Jonathan Erdman: My blog, theology, pilgrimage, and personal revolution.
"We do not wake up in this world calm and serene, having the luxury of choosing to act or not act. We wake up crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality." -Ronald Rolheiser
(Continuing to borrow from Tamie's posts.)
"This is an age that, by its very nature as a time of crisis, of revolution, of struggle, calls for the special searching and questioning which are the work of the monk in his meditation and prayer....the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth." from Thomas Merton's Contemplative Prayer
I really appreciate a spirituality that is grounded. Even the monk who seems to have abandoned the world is for Merton merely listening more intently to its deepest needs.
"Meditation" and "revolution" are not typically two words discussed together, but I am intrigued by the correlation. What would a revolution look like, if it were born out of meditation, silence, reflection, and prayer? What might our solitary spiritual practices become if they were energized with revolutionary impulses?
Merton wrote Contemplative Prayer as a reflection for monks, but he also recognized that the contemplative path is embraced by individuals outside the monastery.
"Nothing is more foreign to authentic monastic and 'contemplative' tradition in the Church than a kind of gnosticism which would elevate the contemplative above the ordinary Christian by initiating him into a realm of esoteric knowledge and experience, delivering him from the ordinary struggles and sufferings of human existence, and elevating him to a privileged state among the spiritually pure, as if he were almost an angel, untouched by matter and passion, and no longer familiar with the economy of sacraments, charity and the Cross. The way of monastic prayer is not a subtle escape from the Christian economy of incarnation and redemption...
"The dimensions of prayer in solitude are those of man's ordinary anguish, his self-searching, his moments of nausea at his own vanity, falsity and capacity for betrayal."
Again, I really appreciate how Merton's spirituality is a means of going deeper into life and ordinary experience, not a means of rising above it or going beyond it. True spirituality is not a means to an end--it is not a way to escape from the individual struggles of our flesh and bone--true spirituality becomes more aware of its frailty and human struggle.
Merton puts all this in a concise way: "Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life."
I have been reading Thomas Merton's little book Contemplative Prayer, and I would like to share some quotes on Theos Project, perhaps combined with a few short thoughts of my own. For those who have an interest in contemplative Christianity, there are few figures as influential as Thomas Merton. Merton was a Trappist monk, a poet, and a deeply engaged intellectual. He combined the passion of an activist with his love for the contemplative life in the monastery.
My interest in contemplative prayer has developed in the last year. For me, prayer had been an empty exercise for many years. My prayer life in the past centered on bringing my list of petitions, along with some form of emotional exercise of "connecting" with God. The latter often felt like I was trying to force my heart into a particular state of being, one in which I either felt energized by the feeling of God's presence or else some sense of sinfulness, that I had fallen short somehow and needed to experience a sense of guilt. What was most lacking, I think, is the sense of letting myself be, to come just as I am to prayer.
For me, silence has been something that I have been exploring over the last year. I began with a short meditation practice, spending five or ten minutes each morning in silence and stillness. Over time, this lengthened. Many months later, I began to combine this meditation with a ritual of prayer, eventually re-incorporating petitions and requests to God as part of my prayers.
Contemplative prayer seems to me to be the combination of conscious elements of prayer with a certain stillness. The term "contemplative prayer" is seeks to engage God in a stance of openness. I'll save more on defining contemplative prayer for Merton. For many Christians in the U.S., prayer can lack this reflective and contemplative openness. My inclination is to say that such reflection and openness necessitates grace, an unconditional acceptance of everything we are. It may take on many moods, but if prayer does not in some way root itself in grace, then it risks becoming empty activity and routine, and further, without grace we tend to hide certain elements of ourselves from God, from others, and from ourselves. Contemplative prayer, then, is an exercise in grace.
Some speak of meditation as being a practice that brings us into awareness with our "true self." The idea of a true self seems tricky to me. Tricky I say, because the notion of a true self seems to be the self that is buried deep beneath the rubble of all of the external influences that have shaped us. The true self is the self that is deeper that the part of us that has been molded by our culture, society, and environment.
While I do not deny the existence of a “true self,” in some form or fashion, I find it problematic to draw a hard and fast line between “true self” and “conditioned self.” Whatever the true self is, it isn’t what it is without the conditioning of our lives. Nor do I think a self is less true if it is conditioned. Living a contemplative life, engaging in a deeper spiritual and psychological awareness, should not be a practice of seeking to bypass the concrete realities around us or to despise the part of us that has been conditioned by the experiences of life. In short, meditation should not simply be an escape. If it becomes mostly about escape, then it differs little from other methods that people use to hide or themselves to the world.
Meditation seems to me to be as much about connecting to the external world as it does to go deeper into one’s self. I do believe that meditation should be an experience of going deeper into one’s self. Yet it is simultaneously a way in which a person develops a deeper awareness of what is going on around them.
In the hectic ebb and flow of life in our highly connected Western society, many people appear rather checked out, disengaged from life. They be unable to really be present to someone else’s thoughts and emotions, or, conversely, they may be unaware of the thoughts and emotions that they have, becoming lost in the world of others. Ironically, losing one’s self in the world also tends to miss a vital connection with others, since others in the world are serving as an escape route.
Meditation seeks to develop a greater sense of awareness. To become aware of one’s own thoughts and feelings as well as the thoughts and feelings of those around them. As such, it is not merely a practice that allows one to become lost in one’s self. It is a way of practicing an acute sense of ourselves, carrying over into an ability to tune in to others in a meaningful way.
Personally, my method of dealing with the world is to seek to escape it, to withdraw and distance myself from it. Sitting in meditation comes easy for me, but not necessarily for all of the right reasons. It can become merely an avenue for escape. However, what I have certainly noticed since I began practicing regular meditation (almost a year or so ago?) is that I have very gradually developed a better awareness of what is going on in and through others. I can be in groups or in one-on-one conversations and drop out of sight, disconnect.
For me, meditation has been a way that I have been able to concentrate on my awareness of the present moment, and to become aware of the times when I am disconnecting or want to withdraw from what is going on around. So, for me the benefits of meditation have had as much to do with going outside of myself as it has for going within myself. The experience of growing in awareness, I believe, is different for various people and personality types. For all, though, awareness is both of self and of the external world outside of one's self; and, there is a very real sense in which there is no difference.
A.H. Almaas is a spiritual teacher who merges modern depth psychology with spirituality. In order to familiarize myself with Almaas, I was recently listening to a Youtube lecture, and he made the comment that in spiritual practices (or spiritual disciplines), the person must love the practice.
It is interesting to me that so often we lose sight of the fact that love is the primary motivation for spiritual practice. For so many, spiritual disciplines become a means to an end: enlightenment, mental focus, peace, feeling closer to God, fulfilling one’s religious duty, changing the world via prayer, etc. There are many ways in which our spiritual practice becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
Is it really all that surprising that we so easily lose sight of love? Doesn’t it seem like love is the first thing to go? Love is so fragile. So delicate. So beyond our ability to control it or capture it. Perhaps it is not “the first thing to go.” Perhaps it is just the thing we lose sight of, even if it is still there, supporting us in ways unseen.
Spiritual practice can involve so many different things. There are the usual culprits: contemplative prayer, reading of scripture, meditation, intercessory prayer, liturgical services, corporate worship, spiritual journaling, fasting, etc. But there are so many diverse ways to engage the sacred in spiritual practice: walking, painting, cycling, writing (of all kinds), washing the dishes, eating, singing, and the list can go on and on. In reality, anything one does can be an act of contemplation. Anything can be a spiritual practice.
I suppose what makes one particular spiritual practice more significant for a person is love. That is, there are some spiritual practices that we just love more than others. Why do we love one (or a few) spiritual practice(s) more than others? Well, that’s the mystery of love, I suppose. Love itself is mysterious and beyond our ability to explain it in its entire depth.
If love is the foundation of spiritual practice, then we can compare spiritual practice with love for a partner or spouse. Sure, we love certain things about people. We might think a person is beautiful, sexual, or attractive. We may enjoy the dialog and conversation that we can generate with a person. But when we love, there is some sense in which we fall. Something just happens. Something that seems best to leave unexplained. There is a mystery to love.
There is a mystery to love, and there is love in touching mystery. Spiritual practice is this merging of mystery and love.
And yet we so easily lose sight of love and mystery in our spiritual lives and practice. This is to be expected, even for the most learned theologian, the most experienced pastor/priest, or the most advanced spiritual guru. In fact, advancement seems to be one of the greatest enemies of mystery and love.
Yet when we lose sight of love, there is always grace. Grace surrounds us in practice, even when we are using practice as a means to an end, or when our minds have strayed from focus and concentration, or when we just don’t want to have anything to do with spiritual practice. Grace surrounds us. Perhaps we might say that grace is most present when we are most absent.
Based on our knowledge of a grace that surrounds us, we are free to open our hearts again to the love of practice and the joy of spiritual discipline.
