for a long time and returns to the bosom of his/her family. They are not necessarily tears of joy or happiness, more a sense of overwhelming grace.
Later, while sitting in meditation, I felt as though God were gazing into my very being, flooding me with love. I have never been so tenderly loved, so completely loved, so totally accepted.
I sat down one night, determined to ask God to make changes in my life. I expected to wait quite a while before I got a sense of response, but this came instantaneously. I was overcome by a spiritual vomiting. One thing after another from my past came up. I no sooner recognized it, then another thing came up. These things that I was vomiting were the experiences of my false self: my pride, my self-pity, my preconceptions, my ideas about myself and the world. This kept up for hours, until I was exhausted. I went to bed, fully expecting to sleep because I was so emotionally drained.
Instead, as I lay there, I became engaged in wrestling with God. I know now that I was wrestling with my true self, but then it felt as though I were wrestling God. I kept holding onto all those things that I had vomited up earlier. I would not let go of them. They were how I defined and knew myself and my world. I knew that if I let go of them, my 'I' would cease to be. It seemed as though there was a soft being with me, urging me gently to let go of my vomit. But I kept wrestling with that soft being, only I wasn't strong enough. I wrestled and fought, but still that being held on. I didn't sleep at all that night.
I was still wrestling as I walked to mass in the morning. Along the road, I was 'debating' with God. I was asking God what would happen if I let go of myself. (As I write these words, now, the answer seems obvious. But you must remember that I was totally engaged in this tremendous struggle for my very being.) What would be left? Then I had a waking 'vision.' I'm still not sure what to call it. I was aware of myself looking into a mirror and seeing no reflection. I was aware of myself holding the mirror, but no reflection or anything else was coming back at me. There was just nothing in the mirror.
This, for some reason that I still don't understand, was very reassuring to me. It was as though I was still there, but I was nothing. So I said "Okay" to God and let go of myself. The next sensation I had was the experience of free-floating. Then I just was, with no more sense of falling or floating. I did not know who I was. I did know where I was and what I was doing. But I had no sense of who I was. This continued for a while. It was not bothersome. In fact, it was quite intriguing. I knew I still existed, but I did not know who this 'I' was.
I spent the next few days exploring aspects of this 'I', which was my true self, which had been hidden deep inside, below all the garbage that I had accumulated. It was like listening to an inner voice, instead of my usual thinking about things. My perception of reality shifted slightly. I became aware of the unity of all people and all things in God. This has stayed with me until today (a time period of several years).
This woman returned from the ten-day intensive as a changed person. Not only has her perception of reality shifted, as she indicates above, but her behavior has undergone a radical change. She no longer feels compelled to take care of others and to sacrifice herself for their needs. Yet, paradoxically, she seems more effective in her interactions with others and is perceived as immensely compassionate. This woman even looks different. Her husband said that when he met her at the plane, he didn't recognize her at first.
The account of this modern-day pilgrim describes what these forms of deep prayer are about. They are transformative tools that enable us to discover our true nature as children of God. The practice of meditation and contemplative prayer helps us to see ourselves as God sees us. More importantly, these practices help us to be ourselves. In the process, we come to know ourselves as participating in God's holy Presence. Here is where we find our deepest, truest nature.
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Centering Prayer is rooted in the apophatic mysticism of the Western Church and is based on the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing. Centering Prayer is rooted in a profoundly incarnational theology. It rests on the understanding that God is always with us, that the Divine is always accessible to us in our deepest center. In addition, with the work of Father Keating, there is an expansion of the Pauline doctrine of "putting on the armor of light." This theological expansion provides words for describing and understanding the transformations that occur in meditation and contemplative prayer. Thus, it enables greater precision in description and a deeper understanding of the process.
One of my concerns as a teacher and a psychologist is the applicability of different meditations for different people. For example, there is a clear developmental sequence in these meditations, which I have tried to illustrate in these newsletters. But are there certain meditations that would work better for one kind of person than another? Since we all learn in different ways, it is likely that some people will learn more effectively from one type of technique than another.
Over the years, I have found some confirming evidence for this, as we compare the Jesus Prayer with Centering Prayer. In my experience with these two techniques, I have found that their efficacy is related to personality styles. For introverts, Centering Prayer appears to be a more suitable option. Introverts work better when they don't have to 'talk', even when the talk is internal. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to find the Jesus Prayer more compatible. The Jesus Prayer provides them with a way to go deeply into prayer, while still chatting away.
Centering Prayer is a vital technique for spiritual transformation. It is not, however, a tool for beginners. The focus of Centering Prayer is too diffuse for most beginners. They have difficulty concentrating their awareness on the inner center. Thus, Centering Prayer is for those who have developed some ability to focus attention and to rest it in God. The contemplative practices that we will describe later will further enhance our ability to focus attention.
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That’s it for this week. Next week, I plan to delve deeply into the concept of karma. The concept of karma is pretty straightforward – we are each responsible for all our actions. This idea is found in all major religions, although each has developed its own terminology to describe the same phenomenon.
Please continue to meditate regularly. You now have an array of meditative practices to choose from. You will make the most progress if you pick one practice and stick with that for a time.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
33: The Practice of Centering Prayer
Edition #33: Inside the Invisible
Centering Prayer is a modification of the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing. In Centering Prayer, there is no creation of a cloud of unknowing above you or a cloud of forgetting below you. These are mental creations; ideas that are artificial and not wholly real. Instead, there is a resting of the attention in one's center, trusting that God is always present to us there. There is no attempt made to 'feel' God's Presence. Again, this would be just another 'mental' effort; something that ultimately distorts our approach to God rather than something that facilitates our approach.
Finally, there is a different use of the "sudden impulses toward God" which the author of The Cloud describes. The author of The Cloud invites us to use a one-syllable word to help focus our attention, by "fasten[ing] the word to your heart" and saying it over and over again. The authors of the Centering Prayer invite us to choose a word at the outset of our meditation, but to use it in a somewhat different way. Instead of repeating it constantly, like in the Jesus Prayer, we are to say it only when we become aware of distractions. We are to "touch distractions with the sacred word, like the light touch of a feather."
Father Keating sums up this use of the sacred word with "the four R's." These are:
1) Resist no thought.
2) Retain no thought.
3) React emotionally to no thought.
4) Return to your sacred word when you notice you are thinking about some other thought."
Centering Prayer revolves around the use of a "sacred word." Before we begin a period of practice, we must choose a word, a sound, or even a gesture. This will serve as a symbol for us, a tool to remind us of what we are doing – sitting in God's holy Presence. When distracted, we will use this word to bring us back to that central Reality.
It is important to note that the sacred word is not sacred because of any intrinsic quality of the word itself. It is sacred because it expresses our intention to be in God's Presence and to yield to His action. Your sacred word may be one of the words used to refer to God: Jesus, Lord, Kyrie (Greek for Lord), Abba, Amma (Aramaic for Father and Mother), etc. It may refer to a divine quality: Love, One, Still. It may be a gesture, made silently within yourself, such as raising the distracting thought up to the Divine. It may be totally devoid of intellectual content, such as the sound of a pure tone, or a sigh like, "Ahhh."
Whatever you choose for your sacred word, it should be simple, short, and non-reflective. That is, you shouldn't go off on a ten-minute remembrance of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount if you use the name "Jesus" as your sacred word. Furthermore, after you have chosen your sacred word, do not change it for the period of your meditation. Father Keating and the other leaders in the Centering Prayer movement recommend practicing this method for at least 20 minutes at a time. They also recommend practicing twice a day: early in the morning when you arise, and in the afternoon or evening.
Keating describes Centering Prayer as "a discipline designed to withdraw our attention from the ordinary flow of our thoughts. We tend to identify ourselves with that flow. There is, however, a deeper part of ourselves. This prayer opens our awareness to the spiritual level of our being....which is our participation in God's being."
Centering Prayer is based upon cultivating a receptive attitude. The entrance into deep quiet is a mark of the power of our developing receptivity. We are not praying to achieve a spiritual 'high,' to have no thoughts, or to do or have anything at all. Our purpose, in Centering Prayer as in all of the exercises presented here, is to be with the Lord, to be open to His Will, to be receptive to His movement in our hearts.
The reason this discipline is so crucial is simple. "The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from Him. We fail to believe that we are always with God and that He is part of every reality." The obstacle that prevents us from understanding this fundamental reality is our own thinking and worldview. "It needs to be exchanged for the mind of Christ, for His worldview." Centering Prayer, then, can be best understood as an open-hearted consent to God.
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This seems like a good stopping place for this week. I would encourage you to practice Centering Prayer until we meet again. I have found that Centering Prayer seems more natural for introverts, whereas the Jesus prayer, with all of its words, seems more natural for extroverts. That being said, both of these forms of meditation will take you very deeply into the presence of God. It really doesn’t matter which method you choose; what matters is that you find a method that is comfortable for you and that you practice with it regularly.
Next week, we will examine the interior movement that occurs during Centering Prayer in more detail. I will be sharing the experiences of a colleague who went to a 10-day Centering Prayer Intensive Retreat. In this account, my colleague shares with us a series of internal changes that occurred as a result of her meditation. Her account is very moving, and it will give you a sense of what is possible as a result of practicing this prayer.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
32: Centering Prayer
Edition #32: Inside the Invisible
In past newsletters, we have explored a very special kind of prayer known as monologistic prayer. This is a family of meditative exercises that has been developed within Christianity over the course of its 2,000-year history. Then, in weeks 20 and 27, we explored the Jesus Prayer as one of the very first examples of this special way of connecting with God. With the Jesus Prayer, you open yourself to the presence of God, move your attention into the region of your heart, and from your heart say the words of the Jesus Prayer. This is a repetitive prayer and was developed as a way of following Paul’s injunction in 1 Thessalonians, to pray without ceasing.
Over the centuries, prayerful Christians have developed other forms of monologistic prayer – forms that seemed more in keeping with the tenor of their times. This is exactly how Centering Prayer came into being.
In the mid-1970s, monks at the Cistercian abbey of St. Joseph in Spencer, Massachusetts, began to talk together about the spiritual poverty of our times. They viewed with concern the exodus of sincere spiritual seekers within Christendom who were unable to connect with their own contemplative tradition. They wanted to find a way to make the riches of the contemplative life available to the lay person who could not spend a life in the monastery. The result of their conversations is Centering Prayer, a contemporary revision of an earlier monologistic prayer, a technique that was first presented in the fourteenth century, in The Cloud of Unknowing.
Because the development of Centering Prayer is contemporaneous, we have insight into how it was created and why. This takes away the aura of “specialness” that surrounds many of the earlier forms of monologistic prayer. We see, by talking with the originators of Centering Prayer, what they were trying to address and how the prayer seemed to develop stage by stage.
Responding to an invitation from Father Thomas Keating, abbot of the monastery in Spencer, Father William Meninger developed the initial form of Centering Prayer and taught it within the walls of the monastery. Father Basil Pennington then began to offer classes outside the monastery, altering the prayer to fit in this
new environment. In 1981, Father Keating 'retired' as abbot at St. Joseph's and began to teach Centering Prayer full time to the spiritually hungry. The practice was codified in 1984, with the publication of Open Mind, Open Heart.
Like the Jesus Prayer, this form of prayer is not for the discursive intellect, and is not meant to be a forum for the creation of visual imagery or other forms of 'thinking.' Rather, it is a technique that enables us to see what lies beneath the busyness of the modern mind. It rests on the notion that, deep in our hearts, God is always with us.
The Theological Basis for Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer rests on a much more developed and sophisticated theological and psychological base than does the technique of The Cloud. Centering Prayer focuses on the incarnation of God: that God is always and everywhere present to us. Father Keating has given us a thoroughly developed understanding of the Pauline teaching of "casting off the deeds of darkness and putting on the armor of light." He not only explains the theology, he also incorporates contemporary psychological understandings as well. As a result of these deeper understandings of the inner workings of the human mind, the authors of Centering Prayer revised several elements in the prayer technique.
The basic theological underpinning on which Centering Prayer rests is that God is always with us. We find this understanding in the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, we hear in the book of First Kings that Elijah finds God in the "still small voice within." The stories of the prophets are filled with references to God being present, right in the midst of the people of Israel. This God, while being Wholly Other, is also the burning bush right in front of Moses. Not only is this God right here, He is named in the book of Isaiah, "Emmanuel", which means "God with us."
In the New Testament, the incarnate aspect of God finds its fulfillment in the person of Jesus, God's Son, sent to redeem His people. Jesus, himself, reaffirms this at crucial points in His ministry. In the gospel of John, Christ states "I am the good shepherd." The shepherd stands with his sheep; that is the nature of shepherding. A bit later in the gospel of John, our Lord says, "I am the vine, you are the branches." In case we didn't understand the inseparable nature of the shepherd with the sheep, Christ gives us an elaboration of this notion with His vine image. There is no place in the vine where you can clearly say that the vine stops and the branches begin. Not only is God with us, He is indistinguishable from us except in the most general of generalizations. And at the very end of His incarnate time, in the last words of the book of Matthew, Jesus says, "know that I will be with you always, even to the end of time."
The understanding which has come down to us through the Church, is that we are grafted onto Jesus by means of our baptism. Jesus, then, is always present in the soul of the one baptized. This theological understanding has been verified experientially by those who have devoted themselves to drawing closer to God. Generations of Christian contemplatives, those who have traveled the spiritual path before us, have indicated that Christ lives in the soul, and the soul is found in our hearts. Not the physical organ, but in our spiritual center which is located in the same general vicinity.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of this grafting and the transformation it can bring is found in the story of Saul of Tarsus, at the very beginning of the Christian era. Saul, the persecutor of Christians, the apostle who never knew Jesus in the flesh, was utterly transformed by his encounter with the risen Christ. Jesus even gave him a new name, Paul, to mark this transformation.
While much is made of his visionary experience on the road to Damascus, little attention is given to the quiet, yet more profound part of Paul's journey. Over the course of his remaining years, Paul changed and matured spiritually. As he gained knowledge of God's indwelling Presence, his connection with the Christ strengthened immeasurably. He was able to write from prison in Rome, just before his execution, "nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." He is writing here, not from faith. His is not a strong hope in Christ. He writes like a man who knows. He knows that nothing can separate him from the Lord because that has been his daily experience in prayer. Paul has 'seen' and 'felt' and 'listened to' the Christ who dwells in his heart.
This is the close connection with Christ that we all long for. The basic understanding, which forms the foundation of Centering Prayer, is that God is already present with us, in our center. We are already redeemed; we are already participating in the Divine. We are already one with God, our Savior. There is nothing we need to do to come to our Redeemer.
We don't feel like this, though. These assertions of closeness to God run counter to our felt experience. Our felt experience of separation, however, is fundamentally untrue. Our felt experience is a result of our dissociation – our disconnection from our true self. The authors of Centering Prayer reiterate the same message that all the deepest mystics of the Church have given us: there is no fundamental separation between God and her people. There is no abyss to cross, no journey that is necessary. What we hear from our spiritual Fathers and Mothers is something radically different. What they say is this: "God is closer to you than you are to your very self."
Our Felt Separation. Two thousand years ago, St. Paul struggled with the same profound sense of separation that we struggle with today. He complained, "I do the things that I don't want to do, and I don't do the things I want to do. What is wrong with me?"
Modern psychological investigators have addressed the same phenomena using different language. D.H. Winnecott uses the terms true self and false self to describe these experiences. Father Keating has adopted these terms to explain the apparent contradictions within the human psyche. From this perspective, each of us creates a false self – a socially adapted ego – in response to the pressures of growing up. We learn very early that some parts of ourselves are not acceptable. Boys learn that it is not acceptable to show emotions, such as crying. Girls learn that it is not acceptable to be rowdy and loud. As our egos develop, we often cut off these parts of ourselves because they are not socially acceptable.
The false self is our response to social pressure. None of us develops 'naturally.' That is, none of us is ever allowed to be just as we are. Rather, the human infant undergoes a constant process of shaping and conditioning, during which we learn to be acceptable to others. This socialization process is crucial for us if we are to get along with one another in groups. However, it is achieved at a high cost. Our Lord indicates that, to return to our true nature and to return home to God, we must become like little children.
In addition to pruning away parts of ourselves, our socialization in childhood also entails the creation of a variety of emotional programs, many of which are dysfunctional. As a culture, we are finally waking up to the social devastation in which we dwell. As a clinical psychologist, I saw the horrid effect of these old emotional programs every day. I saw women who were sexually abused as children internalize this abuse and seek out men who abuse them as adults. I saw children who grew up with abusive parents develop clusters of dysfunctional personality traits that are the perfect complement to their early abuse.
So you see, our socialization literally programs us for unhappiness. This happens in two ways: 1) by the pruning process of socialization, and 2) by the creation of dysfunctional emotional programs, which then act to 'control' the choices we make in our lives. All of this is absolutely contrary to the words of our Creator!
After creation, God looked at her work and said that it was good. Indeed, it was very good. We act, however, as if parts of that creation were not good and have to be cut off. We have left that centered, balanced place where we are in tune with the Divine, with nature, with one another, and with our deepest selves. We are like Esau; we have sold our birthright for next to nothing, for a mess of pottage. We have abandoned our true self, created by God, and exchanged it for a maladaptive false self.
Father Keating rightly recognized that the meditation process is a direct attack upon this construct of the false self. During meditation, we attempt to focus and concentrate our attention. This is a process radically different from anything else we do. Instead of being plugged into the old programming of the false self – instead of listening to the thoughts and feelings that are governed by this old programming – we disengage from it. We simply rest our attention in God.
From the perspective of the false self, we are unaware of how to access the true self. We simply cannot see it. We are not even sure that it exists at the start. We take its existence on faith and begin our attempt to shed our old skin. Because we don't know how to get to the true self, we can't do anything other than unplug from the old. Most attempts to dosomething to get away from this false self are actually directed by that same false self. We cannot use it as a tool to cut itself.
All that we can do is to disengage our attention from the old, sinful person and from the false self. As we know from our experience in meditation, even this is incredibly difficult. We rest our attention in God, and moments later, we become aware that we are once again wrapped up in our thinking. So, once more, even in meditation, we find ourselves following the dictates of the ego, the false self. Eventually, however, the false self will run out of fuel and die. Then the true self, which has been obscured within our deepest interior, will emerge. When the true self emerges, we become aware of our deep connection with God and with all of her Creation.
This description of the destruction of the old self and the emergence of the true self that God creates is taken from experience. It is not something made up or imagined. We first hear of this process in the letters of St. Paul. Paul, through much prayer over many years, accomplished this process within himself. With this perspective in mind, the lives of the saints become much clearer. From this perspective, we see that the variety of disciplines that they used were attempts to disengage from the ego, the false self.
It is only from this perspective that certain passages of the gospels make any sense. Central to all the gospels is Jesus' command that we should love one another, even to the extent of loving our enemy. From the perspective of the false self, however, we cannot love our enemy. Our enemy, by definition, is one whom we hate. Only from the perspective of the true self – the self which knows that it is deeply interconnected with all beings – can one have an enemy and love that enemy!
From this understanding of the deep psychological dynamics that are involved in our journey toward God, our Center, we begin to see why certain things are the way they are. Because our false self readily adjusts to every social situation, we see this falseness played out in every church community. From this perspective, we see that a conscious decision to choose Christ is not enough to lead a Christian life. Any conscious decision, including those related to the spiritual life, does not really touch the deep unconscious programming of the false self. These decisions, well-intentioned though they may be, are regularly subverted by the false self. It is only through engagement in the regular disciplines of deep prayer and meditation that we can break free of the ego’s control over our lives. The nondiscursive meditations, such as Centering Prayer, draw us into the realm of God's grace. As we spend time in meditation, these ego–derived programs are gradually drained of their energy and finally discarded.
Thus, the deep forms of prayer function as a kind of divine therapy. Father Keating states that the process of meditation and contemplative prayer allows our old emotional programs to come to the surface, where their energy can be discharged.
In our meditation, at this point, there is a reduction of interior dialogue. This reduction removes the constant reinforcers of the false self system. This quieting of the thoughts, the gross movements of the mind, allows the more subtle attributes to be seen. Ultimately, we disengage even from these. The energy that previously fueled the false self is withdrawn. As this occurs, the false self shrivels and the true self emerges. Finally, we realize that this true self has been in union with God all along. We simply could not be aware of this union from the perspective of the false self.
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I hope you have found this newsletter helpful in understanding what happens during the spiritual journey. We are embarked upon this fascinating expedition into the dark unknown – the unknown that exists within each of us. We are promised riches beyond all imagining if we persevere to the end. As with the story of the Prodigal Son, God promises to throw us a party when we finally find our way back home. So keep up with your meditation, even (or perhaps especially) when your meditations seem dry or pointless. You know when that happens that your false self is fighting for its very existence – you have pressed it to the edge.
God bless you in your inner work. Next week, we will learn how to do Centering Prayer.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
31: Positional Thinking and Attachment
Edition #31: Inside the Invisible
I really hope that your head hasn’t exploded after last week’s newsletter. Writing it induced a number of cracks in my skull, and I felt a certain rumbling and agitation in my head this week. Thankfully, my head didn’t come apart. But I want to warn you, your head and mind may well explode with the newsletter on your screen right now.
Let’s start with the dualism inherent in positional thinking. Positional thinking is so ordinary that we rarely give it a thought. This kind of thinking involves having an opinion about something, and we do that all the time. But we don’t realize, and we refuse to acknowledge, the simple fact that our positional thinking traps us.
That’s right, it traps us! It locks us into a particular position, and then we find ourselves defending that particular position.
I was noticing this as I was watching a college football game earlier today. Two teams were playing that I really didn’t care about, but after a minute or three, I found myself rooting for one of the teams. How did that come about? I don’t know – it just seemed to happen. When stuff like this happens ‘automatically,’ I start to wonder what’s really going on. Why did I make this choice, and why did I need to make the act of choosing invisible to myself?
It’s such an automatic response, isn’t it? We form opinions all the time, often out of thin air, based on little or no knowledge. We think this is good and that’s bad; this is attractive and that is not. After the opinion is formed, we then act as if our opinion is the right one. If someone should happen to challenge our opinion, even if we know little or nothing about the subject, we step up to defend it. Why?
At least part of the why is because it’s our opinion. My opinion is special because it’s mine. I have the fanciful illusion that I own that opinion. In actual fact, the exact opposite is true. Once I form an opinion, it owns me. I find myself defending it, sometimes defending it as if it were the most important thing in the world. But let’s be serious. It’s just an opinion, right? And we each have hundreds or thousands of opinions about virtually everything. And all of those opinions, plus a couple of bucks, will get you a cup of coffee.
Understanding this about opinions leads us directly into the subject of attachment. This is one of the most important concepts in all of spiritual thinking, and the Buddha appears to be the original thinker about these matters. Gautama stated that attachment is the core problem that keeps us from realizing our true nature. So, what is attachment, and where does it come from?
We often think our spiritual problems are caused by running after money, or chasing after pleasure, or pursuing any of the myriad objects that fascinate us so. What we are noticing here is our attachments to these goals.
Here’s how it works. We decide we like something. Often this seems to occur of its own accord, as a consequence of our dualistic thinking. Our desire then magically forms an attachment to the object of our desire, and then we chase after it, often spending all our time and energy in its pursuit. But the problem is not really money or sex or pleasure or any of the attachments that we have created. The problem lies in the attachment, as well as the illusion that if we grasp the object of our desire, we will be happy and fulfilled.
Stop and think for a minute. In your life, you have chased many a goal, and you have no doubt achieved many of them. But how often have these achievements given you any lasting happiness?
In my experience, there is usually a brief moment of happiness when I accomplish something, but it never lasts for long. When I compare the effort, the time, and the energy necessary to accomplish some of these goals, it definitely doesn’t seem worth it. So why do we continue chasing our crazy goals, if, in the end, they are not really worth it?
The reason we chase our goals is for the pleasure and satisfaction we get when we accomplish them. There is even a strange sort of pleasure in the negative positions we take. While anger and hatred wouldn’t ordinarily be considered desirable, we often hold on to them. That is, we attach ourselves to these positions. Why? Because when we are angry, we give ourselves a little shot of adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol – so even unpleasant things can be rewarding. But is this what we really want? Is the brief satisfaction we get worth the price we have to pay?
It comes down to a simple question: do you want to know God or not?
If you do, then it will be necessary to give up our attachments to everything else. Ultimately, we must even relinquish our egos, our sense of self, because in the last analysis, our egos are the final barrier to our union with the Divine.
I would invite you to join me in a simple thought experiment. Sit back in your chair, position your body in a comfortable way, uncross your legs and ankles, and let your hands rest gently in your lap. Close your eyes, and then start to let go of what you are presently experiencing.
Let go of your thoughts. Oh, they will continue to rattle on, but there is no need for you to pay attention to them for now. So, for the purpose of our ‘thought’ experiment, let go of the mental part of your life. For now, stop following them.
Let go of the physical sensations flowing through your body. Again, your body will continue to exist, and it will continue to pump out sensation after sensation. For now, however, there is no need to pay attention to those sensations. Just let go…
Thoughts and sensations will continue to arise in your awareness. Let them all go. Notice instead the underlying awareness. Rest in this contentless awareness for a time.
When your attention is disturbed, when it is caught by a passing thought or sensation, just let it go and refocus on the underlying awareness. It is as if your awareness is the screen on which your thoughts and sensations are projected. We don’t notice the screen on which movie images are projected when we go to the movies. In the same way, we don’t typically notice our awareness as the screen on which our thoughts, emotions, and sensations are projected. We notice what is projected on the screen of awareness, rather than the awareness itself.
When you are ready, open your eyes. Take a deep breath and let yourself be aware, once again, of the flood of thoughts and sensations streaming through you.
When I do this, I feel a sense of lightness, a sense of aliveness. Everything seems fresh and bright. My awareness is not all clogged up with stuff – with thoughts, objects-of-desire, sensations, etc. In its pure form, there are no judgments, there is no duality. There is just Is-ness… Awareness.
My ego is still there, but by letting go of the stuff it usually entertains me with – my thoughts, emotions, and sensations – it is hamstrung. It can’t function like usual. I am not facilitating my ego’s running after things, running after objects-of-desire. And the space that is created by this maneuver allows me to sense what is hiding underneath the cover of the ego and its busyness.
In doing this, we are relinquishing our judgments and our positional thinking. We are letting go of our usual experiences so that we can go deeper. Instead of surface-level thinking and sensation, we begin to experience the deeper parts of ourselves, the parts that are intimately connected with God. If you will, we open ourselves to the Divine.
This is both our true heritage and our true home.
By the way, don’t be upset if you have trouble with this. Having trouble here simply shows us how strong our ego-functioning really is. And yet, notice how fragile it is as well. When we engage in this thought experiment in the early stages of our meditative development, the ego goes into overdrive, trying to regain control. If it succeeds for now, don’t worry. Our God loves us and is fighting for our freedom. While the ego is necessary for us to get along socially, it is ultimately a tool that will be discarded. Nobody bothers riding a tricycle once they learn to ride a bike. And nobody stays with the training wheels on their bike once they have learned how to balance.
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Well, I need to stop here and give my aching head a rest. Over the next couple of weeks, we will explore Centering Prayer – one of the great additions to our contemplative toolkit. So, keep up your daily meditations to the best of your ability. And, from time to time, give yourself “the pause that refreshes” and revisit our thought experiment above.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
30: The Invisible Trap of Judgment
Edition #30: Inside the Invisible
Today I want to explore a concept that I call positional thinking. I am basing my thoughts on some original work by Dr. David Hawkins. Dr. Hawkins, to my knowledge, originated the concept of positionality. For the longest time, I have had difficulty wrapping my head around this label. I just didn’t understand it, or rather, I would understand it briefly, and then the idea would slip away.
At some point, I realized that Hawkins was discussing a particular way of thinking, and this opened up the idea for me. Positional thinking involves making a judgment about something. The seduction of a judgment is that it maintains
the illusion that we understand what’s going on, when in fact we don’t. By making these judgments, we hide ourselves from the truth. We also assume that, by means of our judgment, we now have some control over the object of our judgment. These are wonderful delusions that reinforce our ego and our spiritual stuck-ness.
Let’s start by examining the concept of judging. For example, I might say, “It’s too dark in here, so let’s turn on a light.” This is the kind of judgment that we all engage in on a daily basis. We look at a specific phenomenon and then make a variety of judgments about our experience. On the surface, this seems absolutely ordinary and unremarkable, but just below the surface, we find an amazing error.
We have assumed that light and darkness form a continuum, with various degrees of light and darkness. In actual fact, there is no such continuum. Instead of a continuum, we are actually observing a unipolar phenomenon – light! Darkness does not exist as an entity that can be labeled. I know this sounds weird, but bear with me for a moment.
When have you ever seen somebody flip a wall switch and turn on the darkness? That never happens, does it? It doesn’t happen because only light exists. What we call darkness is actually the absence of light. Here is a clear example of our tendency to not see reality, to not see what is actually before our eyes. We think we see darkness; we label what we see as darkness, but in actuality, we are seeing the absence of something, not the existence of an entity we call darkness.
If this were an isolated example, we could easily ignore it. Unfortunately, our perceptions are riddled with this kind of error. Let me give you some examples. Let’s take hot and cold – two apparent polarities that are very important to us every time we step into a shower. However, cold doesn’t exist. Cold is the label that we give to the absence of heat.
“Okay,” you say. “But what about good and evil? Surely you are not going to say that evil doesn’t exist!” Once again, let’s look at this carefully. When have you ever seen a measure of evil? The only measurements of evil that exist are in our subjective judgments. When you examine the writings of the great thinkers who have explored this issue, philosophers such as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Baruch Spinoza, they universally conclude that evil is simply the absence of good. Once again, we have a unipolar phenomenon – only good exists. Evil, as we understand it, is simply the absence of good.
So, what are we doing here? In essence, we are mistaking our perceptions for reality. We have created a series of collective delusions – by assuming that something exists when it actually doesn’t – and we’ve enshrined these delusions in our language. Because of these shared delusions, we have changed our behavior to accommodate them.
I know all of this sounds terribly abstract and difficult to comprehend, so let’s try to create an example. Imagine that there is a spot in your living room where you imagine a very special chair rests. Everyone in the family honors this imaginary chair by walking around it. Nobody is allowed to sit in this chair except for honored guests. So far, so good. This shared delusion is relatively innocuous right up until the moment that special guest arrives.
Can you imagine that guest’s consternation when invited to sit in this special but imaginary chair? The guest might comment, “But there’s nothing there – I don’t see a chair!” The family insists and says, “Not only is there a chair, but it’s a very special chair and reserved for special guests just such as yourself.” You might wonder what would happen if this guest actually tried to take a seat in this very special chair.
It’s the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, isn’t it, but set in a different context. And like the Emperor’s new clothes, this imaginary chair can lead to catastrophic consequences. This is what happens with positional thinking. It seems to work just fine, right up until the point that it stops working.
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Not only does positional thinking lead us to misperceive the reality around us, it also impacts us in other ways. For example, by assuming a continuum between good and evil, we have created an illusion that we understand the nature of these two categories. But when we assume that they exist on a continuum, we have actually turned our back on the reality of the situation. It means that we assume evil has some objective existence, and therefore some sort of validity. Nothing could be further from the truth! Of all of the distortions that we might engage in, making mistakes about the true nature of good and evil might be the most dangerous.
A case in point is the rise in Satanism in Western cultures. If you mistake evil for something that has an independent existence, it seems logical, and perhaps even reasonable, to worship the God of evil, Satan. You would simply see Satan as one of many gods, and thus, as a powerful entity. Once you realize that evil has no independent existence, however, then Satan is revealed as a chimera, the figment of our overheated imaginations.
Sadly, the damage doesn’t stop here. When we use positional thinking and make judgments about things or behaviors, we have created for ourselves the illusion that we have some control over these mental objects. This harkens back to the magical thinking of our forebearers – that if you can name something, having that name gives you power over that which is named. This is simply not true.
The sad part is, by not reflecting on this matter so that we can discern the truth about it, we waste time and energy. We situate ourselves at the center of a delusional fantasy, a kind of ‘pretend’ situation, all the while thinking that we have mastered the matter. When reality knocks on our door, our fantasies disappear in a poof of smoke, and we are heartbroken.
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There is yet another critical aspect to our mistaken beliefs. While believing that we control something as a result of our positional thinking, we are actually being controlled.
Our positional thinking – our judgments – lock us into a fixed position. By engaging in positional thinking, we have bound ourselves to a particular position. For example, by saying things like, “I’m a Democrat,” we have locked ourselves into whatever being a Democrat means to you. The same with saying you are a Republican. For example, you may support the political position of having secure borders for our country, but be appalled at the way the current administration is treating immigrants. By locking yourself into a particular political position, however, you are identifying yourself with something you don’t actually support. We take a position, thinking that we are defining ourselves. We don’t typically see it as a process whereby we sacrifice our freedom.
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So, what does all this mean? In effect, we are creating a prison for ourselves by our positional thinking. Here’s how it works. What we believe is what we experience. Using the light/dark example above, we have always thought of darkness as a thing-in-itself. Because we believed it to be a separate thing, that’s exactly what we experienced – we saw darkness as a separate thing, even though careful analysis shows us that it isn’t.
Now, let’s take a step back and look at what is driving our thinking. It is our ego. Your ‘I’ is what is generating your thoughts. For example, we commonly say, “I think (fill in the blank.) While our ego is necessary to get along in the world, it actually is in business to gratify itself. It is about Me-Me-Me. And ultimately, our ego becomes an obstacle in our search for the Divine.
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Has your head exploded yet? If it has, don’t worry. Your ego will soon put it back together again. But hopefully, I have started you on a road that will lead you to question our conventional reality. What is actually real is radically different from what we have assumed, and careful analysis helps us peel away the deceptions so that we can get to the Truth. And it is the Truth that will set us free!
This week, you may find it helpful to read this newsletter several times. The material we are covering is very difficult to understand. It is also very important as it bears heavily on the success of our spiritual journey. So hang in there, and remember to meditate every day.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
29: An Introduction to Unitive Consciousness
Edition #29: Inside the Invisible
When you dig deeply enough, when you open your eyes and leave behind the preconceptions you have been taught about religion, you realize something extraordinary. You realize that the goal of all of the major world religions is virtually identical! Despite the vast differences in their theological understandings, each religion has created a path that results in the unification of the spiritual aspirant's consciousness with the Divine. Given this information, it may be reasonable to say that there is only one religion, and this religion has a variety of pathways, each of which leads to the same ultimate goal.
This is a truly amazing finding. When you consider the vast quantities of blood that have been spilled in the religious wars throughout the centuries, this finding is almost unbelievable. Each of the major religions, in one way or another, has asserted its primacy. Each has proclaimed that they are the only true religion; each has asserted that their path to God is the only true path. Yet, when we compare the paths to God described by each of these religions, we find they are identical.
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Today, I thought it might be useful to explore the goal that our religious beliefs have in common – the notion of unitive consciousness. Each of the major religions talks about the goal of a spiritual life as a process that unites our conscious awareness with the Divine. What does this notion refer to? How might we describe it? The easiest way to explore this topic is to describe how each of the major religions understands the goal of spiritual striving. From these data, we will be able to stand back and see what they actually have in common.
To accomplish this, we must disregard the numerous schools of thought within each of the major religions. The major religions have been around for thousands of years, and it is natural that there would be some variability of understanding about the spiritual path within each religion. As a result, I have chosen one mystic from each of these religions – a mystic regarded as authoritative within their own religion. (You can find a fuller exposition of this material in my recent book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transformation.)
So, what does the goal of the spiritual path look like in each religion?
Hinduism
Hinduism describes a series of spiritual states that culminate in a state called Dharma-Megha-Samadhi. In this state, the aspirant's mind has relinquished all attachments and, as a result, it has established itself in its real nature, which is pure Consciousness. To attain this state, the spiritual aspirant has had to focus attention to such a degree that there is no longer any individual content left in awareness. This process typically takes a very long time and is often described as spanning multiple lifetimes, as the individual is reincarnated over and over again.
Buddhism
The Theravadan school of Buddhism, the earliest in the historical record, describes the goal of the spiritual life as the attainment of Fruition Consciousness. This is the final stage of Enlightenment, where the spiritual aspirant has finally relinquished all desires, and all grasping at the objects of desire. To reach this state, the aspirant has progressed through a series of meditations that have developed one’s concentration to a very refined degree. In the process, the aspirant perceives that all objects of awareness are impermanent and painful, and as a result, the aspirant disengages from all objects of awareness. There is a unification of consciousness with itself, and the aspirant enters into Nirvana.
Daoism
In Daoism, the spiritual aspirant engages in a series of extended meditative exercises. As a result, outward actions gradually diminish and the mind rests in a deeper and deeper peace. All desires are relinquished, and the mind becomes utterly detached from them. From this detached state, the aspirant is able to distinguish between what is real and what is not; the mind becomes utterly empty and reaches a stable state of serenity. In this state, the aspirant reaches Dao within the mind, and insight into the true nature of reality emerges. When the mind and Dao are fused into one, the body and spirit are also fused together in a unique way, and one is no longer limited by the usual constraints of space and time.
Judaism
Hasidic Judaism understands this unification to take place as the result of a series of ever-more refined states of concentration while contemplating the Divine. The conclusion of these exercises is a full and open communion with God, such that the essence of the soul is attached to the essence of God. Here, there is only one will – the will of God – and one’s whole being is absorbed into the Divine, so that nothing of the individual self-consciousness remains. In this unitive state, one has no self-consciousness. There is only the limitless love of God.
Christianity
In the Christian view, the spiritual aspirant progresses through a series of meditative exercises designed to focus and sharpen one’s concentration. As this occurs, the soul experiences a union with God such that all faculties – the senses, will, imagination, and memory – are suspended and one no longer has awareness of anything but God. At the end of the spiritual journey, the soul is fully united with God and experiences the immediate presence of the Trinity in every moment. The spiritual aspirant no longer experiences intense raptures but a different kind of pleasure that is extreme and indescribable. There is a sense of inner peace and a return to activity in the world.
Islam
The spiritual aspirant goes through a long progression of concentrative exercises, which result in the abandonment of sin, a renunciation of the world, and the abstention from blameworthy acts. Out of this arises a remembrance of God and finding Him. Ultimately, this results in a union with God and an expansion of wisdom. One is liberated from all needs and attachments, and there is a peace which God pours into the heart so that the spiritual aspirant tastes freedom. This is an acceptance of God’s guardianship. One becomes free from all attachments and finds intimacy and love in the Divine rather than in oneself. One becomes free from the self and returns to God.
* * *
As you can see by this aggregation, the major world religions have much in common when they describe the path to God. In every case, there is a series of meditative exercises designed to sharpen the focus of one’s concentration. It’s important I think to ask, why is this necessary. Only by probing these data will we come to understand the rationale behind them.
I have come to understand the rationale for this emphasis on concentration through a strange and peculiar parallel. (This is probably because I’m a strange and peculiar guy. After all, how many priest/psychologist folk do you know?) The parallel that came to mind as I struggled with understanding this has to do with women in stilettos. If you have ever had your foot stepped on by a woman wearing high heels, you immediately experience excruciating pain. All of her weight is focused on a point about ¼ of an inch square. If this same woman happens to step on your foot while wearing flats, there is no pain at all.
Here’s the parallel. When her weight is focused, it has the ability to punch through things – namely, your foot! In the same way, when your attention is highly focused and concentrated, it has the ability to “punch through” the observable reality in front of us so that we are able to see the Ultimate Reality which lies behind it.
As we draw closer to the Divine by developing our concentrative abilities, we begin to experience some unusual phenomena. We find ourselves relinquishing our grasping at things, and ultimately, we relinquish our desire for those things altogether. Instead, by focusing our desire on God, we find ourselves drawing closer and closer to the Divine.
Ultimately, as we find ourselves standing next to the Divine, we even relinquish our self, our ego identity. Instead, we find a deeper and truer identity in God. This is the pathway that the saints from all religions have followed. As they have gotten closer and closer to the Divine, their self-consciousness has disappeared, and the limitless love of God flows through them and into the world. It is from this spiritual place that the miracles, apparent in all of the religions, have occurred.
We have a clear example of this process in the Christian Scriptures. As St. Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
* * *
I hope that you have found this newsletter interesting and helpful in your spiritual journey. While each religion covers up the actual process for spiritual growth with its own doctrinal understandings, I believe we can learn a great deal when we aggregate this information.
Historically, each religion has presented itself as the only true path. Rationally, we know that this can’t be. If one is true, then the others must be false. But what if we simply accept that they all are true? What if we accepted the hypothesis that each religion, to the best of its ability, is speaking the truth?
For example, if six different people saw the same tree, each from different vantage points, we would expect six different descriptions, wouldn’t we? Why would we not expect the same about six different descriptions of something far more complex – the path to God? When we remove the conceptual blinders we have been taught by our various religious authorities and examine the data on its own merits, we start to see the things they have in common. This, I believe, enhances our understanding of this most complex of human processes – that of walking the spiritual path, that of entering into a life wholly devoted to God.
* * *
That’s all for now. I hope I have disturbed you a little and shaken up your view of what constitutes the Truth. I hope today’s newsletter has given you a glimpse of the path in front of you. Typically, we who tread the spiritual path have had little knowledge of what lies ahead. We have had to travel on faith. I hope these newsletters provide you with solid knowledge. Knowledge that you can verify for yourself through your own experience as you engage in these concentrative exercises we call ‘meditation.’
Next week, we will start to tackle something even more fascinating, so stay tuned. And may our Lord continue to bless you as we walk the Way together!
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
28: Achieving Peace of Mind
Edition #28: Inside the Invisible
Have you ever longed for more peace of mind? I certainly have, and I had a very interesting conversation with Mike this week about just this topic. Mike is an old friend from Southern California who is now a subscriber. He said some things that made me stop and reflect on what we are doing here with the newsletter.
Mike’s background is in marketing, so he sees the world from that perspective. He said, “What you are selling, Ken, is peace of mind.” I had never thought of it in those terms. From my perspective, I’m not selling anything. This newsletter is free; if anything, I’m trying to give it away! Mike insisted, “No, the product you’re selling – whether you get any money for it or not – is peace of mind!”
On reflection, I realized Mike was right. What I’m trying to do is to give you the tools that will enable you to connect with your own deepest, most innermost self. In my experience, people who have realized this deep connection also experience extraordinary inner peace. They are people who radiate joy. It’s not happiness they have – happiness comes when something is added to you from the outside. No, what these people have is access to a deep current of joy that freely streams in their depths. And it streams through every moment of their life.
You have undoubtedly noticed by now that I keep promoting meditation. The reason I keep encouraging you to meditate is that I believe this is the most efficient way to connect you with your deepest being. It is a way for each of us to tap into that deep peace and joy in our depths.
We typically stand at a remove from ourselves. We are bombarded from all sides with an overload of information, so we have learned to tune out the noise that comes from outside. Sadly, though, we seem to have internalized all of these streaming channels. As a result, our minds give us more streaming, and it’s not so easy to shut these thoughts off. You know, all the inner chatter about the political uproar and the changing economic situation, the uproar of friends losing their jobs, and the fear that surrounds all of us today.
There are two things you can do to connect with your deepest being. The first is meditation, which, over time, will help you diminish and ultimately relinquish the inner chatter in your head. The second thing you can do, which will help you find peace of mind, is to change your outward behaviors. And this is where a second conversation came in.
I was talking with Zilvinas, who is a subscriber on the other side of the world, in Lithuania. We are able to talk thanks to the magic of video calls, and we were focusing on how we make behavioral changes in our lives. We asked ourselves, How do we become more generous? We realized that you can’t just jump from our usual selfish ways to a magnificent philanthropy. So how do you make these kinds of changes?
You start with little things, don’t you? You become aware of the needs of others, and you push yourself to give in small ways. Perhaps you begin by seeing something that your partner has left undone, and instead of mentally complaining, you simply take care of it. As you continue to perform these simple acts of generosity, you begin to realize that doing so brings you a sweet kind of joy. It’s not the “wowie-zowie-out-of-your-mind kind of happiness,” but rather a small, quiet sense of satisfaction.
After a time, this new behavior becomes your ‘normal.’ When you began to deliberately become more generous, you had to exert effort. You had to “open your eyes” to see what needed to be done. You had to make the conscious decision to act in a new way. You had to follow through with a change in your actual behavior. After a while, though, these exertions become commonplace and you realize they have become your new normal.
It reminded me a bit of what I experience with gardening. I planted late this year, and I decided to grow some herbs. I planted quite a variety – cilantro, oregano, parsley, thyme, tarragon – and watered them every day. Nothing happened. The dirt just stayed dirt. And then, after a week or so, to my great delight, the oregano seeds began to sprout with these little pinpoints of green – so tiny that they were just barely visible. After a few days, some of the other herbs began to sprout as well, but I noticed that nothing was happening with the parsley. I wondered why, and then reread the seed packet again. Parsley takes 18 to 24 days to germinate. I was amazed that it took so long.
This means that I need to keep watering the dirt where I planted the parsley seeds for a relatively long time – a time when I will see no visible results for my efforts. This seems to be a direct parallel with what happens as we try to change our behavior. You have to put in a lot of effort over an extended period of time for those changes to become established. Once they are established, though, they become our new ‘normal.’
Our conversation led Zilvinas to talk about his wife’s description of her meditation efforts. She doesn’t use the Jesus Prayer or any of the rather fancy forms of meditation. Instead, she simply sits still for 15 minutes or so and lets go of the chatter in her head. She doesn’t have a particular method for doing this; she just lets go. When she gets up from her meditation, she reports that she’s much calmer. She said, “It’s almost like the rest of the day becomes a kind of extended meditation.” When asked about this, she said, “My meditation seems to turn off the streaming in my head, or at least, it turns down the volume quite a bit.” In either case, she finds herself closer to her inner being, and she reports a much greater peace of mind.
* * *
So we see that the most efficient way to achieve the deep inner peace we long for is to work in two parallel channels. The first channel is to change our outward behaviors. The major world religions have agreed that four kinds of behavior change are necessary for inner peace. These include: no lying, no stealing, no inappropriate sexual behavior, and no violence. As you can see, these behaviors are framed as things we should avoid. They do not address the positive behaviors we should cultivate. Behaviors like generosity, kindness, and concern for others.
The second channel is to change our inner behaviors, namely the thoughts that stream through our heads. Let’s face it, most of our thinking is superfluous. It’s a way of gossiping to ourselves about every little thing we experience. It doesn’t move us forward, it doesn’t advance the many projects we are involved in, it’s just a lot of noisy extraneous chatter. Its only function, if you can call it that, is entertainment. That’s right – we constantly talk to ourselves just to entertain ourselves. It’s like Netflix for free! But it is not without cost. The cost is increasing our anxiety, our depression, our loneliness, and our pain. I don’t know about you, but for me, this cost is frequently too high to bear.
So I encourage you, this week, to observe the mental chatter taking place in your head. Instead of taking it for granted, see if it helps you in any way. If it does, by all means keep it. But if your mental chatter doesn’t add to your well-being, you may want to let it go. Just ignore it. Let it chatter on… There is no need for you to pay attention to most of it.
Well, that winds it up for this week. I pray that your week is filled with God’s grace, and that you are blessed with the stillness that comes when you simply ignore the internal blah-blah-blah.With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
27: Deepening the Jesus Prayer
Edition #27: Inside the Invisible
As wondrous and powerful as the Jesus Prayer is, there is a way to further enhance its efficacy. To do this, you connect the power of your emotions to the intent of the prayer. Instead of simply reciting the words over and over, you emotionally charge the words, imbuing them with your own genuine longing.
There are two critical elements that need to be addressed here: your intention and your emotional focus and power. Your intention, by using the Jesus Prayer, is not simply to repeat a jumble of words just to hear yourself talk. Your intention is your determination to present yourself to your Creator, your Messiah. Reflect on that for a moment. If you go to your boss with a problem, you might feel a little anxiety. If you go before your city Council, or before the governor of your state, you will probably experience some considerable anxiety.
So what are you going to feel like when you present yourself to the Creator of all that is? The Creator of all humanity and every bit of the planet Earth, with all of its marvelous complexity? How are you going to feel in front of the Creator of the solar system, and not just our little solar system, but the entire Milky Way – 100 billion stars, many of them shining even brighter than our sun? Pretty awesome, isn’t it?
Perhaps more than anything, being clear about our intention to present ourselves to our Creator – to be present to that wonderful Presence that vibrates through and within everything that is – is the most critical element in the Jesus Prayer and in all prayer. This is also something that is commonly overlooked. We often just sit down and pray without really considering the meaning of our prayer. Without considering that we are standing before the Most High. Being clear and focused in our intention is critical to unlock the full power of our prayer.
The second element here – the use of our emotional power – is also a critical factor for enhancing the efficacy of the Jesus Prayer. Our emotions carry this amazing power that enables us to connect deeply with others. Remember what it was like when you first fell in love with someone? You thought about that person all the time and couldn’t wait to be with them again. When you are finally together, it's blissful, and you feel completely seen and understood. As a result, you did everything in your power to be with the person you loved.
Our intention with the Jesus Prayer, and with all prayer, is to connect with the Divine in just this loving and all-consuming way. Sadly, the emotional component of prayer is often overlooked or disregarded. We don’t use our innate power for connection to further deepen our connection with God. By tapping into this innate capacity in our prayer, we enhance its efficacy many times over.
That being said, this enhanced practice is not for those who are just starting to learn the Jesus Prayer. It is enough, for those who are just learning, to develop a focused attentiveness to the Lord. After approximately six months or so of continuous practice with this prayer and the attainment of some interior stability, you may wish to enhance the power of the Prayer by being clear about your intention and connecting your emotions to the Prayer, enlivening it with your emotional energy.
A brief note about the following instructions: You will remember, from previous newsletters, that the Jesus Prayer is not about the words used, per se, but about using words as a vehicle to enter into the Being of God. Despite the plethora of words used to describe this enhancement, please remember that the Prayer is not about the words. The words used below are intended to guide you toward those interior movements that will help you deepen your prayer.
Enhancing The Jesus Prayer
1. Position your body comfortably, spine erect, on a chair or cushions.
2. Become aware of the physical sensations that flow through you. Close your eyes and experience the streams of sensation that course through your physical body. No need to change them. No need to judge them. Simply let yourself feel deeply the multitude of sensations cascading through you. Gently focus on the sensations in your head...in your neck and shoulders...your elbows...your wrists and the palms of your hands...the sensations in your knees...your ankles and the soles of your feet.
3. Now open your awareness to feel God's Presence right here with you. Feel that Presence all around you...within you. Let yourself rest in this Presence.
4. Be aware of the sphere of energy around your head. Let this sphere of energy begin to get heavy and drift downward toward your heart center, until your head rests in your heart.
5. In your heart and from your heart, say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me...Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." Let your heart repeat these words over and over again, feeling God's Presence right here with you.
6. After the words have stabilized, begin to feel the words. Instead of just saying the words, feel their meaning. Feel what it means to acknowledge Jesus as your Lord. Historically, a lord has had the power of life or death over his subjects. As you acknowledge Jesus as your lord, let yourself fully experience your absolute dependence on your Lord. Feel your need for his favor, his generosity, his willingness to give. Your life, your continued existence, all depend on his good will towards you.
7. Be aware of the difference between yourself and your God. You are small and limited in power. Your Lord is not just large but without limits. As you experience the difference, use this as an opportunity to let go of your self-centeredness, your constant cry of “Me-me-me.” Rest in the Immensity that is your Lord.
8. In your Jesus Prayer, you have named him as your Christ, your Messiah. The Messiah is the one who saves us from our selfishness, from our ego-driven limits. He is the one who invites us to open to our true nature as children of the Divine. Acknowledge Jesus as your Christ. Feel what it is, to be saved from your own drivenness, your own neediness. As you acknowledge your Savior, feel yourself letting go of that which separates you from Him.
9. In this great Prayer, you are asking your Lord, "Have mercy on me." Repeat these words with all of your emotional power. Let yourself explore the depths of your need for God’s mercy. This is not a time for blaming yourself, but a time for acknowledging your genuine neediness and your profound need for mercy and divine assistance.
10. Rest here, in the Presence of your Lord.
(To close your meditation)
11. When you are ready, let yourself come back to this place. Let the feeling return to your feet, your hands, and your face. Take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
Connecting your emotions to your prayer is one of the great contributions that Christian contemplatives have made to the development of prayer. Our Christian heritage is full of emotion: from Christ, the Messiah, being born in a stable, to the bloody crucifixion, and then the sweetness of Jesus' resurrection. It is natural for us to use the strong feelings that are aroused in us as we read the narratives of our Savior's work, and to apply these feelings to our prayer.
To state the obvious, our emotions move us. There is a powerful force within our emotions that can transport us to different places. So too it is in prayer. When we find ways to connect our emotions to our prayer, then that power to move us is unleashed and channeled into spiritual pursuits. In this way, our emotions can become a great force for our interior development.
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The Jesus Prayer is one of the great spiritual tools that the Church has developed to aid us in our walk with the Lord. It has been developed and refined over virtually the entire scope of Christian history, a period spanning approximately 2,000 years. Over this period, those elements of the Prayer that were not efficacious in producing spiritual transformation have been pruned away. What is left is the pure essence.
The Prayer is like a powerful vehicle, waiting only for us to use it. Because of its power, it should not be used lightly. This is not a toy for children to play with. It has the capacity to provoke the most profound kinds of spiritual change in our hearts. So we should not use this prayer until we are quite ready, in our own minds, to move into the depths of God.
The Prayer will lead us, as directly as possible, into a direct encounter with the Divine. The benefits which accrue from this encounter are impossible to enumerate. There is such a sweetness, such a joy that arises from this direct encounter, that language is simply too gross a vehicle to adequately describe the experience. This, of course, has not stopped people from trying to describe what has happened to them. Let us close this chapter with a description of the effects of this Prayer, as described by the anonymous Russian pilgrim of the nineteenth century.
The Prayer of my heart gave me such consolation that I felt there was no happier person on earth than I, and I doubted if there could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of Heaven. Not only did I feel this in my own soul, but the whole outside world also seemed to me full of charm and delight. Everything drew me to love and thank God: people, trees, plants, animals. I saw them all as my kinsfolk; I found on all of them the magic of the Name of Jesus. Sometimes I felt as light as though I had no body and was floating happily through the air instead of walking. Sometimes when I withdrew into myself, I saw clearly all my internal organs and was filled with wonder at the wisdom with which the human body is made. Sometimes I felt as joyful as if I had been made Tsar. And at all such times of happiness, I wished that God would let death come to me quickly, and let me pour out my heart in thankfulness at His feet.
Have a great week, and remember that if you have any questions about your practice, please don't hesitate to contact me at ken123kaisch@google.com.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
26: Do You Have Enough Love in Your Life?
Edition #26: Inside the Invisible
Over the past month or so, many of you have been asking about love. The questions have ranged from “Why are you not talking about Christ’s love in your newsletters?” to “How can I get more love in my life?” So today, I thought we might turn our attention to what our Lord says about love and how to get more of it. To do that, though, we have to start at a place that might seem a little strange.
We need to begin with several of Jesus’ comments about how we are to live our lives. “Love your enemies,” he says, “Do good to those who hate you,” and then a bit later, he says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you…. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” It is this last statement that sums up his thoughts on the matter.
“Love your enemies.” My God, how many times have we heard that? And not just in church. You hear people paying lip service to this over and over, in context after context, and it gets to the point that it just runs in one ear and out the other. Blah blah blah blah! Why bother with this – it just doesn’t make sense.
Your enemies are people who hate you! They have it in for you. They want to see you suffer; they want to see you diminished. What possible good could come of being kind to those who hate you?
When somebody tells me to do something, I’m one of those guys who wants to know ‘why.’ Why should I do that? And underlying that question is another – a question that I often conceal from myself. Namely, what’s in it for me? I’m not so proud of this question, so I tend to avert my eyes and conceal it, especially from myself.
“What’s in it for me?” That’s a question that comes up a lot for all of us, isn’t it? “How am I going to benefit?” As if he had supernatural hearing, Jesus answers this question for us, albeit a little harshly, if you ask my opinion. He says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged.” I judge all the time, and I’ll bet you do the same. Oh, these judgments don’t always leave my lips, but in my head, I’m keeping score. “This is good, this is better, and that over there is really wonderful! And what those folks over there are doing, (head moving in a disapproving shake) that’s just terrible!”
We have a constant stream of this, don’t we? We're judging all the time, and it’s even kind of comfortable in a strange way. When I put you down, I have the illusion that it makes me superior. I feel “better than you,” or “holier than thou.” I get to put on that wonderfully traditional Christian garment of smugness. “Look at me, I’m special!” And Jesus wants me to forgo these traditional Christian pleasures? How dare he!
And why would he want to do that, anyway? Why does he want us to forgive? Why does he want us to give? He supplies the answer in the following sentence: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.” Right there – that’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it?
* * *
I had a strange but fascinating experience last month. A group of us were talking with a priest who has a ministry in Africa, and he was asked if he was going back to Ghana this year. He allowed that it has been increasingly difficult for him to return. He said, “It always confronts me with an impossible choice. If I have $1000 to give, I have a terrible choice to make.”
“I can buy a water well, and that will transform an entire village. Right off the bat, we take out all of the waterborne illnesses, like cholera and dysentery, which kill half of the children before age 5. They now have water to irrigate their crops, so everyone eats better and gets healthier. And when I go back a year later, I can see the results of this. It’s an astounding change! And the women no longer have to walk eight hours a day to fetch and carry water. Can you imagine, walking miles and miles just for water to drink and cook with? Water that is filthy and often contaminated with bacteria. This frees the women up to start small businesses so they can now contribute to the economic well-being of the village. Everything is transformed with that water well.”
He paused, and I asked, “So what’s the other choice? This one sounds like a no-brainer to me!” He looked down and away, and then he said in a quiet voice, “Or I could buy five children out of a lifetime of slavery.”
I was shocked! Considering this choice, my eyes just filled up with tears. Buying five little ones out of slavery? Now I understood why the choice he faces is so daunting and so terrible.
* * *
I thought about this wretched choice for weeks afterward. I’m ashamed to admit that one of the questions that came to mind was, “Why do I care?” The strange fact is, I do care, but why? I will never meet these children. I will never meet these villagers. So why do I care?
That question has bothered me to this day. I know why I care. I care because these are hurting human beings, and somehow the hurt they experience on the other side of the world is felt by me, in my own skin, my own flesh, right now.
Logically, this makes no sense. You can talk all you like about the brotherhood of man, but why should I give a hoot about somebody I will never meet, and whose life will never affect mine? Regardless of the logical nonsensicalness of this, my eyes still filled with tears. The truth is, they filled with tears before I ever had a chance to consider the logic of it. These tears revealed to me a deeper truth – a truth that is deeper than all of our logic.
Let me try to explain. Quantum scientists who have been exploring the fundamental nature of matter have been uncovering strange and even bizarre things about the world we live in. (Like the fact that the electrons on which you are currently sitting are actually moving about 64 million miles per hour.) One of their findings is directly relevant to this strange experience of simpatico I felt. Moreover, it is directly relevant to experiences we all have on a daily basis.
Quantum scientists – weirdos who live in ivory towers like Ernst Planck, David Bohm, and others – have found at the most minute level that two particles can get entangled with one another. For example, if you shoot one of these entangled particles off to the right, the other one will instantaneously go off to the left. Even more frightening to a non-mathematician like myself, they have developed equations that describe these entanglements.
What we are seeing at the cutting edge of scientific exploration is this dawning understanding that everything is connected with every other thing. You and I can look around at each other, and we understand that we are connected. We show up here, once a week, in this newsletter space. Clearly, there is a connection that binds us together. What is not so clear is that this connection binds us with every other thing in the universe.
Now, all of a sudden, Jesus’ words start to make sense. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Because our lives are entangled with the lives of every other human being, these words of Jesus are just a simple statement of truth. They invite us to take complete responsibility for all of our actions. If you don’t want to forgive, that’s okay. But expect that you will not be forgiven either. On the other hand, if you want love, then you will get back the very measure of love that you give. Reminds us of the words of the old Beatles song, doesn’t it? “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Jesus’ words invite us to take a real hard look at our own behaviors. Instead of aiming our judgment out there, we’re invited to look inside. We’re invited to examine and judge our own behaviors. So, let me ask you: Do you have enough love in your life? I don’t. When I reflect on this, I realize it’s because I have closed off my heart. I close it off by judging and criticizing others. When I reflect further, I realize that when I open my heart up, not only am I able to give more, but I’m also able to receive more.
This, my friends, is the key for us. You see, our judgements have an unseen consequence. When we judge, we act as if we know the real meaning of an action or behavior. The truth is, we don’t know that much – we know what we observe, but we rarely know the full reasons behind another's actions, and we hardly ever know the ultimate consequences. Never mind these stunning limitations, we still judge and feel quite satisfied with our judgements, don’t we?
Despite our obvious limitations, we have been setting ourselves up as gods. This is the ego again, and it has the unseen effect of hardening our hearts against. By hardening our hearts in this way, we literally block the love of God from touching us. So, if we don’t have enough love, it is almost certainly because we ourselves are blocking that love by means of our ego-derived judgements of others. The bottom line is simple: if we want more love in our lives, we need to stop judging others.
So, if you want more love in your life, start to notice all of the judgments you are making of others. Once you start noticing, you are likely to be horrified. I certainly was! However, the good news in this situation is that by being aware, we can now start to rein in our too-frequent judgments. We can now start to surrender this part of our lives to our Lord. As we do so, we will find more and more love entering into our lives.
* * *
That’s enough for this week. I encourage you to spend some time observing the conversations you have in your head and paying special attention to the many ways you judge others. Then, to the best of your ability, pull back your judgements. After practicing this for even a little while, I have found that I have more love in my life, a greater understanding of others, and the way forward seems easier. Give it a try for yourself…
I hope you have a grace-filled week. Remember to meditate every day. With the spiritual exercises you have been learning about in these newsletters, you certainly have a lot to choose from. Find what works best for you and tap into the transformative power of these spiritual exercises for yourself.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
25: You Are Not What You Think You Are! Part II
Edition #25: Inside the Invisible
Last week, we continued our exploration of Reality by focusing on what we actually are. If we are to take the investigations of our foremost scientists seriously, we have to conclude that all Reality is fundamentally an idea in the mind of God. Contrary to our conventional notions, that human consciousness is derived from our brain functioning or from inert matter, we find the reverse. In actual fact, our leading-edge physicists tell us that we are fundamentally consciousness, awareness, Beingness.
Talk about a wild and crazy idea! But now get ready for the Ginsu announcer because, “Wait, there’s more…”
Let’s focus on our own consciousness today. As we have seen over the last several weeks, we don’t really see reality. We think what we perceive is the actual “stuff” that makes up the reality in and around us, but as we have seen, this “stuff” is not real in the sense that we think it is. For example, while the chair that you’re sitting on appears to be solid matter, we know from our scientific investigations that it is actually a few units of energy rotating at extremely high speeds. In fact, the apparently solid chair on which you are sitting is mostly empty space.
Despite this clear understanding of the chair's true nature, you still perceive it as solid, and you still trust that it will support your weight. So, what are we actually seeing?
This is where it gets really strange. What we are seeing 99.9% of the time is not reality, but rather our ideas about what reality is. Psychological research has shown that we project our ideas onto the sensory data we perceive, and we then mistake our ideas for the actual reality. Let me give you an example from my own recent experience.
I was driving north on the 101 freeway the other day, in an area I have driven countless times before. Throughout my past experiences, there has been a rather large hole in the blacktop at a certain spot in the number one lane. The other day, as I came down the hill, I could see what looked like a large black rectangular box ahead of me in the number one lane. As I got closer, the box got larger and larger, and I prepared to move to the number two lane to avoid it. As I approached this large, black object, I realized it was actually a rectangular patch that had now covered the hole I had previously seen. From 100 yards away, from 50 yards away, from 10 yards away, I was certain it was a large black box in the middle of the road. Why?
I expected to see the hole in its usual place, so that’s what I saw, even though it wasn’t there this time. This time, there was a large rectangular black asphalt patch filling in the hole. I literally did not see the patch that was actually there. Instead, I saw my idea —a large, rectangular, black box — sitting dangerously in the middle of the number one lane. Not only did I see the box, but I also changed my behavior to accommodate this illusion. In brief, this is what we all do, almost all of the time. We don’t see reality; we see our ideas about reality
I know, it doesn’t seem like that, does it? It seems like we are functioning in a world full of objects – objects that are, for the most part, customary and familiar. If you think about this, even a little bit, it should scare the wits out of you! It means that we are living on a planet with 8 billion others just like ourselves, and no one is seeing what is actually there. Instead, we are all wandering around the planet, inhabiting 8 billion different delusions! If that doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, I don’t know what will…
If we are not seeing reality, but instead seeing our ideas about reality, you have to wonder where this comes from. Once again, we circle back to our understanding of the ego. Our egos are socially constructed defense mechanisms that have enabled us to survive in this complex universe. Why would we have evolved in this seemingly strange fashion?
Have you ever watched a toddler being scolded? Their ego defenses are not well-formed; their defenses are flimsy, and when criticism comes their way, they are often completely devastated. Think of what it would be like to sustain a massive attack that says you are WRONG. While the adult intends to say, “This behavior is wrong,” the toddler often receives the message that “I myself am wrong, bad, and ineffective, and I can never be good enough.” They take the criticism as a massive rejection of their being. This is too painful for any of us to experience. We have to put up defenses against this massive rejection. As a result, our egos have erected an amazingly clever defense.
If I can’t tolerate being rejected because the hurt is too painful, what if I erect a barrier between myself and the rejection? What if I could put up a wall so that I didn’t have to feel the pain, or at least, didn’t have to feel the pain directly? This is what humanity has learned to do, but it comes with a terrible cost.
So we put up a wall – a wall of ideas. That way, when criticism is directed at us, it’s not really a criticism of me, myself, but a criticism of this idea of myself that I have put up as a kind of mask between my true self and the rest of the world. This means that I have erected a barrier between me and you, between myself and everything else. While I am protected (kind of), I am now alone. Sadly, loneliness is perhaps the most corrosive and destructive of all our emotions.
And while we hope our walls will protect us from the hurt of rejection, in my experience, that hurt somehow manages to slip through our guard and wound us anyway. Despite all the effort we put into erecting and maintaining these protective barriers, they are not very effective.
So, the ‘me’ that I think I am isn’t really me. It’s my ego, a mental construct that I built as an infant to protect myself from rejection and hurt. My true self, and yours, lies underneath the ego and is hidden by it. Our true self participates in the Divine. While the ego can be characterized by fear, our true self is characterized by the limitless love of God. It is a love, like that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that sees beyond the apparent ugliness and cruelty of other human beings. It is a love that sees the hidden soul deep within, the child that God created and loves.
This is our heritage as spiritual beings. It is a heritage that transcends belief systems and every mode of thought. It is the heritage of our true being, a being that we share with all creation, that we are sons and daughters of the Most High. It is a heritage of limitless love.
It is this heritage, the birthright of every human being, that we are attempting to recover by means of our spiritual journey.
* * *
I think I will end our conversation here for today. I expect that I have given you more than enough to ponder for the week! Next week, I want to explore a topic that several of you have been asking about, namely, how we might open our hearts to love our God more fully.
Once again, I want to encourage you to meditate daily. Meditation may be the most significant tool we have to loosen the chains that our ego has wrapped around us. How will we step into the love which God has created for us? We will only be able to do that as we step out of the too-narrow constraints that keep us bound and in chains.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
24: You Are Not What You Think You Are! Part I
Edition #24: Inside the Invisible
I would like to begin this week by expressing my gratitude to Father Chris, a Catholic priest and professed friar, and Canon Doug, a retired Anglican priest, for their words of encouragement. Both report that they are using these newsletters in their teaching and spiritual direction, and they are commending them to others. This affirms that I’m on the right path in sharing these understandings with you. Thank you both so much! I would also like to encourage all my readers to share the email addresses of those they think might benefit from these teachings. Please email them to ken123kaisch@gmail.com
Last week, we concluded our conversation with the extraordinary formulation of the world-renowned physicist Max Planck, who said, in essence, that the universe is looking more and more like an idea in the mind of God. The conventional understanding is directly opposite: that consciousness comes from matter. Planck, David Bohm, and other major figures in the field of physics have stated the opposite: that the phenomenal universe we perceive around us is the result of consciousness.
In 1994, D.J. Chalmers first formulated what he called the hard problem of consciousness. In a nutshell, the hard problem asks, How did consciousness evolve from inert matter? Specifically, Chalmers asked, “Why and how do brain processes give rise to subjective experience?” Up to this point, physicists had ignored what is, for you and me and everybody else, our subjective experience of being aware and conscious. This omission is quite extraordinary!
Prior to Chalmers’ radical question, scientists had assumed that consciousness is a negligible phenomenon that can be summarily discarded from any serious scientific inquiry. Since Galileo in the early 1600s, scientists have come to understand that the world around us can be described using the language of mathematics. In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton provided definitive proof of this notion in his groundbreaking work, Principia Mathematica. Since then, consciousness has been described at best as an epiphenomenon – some odd quirk of the natural world, which was probably caused in some unknown way by natural forces we don’t yet understand, but it’s not really all that important.
This was the situation when I began my graduate studies in clinical psychology in 1980. The “hard science” branch of psychology viewed consciousness as an epiphenomenon, not worth the bother of studying. That this flies in the face of our ordinary understanding made no difference at all to those “hard scientists.” (I suspect that at least part of this omission was due to psychologists’ corporate sense of inferiority, because at that time psychology was understood as a “soft science” and not really worthy of being labeled a science at all.)
Despite consciousness being overlooked as an appropriate field of study, there was one huge and unmistakable fact about scientific progress. While extraordinary advances were being made in the applied sciences – witness the development of computers, space travel, lasers, artificial intelligence, and the like – there were no corresponding developments in pure science. There were no real breakthroughs in our understanding of the world around us or our own human nature. (Yes, I know that string theory was formulated over the last 40 years, but string theory is inherently unprovable. As a result, we have no way of knowing if this formulation is accurate.)
So where does that leave us? The one thing that all human beings have in common is the experience of consciousness. We are all self-aware entities. When you match our self-awareness with Max Planck’s understanding, that the universe is an idea in the mind of God, all of a sudden, all of our previous ideas about Reality seem to explode!
* * *
Let’s now shift gears and look at a parallel line of inquiry, that of religion. Religion shares with science a curiosity about the nature of Reality. The most significant difference between these two lines of inquiry lies in the ‘assumption,’ on the part of religious adherents, that God exists. As a result of this difference, these two lines of inquiry have reached very different conclusions.
Mystics from all the great world religions have universally found that there is no difference at the deepest level between our consciousness and God’s consciousness. Perhaps the clearest verbal formulation of this is found in Hinduism, the oldest of the major world religions. Hindu mystics universally say, “Thou art That.” Unpacking this short sentence, we find that they are referring to our limited human consciousness being fundamentally identical with the Divine. You, yourself, are identical with That for which you search.
This understanding is repeated many, many times by the mystics of all religions. In Christianity, perhaps the clearest statement of this is found in the gospel of John. Here Jesus said, in effect, “I am in my Father and my Father is in me. In just the same way, I am in you and you are in me.” In case his listeners did not understand what he was saying, Jesus said it again in different words in the next chapter, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
Within Christendom, this message is repeated over and over again through the centuries. Meister Eckhart stated, for example, “the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” St. Catherine of Genoa said, being quite clear about the matter, “My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my being.” In essence, she is saying that “My me is God.” St. Seraphim of Sarov, in the early 1800s, stated that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. By this, he meant that our task is to realize that the Holy Spirit is already residing deeply within each of us.
Yet, despite all of the affirmations that come from those who actually know God intimately and personally – that we are fundamentally identical with the Divine Consciousness – this is not our experience. We have to ask, why not?
* * *
What are we? What is this self-awareness that makes us what we are? And how are we connected with the rest of the universe?
In prior weeks, we have explored the nature of the self – that fundamental sense of self-identity. That part of us that says, “I am myself and not someone or something else.” We have seen that this self is composed of at least two elements. There is the ego, that sense of being a separate self, and there is something deeper, which I will get to in a moment.
We have seen that our ego begins by taking in the values of our parents. They teach us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that certain behaviors are good, other behaviors are acceptable, and still others are not good at all. This serves as the initial scaffolding for our sense of self, which each of us builds, moment by moment. Essentially, our ego is an instruction manual for getting along in the world.
This means that our ego is fundamentally a survival mechanism. It is that part of us that helps us survive from birth through early adulthood. As such, our egos are essential to human development. We cannot do without them. That being said, our egos come with significant limitations. While they function to keep destructive events away from us, they also keep us from accurately understanding both the world around us and within us. In addition, our egos tend to keep our negative thoughts and feelings inside of us, where they often wreak destruction. How many times, for example, have you found your mind repeatedly going over a negative situation or conversation, until you’re just sick of it?
So you can think of your ego as constructing a wall. While that wall keeps negative things outside of itself, when negative things do get in, it holds on to them. We can see here that the ego is a two-edged sword: it confers benefits and, at the same time, burdens us with negative consequences.
The most profoundly debilitating consequence of an adult ego is that it keeps us from realizing our essential nature. We tend to identify with our bodies or with our minds but our actual identity is that we participate in the fullness of the Divine. The Christian mystics and indeed, the mystics of all religions, clearly state that we are one with God. They clearly state that God dwells within our hearts. Yet, because we identify with our bodies or our minds, we are unable to perceive the great treasure within each of us. Jesus himself says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Due to the ego's limiting effect, we fail to perceive this profound truth.
As a result, our primary spiritual task is to let go of our ego’s constraints so that we can experience our true self. Our true self is not limited to this body. It is not limited to the ever-changing play of emotions we experience. It is not limited to our thoughts or our ideas. Our true self participates fully in the Divine and has no limits. Indeed, one way to understand the salvation that Christ brings to us is to recognize that he is freeing us from the too-narrow constraints of our ego so that we can participate fully in the love of God.
* * *
Let us circle back now to that amazing notion, that we are best understood as ideas in the mind of God. Let us also remember one of the most hideous stories in the Bible, that of Jacob and Esau. In this story, Esau, who was famished, came upon Jacob, who was cooking a meal, variously described as a mess of pottage or gruel. In order to obtain immediate relief from his hunger, Esau foolishly sold his birthright to Jacob for a meal. This appears to me to be a metaphor for what each and every one of us has done. We have sold our birthright as children of the Most High in exchange for next to nothing.
We have mistaken our egos – which are nothing more than a set of tools for survival in this world – for our ultimate reality. As such, we have limited ourselves to an extraordinary degree. Most of us have come to believe that we are nothing more than our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical bodies. We have mistaken who we are for what amounts to a set of fantasies or delusions about ourselves.
The Divine – however you conceive or perceive that – dwells inside of you, in your innermost being. Not only that, but paraphrasing the words of St. Paul slightly, “you live and move and have your being with in Christ.” As a result, there is no way that you can ever be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
* * *
I think I will end our conversation here for today. I expect that I have afflicted you enough for a while! Next week I want to go more deeply into our human experience and explore how we have used our egos to erect protective barriers.
Once again, I want to encourage you to meditate daily. Meditation may be the most significant tool that we have to loosen the chains that our ego has wrapped around us. How will we step into the love which God has created for us? We will only be able to do that as we step out of the too narrow constraints that keep us bound and in chains.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
23: Reality Is Not What It Seems!
Edition #23: Inside the Invisible
Today I think we have come to a place where we need to begin exploring the nature of the reality in which we find ourselves. I’ll give you fair warning, if you continue reading this material, you are highly likely to be upset by what you learn. I am going to shake the very foundations of what you think is real.
Let’s start with stuff. You know, the ordinary stuff that everything is made of. We all learned in high school that matter is composed of atoms, which in turn are composed of electrons, neutrons and protons. The assumption is, these materials are little bits of “stuff.” All of this is false.
Matter is not solid: it is little bits of energy and mostly empty space.
Even the term “bits” of energy is deceptive. Energy doesn’t come in bits. Imagine, for example, a bit of sunlight, or a bit of electricity. It doesn’t make sense.
Think for a moment about what this means. It means that the chair you are sitting on, while it appears to be solid, is mostly empty space interspersed with tiny units of energy.
In actual fact, you are sitting on rapidly rotating bits of energy. These bits are rotating at a mind-boggling speed. To give you a rough equivalent, in terms that we commonly use, the electrons in your chair are rotating at 64,000,000 mph. That’s right – 64 million miles per hour!
The reason your chair appears solid is the same reason that a rotating fan blade appears solid. When you crank the speed up fast enough, the blades of the fan look like they are one solid piece.
I said a moment ago that you are mostly sitting on empty space. Let me give you something to compare that with. If you removed the empty space from all the atoms in the bodies of all 8+ billion people currently living on the planet, you would have an object roughly the size of a sugar cube. Perhaps human beings are not as significant as we thought we were!
Let’s look at Time, shall we? Everybody knows what time is. It’s composed of the past, the present, and the future. Actually, these wonderful ideas about time are completely false! Let me explain:
It’s pretty clear that the past doesn’t exist. Once upon a time (perhaps!) it did exist, or so we think, but right now, the past is over and done with. The past clearly has no existence right now, except as a memory.
In the same way, we know that the future doesn’t exist because it hasn’t happened yet.
That leaves us with “now,” the present moment. There’s a lot of buzz about the “now.” People talk about living in the present moment – they say that that’s where the real life is. On the surface, this seems like a plausible idea, but sadly, this too is false.
When we talk about “the now,” we are distinguishing ‘now’ from other times. But we have just shown that the past and the future don’t really exist. They are simply ideas, fabrications, fantasies that we have that we use to try and make sense of the world. But if there is no past or future, then the concept of ‘now’ must also be a fabrication.
So, what is left to us? If we are to speak accurately, we have to say that time as we have conventionally understood it does not exist. What we live in is a state of Being, a state of “Is-ness.”
Just for fun, let’s continue this exploration of our shared delusional reality and look at the three-dimensional world we think we live in. In everyday language, time and distance are interconnected. They are linked by the notion of speed, also known as velocity. The equation that we learned in math and science classes looks like this: Distance = Time X Speed. But if there is no Time, this equation doesn’t work. The equation would be simplified to Distance = 0 X Speed. Which is zero. Which means distance also doesn’t exist. Which means we don’t live in a three-dimensional world because height, width and breadth do not actually exist!
It starts to make you wonder, doesn’t it? These ideas that we have held about the nature of reality begin to appear as they are, simple fabrications or fantasies. Yet, when you drill down into what actually constitutes the reality we live in, these ideas start to fall apart.
* * *
So let’s take a moment and see what we’ve accomplished to this point.
1. We’ve shown that matter as we ordinarily understand it simply does not exist. What we call matter is really little tiny units of energy and mostly empty space.
2. We’ve shown that time does not really exist either. We thought that there was a past, a present, and a future, but it’s quite obvious that the past no longer exists, it’s over and done with. In the same way, the future doesn’t exist because it hasn’t happened yet. That leaves us with the present, the ‘Now.’ But conceiving of a ‘now’ necessarily implies something other than ‘now,’ namely the past and the future which we know don’t really exist. This means that talking about the ‘now’ is a serious mistake. It would be more accurate to say we exist in a state of Is-ness, the state of Beingness.
3. Finally, we’ve shown that if time doesn’t exist, then distance doesn’t exist either. This means that the three-dimensional world we live in is actually some sort of illusion as well.
By now, I suspect that you are thoroughly confused! When I feel confused, I typically shut down and back away. If you are tempted to do the same right about now, let me encourage you to stop for a moment because there’s some good news. The good news is this: if there is no time, then you are not aging, and all those birthdays that you have celebrated are totally without meaning. LOL
* * *
So, what is Real? Here’s what a cutting-edge physicist has to say:
"As a physicist who has devoted his whole life to rational science, to the study of matter, I think I can safely claim to be above any suspicion of irrational exuberance. Having said that, I would like to observe that my research on the atom has shown me that there is no such thing as matter in itself (italics mine). What we perceive as matter is merely the manifestation of a force that causes the subatomic particles to oscillate and holds them together in the tiniest solar system of the universe. Since there is in the whole universe neither an intelligent force nor an eternal force (mankind, for all its yearnings, has yet to succeed in inventing a perpetual motion machine), we must assume that this force that is active within the atom comes from a conscious and intelligent mind. That mind is the ultimate source of matter (italics mine)."
--Max Planck, from his 1944 speech titled "Das Wesen der Materie" ("The Nature of Matter"), delivered in Florence, Italy.
Let me put this in more conventional language. What Planck and other physicists are saying is that the universe is looking more and more like an idea in the mind of God.
And this understanding turns our world upside down and inside out, doesn’t it?
* * *
I’m going to stop here for now, because I have given you more than enough to think about for the week. But just as a teaser, think about what this means for the miracles of Jesus. Water into wine? Healing the sick? Raising the dead? Ascending bodily into heaven? These so-called miracles suddenly seem possible, and perhaps even ordinary, don’t they? If all that is necessary is a change of ideas, then all sorts of unusual events are possible, aren’t they? So ponder on the meaning of all of this, but don’t forget to keep up your meditation practice. I will continue this exploration with you next week.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
22: The Language of God Is Silence
Edition #22: Inside the Invisible
I had a great question from Marianne in Boston about our last two newsletters on the Jesus Prayer. She made a comment that all language seems to divide us, so how could the Jesus Prayer, which relies on words, bring us closer to God? For that matter, how could any meditation that uses words and language allow us to cross the apparent abyss that seems to separate us from the Divine? This is a very profound question, Marianne, and thank you for raising it.
We live in a world of apparent duality, and this duality is inherent in our use of language. In fact, duality appears to be the way we conceptualize most, if not all, of our experiences. Just think about it for a moment: there is up, and its opposite down. There is left, and its opposite right. Almost all of our experiences can be formulated in this dualistic manner. Indeed, this is how most of us conceptualize our relationship with the Divine. “I” am over here, and the Divine is somewhere else. This kind of understanding leaves us forever searching, and the object of our search always appears to be just out of reach. Hence, our constant feelings of restlessness – we are always searching and nothing seems to fill us for very long. Worse, our restlessness covers over our deep feelings of emptiness.
We commonly understand that language is a way of connecting with others. In fact, that’s how we're using language right now, as a way of connecting. There is, however, another and opposite aspect to language. Language also divides. It operates by invisibly separating everything we experience into subjects and objects.
Let’s use a simple example, one that describes what’s happening between us right now. I am over here, and you, my reader, are somewhere else. On the face of it, this appears to be a simple statement of fact: “I” am over here and “you” are over there. While this sentence captures part of our relationship, it misses the most important part. It misses the fact that we are somehow deeply connected. It misses the fact that we are both searching for something deeper in our lives. It misses the deep emptiness within each of us that drives our search. It overlooks the fact that we are deeply connected with one another and with the Divine.
So, what’s more important? The fact that we are in different places, or the deep interconnectedness that hides beneath the surface?
And this takes us directly into the heart of the problem – that our relationship with the Divine and with each otherhas no words that can adequately describe it. Whatever these relationships are, they are beyond the power of language to describe. You see, when you use words, you must employ a distinction between the subject and the object. That’s simply how language works; it channels our thinking into divisions, and thus it keeps us from perceiving the underlying unity. This simple fact has a profound implication for our search. Whenever you employ the subject/object distinction, you can only perceive the separateness, not the unity underlying the separateness.
The great Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, stated that “The language of God is silence – all else is a poor translation.” So how can our words take us into the heart of God?
* * *
The Jesus Prayer uses words. We call upon our Lord Jesus for mercy, for all of us, to one extent or another, are lost in this wilderness that we call the world. We find ourselves cut off from God, and estranged from each other, and even from our own deepest being. Worse, the way to overcome these profound separations is not clear.
We are trapped by our dualistic concepts in a dualistic world. It is as if we have hallucinated a world that, by the nature of the concepts we use, prevents us from discerning the underlying unitive reality in which we live. Not only that, our dualistic thinking profoundly inhibits us from seeing the world and ourselves as we actually are. (I will explore this topic of the nature of reality at length next week. For now, I ask that you trust me on this point.)
So, the question that confronts us, stated as clearly as possible, is how can we use our dualistic tools to escape this gigantic mousetrap that we and our forebearers have created?
The Jesus Prayer is a tool that was developed in the very early centuries of the Christian era. Over the last 2,000 years, it has been used by a wide variety of people from very different cultures, speaking very different languages, but having in common the dualistic perceptions that bedevil us today. This tool has been used because it has been found effective in generation after generation. It is a tool that begins within the common dualistic framework: we are here, and Jesus is somewhere else, a Being from whom we are seeking assistance.
When we employ the Jesus Prayer, we are enjoined to repeat the words of the prayer over and over again. The goal of this prayer is to “pray without ceasing,” as Paul described in his letter to the Thessalonians. When I first heard of the Jesus prayer, I thought this constant repetition was simply stupid. “Why say the same thing over and over again? If God didn’t hear me the first time, what makes me think he’ll hear me on the hundred and first time?”
At this early stage in my spiritual life, I was missing quite a few things about this extraordinary tool. I missed the fact that repetition bores me. My discursive mind was always looking for new and more exciting things to focus on, and the Jesus Prayer simply bored me to tears. So, what happens when my constantly seeking intellect gets bored like this? Ultimately, it gives up and shuts up!
That’s right, when I keep repeating the words of the prayer and force myself to focus here and here alone, my discursive intellect stops searching for new and more exciting things to focus on. If I stay with it long enough, it gives up. When it stops its striving, it stills and moves into silence. And this is the point of constantly repeating the words. We are not really exhorting God, because he heard our petition the first time. We are simply boring ourselves into silence.
So ask yourselves, why would the language of God be silence? Since our words divide, it is only in silence that we can enter into union with the Divine. It is only in the stillness that we are open to the deeper unitive states – the union that takes us out of our separateness and isolation, the union for which we all search.
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“But wait, there’s more!” As our self-talk grows silent, we come into an awareness of a deeper energy buried deep within our hearts. It is here, in the depths of each heart, that the mystics from all the great religions have said that we meet God. As long as our intellects blather on, our dualistic concepts force us into a separation from that great Being which underlies all our apparent divisions. When the self-talk stills, however, we then begin to perceive that underlying unity. In this silence, the language of God becomes apparent.
Remember the first component of the Jesus Prayer, to open ourselves to the Presence of God? When we begin using this prayer, this opening is, for most of us, a kind of pro formaevent. We go through the motions at this point, but we don’t really understand what it means to be open to the Divine. As our discursive intellect quiets, as our divisive self-talk disappears, we then begin to experience what it feels like to be in God’s holy Presence. As long as we blather on, the inherent divisiveness of using subjects and objects keeps us from the actual experience of God. Literally, our languaging is keeping us from our heart's desire!
You may not believe me when I talk about the importance of this holy silence to our spiritual development. Our discursive intellect would have us believe that “real knowledge” can only be obtained by using words. This is hogwash, and your own experience proves it.
Think back to that magnificent sunset you saw, or the tenderness of a father holding his newborn baby. Think back to the moment you first realized that your partner truly loves you. In each of these moments, our intellect stops. There are no words that can adequately describe the experience we have in these moments. How could that be, if our discursive intellects have the last word? Clearly, the deepest and most important experiences we have are those we have in silence. There is a Reality which passes our human understanding. This is the Reality in which we all live. We just pretend it ain’t so…
The Jesus Prayer occupies a very special place for those who seek God. It is a tool that can take us from our ordinary, intellectually-based awareness and move us into stillness and quiet. In the ensuing silence, we will find ourselves open to God in ways that we cannot imagine from our divided and separated states of being.
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Well, that’s it for this week. It has been a joy for me to share these words with you, however divisive they may be! Hopefully you will be able to translate my silly words into silence, and listen for yourself to that still quiet voice in your heart. Next week, we will explore a topic that will shock and amaze you. We will take a deep dive into the nature of reality, and I hope to show you that everything you learned in your high school science classes is wrong.
With that teaser, I hope you have a great week. I encourage you to set aside a regular time to practice the Jesus Prayer, for it can take you into the depths where, with your own eyes, you can see our Lord.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
21: The Spiritual Exercise of the Jesus Prayer
Edition #21: Inside the Invisible
I am delighted to be here with you this week, because we get to explore and practice the Jesus Prayer, one of the oldest forms of meditation and contemplation in all of Christendom. I have practiced this form of meditation for roughly the last 50 years. During that time, it has taken me deeper and deeper, coming to a wordless contemplation of God. It is suitable for almost everyone, from beginners to very experienced practitioners.
Last week we explored a bit about monologistic prayer and the history and development of the Jesus Prayer. This week we will actually start our practice with this very special form of meditation, which has the power to take us deeply into God’s holy presence.
The Jesus Prayer
1. Position your body comfortably, spine erect, on a chair or cushions.
2. Ground yourself in your physical sensations. Close your eyes and slowly become aware of the sensations of your physical body. Feel the sensations as they flow through you. The sensations in your head...in your neck and shoulders...your elbows...your wrists and the palms of your hands...the sensations in your knees...your ankles and the soles of your feet.
3. Now open your awareness to feel God's Presence right here with you. Feel that Presence all around you...within you. Breathe in the Divine with every breath. Breathe God out. Let yourself rest in this Presence.
4. Be aware of the sensations in and around your head. You probably are aware of a sphere of energy around your head. This is where most of us 'live.' Let this sphere of energy begin to get heavy and drift downward toward your heart center. When you begin this, it may be a little difficult. We are so accustomed to having this energy in our heads that we don't know what it would feel like somewhere else. But let that sphere of energy gradually grow heavier and heavier. Let it sink down into your heart. If you have trouble with this, imagine that with each inhalation this sphere of energy is pushed down about an inch or so. With every breath, your head energy is moved downward, until your head rests in your heart. Anchor yourself here, so that you are able to perceive through your heart.
5. Now, in your heart and from your heart, say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me...Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." Let your heart repeat these words over and over again, feeling God's Presence right here with you.
6. When your attention wanders, be patient with yourself. Gently bring your attention back to the three operations of this meditation: feel God's Presence; put your head in your heart; and say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."
(To close your meditation)
7. When you are ready, let yourself come back to this place. Let the feeling return to your feet, your hands, and your face. Take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
The Interior Movement of the Jesus Prayer
The practice of the Jesus Prayer will take us on a predictable interior journey. At first, we are likely to have difficulty engaging in the three operations of the prayer simultaneously. While each of these operations is relatively simple, the first two are unusual for us in this culture. We seldom try to experience the Presence of God in a deliberate way. And we never strive to put our attention into our heart! So there will be a period of some frustration, as we try to keep each of these three things going at once. It can feel a bit like juggling, trying to keep three things in the air at the same time. Once you get the hang of it, though, the experience seems quite natural and enjoyable.
During the initial time of frustration, you will find yourself distracted, as with the previous practices. Your attention, while strengthened, is still not a focused tool. As you become aware of your distractions, the initial impulse will be to punish yourself: to engage in the punitive internal dialogue which emphasizes how inadequate you are to accomplish even the simple tasks of this prayer. This sort of inner dialogue is basically garbage! It is your ego, fiercely defending itself and its control over you. The best way to view this negative self-talk is to see it as just another distraction. You obtain no benefit from it, so simply withdraw your attention from these distractions, and re-engage in the three operations of the prayer.
The complexity of the Jesus Prayer, with its three specific and simultaneous operations, is actually a substantial aid toward the development of a stable attention. These three operations place such a load on conscious awareness, that it rather quickly moves beyond distraction. You notice I said 'rather quickly.' I mean this in relationship to other meditations which do not have this loading effect. Your progress may still seem slow to you. After continual practice, two things begin to emerge. First, you are more and more able to do all three operations of the prayer simultaneously. Second, the number and intensity of distracting thoughts and feelings seem to diminish. There is a gradual quieting of the mind, as if the intellect becomes content with the discursive activity of the prayer, while deeper changes are occurring in you beneath the words.
The Arising of Spiritual Phenomena
As your practice continues, several phenomena may arise that are important to understand. While there is no specific order to their occurrence, in my experience, they tend to follow the order described here.
First, there is the arising of internal heat. You will be sitting in meditation and you will become aware that your body is very warm, sometimes it even feels hot. You may begin to perspire profusely. This is one of the spiritual fruits of the deepening of your interior prayer. It is the action of God within us, burning away the subtle interior obstacles which keep God veiled from our awareness. You may find this warmth so intense that you become frightened of it, thinking that something is wrong. Don’t worry. You are simply tasting the first fruits of the interior life. As this experience comes, you may need to loosen your clothing before you meditate, or even wear lighter clothing, so that you are not too distracted by the heat.
The second phenomenon which frequently occurs is known as the gift of tears. This is the experience of inner grief and compunction, which seems to arise spontaneously as you explore your interior depths. This experience is cause for rejoicing, because it signifies a deepening of the interior cleansing which usually begins with the experience of interior heat.
The gift of tears may begin with a feeling of grief or sadness, centered in the heart or the throat. You may find tears beginning to trickle out of your eyes. On occasion, there is full-blown weeping, but more often it is just a sweet-sad grief which causes these tears. When this occurs, don’t be surprised if your tears continue, even beyond the period of your meditation. You may find your eyes 'gently leaking,' producing very small amounts of moisture throughout the day. Usually no one will notice this but you.
A third phenomenon, which is more rare than the first two, and which typically follows after a long period of practice, is the experience of interior light. There arises within your heart an interior light that carries with it such tender sweetness that you will marvel at its intensity. This is your first clear sight of that great Light that is Christ the Lord. Words do not suffice to describe it, nor the interior feelings which accompany it.
These three phenomena cannot be sought after. This is very important for you to understand. These phenomena accompany the deepening of practice in a natural way. So do not strive after the phenomena. Your striving after these 'markers' of experience will only serve to keep you from them. Instead, strive to be present to God at all times. As our Lord says, "Do this, and all else shall be added to you." As you continue your practice, you will find that your mind begins to quiet down. There is a gradual dawning of interior stillness. This occurs both within the practice of the Jesus Prayer and between the formal periods of practice.
Within the practice, your recitation of the words will be broken, from time to time, by a vast stillness. It is as if you have been traveling along a heavily wooded road in the mountains, where you cannot see anything because of the thick forest. Then suddenly the road breaks out of the forest and a stunning vista opens before you. You stand, dumbstruck with awe, held suspended in the vastness of all that you survey.
This is what interior silence is like. Your recitation of the words of the prayer will, at times, spontaneously cease, and you will stand in the Presence of God in awe. There are simply no words, only stillness. This deep experience cannot be achieved by 'wishing' it, by imagining it, by striving for it, or by promoting yourself beyond the reach of your own experience. It lies within you, awaiting your discovery. You can do nothing to hurry it. You can only open your heart to God, and fix your attention there. God will give you His grace in His own time, not in yours.
With the arising of this deep inner stillness, you begin to approach contemplation. The contemplative process is different in character than all the spiritual exercises that go before it. We will explore the contemplative process at a later time.
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Let’s bring our meeting to a close for now. You have received the basic instructions for one of the most powerful meditative prayers that has ever been developed. It has the power to take you deeper and deeper into an intimate relationship with the Divine.
I encourage you to set aside time to practice the Jesus Prayer on a daily basis. I typically practice in the morning, on arising, and in the evening before I go to sleep. This form of practice provides me with spiritual bookends for my day, and this practice seems to make my days go more smoothly. I would encourage you to enter into this interior space throughout the day as well, even if it is just for a moment or two. The ultimate aim of all spiritual practice is to dwell in the house of the Lord, so why not move in today? LOL
Have a great week, and remember, if you have any questions about your practice, please drop me a line at ken123kaisch@google.com.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇
20: The Jesus Prayer
Edition #20: Inside the Invisible
First, I need to apologize to you. I have been planning to show you a new spiritual exercise for some time now, but I finally realized that I have not prepared you for this more advanced practice. So please forgive my enthusiasm. In my excitement to share this new exercise with you, I forgot that many of you are not regular meditators. I’m afraid that if I share this new practice with you now, you may be a bit overwhelmed. So, out of the abundance of caution, and out of my concern for your spiritual growth and well-being, I’m having to walk back my promise to you.
Monologistic Prayers
In its place, I would like to introduce the Jesus Prayer, the oldest, commonly-used monologistic prayer in Christendom. Monologistic prayers are similar in many ways to the mantras of the Eastern religions. The word “monologistic” refers to the short prayers (mono logos = one word) developed within the Christian faith, which are continuously repeated during one’s meditation practice. These prayers are suitable for both beginning and advanced meditators, and they offer many benefits. Examples of these kinds of meditation include the Jesus Prayer, the prayer described in The Cloud of Unknowing, and the more modern Centering Prayer.
For beginners, monologistic prayers are great tools for learning to focus your attention. As we have said previously, a focused attention, capable of being sustained over long periods of time, is an absolute requisite for the kind of spiritual progress we are exploring. As you develop more and more comfort and expertise with these practices, these prayers can take you deeply into a profound inner stillness. This stillness is the precursor to those unitive states that signal we are reaching the conclusion of our spiritual journey.
The Jesus Prayer, in its several variations, holds the distinction of being the oldest continually-used monologistic prayer in Christendom. Furthermore, it has probably been used by more people, and in more varied circumstances than any other. It is one of the great treasures of the Church.
The Jesus Prayer has three parts which are practiced simultaneously. First, the practitioner opens to God's Presence, using one of the practices of Recollection. Second, the practitioner places his attention in the region of the heart. And third, he begins to repeat the words from the heart, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."
The Development of the Jesus Prayer
The roots of this Prayer extend back to the time of Christ Jesus. From the earliest times, devotion to the name of Jesus has been a part of the Church. This devotion is embodied in two central references in the New Testament. The first, from St. Paul, says, "God...bestowed on Him the name above every other name, so that at Jesus' name, every knee must bend in the heavens, and on the earth, and under the earth." The second reference is in St. John's gospel: "Whatever you ask the Father, he will give you in my name." These texts form a powerful rationale for praying using the name of Jesus. The Jesus Prayer refines this by focusing directly and exclusively on the name of Jesus. In this way, the prayer functions as a tool through which divine grace is channeled into the heart of the believer.
The second element of the Jesus Prayer, embodied in the words, "have mercy on me," appeals for God's mercy and forgiveness. Here the one who prays focuses on their relationship to God, and asks for grace. In practice, as the meditator prays in this way, there frequently arises a deep sense of grief and an outpouring of tears. These tears seem to cleanse the soul from the passions which separate us from the Divine.
The third element, the frequent repetition of the prayer, is an attempt to follow St. Paul's injunction to "pray without ceasing." We hear mention of this practice of constant repetition throughout the surviving writings of the Desert Fathers. By this means, these early monks and nuns strove constantly to remember God, and to live and move in an awareness of God's constant Presence.
The fourth element, the quest for inner stillness, is the hallmark of non-discursive prayer, and the beginning of contemplation. Evagrios of Ponticus, who lived with the Desert Fathers, states that "prayer means the shedding of thoughts." Another translation renders the passage, "Prayer is the rejection of concepts." Evagrios' concern was to still the restless wanderings of the intellect so that the essential unity of the soul with the Divine can stand revealed. In most people, their mental turmoil obscures the Presence of God. Only through focusing our attention can we go beyond conceptual thinking into those unitive states where we dwell with the Divine.
The History of the Jesus Prayer.
While the four elements of the Jesus Prayer were clearly recognizable by the fourth century, it was not until Bishop Diadochus in the fifth century unified these elements into one recognizable prayer that the Jesus Prayer, per se, came into being. Diadochus was the first to bring these elements together for the purpose of entering into the state of non-discursive, imageless prayer. He states that the intellect is inherently “restless,” and needs some activity to satisfy its needs. He engages the intellect with the ceaseless repetition of the name of Jesus, which ultimately leads to quieting the discursive mind. Of importance is Diadochos' instruction to "give [the mind] nothing but the prayer, 'Lord Jesus'." This unvarying repetition brings the restless intellect into stillness, "reaching out beyond language into silence, beyond discursive thinking into intuitive awareness."
From this essential catalyst, the Jesus Prayer appears again in clear form in the deserts of Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine. St. John Climacus, who lived in the Sinai and wrote the core work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, recommends the prayer. Due to the widespread influence of his writings, the Jesus Prayer spread throughout the Orthodox churches. St. John's followers, St. Hesychius and St. Philotheus, are even more explicit in extolling the virtues of the Jesus Prayer.
Thus, between the fifth and eighth centuries, the Jesus Prayer emerges as a recognized spiritual way, sanctioned by the church hierarchy and widely practiced by both monastics and the laity. In later centuries, as the Eastern churches declined in spiritual vigor, the practice of the Jesus Prayer fell into disuse. In each of the several revivals which have swept through the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Jesus Prayer has played a significant role. In Greece in the fourteenth century, and then again in the eighteenth century when the Philokalia was compiled, the Jesus Prayer was the central practice which fueled and sustained the revival. Again, in Russia during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Jesus Prayer plays a now-familiar and significant role in revitalizing the faith of an entire people.
The Russian Pilgrim
We in the West are familiar with this last revival through the works of the anonymous Russian author of The Way of a Pilgrim. This anonymous author tells a fascinating story of his adventures during the decades before the freeing of the serfs in 1861. An orphaned peasant from the province of Orel, he was raised by a grandfather, along with his older brother. This brother was a drunkard and injured him repeatedly, first crippling his hand, and then burning his house down. Crippled and widowed, with no ties to keep him, the younger brother began his wanderings.
The pilgrim's spiritual journey started in a church, when he heard a reading of the words of St. Paul, "pray without ceasing." He began to wonder how this was possible, and asked every learned clergyman that he encountered. No one gave him a satisfactory answer. He kept looking for a method, but all he received were pious platitudes which begged the question. Finally the pilgrim found a staretz, a wise old spiritual guide, who taught him the following:
The continuous interior Prayer of Jesus is a constant uninterrupted calling upon the divine Name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, in the heart; while forming a mental picture of His constant presence, and imploring His grace, during every occupation, at all times, in all places, even during sleep. The appeal is couched in these terms, 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.' One who accustoms himself to this appeal experiences as a result so deep a consolation and so great a need to offer the prayer always, that he can no longer live without it, and it will continue to voice itself within him of its own accord.
In addition, the staretz read to the pilgrim from the Philokalia, a compendium of writings from the early Fathers which describes the "detailed science of constant interior prayer." Various postures and other details about the Jesus Prayer were explained by reference to this work, introducing him to the writings of the early Church Fathers. As the pilgrim began to progress in the prayer, his psychology started to change. After a summer of practice, he reports:
I felt an absolute peace in my soul. During sleep I often dreamed that I was saying the Prayer. And during the day if I happened to meet anyone, all men without exception were as dear to me as if they have been my nearest relations....All my ideas were quite calmed of their own accord. I thought of nothing whatever but my Prayer, my mind tended to listen to it, and my heart began of itself to feel at times a certain warmth and pleasure...My lonely hut seemed like a splendid palace, and I knew not how to thank God for having sent to me, a lost sinner, so wholesome a guide and master.
The Three Operations of the Jesus Prayer
The Jesus Prayer, as it was taught in Greece and Russia, has three mental parts or operations, and all of these need to be present for the Prayer to be effective. All too often the Jesus Prayer has been taught as if it has only one operation, that of saying the words. This is the most misunderstood point in the practice of this great prayer. The spiritual giants who have used this prayer are unanimous in stating that the words are the least important of the three operations of the Jesus Prayer. The first and most important operation is the Recollection of God's Presence, opening ourselves to the immediacy of the Divine right here and right now. This is the first and most important part of the Jesus Prayer.
The second operation of the Prayer is to put the 'head in the heart', which means to move our attention from our head, where it usually resides, into our heart center, and to pray from the heart. In the words of St. Theophan the Recluse, a major figure in Russian mysticism in the nineteenth century:
In order to keep the mind on one thing by the use of a short prayer, it is necessary to preserve attention and so lead it into the heart: for so long as the mind remains in the head, where thoughts jostle one another, it has no time to concentrate on one thing. But when attention descends into the heart, it attracts all the powers of the soul and body into one point there. This concentration of all human life in one place is immediately reflected in the heart by a special sensation that is the beginning of future warmth....This warmth then holds the attention without special effort....From this there follows a rule of spiritual life: if you keep the heart alive towards God, you will always be in remembrance of God.
This means that if we keep our attention focused in our hearts, our hearts will always be oriented towards the Divine.
This mental operation of putting the attention into the heart is quite unusual for Western Christians. We tend to think of attention as something fixed in the head. Our reasoning goes like this: 'the brain is the organ of thought, so our attention must be physically rooted in the head.' If you have ever stubbed your toe or barked your shin, you know this is untrue. When one of these accidents happen, our entire attention is instantly unified at the location of the injury!
Actually, we can place our attention anywhere in the body that we choose. Placing our attention in the heart feels strange at first, and many wonder whether they get it right. But you will become more comfortable here as the practice becomes familiar.
The third, and least important of the three operations of the Jesus Prayer is the repetition of the words: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" over and over. If our minds are particularly unsettled in our meditation, we may need to repeat this phrase quickly, to drive out the distractions. If our attention is collected and focused, we may adopt a more receptive attitude, and say the words slowly, with pauses in between the phrases.
Putting the three operations together looks like this. First, open yourself to feel God's Presence with you. Then feel the sphere of energy that surrounds your head. This is your attention. Move that sphere of energy slowly down into your heart. From your heart, not from your head, repeat the words of the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me". "The essence of the whole thing is to be established in the remembrance of God, and to walk in His presence."
The Jesus Prayer is not a visual meditation. You should not make pictures of the Lord or of yourself in this practice. Simply engage in these three operations. When your attention wanders from them, gently bring yourself back, and reestablish each of these three operations. If you notice, during the course of your practice of the Jesus Prayer, that you are no longer doing one of these operations, gently reestablish that part of the Prayer and then continue.
"The main thing is to stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart." Eventually, even the words of the prayer will disappear, as we begin to venture into the realms of contemplative prayer. This is the experience of hesychia, or inner stillness. When the words and thoughts of the Jesus Prayer disappear of their own accord, the one who prays has entered into the stillness of the Mind of God. This experience is one of sublime peace and tranquility. When this occurs, do not force yourself to continue repeating the Jesus Prayer. Let yourself dwell in stillness.
In summation, the purpose of the Jesus Prayer is to collect and order the attention, and to focus this attention on God in such a way that we are gradually drawn into the deepest awareness of the Divine Presence in all things and manners of life.
* * *
That’s all for this week. I know this newsletter is a bit lengthy, but I felt it important to review the history and practice of the Jesus Prayer before we begin to use it in our meditation practice. Over the last two thousand years, it has been a central prayer practice for much of the Christian Church. This is such an important practice, that you need to understand where it comes from and how our forebearers have used this meditation to journey into the Divine.
This week, I would encourage you to prepare for the practice of the Jesus Prayer by remembering that you are walking in God’s holy Presence. As you move through the events of your week, simply remember that God is with you. Remember that God’s holy Presence surrounds you and makes its dwelling within you. Next week, I promise, we will go into the actual practice of the Jesus Prayer, and I will show you several variations that you can use.
Thank you once again for your faithfulness in exploring this material with me. Let us pray for one another, that we can let go of everything that separates us from that wondrous love of God, so that we can fully enjoy that magnificent Presence.
With love,
P.S. Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class. If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web. If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com.
Humility as a Tool → Letting go → Fear → Openness → Acceptance & Growth
If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇