contemplation and healing[1]

            In the last lesson, we noted that there are five kinds of thoughts we tend to have while contemplating. Four of them were discussed there: 

(1)        the ordinary wanderings of our mind;

(2)        emotionally charged thoughts;

(3)        insights and psychological breakthroughs;

(4)        self-reflections. 

All of these kinds of thoughts are handled in the same way. We notice them, then let them go, and we return to the focus of God’s presence within us.

            The fifth kind of thought arises because we are all broken people in need of inner healing. We all have lodged in our soul, sometimes very deeply, pain from past wounds, fears, defences, shame, judgments, vows, emotional blocks, and all manner of other things of darkness. These are present within us because of our own sin or because of hurts received from others out of their sin.

            When we begin a practice like contemplation, which is basically our willingness for God to be present as He is and to do what He wants, God realizes that this request is a tall order. Because all that junk in our souls blocks His grace. That junk is designed to keep us isolated from any further sources of pain. And it tends to work very well - in fact, too well, and it keeps people at a distance as well. Which has a certain wisdom to it since it is usually people who deliver the most painful of our wounds. But then, when we want to get really close to someone - like our spouse and kids and God - we find we can’t shut off our stuff. It keeps on working. Meaning we can’t pull those people as close to us as we would like. But we have no idea how to fix that.

            Well, God knows. So, when we begin to contemplate, He begins to house clean, removing all the junk that stands in the way of His fully possessing our heart. He systematically dismantles everything we may have thought was us but was really flesh or false self or old nature (whichever term you prefer to use) and throws out the trash. We may become aware of this work when emotions surface that are out of proportion to our present experience or are a confusing mix, or when emotionally charged thoughts emerge, often all in a jumble. Now what do we do?

            Remember, everything in contemplation is by grace. All we do is to let go of thoughts. The rest is up to God. So it won’t help, when facing the junk of our past, to try to help God out. We tend to want to do this by trying to figure out where the junk is coming from and what the root of it all is so we can process it in the same way we would in a counseling office or in an inner healing/deliverance session. But God isn’t doing standard counseling or inner healing. So what is He doing?

Picture it this way. If you think of all the junk in your soul as garbage that needs to be thrown out, then standard counseling or inner healing picks up the garbage piece by piece - first the apple core, then the old tin can, then the picture of our ex-spouse, and so on, and systematically throws it out item by item. That can be a time-consuming pathway to healing and can sometimes result in our being retraumatized as we look at events in our life that we have kept buried for a long time because of the force of the pain attached to them. But what God does it to fill trash bags with our junk and throw out our junk by the bag. This is why what we feel, if we feel it at all, seems to be a confused mix of everything and anything coming from goodness knows where.

So what do we do with the bag? We could open the bag and look at what God has put in there. But it’s so much easier if we don’t and just trust that what’s in there needs to go, and we let it go. How do we do that?

            First of all, we need to realize that just because our contemplative time is now a time of emotional pain and unrest rather than a time of quiet and rest, this does not mean that “it isn’t working any more” or that we’re going backward instead of making progress. It means that God is honouring our request for a deeper relationship with Him.

            Secondly, we need to resist the temptation to do battle with what we’re feeling even though it may feel bad. We don’t go running off to a counselor or an inner healing session (unless God says to). We also don’t buy the lie that we’re coming apart at the seams. We don’t try to stuff the whole mess back down. And we don’t give up on our contemplative practice because suddenly it doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy or even neutral any more - it just feels bad.

Thirdly, we let go. The way we let go of these kinds of thoughts and emotions is to sit and feel our pain. We now have a double focus. We still hold to our main intention of being in the presence of God, but we allow ourselves to sink into the pain in our heart. Why? Because if our pain is real, God is in the midst of it and we will encounter Him there (Romans 11:36): “For from him and through him and to him are all things.” God is at the heart of all reality. This is the core belief of a contemplative life - that everything that is real is a doorway to encountering God. This includes our pain. So we allow ourselves to feel our pain in the presence of God. Then we discover that we have believed a lie. Contrary to what most of us believe, inner pain that we try to reject and not think about continues to hurt us. But pain that we accept tends to distintegrate or lessen. And pain that we hold in God’s presence as He moves to remove it is healed.

To have this experience in contemplation of the unloading of our inner junk is a wonderful thing. God is actually doing more than making us feel better - which is the goal of all healing ministry. God is restructuring our consciousness. He is dismantling and getting rid of everything that remains of our old nature/false self/flesh and freeing the real us - the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) [2] - to live in its place. He is making real to us His promise that “the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is what brings us to that place where we live in the abiding presence of God. Thomas Keating puts it this way as he describes centring prayer, that doorway to contemplation that was discussed in Lesson 21:[3] 

Contemplative prayer has a way of completing everything unfinished in your life by allowing the emotions to have an outlet in the form of moods or thoughts that seem but a jumble. This is the dynamic of purification. The intensity of feelings of fear, anxiety, or anger may have no relationship to your recent experience. Sitting through that kind of stuff is more useful than consoling experiences [what we usually call “good” prayer experiences where we feel calm and held in the presence of God]. The purpose of centering prayer is not to experience peace but to evacuate the unconscious obstacles to the permanent abiding state of union with God. Not contemplative prayer but the contemplative state is the purpose of our practice; not experiences, however exotic or reassuring, but the permanent and abiding awareness of God that comes through the mysterious restructuring of consciousness. At some point in your life, it could be in the middle of the night, on a subway, or in the midst of prayer, the necessary changes in the nervous system and psyche finally come to completion. That particular stage of the spiritual journey resolves itself, and you no longer have the problems that you had before. The restructuring of consciousness is the fruit of regular practice. That is why it makes no sense to aim at particular experiences. You can’t even imagine a state of consciousness that you’ve never had before, so it is a waste of time and energy to anticipate it. The practice will eventually bring about the change of consciousness. The most significant happening at this stage of the journey is the calming of the affective system. You become free of emotional swings because the false self system on which they were based has at last been dismantled. The emotions then come through in their purity and are no longer upsetting. This is a marvelous release from inner turmoil. 

            Another blessing of this experience is that we become painfully aware of our personal darkness, brokenness and weakness. We can no longer pretend to ourselves, let alone to others, that we’re fine, capable, and can handle it. This is a precious meeting place with God because: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). And because (2 Corinthians 12:9): “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” In other words, at the moment we are struck to the heart and broken over our personal sin and darkness, God’s grace and His presence come rushing in. This is because we are, at this point, finally 100% convinced of our need for mercy and grace, and we reach to receive with our whole being. And God, who has been waiting for this moment, perhaps for a very long time, is finally able to give all He has to give because we are finally able to receive it all.

            So when those distressing emotions surface, we are invited to allow our attention to move to that place, and we sink into it as gently as if we were stepping into a warm bath. We don’t think. We just feel the emotion, and we hold our hearts open to God in the process. What happens from there is, as with all contemplative experience, by grace, in other words, completely up to God. But we rest assured that He can be trusted and wherever it is we go from there will be good because we will go with God. 

Exercises 

Days 80 to 83 

Take 30 minutes a day to practise centring prayer/contemplation as outlined in Lesson 21.