Section Four: Paths of Presence
Chapter Seven introduces us to contemplative prayer: seeing God within us and around us. Chapter Eight helps us find the presence of God in the words of Scripture.
Chapter Seven:
Paths of God’s Presence Within and Around You
Spiritual Experiment: Fasting and Abstinence
Fasting and abstinence have varied meanings. Traditionally, fasting means eating nothing between meals and eating less food than normal at meals. There are stricter forms of fasting in which a person eats nothing and drinks only water. Abstinence means staying away from something, often from meat. One could, however, abstain from other things like cigarettes or television. What are some reasons for fasting and abstinence in your life? There are many kinds of reasons–practical, political, and religious.
Most practical reasons involve health. The body is not made for overeating, continual eating, or eating unhealthy foods. Generally speaking, people who are substantially overweight are less healthy than people of moderate weight. On the other hand, eating too little can also be the cause of a serious ailment. Eating between meals is unhealthy because then the stomach is digesting constantly. This takes up blood that the body needs for other purposes. Frequent eating promotes tooth decay. The food you eat after the evening meal is most likely to turn to fat because you will not have the time to burn it off before sleep.
Other reasons for fasting are not related to health. The more you eat for meals, the more sluggish and lethargic you get. Also, the more weight you gain, the less good you feel about yourself. Very often, when people eat, it is not because they are really hungry; it is because they are not feeling good about themselves or their lives. Food becomes a kind of sedative.
Political reasons for fasting often involve protesting injustice. People like Gandhi and Cesar Chavez have gone without food for long periods of time both to call attention to injustice and to protest against it, even at times at the risk of their own health and life.
Fasting and abstinence are also religious practices. The Catholic Church has always had special times, including Advent and Lent, for fasting and abstinence to prepare for great feasts and celebrations. Catholics are to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and to abstain from meat on the Fridays of Lent. This fasting and abstinence also enables people to experience a little of the hardship that most of the world knows daily and helps people develop self-control in their lives.
Fasting and abstinence are related to experiencing the presence of God. When we fast or abstain, we become more aware of our physical hungers and feel thankful to God that we fast and abstain from choice, not from poverty. Fasting and abstinence can also be symbolic of our spiritual hunger for God. They remind us of the words of Saint Augustine: “O God, You have made us for Yourself. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
The easiest way to fast is just to eat less for meals and nothing between meals. If you want to do a stricter fast, try skipping lunch and eating nothing besides breakfast and dinner. If after doing this a few times you want to do more, eat nothing but breakfast. If you can do this with no apparent ill effect, you could try not eating at all during a day and seeing what that was like.
Whenever you fast, make sure you drink plenty of water. Do not fast if you are doing strenuous work. When you break your fast and return to normal, eat very little for your first regular meal, perhaps just a piece of fruit. Then return to regular eating habits gradually.
If you fast and abstain, you will feel positive, healthy, and energetic. This is a spiritual experiment. Try it for a while–it will have to be a couple of weeks so that your body can get rid of the toxins it has already stored up from previous bad eating–and see for yourself what a difference it makes.
Contemplation: The Prayer of Presence
Notes on Using Contemplative Prayer
God is present in everything since God made everything and keeps it in existence. This is not to say that everything is God. Things have their own existence, but that existence is as closely bound up with God as the dance is with the dancer. Things are the same as God, yet different.
We are touched by God’s presence in the world in many ways. With our minds we recognize God’s presence in all that God has made. With our hearts we feel God’s presence in moments of beauty. With our entire being, during times of rapture or deepest prayer, we experience God’s presence in all that exists. Prayerful people in all religions throughout the centuries have experienced the all-pervasive presence of God.
The word contemplation means “seeing”; contemplative prayer means “the prayer of seeing God.” Prayer can enable us to see God in everything. God is always there, but plays hide-and-seek with us. If we saw God frequently, we would be so overcome with emotion that we would not be able to live our lives normally, so God is merciful to us and hides God’s overwhelming presence from us, except for gifted moments of prayer or peak experiences. Because God is in everything, everything is holy, and every place is a holy place. God is always present everywhere. Our attention and awareness make it easier for God to manifest that presence to us.
Relaxation: Heaviness and Lightness
Imagine that you are in the space shuttle. As the shuttle very slowly and gently takes off, feel your body becoming more and more relaxed as it becomes heavier and heavier. As the shuttle reaches orbit, feel your body becoming lighter and lighter until it is weightless and very relaxed. Take a minute to stay with whatever relaxes you more, the feeling of heaviness or the feeling of lightness.
Prayer: Experiencing God’s Presence Within You
Spend ten minutes with God. Pretend that you have such a close and intense relationship with God that you do not need to say anything to God. Prayer can be just looking at God. So just look at God present within you. Do not think. Do not talk. Do not “pray.” Just look. Let yourself be open to experience God’s presence within you.
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When the prayer is over, write on a piece of looseleaf paper the word God. Fold the paper and put it into your shoe so you will be reminded of God all day long. When you feel the paper, remember God’s presence.
QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU DESCRIBE YOUR EXPERIENCE
- What was it like to look at God?
- What did you “see” when you looked at God?
- How is this different from other kinds of prayer?
- Could you feel God’s presence even a little? What was it like?
- How did the folded piece of paper in your shoe keep God in your day?
Prayer: Experiencing God’s Presence in Nature and Art
Look at something beautiful: a flower, a baby, something artistic, the palm of your own hand. Imagine that God is within it. You do not “see” God, but you know God is there. Or imagine that God is hiding in that beautiful object. Become aware of God. Either be silent or talk to God. Do this for ten minutes.
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If it is hard to imagine God by focusing on one thing, then find God’s presence by taking a walk in a park or a woods and seeing all the beauty of nature around you, or pay an evening visit to a church. Light a candle and let your eyes get accustomed to the dim interior. Open yourself to God’s presence.
QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU DESCRIBE YOUR EXPERIENCE
- What object(s) did you look at? Could you “see” (imagine or pretend to see) God?
- Did you find God in the woods or in church? Describe the experience.
Prayer Three: Experiencing God’s Presence through Pictures
Take a very slow look at a few pictures, either prints or pictures from magazines. As you gaze at each one, listen for what each is trying to say to you. Listen for what God is trying to say to you through each picture.
QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU DESCRIBE YOUR EXPERIENCE
- Did God seem to speak most to you in any particular kind of pictures?
- What did God say to you?
- How will you respond?
Background: The Geography of the Psyche
In order to understand meditation and prayer, you will find it helpful to understand something about the way the mind works. The great psychologist Dr. Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) developed an approach called analytical psychology, which provides a good map of the human mind. When we pray, we are united with God at the depths of our hearts and souls. But because we are human beings, there are also certain psychological processes going on while we pray. The following material is based on Dr. Jung’s insights and will give you some idea of the shape of the place-your whole mind-where prayer happens.
Dr. Jung used the Greek word psyche to mean “the total mind.” It is much more than just your thinking mind. Normally, you use only a small percent of your mind. Most of the mind is an untouched reservoir of hidden knowledge and power. The pages that follow will provide an introduction to what Dr. Jung discovered about the psyche.
The psyche is like a well. At the top, easily accessible, is the conscious, the part of the psyche that thinks and is self-aware. The conscious knows that it exists and thinks. “I think, therefore I am” said the French philosopher Descartes. The conscious represents perhaps one percent of the psyche. You might think of it as the first foot of water near the top of the well. At the center of the conscious, directing it, is the ego. In this psychological sense, ego is not a derogatory term. It is merely that part of you which calls itself “I” and does the conscious thinking.
Below the ego in the well of the psyche lies the personal unconscious. This part of the psyche contains memories of all that you have ever thought or felt or done or repressed. It is represented in the well image by the water in the vertical shaft of the well. The personal unconscious is like a vast library of your life up to this time. It can be reached through dreams, hypnotism, and meditation. The conscious mind does not have easy access to the unconscious mind; that is why it is called the personal “unconscious.” Dr. Sigmund Freud, a contemporary of Dr. Jung’s, was the first psychologist to study this area of the psyche in depth.
At its bottom, the psyche/well is connected to a vast and ancient lake which touches every other existing well. This is the collective unconscious, the oldest and deepest part of the psyche. Buried within it are our deepest instincts, memories, and fears, such as fear of the dark. That particular fear goes back tens of thousands of years to when early humans lived in fear of the night because they had not yet tamed fire. The collective unconscious carries the collective memories of the human race and is the source of all human creativity and poetry and religious sensitivity. It connects your mind with every other person’s mind. Dr. Jung did most of his research on the collective unconscious.
Another way to imagine the psyche is to think of islands in the ocean. The islands themselves represent the conscious. The shallow coastal waters surrounding them represent the personal unconscious. The sea that connects all the islands is the collective unconscious.
When we pray, things are going on at all three levels. At the conscious level we are aware of ourselves talking to God and listening to any insights or inspirations we might receive from God. At the level of the personal unconscious, God is silently present healing us of our sins and personality defects. At the level of the collective unconscious, God is present as a vast loving energy, the self, which seeks to divinize us and make us completely one with God. Chapter Fourteen’s section “Background: The Experience of God and the Self” and Chapter Seventeen’s section “Background: Transformation into Another Christ” give a more detailed presentation of how we become one with God.
There are many ways to get in touch with your unconscious. One way to do this is to pay attention to dreams because they originate in the unconscious. Another way is to meditate. Meditation is a descent into the well of the unconscious. When your conscious mind is silent and open, images and feelings from the unconscious can come into it while you meditate. The means you use to meditate is like the rope in a well. It takes you down into the well, and then it takes you back out again. Other ways of getting into the unconscious, like drugs, drop you into the well but do not allow you to get out any time you so desire. You may be stuck in some very unpleasant surroundings. Sometimes traces of the drug remain in the body and plunge you back into the well when you least expect it. Meditation does not offer any of these disadvantages. In addition, it is free and legal.
Prayer is another way to descend into the unconscious, but this prayer has to be a very special kind of prayer. Most prayer is discursive, meaning that it is from the conscious mind, as when we are thinking about and talking to God. Because the goal of prayer is to get in touch with the depth of God’s presence within you, you may strive for more silence and solitude in prayer, with fewer discursive thoughts or conversation. That way you put nothing, neither words nor thoughts, between yourself and God. When people have been praying for many years, their prayer tends to become more quiet. It becomes more of a listening-to-God form of prayer than a speaking-to-God prayer. Like meditation, this meditative prayer puts people in touch with the unconscious mind.
Why should you want to experience your unconscious? To become aware of aspects of your personal unconscious will not only help you remember important things that you may have forgotten, it will also help you to become more in touch with your feelings. As you dialog with your collective unconscious, you will find more meaning and direction coming into your life. Meditative prayer, by helping you keep these parts of your psyche in balance and harmony, will also help you become a more balanced and centered human being. Meditative prayer, by bringing you closer to these hidden parts of yourself, will also bring you closer to God who dwells within you. Finally, experiencing more of your unconscious through dreams and meditative prayer can be an exciting and enjoyable adventure.
Background: Difficulties in Prayer and Meditation
Rainmaker lived in a cave high up the wall of the mesa. In times of drought, the people of the Hopi pueblo nearby would select a delegate to visit Rainmaker’s cave to seek the life-sustaining rain. It took a day of arduous climbing to get to the cave and an equally hard day of climbing down to return. All the delegates who had ever represented the tribe on various trips to the cave always had the same story about the difficulty of the climb, but they always had different stories about their stay in the cave.
Some reported that after making their request for rain, they heard only the silence. Others claimed to have heard the wind making a peculiar sound as it whistled across the mouth of the cave. Some thought they saw movement in the shadows. Others saw nothing at all and went away disappointed. Some complained to Rainmaker and grew angry, while others shed tears. Some even fell asleep in the cave because of the tiring climb and were not sure whether Rainmaker had spoken to them or not. But whatever seemed to have happened in the cave, the results for the Hopis
of the pueblo were always the same. Rain began to fall even before their delegate had returned from the cave.
This story illustrates an important aspect of prayer. It is impossible not to pray well if you have the intention of praying and are making any kind of sincere effort. You cannot waste your time by doing it poorly. Even if you keep falling asleep during prayer (although you have made all kinds of attempts to stay awake), you are praying beautifully. This is good news for people who try too hard to do things and then worry about whether they are doing them properly. Stop worrying about your prayer. The proof that your prayer is working is that, in the long run, you are slowly becoming a better person.
When we pray, it is not really we who are doing the praying. God’s Holy Spirit is praying in and through us. We provide the opportunity for the Spirit to pray. We never have to worry about whether we are doing it well because we are really not doing it. The Holy Spirit is praying through us. This is why God can claim to grant us anything we ask for in prayer because the Holy Spirit is actually requesting it. You must realize, however, that what we need may not be granted in the way we expect it, and we may not be given exactly what we asked for, but rather something better and more important.
The big secret of prayer is that no effort is lost in attempting prayer. It does not really matter what you do when you pray, so long as you give God the gift of your time — just as it does not matter what you do when you are with your friend, just so long as you are with your friend. All God wants is that you attempt to be with God as you pray. You can read prayers from books, use your own words, accidentally find your mind wandering, accidentally fall asleep, and so on. So long as you are trying to spend time with God, you are praying, and good things are happening for you. While you are busy doing whatever you are doing on the first floor of your conscious mind, unknown to you God is at work in the basement of your unconscious mind. But even though it is the easiest thing in the world to pray well, people still have many difficulties in prayer.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty in praying is finding time to pray each day. We are all too busy to put much else into our lives, especially prayer. Perhaps by now you are finding it difficult to pray even the ten minutes a day for this course. There just seem to be too many other things to do in your life. Really, ten minutes a day is not much time. There are actually 144 ten-minute periods in every day, and you need to give only one of them to prayer (except on Saturday or Sunday for Mass).
Try to set aside the same time each day to pray. Regularity is very helpful. If your days are so varied that you cannot pray or meditate at the same time every day, then each morning, as you stand looking at your face in the mirror, quickly scan your day and decide what time of that day you will make time for prayer. Another helpful practice for students is to spend the first ten minutes of homework with meditation or a relaxing form of prayer. Many students have said that this actually helps them save time because they can think more clearly and work much faster on their homework with this method. Prayer does not take time out of the day but, rather, makes more time.
Some people think that nothing is happening in their prayer. Do not be discouraged. Something is happening. The Holy Spirit is praying through you, and good things are happening to your mind and personality, too, as the following story shows.
A large international meditation group ran an experiment to see the effects of their meditating. A random group was given a variety of tests: tests pertaining to their psychological state, their intelligence, and so on. Then they were taught to meditate. Six months later the group was asked to form two subgroups: those who thought their meditations were successful and those who thought their meditations were going poorly. Then both groups were given the tests a second time. To the surprise of the testers, both groups showed an improvement over their original tests. Both groups improved, not just the ones who felt successful. So no matter how boring or worthless your meditation or prayer may seem, something good is happening to you and your relationship with God.
Falling asleep can be a difficulty in prayer, even though it may not mean that your prayer time was actually wasted. The very effort to stay awake is a form of prayer, but you also need to use planning and common sense to make it easier to stay awake. Do not pray when your stomach is full. Pray at times when you are not tired. Do not pray in a room that is too hot or too stuffy. Open a window. Do not pray in a body position that promotes sleep. Keep your spine straight, do not lean on anything, and, above all, do not lie down. Do not drink coffee or soda to help keep you awake.
If you find distracting thoughts seeming to ruin your prayer, make them your prayer. Pray about whatever comes into your mind. The fact that something comes into your mind means that it has some importance for you. God is interested in whatever is important to you.
If you find that you are having trouble finding a quiet place for prayer at home, here is something you might try. Put on a set of stereo headphones and plug them into your radio. Then tune the radio to a place of static, white noise, between stations. You have to find a place where you do not hear recognizable voices or music. This will drown out the outside noise without being distracting.
If one of your difficulties is that prayer does not seem to do anything for you, the first point to consider is that prayer may be doing all kinds of things for you that are gradual. It may take a year of prayer to see how your personality and life are changing for the better. Lasting change usually comes slowly. But the second point to make is that the complaint that prayer ” doesn’t seem to do anything for me” is basically a selfish one. Prayer is not primarily for you. It is for God. It is the honest expression of your relationship with God. Human beings pray to God. It is our duty and our privilege.
The difficulty of prayer being boring is much like that of it not doing anything for you. Prayer may be boring because we are not able to slow down our rushing life and our rushing mind. Perhaps periods of boredom are what our life needs most. And again, it is wrong to seek excitement from prayer. Prayer is not meant for our entertainment. It is not meant just to give us pleasant feelings. If we pray for these reasons, then prayer is just another pleasurable commodity that we try to acquire. It is not the fulfillment of our duty to God.
So even if you run into various obstacles or become discouraged, continue to persevere in your efforts at prayer. You owe it to yourself and to God.
Review Questions
Copy each of these descriptions on your paper. Then supply the correct term for each.
- Eating nothing between meals and eating less food than normal at meals.
- Staying away from something, often from meat.
- Prayer of seeing God.
- Person who developed analytical psychology as a map of the mind
- Word used by Dr. Jung to mean the total mind.
- The part of the psyche that thinks and is self-aware.
- The center of the conscious, the part that calls itself “I.”
- Part of the psyche containing memories of all a person has thought, done, or repressed.
- The first psychologist to study the personal unconscious in depth.
- The oldest part of the psyche, containing instincts and memories of the human race.
Write each question and its answer.
- Give three reasons for fasting and abstaining.
- Why is everything holy?
- How is the psyche like a well?
- How does prayer touch or affect the various levels of the pysche?
- What are four ways to get in touch with the Unconscious?
- Why is it good to be in touch with your unconscious?
- What is the Rainmaker story and what does it say about prayer?
- What are five difficulties in prayer, and what can be done about each?
Self-Reflection Question
What was the strongest experience of God’s presence that you have had in your life?
Spiritual Experiment Questions
- Have you done any sort of fasting or abstinence? For sports? For physical appearance? For religious reasons?
- What was that experience like?
- What would be the most difficult thing for you to abstain from? What would be best for you to abstain from? What would you do to be able to succeed in staying away from it?
- If you tried fasting or abstinence this week, what was the experience like?
Weekend Eucharist
At Mass this weekend, contemplate God’s presence in the church around you: in the altar, statues, flowers, people, and so forth. Just look at God. You need not speak to God.
bridgingthegaplessgap 