Honing closer to the center

Confusion continues and even as I grieve over a loneliness that I do not understand, scores of people rush to support me. My husband, Stephen, has booked a plane ticket and will arrive here in Berkeley for an unexpected Easter visit. My aunt and uncle call to ask how I am doing and express a gratitude for simply hearing my voice. My dear friend Perry sits with me at lunch and provides intense counsel that keeps other people from casually sitting down with us.

There are numerous people here in this CDSP (Church Divinity School of the Pacific) dorm that watch me in my sorrow and make a point to pat me on the back when they say hello. My eyes tear up in emotion when I think of this outpouring of support.

But all this does not put an end to the emotive feelings that well in me. I read further in “Center Prayer and Inner Awakening” that indicates that is loosening of emotional pain is what Keating calls “the archeological dig.” This is the way, he says, to get to the origin of the “false self.”

The “false self,” in this Christian meditative context, is a modern equivalent for the traditional concept of the consequences of original sin. Beginning in infancy (or even before) each of us, in response to perceived threats to our well being, develops a false self: a set of protective behaviors driven at the root by a sense of need and lack.

It is the false self, Keating says, that we bring to the spiritual journey, as our “true self” lies buried beneath the accretions and defenses. Accordingly, there is a huge amount of healing that has to take place before our deep and authentic quest for union with God.

Interestingly enough, at this point I’m not sure what my personal theology is and for as much as I believe in a divine spirit, which is in each one of us, I don’t know that I think there is actually an essence that I will form a union with beyond my own nature.

Which seems to lead me to an ironic truth that even when we are deliberate, like my practice of centering prayer, life is an experiment with the unknown and the unseen. And for as much as I rail against the need to continually make my own way, another part of me understands that in our aloneness, we are each a part of each us.

It is indeed the mystery of life that touches us all. This mystery may be an essence that I could call God.

No way but through

I cried today over unknown feelings that I have no words for and no clear idea of what the emotion is about. This feeling seems to attack my sense of well being; there is a fleeting sense of despair and I grieve over very old hurts.

I question whether I am doing adequate work as a graduate student and I am made stupid in my questions. My friends at lunch suggest it is the “inside critic” and that I should ceremoniously place it in a jar and lid it tightly.

I am not so sure I should simply fend it away.

Is this the work of the centering prayer? Is this the stirring up of the unconscious that Father Thomas Keating says will arise of seeking the still point of the turning world? According to Keating “as one sits in centering prayer with the intent to rest in and trust in God, the unconscious begins to unload the emotional junk of a lifetime. Repressed memories, pain, accumulated dull hurt rise to the surface and are, through the attitudes of gentle consent, allowed to depart.”

Maybe so.

The feelings are one of smallness, of not mattering, of being crushed and ignored by some greater force. I grieve with this feeling, and it remains illusive. I feel inadequate to describe it, silenced in its presence and attempts to explore it make it even more illusive from my consciousness.

I read that the fruits of this unloading are more than worth the pain. In response to each significant descent into the ground of our woundedness, there is a parallel ascent in the form of inner freedom, the experience of the fruits of the spirit, and beatitude.

I breathe into its darkness and I make myself a student of its pain.

What else can I possibly do?

Out of the fray

I lengthened my time of sitting this morning to 25 minutes as an intention to enhance my experience of Centering Prayer. Having sat for a total of 80 minutes yesterday in silence and theoretically without thought, I had felt a certain calm centering following the last session.

This morning I had a dream that I was accompanying someone who was being chased, took over the lead in driving the “get-a-way” car, which, as oft happens in dreams, became a bicycle. At the end of the road I was riding on, there was a small incline. As I was having trouble pedaling the bike even on the flat, I dismounted. I had no energy for the hill and realized that I was not the focus of the chase. As I walked up the hill, it became grassy, and I was called to simply enter the woods to the right and remove myself from the street, from the chase and from the turmoil.

I think the choice to choose calm became apparent because of this new habit of sitting quietly each day.

Naked in the garden

According to the Rev. Dr. David Gortner in a March 15 lecture in Mind, Habit, Change and Conversion, all human interactions are functioning with an unconscious undergirding of impression management and perception enhancement. In other words, unbeknownst to us, we are constantly working toward convincing others that we are somehow different than we are.

I found the concept sad. I extrapolated that all human interactions are based on feelings of inadequacy, or worse yet, manipulation and deception. I found it contrary to the actualization of our oneness with each other and the divine spark that illumines our lives.

I articulated my difficulty with the concept and Professor Gortner suggested that I could reframe my analysis and understand that human beings instinctively know that the “other” is very important to our individual well-being.

At first, the answer did not satisfy me. Then, I came to realize that the conflict was reconciled when I held the tension of being insecurely rooted in our humanness together with being able to touch our wholeness with the sacred through our relationships with others.

Additionally, as the human mind has the capacity to be the observer and to comment on the observation, I can also wonder how perception enhancement and impression management plays out in electronic interaction, exemplified, perhaps, with the practice of blogging.

There is no hiding

[The following is my weekly reflection paper for my class Howard Thurman: Finding Common Ground.]

When it is all said and done and we have lived our lives out to their earthly end, our lives will be measured by the quality of our relationships--to each other, to God and to our work. When I say work, it is not necessarily a job that I am talking about; what I mean by work is our life’s work, our call or that which we contribute to the world.

What is the quality of those relationships? How would our lives be described in a poem, a ballad or a movie? Is it fair to expect that we traveled through our journey with consistent of moral or ethical values?

Dr Howard Thurman in “Jesus and the Disinherited” explores deception as a survival tool that the underprivileged have used to gain some control over their lives and a mechanism that the strong have used to deprive others of their civic, economic, political and social rights without its appearing so be so. He espouses that honesty is not part of the question in dealing with others where there is no basis of equality. This pattern conspires to silence and eliminates the question of morality on everyone’s side. It also weakens the moral fiber of a person and by extension a society who condones the system. “The penalty,” he says, “of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated.” To the habitual liar, the boundary between lie and truth is lost and becomes increasingly impossible to discern which is which.

The disinherited, the put upon of society’s structure, often seem justified to compromise their moral compass on the assumption that one small deception in the face of overwhelming limitation could be seen as a sin of survival--an amoral choice of consequence. It is in this realm that many of our systems operate; the most glaring example is our use of the death penalty as the ultimate penalty for the taking of a life.

In defense of the reasonableness of this position one has to consider the hiding of slaves on the Underground Railroad. If a soldier were to come to your door and ask if you are hiding a slave, is the only answer that has moral integrity “yes”? Here we understand that morality is not part of the question. And until the center of people’s lives change from survival, there is little alternative to maintain totally moral and ethical lives.

But aside from that shift, Thurman advocates one viable alternative of “a complete and devastating sincerity.” Here, there are no excuses, no extenuating circumstances, or viable option beyond speaking the truth, without fear and without exception. Gandhi in a letter to Muriel Lester wrote, “You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn. If they listen to your requests and grant them, you will be satisfied. If they reject them, then you must make their rejection your strength.” It seems that within these words he is advocating that the individual is totally in charge of his/her transcendence over limitations.

Interestingly enough, in terms of power struggle and victory over injustice, sincerity packs a powerful punch. Thurman writes, “in the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense, with the edge taken away from the sense of prerogative and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests.”

The analysis is brilliant in its simplicity and in its pin-pointing of a universal truth. There are no excuses that we can provide for ourselves that justifies deception. What you see is what you get; honesty is the best policy. Why would we think there was anything else?

When it is all said and done and we have lived our lives out to their earthly end, our lives will be measured by the quality of our relationships--to each other, to God and to our work. For all of our complexity and need for complexification it is a humorous and inverted truth, that less is more and that “a man is a man, no more, no less.”

“The awareness of this simple fact is the supreme moment of human dignity.”

Progress or practice?

It’s easy to sit for 20 minutes and I have no trouble doing it twice during the day. This evening, I didn’t fully finished setting the alarm and after what seemed like an awfully long time, I checked the clock and found that I had been sitting for almost 30 minutes.

My mind wanders from breath to fantasy about traveling an interior world inside my body. In a self-guided tour, I imagine a crystal shaft, pocked with holes, connecting rooms that lie like apartment house floors at each of my seven charkas. I bring the moist rich earth energy into the tube from the root charkas and allow it to circulate and clear out the dust that lays over everything in those cavernous rooms. I bring energy down from my crown charkas to fill those inner places with light.

As I sat tonight, with thoughts of the day flitting in and out, I heard a suggestion to “merge with the universe.” It seemed like a protective message, perhaps in response to extending myself today in several meetings about issues at the school that left me feeling effective and vulnerable.

I sense a human attraction to our vulnerabilities and the embrace of systems that don’t go well. I sense a society of people content to accept limitations. I sense a culture that shrugs their shoulders in the face of mediocre outcomes.

Could the message to merge with the universe be a suggestion to become invisible to the self-imposed barriers that keep me separate from the living energy of the universe or merely an invitation to become less self-conscious?

Is there a difference between the two?

Riding the energy

Last night during my women’s spirituality circle, we were instructed to go on a guided meditation from our heads to our hearts. In my mind’s eye, I traveled down a square staircase, down into my heart chamber.

Upon arriving there, I found my heart covered with stained and old gauze. Left over from when my heart was hemorrhaging and needed to be bound up, my sense was that the strips now constrict my heart’s beating and bring a catch in my breath.

In my meditation, I was not sure if I needed to unravel the gauze, or cut it away in a smooth line. The cut, which would cause the binds to fall all in one piece, seemed too risky to consider. I pondered whether to allow my beating heart to loosen it own bonds over time, but somehow felt this alternative seemed too slow and left too much to chance.

Toward the end of this morning's session, my mind went back to that image and wondered in what direction the gauze was wrapped. In my mind’s eye, I contemplated its unraveling. When the alarm went off and signaled the end of the session, I was almost sad to leave that sheltered heart space behind.

I logged in a second 20-minute session between finishing the required reading in Howard Thurman’s “Jesus the Disinherited” and the writing of two-page reflection. The session was relaxing, went quickly and I was comfortable sitting upright in a soft dining room type straight chair in front of my window.

I had a lot of energy after lunch and got through my editing work for The River Reporter with more vigor than what I consider normal. I asked my dorm mate Suzanne, who is experienced with meditation, whether my energy level would increase after five 20-minute sessions.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I always feel like I am charging my battery. But I just don’t keep up the practice.”

What is it about human beings that makes it so easy to ignore that which makes us feel better?

Father Thomas Keating believes that if more people would practice contemplation, there would be more peace in the world. I suppose I’m one of his converts.

Timing is everything

I began my contemplative practice this morning at 7:40 a.m. so that the bell at the hour would signal the end of 20 minutes. My mind was wandering and I centered on the word “detach” to calm my rampant thoughts. When I was able to more or less have my mind go still, I felt a tingling in the middle of my forehead. My eyes seemed to focus upward beneath closed lids.

Counter to the goal of emptying one’s mind, I thought of something that was important to do, a solution to a problem or a thought that was expansive in some way, but at this particular moment I cannot remember it.

Clarity often comes at the most inopportune times.

Day 1, p.m.
I laid down on my bed at 4:40 p.m. to do my second contemplative session. Having been out all day, first at church, then a visit with my aunt and uncle and shopping for refreshments for a program for school tomorrow, my mind was flitting and tumbling all over itself. I cautioned myself about falling asleep.

After a while, I became interested in how much time had passed, and I opened my eyes and looked at my clock. It is 5:06 p.m. and I had undoubtedly slept through the clanking at the hour. I learned that it’s probably not a good idea to try to meditate in the late afternoon.

Day 1, p.m., take two
Because I had fallen asleep in the afternoon, I decided that I would log in another 20-minute contemplative session this evening. Again my mind jumped all over the place. Concentrating on a single word, at least for right now, does not seem to be an effective method of preventing my whirling mind to empty itself.

But I have become aware of the constant stream of thought that accompanies me wherever I go. This morning on the way to the BART station, a 15-minute walk from my room, my mind was constantly taking in my surroundings and providing me a silent verbal commentary. Much of the thought was peaceful, “oh, isn’t that plant pretty, or “oh, how weird, they spray painted those plants.”

But I wonder about that commentary and I remember times when I am simply absorbed and silent in the moment.

Wondering here and there

Between the Contemporary Worship conference last week taking me to San Diego for two days and an entry into a sermon contest that I handed in on Wednesday afternoon, being prepared for my classes this week was a real challenge.

Knowing that there was simply too much to do, I prioritized my time, deleted all of the “truthout” emails without reading them and refrained from Spider Solitaire. And while I did not read every word of the assigned readings, I was able to follow the classroom lectures and completed both papers that were due this week.

And I made a preliminary arrangement with my professors of my “Mind, Habit, Change and Conversion” class that I would start a contemplative practice and keep a journal on my progress for my final project in that class, as opposed to writing a scholarly 15-25 page research paper.

The idea of actually trying to inhabit the learning, by changing my mind and habits, came as I listened to Father Thomas Keating last Thursday morning. And so with preliminary approval, I begin to research different contemplative models. I am leaning toward the Keating’s centering prayer, which optimally is practiced twice a day for 20 minutes.

The centering prayer is based on sitting in silence with a particular word that you think would be helpful to a journey toward stillness. When Father Keating led a 10-minute prayer last week, I settled on “focus.” But as I sat there, the word that kept knocking against my brain was “detach.”

What would our lives look like if we give up attachment to outcome? What would our lives look like if we give up attachment to being right? What spaces would open up if we give up attachment to having things go our way?

The day was bright, and I took the opportunity to go out to shoot pictures for a “Meditation on Light” assignment due on Monday. Starting in the dorm parking lot, I photographed the reflective surfaces of car headlights and taillights. From there I set out to photograph light is it played off flowers, stones walls and finally a hillside stream. As my camera battery went dead, I found myself lying under a huge Redwood tree in a nearby park. With its roots firmly planted in fertile ground, I wondered what detachment might mean for a tree.

There was an earthquake last night at 8:40 p.m. It made a sound like a sudden heavy wind, and then the building jerked a bit. I was in a first-floor room that had one wall at ground level, the other side underground. I felt no shaking. Residents of the fourth floor had books fall off shelves as the building rocked back and forth.

Some wonder how Californians can live on fault lines. I wonder about detachment. What do you wonder about?




For a slideshow of photos from Meditation on Light click image

Meditation on Light