Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

I really love this from a recent blog post on Fr. Richard Rohr’s site. In it the inimitable Cynthia Bourgeault talks about the value of centering prayer in learning to let go, and new neuroscience that verifies its benefits.

[A definition and example of the centering prayer practice]

It reminds me of a talk by Allen Watts on Zen Buddhism and its teachings about learning to let go of our clinging and resistance to change which is the cause of all suffering.

Learning to Let Go

Centering Prayer is a devotional practice, placing ourselves in God’s presence and quieting our minds and hearts, but as Cynthia Bourgeault explains, it doesn’t only work on that level. What the desert abbas and ammas, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and even Thomas Keating could not have known when he formally started teaching the practice five decades ago, was that it works on a physiological level as well, strengthening neural pathways, and making “letting go” that much easier. When it comes to releasing our strong preferences, especially our desire for power and control, it seems safe to say that some practice of kenosis is necessary for any movement forward.

The theological basis for Centering Prayer lies in the principle of kenosis, Jesus’s self-emptying love that forms the core of his own self-understanding and life practice. . . .

The gospels themselves make clear that [Jesus] is specifically inviting us to this journey and modeling how to do it. Once you see this, it’s the touchstone throughout all his teaching: Let go! Don’t cling! Don’t hoard! Don’t assert your importance! Don’t fret. “Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” (Luke 12:32). And it’s this same core gesture we practice in Centering Prayer: thought by thought by thought. You could really summarize Centering Prayer as kenosis in meditation form. . . .

Fascinating confirmation that kenosis is indeed an evolutionary human pathway is emerging from—of all places—recent discoveries in neuroscience. From fMRI data collected primarily by the California-based HeartMath Institute, you can now verify chapter and verse that how you respond to a stimulus in the outer world determines which neural pathways will be activated in your brain, and between your brain and your heart. If you respond with any form of initial negativity (which translates physiologically as constriction)—freezing, bracing, clinging, clenching, and so on—the pathway illumined leads to your amygdala (or “reptilian brain,” as it’s familiarly known) . . . which controls a repertory of highly energized fight-or-flight responses. If you can relax into a stimulus—opening, softening, yielding, releasing—the neural pathway leads through the more evolutionarily advanced parts of your forebrain and, surprisingly, brings brain and heart rhythms into entrainment. . . .

Every time we manage to let go of a thought in Centering Prayer, “consenting to the presence and action of God within,” the gesture is actually physically embodied. It’s not just an attitude; something actually “drops and releases” in the solar plexus region of your body, a subtle but distinct form of interior relaxation. . . . And in time, this gentle and persistent “inner aerobics,” undertaken under the specific banner of Centering Prayer and in solidarity with Jesus’s own kenotic path, will gradually establish that “mind of Christ” within you as your own authentic self.

We invite you to spend some time today practicing “letting go” through Centering Prayer or another practice of kenosis.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Shambhala: 2016), 33, 34, 35–36.

Prayer to Future Beings
by Joanna Macy:

“You live inside us, beings of the future.
In the spiral ribbons of our cells, you are here.
In our rage for the burning forests, the poisoned fields, the oil-drowned seals, you are here.
You beat in our hearts through late-night meetings.
You accompany us to clear-cuts and toxic dumps and the halls of the lawmakers. It is you who drive our dogged labors to save what is left. O you who will walk this Earth when we are gone, stir us awake. Behold through our eyes the beauty of this world. Let us feel your breath in our lungs, your cry in our throat. Let us see you in the poor, the homeless, the sick. Haunt us with your hunger, hound us with your claims, that we may honour the life that links us. You have as yet no faces we can see, no names we can say. But we need only hold you in our mind, and you teach us patience. You attune us to measures of time where healing can happen, where soil and souls can mend. You reveal courage within us we had not suspected, love we had not owned.
O you who come after, help us remember:
we are your ancestors.
Fill us with gladness for the work that must be done.”

A friend posted this on FB.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~ e.e.cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

This moving poem was sent out to one of our Sufi lists today.

SINGULARITY
by Marie Howe

          (after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money —

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home

I read this in the latest issue of “Listen” – the newsletter for Spiritual Companions and it was so beautiful and profound I had to pass it on. It is directed toward female-bodied folx, but I can absolutely find a way that it relates to me in my current male body as well.

Nocturn
by Liza Hyatt

In the dark, middle of night, in the deep middle of the middle of life, may you wake, feeling the familiar fear, and suddenly realize you are in the midst of slowly, painfully, giving birth, and have, for years, been in labor, losing, growing,

and may you mutter, “Midwife,” in confusion turning to prayer, begging the dark to help you, and hear the poetry, midwife, midlife, midlife, midwife,

and be calmed by this, letting Midlife do her work,

attending the birthing chamber where who you were, that too-tight, tight-skinned, tightly clothed, tightly wound young woman, has been opened out, spreading wide, like a snake-skin, like a vulva, from which is emerging that wild, white haired, loose and expansive, grinning and playful old woman, who must be your Soul.

LIZA HYATT is a poet whose books include Once, There Was a Canal (Chatter House Press, 2017), The Mother Poems (Chatter House Press, 2014), Under My Skin, (WordTech Editions, 2012). Liza is an art therapist in Indianapolis. She is currently a student in the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute. You can contact her at lizahyatt@gmail.com

Neil Douglas Klotz, or Saadi is a former member of our Ruhaniat Sufi Order and an amazing scholar, thinker, mystic, and teacher.

When I saw this posting as part of Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog I was moved to share it as something we are all in need of, and/or providing to others in these times.

Finding the Source of Comfort

Earlier this week, we [Richard Rohr’s Blog site] shared a meditation from Megan McKenna on the importance of translation. Scholar and author Neil Douglas-Klotz has worked for decades with the Aramaic language, which Jesus most likely spoke as a first-century Jewish man from Nazareth. Because translation is never an exact science, Dr. Douglas-Klotz offers several possible understandings of Jesus’ teaching “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by love.

Healthy are those weak and overextended for their purpose; they shall feel their inner flow of strength return.

Healed are those who weep for their frustrated desire; they shall see the face of fulfillment in a new form.

Aligned with the One are the mourners; they shall be comforted.

Turned to the Source are those feeling deeply confused by life; they shall be returned from their wandering.

Dr. Douglas-Klotz continues:

Lawile can mean “mourners” (as translated from the Greek), but in Aramaic it also carries the sense of those who long deeply for something to occur, those troubled or in emotional turmoil, or those who are weak and in want from such longing. Netbayun can mean “comforted,” but also connotes being returned from wandering, united inside by love, feeling an inner continuity, or seeing the arrival of (literally, the face of) what one longs for.

Dr. Douglas-Klotz offers this embodied prayer practice to help readers sense the powerful message of this beatitude.

When in emotional turmoil—or unable to clearly feel any emotion—experiment in this fashion: breathe in while feeling the word lawile (lay-wee-ley) [longing]; breathe out while feeling the word netbayun (net-bah-yoon) [loving]. Embrace all of what you feel and allow all emotions to wash through as though you were standing under a gentle waterfall. Follow this flow back to its source and find there the spring from which all emotion arises. At this source, consider what emotion has meaning for the moment, what action or nonaction is important now.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco: 1990), 50, 51, 52.

It’s been a while since I posted as we’ve been enjoying a very full summer of 🚶‍♂️ hikes and gatherings. And we’re off again for a week on the east coast with our son. So, this seemed like a beautiful sharing to leave you all with for a bit.

From Fr Richard Rohr’s blog:

Praying the Lord’s Prayer

Perhaps some of the most comforting words Jesus shared in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels are the prayer we Christians call the Our Father or the Lord’s Prayer. While the prayer is most often said in community or as part of ritual prayer, this prayer can also be a contemplative practice when prayed slowly and mindfully, perhaps even as lectio divina. We invite you to pray this modern version of the prayer of Jesus from the Anglican Church of New Zealand, which both honors and reflects indigenous Maori culture.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples
        of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
        sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
       now and for ever. Amen.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Church of the Province of New Zealand, A New Zealand Prayer Book, He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa (Collins Liturgical Publications: 1989), 181.

With gratitude to sister Tarana who posted this on her FB feed.

************

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

~Rumi

Fr Richard Rohr’s blogs this week speak about the value of Spiritual Direction for anyone. As a newly certified Spiritual Director/Companion, I truly believe this service can be of great help to anyone regardless of your spiritual path, or even if you don’t consider yourself spiritual but know that you feel a connection to the earth or to physics, etc.

One of the most important skills of a good Spiritual Director/Companion is listening. And as this post suggests, practicing reflective listening where instead of always looking for the way to fix a problem, or find a quick answer, we listen to our inner guidance – what they call the Holy Spirit). Of course, this skill is important for anyone who wants to be of service to our fellow humans. So, this post felt important to share.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Spiritual Direction/Companionship or exploring the possibility of walking your spiritual path with me or other Spiritual Companions, please feel free to contact me at drmatthewsusa@gmail.com.

Reflective Listening

One of the most notable “gifts” of good spiritual directors is their ability to listen well. They aren’t afraid of silence. They listen compassionately and without judgment, and they speak from the heart (and when they are very good and disciplined, only as prompted by the Holy Spirit). While spiritual directors are trained in the act of generous and holy listening, it is a skill we can all develop. Interfaith minister and founder of The Listening Center Kay Lindahl offers these guidelines for reflective listening, which is a gift to both ourselves and those around us.

One of the goals that is emphasized in our culture is finding answers—solving problems, answering questions, removing doubt. We want to know who, what, when, where, and why—and we want to know now. When we listen, we are trained to listen for the answers. . . .

Reflective listening distinguishes a response from an answer. It is a practice to get to know your inner voice, and it takes time and patience.

First, take a few breaths before responding to a situation, question, or comment. In those few seconds, ask yourself what wants to happen next. Then wait for your inner voice to respond. Remember that you are not listening for the answer; you are listening for a response, for your true wisdom to reveal itself.

Most important, as you practice reflection, notice that what you want to say (the ego) matters less than what wants to be said (the soul). Reflective listening is a slowing down, waiting, practicing patience with yourself.

Reflective listening is also about listening for the questions. We are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening for the questions. Rainer Maria Rilke’s [1875–1926] advice to the young poet was “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” [1]

The practice of listening for the questions—for what wants to be said next—deepens your relationship to your inner voice, your soul, and enhances full self-expression.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M. D. Herter Norton, rev. ed. 
(W. W. Norton and Company: 1954), 35.

Kay Lindahl, The Sacred Art of Listening: Forty Reflections for Cultivating a Spiritual Practice (Skylight Paths Publishing: 2002), 110, 112. 

Explore further resources and watch Father Richard Rohr explain why more people are asking for—and benefiting from—spiritual direction.

To truly hold the many shadow elements of our world today in radical acceptance requires an ability and capacity for deep mercy toward ourselves and others.

In this post from Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward reminds us how important that is and notes, “Mercy lies in our mindful actions of thinking, speech, and behaviors toward ourselves and one another.”

Deep Mercy

Over the last few years in the United States, we (especially those of us who are white) have been asked to examine the collective shadow of racism that has been a part of our nation since its founding. We wrestled with it during the Civil War and again during the civil rights era, but, as we do with so much shadow material, we allowed it to go “underground” and remain there. Part of the reason we do this is because it is so painful to face our shadow and all the destruction we have caused by ignoring it. As Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward writes, shadow work requires us to hold the tension of placing our collective shadow within a deeper well of mercy:

The bridge of mercy lies deep within us and among us, however well it is hidden by clouds of conflict, cruelty, and hatred. . . . [But] it seems that as a culture we take great pride in our capacity to be unmerciful. . . .

Look at the prison system in America if you want an example of our collective fragmentation: the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with 2.3 million people in prison, and of those people, one-third are people of color. This could not happen in a society of merciful people guided by justice and integrity. . . .

We need the experience of what I call deep mercy. Mercy lies in our mindful actions of thinking, speech, and behaviors toward ourselves and one another. We may not seem as if we are capable of collective deep mercy, as expressed in acts that restore a sense of shared humanity with one another. Yet these acts of mercy are not absent; in fact, they are the invisible web that sustains living connection and progress in human history. We have survived as a species by crossing its bridge again and again. . . .

Mercy’s bridge is kept alive by the energies of deep justice flowing back and forth, the truth of suffering beyond the constrictions of the law. It is the justice of our precious bodies being respected and loved concretely as divinely human.

I invite you to spend some time today contemplating a personal or collective shadow, perhaps even journaling about it or speaking with a trusted friend. Accessing the “deep mercy” that Ward describes only comes about when we have allowed our shadow to come to the surface, faced it fully, and chosen a path of healing and justice for all people.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Larry Ward, America’s Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal (Parallax Press: 2020), 95, 96–97.