Christ the Companion

Paul Romans 8:38-39 " For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

The Way of Devotional Love

It is a great support to have a spiritual director or a contemplative teacher who helps us be accountable to develop a daily spiritual practice in our life, to keep showing up day in and day out. The truth is any relationship withers if we don’t give the gift of our time and the fullness of our attention and our intention.  If we really want to develop a friendship or a love relationship, what do we do?  We spend time.  We make a point to "clear the deck" and everything else is placed out of the way.  We create a sanctuary of consecrated space where we can just be with our beloved or our friend.  What we intend is this: "I'm just here.  I just want to receive you and give you the gift of my self, my presence."  This self-giving with God, is the communion we long for. In the same moment this total presence and gift of self requires a letting go in total trust.  In the previous chapter we discussed this word in the tradition for letting go, we call it "kenosis."  Kenosis makes us present and ready to walk with Christ, our life-long companion.

We have become a culture that is involved in narcissism to the nth degree.  In this consumer society we have come to worship the delusion that completion in life comes through a kind of private, personal fulfillment of possession or taking what we think we need from outside of ourselves. " If I just have this, if I just have that, if I just have the right relationship, if I just have the right job I’m going to be fulfilled." So one's life becomes a frenzy of getting the right kind of things, or the right kind of relationship, or the right kind of experiences. And heaven help anyone who gets my way!  That’s self-absorption, that’s narcissism; and that kind of pure self-idolatry is the source of every evil in the world. 

The spiritual author M. Scott Peck has called evil malignant narcissism.  What Yeshua is asking is just the opposite, not private, personal fulfillment, not self-fulfillment, but self-transcendence through self-giving love.  He invites us to go beyond the confines of this self, this illusion of a separate self. We do this self-release and self-offering with these empty hands.  The hands that grasp so tightly must unclench and release from the things that we cling to as God substitutes for our private, personal fulfillment.  Instead, Yeshua says, "Come, enter into the stream of Divine life beyond the confines of our self-made self." This is the Realm of His Heart, the Kingdom of His all- encompassing Love.  In doing this we don’t lose our true self.  We find our true self, we find our true spirit in the Heart of Christ.  In this self-offering the hand opens and offers all that we are in love, making us ever receptive, present, able to receive the gift of God, God's own Self in Christ, our life companion.  If we are frightened and grasping, if we're holding on, if we're self absorbed, we're not there.  We're not accessible.  And to be accessible to God's Self -Giving is the whole purpose of a spiritual practice.

In retreats I frequently place on an altar another icon drawn by Brother Claude. In the icon Yeshua is seated, extending his arms around the beloved disciple, John. John is extending his hands forward in a gesture of offering to Christ.  A blue color of divinity extends from Christ’s mantle and envelopes the shades of it around the apostle, John. The blue of divinity and red of humanity become intertwined in this embrace. The icon expresses a delightful intimacy.  Often in the Celtic tradition the apostle John is the apostle who is seen as possessing the authority of Christ because he listens and hears the Heart of Christ, his head on the Savior's chest. The beloved disciple is a symbol of ourselves who walk and live in the embrace of Yeshua. In this image we see our opening to receive Christ's divinity and the self-offering of our humanity.  Our self-emptying makes us receptive and accessible to receive the fullness of Christ, and to give the fullness of our life to Him. This is a life of companionship and intimacy with Him.

A Life of Companionship and Communion with Christ

Prayer of Consecration

In the Hindu tradition there is a stream of spiritual practice called Bhakti Yoga.  Yoga means connection or communion and Bhakti Yoga is the devotional practice of communion with the Divine. Devotional self-giving love for Christ is a powerful aspect of Prayer of the Heart. There are different ways of cultivating devotional love.  Among them is a daily prayer of consecration.  The Prayer of Consecration is a way that you express in words, your love commitment daily to Christ.  The essence of the prayer in your own words is " I love you, Yeshua, and I give myself to you."  This is not unlike the love commitments we renew with out loved ones when we say, "I love you." The words that you would use must be your words coming from your own heart and your own experience through your own expression.  It is both powerful and transforming at the very beginning of the day as you sit down to do your silent Prayer of the Heart, to say, “O, Beloved, Christ, I give myself to you.  Take my life and make it yours.”  It establishes us in our intention of devotional love. This praxis connects our Heart's desire to its true completion in Yeshua. To find intervals throughout the day where we can repeat that prayer re-anchors us in that intention.  Returning to our Prayer of Consecration grounds us again in our very motivation for living.  "Why am I here?  What am I doing?    What is all of this for anyway?" When we are in full harmony with our central purpose, our life becomes powerful and purposeful.  Our practice pulls us out of the unconscious inclination of the mind where we coast along the lines of least resistance and comfort; and it re-anchors us in aliveness in the Heart of Christ.

The Holy Name of the Beloved

Human beings have had a practice across traditions of a reciting the name of the Beloved One. This is especially true in the monotheistic traditions, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem. In the Christian tradition we personalize the name of the Holy One using the name of Jesus or Yeshua.  When you are really in love with someone in a relationship, powerfully in love, the name of the one you love is powerful.  It connects you.  So invoking the name of your beloved brings up the desire that you have to be one with him/her, to give yourself in love.  For that reason the ancients discovered that communion with Christ and transformation in Christ arose through invoking the name of Yeshua in silent prayer and in the midst of activity throughout the day. This invocation synchronized with breath became a central expression of Prayer of the Heart. It can find liturgical and joyful expression in chanting in groups or alone as well.

Icon Gazing

Another way to cultivate devotional love is icon gazing.  Icon gazing is not intended to be a way to engage the imagination and think wonderful thoughts about Christ. Rather it is a way to let go of the imagination and receptively receive the self-communication that Christ offers to you through the icon.  Icon gazing is an intuitive, receptive process, and naturally the communication will not be experienced the same for any two people.  We use the visual image of Yeshua to go beyond image to the transcendent experience of the mystical Christ.  In the Gospel Mary of Magdala, upon encountering the risen Christ, says, “Master.”  She is admonished to not cling to the form or the image.  Yeshua says, “Do not cling to me.”  He seems to be saying to Mary and to us,  " Who I am is much deeper and truer than this form."  The mystery of Christ is much bigger than our ideas of Christ, our images of Christ.  The mystery of Christ is Divine Life itself.  Therefore in this practice, like Mary of Magdala, we release from emotion and imagination to a sacred and empty receptivity to receive Christ’s self-communication to us through the icon.

Conversation with Christ

Another form of daily companionship is our inner conversation with Yeshua.  Sometimes it takes the form of words.  Often it is a wordless conversation.  We share the experience and the challenge of our daily life with Christ. We know we have a place of unconditional acceptance and wisdom where our life is brought daily and offered.

Sanctuary and Protection in Christ

All of us need to find inner safety and protection when we feel at risk, physically or spiritually vulnerable. How we find ultimate security when life is filled with threat or risk is an essential interior movement in the spiritual life. How we find protection from temptation and spiritual fears is how we take refuge in Christ our Companion. Prayer of the Heart is the growing discovery of the experience of inner sanctuary and protection in Christ. All of us have the need to experience protection because the world is often a difficult and dangerous place and there are forces and experiences that are injurious to our spiritual nature. Some prayers in the ancient Celtic folk tradition express this protection in Christ in that they are encircling prayers.  They speak of being encircled and shielded in the love of Christ.  Here is one about shielding others:

May those without shelter be under your guarding this day, O Christ.

May the wandering find places of welcome

O, Son of the tears of the wounds of the piercings

May your cross this day be shielding them

Here is an encircling prayer of protection for oneself:

My Christ, my love, my encircler

Be near me, each day, each night, each light, each dark

Be near me; uphold me, my treasure, my truth

These kind of prayers or just invoking the name of Yeshua or a short prayer of protection, such as, "O, Yeshua, you are my refuge and my strength. O, Yeshua, shield me from harm." are excellent forms of guard of the heart practice.  Guard of the heart describes an ancient practice of protection of our spiritual center. When we do spiritual practice of inner transformation in Prayer of the Heart in many ways we become much more sensitive to the world around us. We become more open to people around us, to the feelings, the thoughts, the energies around us.  Thus we have to take more responsibility to take care of our spiritual nature and to protect the heart from what is negative, intrusive, or violent.  Guard of the Heart  (Ryan, p. 84) is a needed aspect of Prayer of the Heart practice, and prayers of protection with Christ, our ceaseless Companion, are an essential aspect of our daily practice. 

Restoration and Consolation in Christ

 Yeshua said, “Abide in me." In other words, “Rest in me.  I am your refuge.  I am the one who will restore you.”  So give restoration time with Christ each day, of letting everything else go to be with Christ to restore your soul.  For some lighting a candle and reclining on the floor in your prayer space with the intention, “I want to be with you, I need to be with you,” will bring the peace and healing we need for the day, a peace the world cannot give.

Inner guidance with Christ

Most of us think that we have to know what we ought to be doing in our lives. We have to be in charge and competent all the time. We think we ought to be "on top of it" and we push our agenda about what is supposed to happen.  If we really want to be open to receive guidance, particularly spiritual guidance, we have to have something the Zen people call, “don’t know" mind.  A “don’t know” mindset means that you accept you really don’t know.  If you don’t know, that means you are open to be surprised.  It means you’re willing to let go of your agenda and surrender to the love and will of Christ.  I saw an older lady in her mid-eighties not long ago who thought she might be close to death. Later she was told that maybe she wasn’t close to death because her cardiac surgery was successful.  She said, “Darn it, I don’t know what to do.  I thought I was preparing for death and now it looks like it’s not going to happen.  What am I supposed to do?”  So I started talking to her about “don’t know mind” and she thought that was just great.  When we really want guidance, we ask because we don’t know.  We ask from receptivity, from trust.  Yeshua said, “Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you, ask and you shall receive.” (Matt. 7:7) He didn’t suggest we ask and take the advice when it compares favorably with what you already have in mind.  So letting go of our agenda, letting go of our expectations is difficult inner work because of the mind's compulsion for control. The fullness of trust and refuge in the One in whom we abide and find our true Life is a different direction, a direction that takes us to surrender and Home.

Communion with Christ the Life-Long Companion

In this companionship the great, great blessing is that we are never alone.  We are never abandoned; we are never unloved; we are never rejected.  Christ is the Faithful companion who says, “I am with you always.” (Matt. 28:20) No exceptions exist here. He promises, "I am with you always."  Personal intimacy with Christ alone opens us to intimacy with Christ in all Creation.  "All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being was Life and the Life was the light of the people. ´(John 1:3-5) It doesn't get any more intimate than this. Gregory of Nazaianzus says, “Christ exists in all things that are."  (Ryan, p.31) When we are personally intimate with Christ, we are in communion with Christ in all things.

Laurence Freeman O.S.B. the great teacher of Christian meditation says this about union with Christ in a lifetime of companionship, “The Kingdom which Jesus taught and embodied in his relationship with us liberates us from individuality as separateness into individuality as indivisibility. In the Kingdom we pass from psychological isolation to spiritual union.  It is the end of individual history as we imagine it.  The breaching of the wall of the ego is an eschatological moment and end of time and an entry into timelessness.  But we experience it in time and therefore it changes the way we live in time.  The sorrow inherent in knowing myself as being only and forever just 'me' yields to welcoming a new identity gained in a sharing of being.  On one side of the wall of the ego, individuality means merely separateness.  On the other side the meaning changes to union.  All relationships from the most intimate to the most impersonal are transformed by breaking through the wall of the ego. …. Here, through this aperture in our egoism, at this frontier of our identity, where the question, ‘who am I?’ becomes a pure experience of Reality.” (Freeman, p. 235)

We recognize the presence of the risen Christ is the experience of our true identity.  That unitive experience of awakening to the risen Life of Yeshua as one's own Life is an experience of being always home.  Wonderfully this experience of oneness with Christ is summarized in St. Paul to the Galatians (3:29): “You are all one person in Christ Jesus.”

Joyfully, amazingly, we are never alone.

Christ the Master

Christ the Master

Icons are wonderful ways in the Christian tradition of communicating spiritual realities without the mediation of conceptual thought, using visual image instead. To gaze upon the icon without analysis or discursive thought can be a way to receive a more direct intuitive contemplative communication.  In a recent retreat I used two icons written by Brother Claude OSB of Mt. Angel, Abbey in Oregon.   One of the icons is a representation of the ancient Christ Pantocrator image and illustrates Christ pointing with his right hand to the heart and holding the Torah in his left. Together the gestures speak of the origin of spiritual authority, Divine Love in the Heart of Christ.

The Heart in the tradition speaks to what is essential, what is the true Spirit within us, the life of God within us.  And for us it is the Heart of Christ who manifests the Heart of the Divine. For Christians the Heart of Christ is the anchor and source of authority. The Heart of Christ is the Life of the Master, and it is the Heart of Christ that guides us and holds us accountable to the authority of Love.  In relational life all of us need to be held accountable to an authority that is higher than our own ego, and we need a Life and Power that is ultimately trustworthy. In the spiritual life we need to find our only sure guidance and a refuge to which we can fully surrender. Certainly if we’ve lived long enough we have learned through bitter experience and error that our own ego-mind is not a very good guide in life.  We also need a personal experience of God to encourage and support us and open us to the power of love in the spiritual life.  Both of those aspects of Christ the Master and Christ the Companion are manifested in my altar icons and are central to the Christocentric character of Prayer of the Heart practice.

Breathing Yeshua- Actualizing Christ

I’d like to share some thoughts with you about Prayer of the Heart practice and these aspects of who Christ is in our journey into God.  I’ll start with a basic understanding of what the language of Prayer of the Heart practice is.  Practice here means “praxis” and that means to actualize, to express what is real, what is ontologically real, to actualize it in our humanity and in our human life.  So the Prayer of the Heart practice is an actualization of the essential truth of our human life and its ontological unity with Divine Life.  It’s very important to think beyond any notion that this is a kind of method or technique.  Prayer of the Heart practice is an actualization, manifesting and making real, what is already a hidden truth. Prayer of the Heart is a Way, a path, and we are people of the Way.  Whatever we do as method is simply a "way" to become accessible to what is, to the "Isness" of the "I AM." For Christians Yeshua the Christ is this Way.

For a Christian the Divine mystery is revealed both in the personal and the individual historical Yeshua and in the risen and mystical universal Christ.  The nature of God is  both intensely personal and intimate, and oceanic and all encompassing.  Both are true.  We are human and in a human face we find the ultimate mystery approachable. In Christ our mistaken illusion of a barrier disappears and we enter into the life of the Trinity, the Christ life, consciously and intentionally in this human life.  Our praxis of the Prayer of the Heart, therefore, is uniting our life utterly with the life of Christ so that our humanity is wholly infused and alive in Christ, a state of complete and utter receptivity and self-gift in love.  This is the consecrated life that Yeshua reveals to us and invites us to.  The Prayer of the Heart is the actualization then of this consecrated life of communion in Christ.  It’s not just sitting down in silence for 25 minutes once or twice a day.  It’s every moment and every breath of every day.

The next question may be, “That's well and good, but how do we live this life, how do we make it real?”  One way to express this directly and without abstraction or analysis is maybe to hold our two hands out in front of us.  When we do this, the palms are outward and upward, open and empty, and they release everything in their grasp.  They are ready to receive the gift of God’s own self, the Christ life.  They are ready to offer in Christ our human life.  This simple expression, this simple metaphor, this simple actualization, is the meaning of our existence.  It is the meaning of the Eucharist that we celebrate ritually.  This is the ontological reality we live, and we can live this reality consciously and intentionally in the praxis of Prayer of the Heart. 

Prayer is this same release into Divine Reality and the receiving of the Divine Reality into our life.  Like the woman at the well we are invited to awaken and to receive the gift of God and all we must do is open and receive.  Yeshua said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)  In the personal Yeshua we can approach the Giver and in His Life, the Life of the Christos, we are given the Gift of God. The universal and oceanic Living Water rises up within us, and infuses our human life.  Yeshua says again, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower.  Abide in me as I abide in you.  I am the vine and you are the branches.”  (John 15:1) We are one, one plant, one being in Christ. The teaching here, in this and in all the metaphors we use in Christianity about the mystical body of Christ, is that each one of us possesses the potential to be a unique expression of the Life of Christ. 

The Nature of  Our Surrender

The teachings of Yeshua are simple but hard, and that’s why He called it the "narrow path," because most avoid it.  The ego-mind resists this level of trust, this level of kenotic self-emptying, this level of release from self-absorption and control.  In many different kaleidoscopic ways, Yeshua keeps pointing to a central truth. He proclaims: "Follow me…Give up everything…..Become as a child.. " He invites us to become simple, naïve, trusting.  "Love God with all of your being.  Love your neighbor as yourself."  In the Beatitudes Yeshua challenges us that in our letting go, in the diminutions of our ego-self and its layered attachments, we truly become free. 

In His example and His teaching He invites us to become gentle and release from self-absorption.  What He exhorts us to do is to follow Him, to let Him be the Master of our heart, and will, and help us relinquish from the bondage of the ego-mind.   We are taught  it is in our self-giving, in the relinquishment of the ego-mind, the consecration of our self to Christ, that we find ourselves and uncover our real freedom.  Yeshua invites us to come to Him and release from our heavy burdens.

There are the trials of life of just surviving.  However, the biggest portion of our burden is our own self-absorption and all the fear that arises. Yeshua says that uniting with Him is the way we lay our burden of separateness down. “Take my yoke (union) upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart.”  He whispers to us that we will find rest, a rest that comes from letting go.  “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30) Yeshua gives us a warm and intimate invitation. At the same time there is a caution there, that yoke or union with Him is a also a discipline.  It is a discipline to be accessible to God, to be given to Christ.  That inner work of kenosis has to happen.  To find this interior freedom an unburdening of self has to happen. 

Spiritual Authority

An essential task to even begin on a spiritual path and to stay faithful is to acknowledge and accept there is an authority, a Reality, a Life that is higher than our own ego-mind.  There is a Will to which our own private, personal will is accountable.  There is a Love to which we bow and give endless adoration and trust.  Without this we can go nowhere. Without adoration and trust our ego becomes a god unto itself, and we become entrapped in a life of hopeless idolatry and self-absorption.  This consciousness of separateness and self-idolatry is the source of suffering and every evil in the world.  The consciousness of self-absorption without limits and without submission and without accountability is what the modern consumer-prosperity-culture holds as an ideal. And it will bring only misery, evil, and suffering for all.

In the letters of Paul are frequent references to the teaching that Christ is Lord. We have to remember what a revolutionary statement that was in a time when only Caesar was deemed Lord. To embark on the consecrated transformed life we must continually choose a greater Life, a greater Love as sovereign over our life. For those who are on the Way of the Heart the Divine Beloved in the Person and Life of Christ must become the true Master. How do we let Christ be the Master in our daily practice?  This is the important question we ask ourselves.  His invitation is that we will find ultimate freedom, joy, and belonging in his yoke. And of course the other meaning of yoke is "joining" or "union." It is the yoke of self-relinquishment, the relinquishment of the ego-mind, and all its self pre-occupation, fear and grasping. The hand that offers in love cannot open when it is clenched.

Kenosis

St. Paul spoke of this Life of Christ within us as the "Great Kenosis."(Phil. 2:6)  Kenosis is the hand that opens, releases, extends, and offers. In our praxis of the kenosis of Christ we learn to lay down our weapons of self-defense and separateness. We may recognize them as our frequent rationalization, our reactive criticism of others, our avoidance of seeing the truth of our self-absorbed thoughts and actions. In kenosis we find the freedom to dwell in the Heart of Christ and find our belonging. In kenosis we find we are free and at peace, to receive criticism, to receive disappointment, and even to receive failure. In the freedom of kenosis we are free lay down our life, especially the habitual patterns of our conditioning. We are free to relinquish the life long conditioning, mental formations, and habit patterns that feed our self-absorption, and prevent us from opening to the Unconditioned Life of Christ that is our true Life.

The Open Handed Life

In the beatitudes Yeshua invites us to cease from grasping, to live the freedom of the open handed life so that we can receive mercy, peace, and fullness of life.  When the hand releases from everything, only Essence remains. And to open to Essence is to open to Christ and bring to our own life the reality Paul described in Galatians: "I live, not I, but Christ lives in me."  Christ is the Master who invites us to "Lose your life, so that you can find your (real) life." (Matt. 10:39)

In our practice of Prayer of the Heart we continually ask, "How do I let go of grasping, how do I release from the compulsions of the ego-mind? " This release into the freedom of Christ begins with our "cultivation of attention," to see when we are grasping with the mind, insisting on our rights, our opinions, insisting that our agenda in life be the first and only priority? This means seeing the thought forms in our minds and seeing the ego-self attach to them.  And in each moment of consecration we learn to release our humanity, our human thoughts, our human desires, and our human attachments, to the will of the Master. This consecrated attention becomes Presence and Adoration. Equally we bring our cultivation of intention to each moment of life.  We release from all motivations but one, our heart's desire to be one with and to ceaselessly offer all that we are in love and self-gift to the Master, Yeshua, our Beloved.

Endless Conversion to the Master

The life of open-handed offering to Christ is a life of endless, ceaseless conversion. In this offering we find an interior act of willingness to see the injuries we may inflict on our own souls and on those nearby. This ceaseless conversion leads us to return to Christ the Master to say "You know that I love you, help me to follow you." To receive and accept our sorrow and let it be the means of continual conversion is our yoking and "oneing" with Christ.

In the Christian path of meditation or contemplative prayer, unlike some other traditions, the only real master, the only true guru, the only teacher, is Christ.  This offers a tremendous safety to us. Tragic things happen in any religious tradition when persons surrender themselves in misplaced Faith to flawed human beings.  Terrible injury can happen.  Some persons are very skilled, trained, and holy teachers but no human being is without failing.  When Christ is our sole master and sovereign over our hearts, master of the soul, when Christ is our singular teacher, when Christ is our only true guide, then we have the genuine safety to fully give ourselves in trust.  Teachers in the Christian contemplative tradition can be companions on this road to Emmaus. They can encourage and point us back to the light of Christ in our own hearts. Christ alone is the Master. Together we know that the One we seek is the One who walks with us. And we may often only know his Presence in the burning of our hearts. It is enough. To give oneself ceaselessly and without reservation to Him is the joy of coming Home, to our singular Refuge, our singular Joy, our singular Trust.

Chapt. 1- Breathing Yeshua- Christian Meditation in the Way of the Heart

Breathing Yeshua

Sr. Antoinette Traeger O.S.B. exclaimed with determination, "The only thing I could do was sit and breathe." Antoinette Traeger, a partner in Prayer of the Heart ministry and an 80 year old monastic spiritual elder, spoke a simple and deep wisdom in response to a challenging moment in her life. Sometimes in life we realize to sit and breathe, to be with the experiences of life with wholehearted presence and loving intention, is all we can do; and it is sufficient and complete.  My wife, Jeanette, a Zen meditation practitioner, has a calligraphy on her wall "Sit and Breathe" to remind her in a similar way of her spiritual practice.  

Our inner spiritual work turns on the tension of the mind's compulsion for control and the freedom of the heart's willingness to open and surrender in love. We can learn to breathe and both receive and give ourselves in love to the "I AM," Who is Love, Who offers Itself to us eternally. Our mind agendas always fall short and are filled with faulty assumptions. In every moment the one thing we can do is "sit and breathe." In contemplative Buddhism this has long been the mantra. In Christianity this "I AM" in life is revealed to us with fiercely personal intensity in the face of Jesus and oceanically in the universal Heart of Christ. In contemplative Christianity and the tradition of the Prayer of the Heart the one thing, the central thing, we can always do, is  "sit and breathe Yeshua." To sit and breathe Jesus, or Yeshua, in the Aramaic, is to sit and inhale in receptive presence and adoration, and to exhale in the self-offering Agape that is Christ. To breathe Yeshua is to unite our life with His life in us, each moment of life. This is not an ideal to aspire to, but a practice to be actualized and lived.

In the Christian tradition this practice of uniting ourselves with the inner Life of Christ in prayer word and breath comes to us from the desert fathers and mothers of early Christianity. In his book on Christian Contemplation Brian Taylor speaks of this development in Christianity:

"However, at some point these desert contemplatives began to use the name

of Jesus as their invocation. In the fourth century text, The Life of

Anthony, by Athanasius of Alexandria, there was already a practice of

invoking Christ in a repetitive prayer, even linking the breath to its

repetition, as if the one who prayed was actually breathing Jesus: 'Anthony

called his two companions...and said to them, "Always breath Christ. ' " (Taylor, p.73)

We know this practice as the Prayer of the Heart. When Christianity was a vital movement and not yet an institution, the ancients of the early centuries fled the towns and cities of North Africa and the Middle East to realize the simplicity and singled hearted life of the Kingdom to which Yeshua invites us in the Gospel.  The Good News proclaimed by Yeshua is that God is accessible to all, and our call in this life is to become wholly accessible to God. Hence there is something we must do to become single hearted; to live a life wholly consecrated to God.

From this desire for the singular, undivided life came the word "monos" and the creation of the monastic life. The early men and women monastics were intent on realizing a life consecrated to union in Christ. They lived as hermits and as cenobites, or in communities. They gathered around teachers or guides who were called "abba" or "amma", spiritual father or mother. The desert ammas and abbas sought to give their lives completely to prayer both in solitude and silence, and in activity, and to guide others to the same singular life of the Heart. Sr. Antoinette is a modern descendant of these followers of Christ, a true Amma of the desert tradition. Her simple wisdom is their wisdom too.

The term that the ancients used for this inner transforming work of union with Christ was "Purification of the Heart." They did not intend that the Heart or spiritual center was unclean, but rather that our life, our will and consciousness, needs to be undivided or purified in its orientation to the singular purpose of the Heart, communion with God in Christ. Therefore the goal is to be undivided, wholly committed, fully consecrated to Christ in all things.

Like all of us the ammas and abbas realized that the primary impediment to the undivided life is the divided attachments and culturally conditioned purposes of the mind. When they went into the desert seeking simplicity and commitment, they brought their mind and its incessant thoughts and traffic with them. Therefore to be fully given and to rest in communion with Christ in the Heart they realized they must find a freedom from the mind's tyranny. These seekers formulated a simple schema in their prayer life. They understood that a person thinks about God in the prayer of the mind; a person speaks to God with the prayer of the lips; and a person experiences God in the silence and interior communion of the prayer of the heart. To assist in this process of anchoring in the Heart or spiritual center they understood that using a prayer word in alignment with breath was most efficacious. They chose a word or phrase from the scriptures. And for many the most powerful word of all was the name of the Redeemer Christ, Jesus, or Yeshua. Over time for many in Eastern Christianity the form of the Prayer of the Heart most commonly known was the Jesus Prayer. An expanded form of the Jesus prayer ("Lord Jesus, Have Mercy.")  was used by many based on the Gospel exclamation of Bartimaeus, the blind man. "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me."(Mark 10:47) Various forms of the Jesus prayer have been used through the centuries, but the simplest and most easily aligned with the breath is the holy name of Jesus or Yeshua. Again Brian Taylor speaks of this ancient tradition of inner communion with Christ:

"This rich and focused tradition is perhaps the only specific, practical

teaching about contemplative prayer in all of Christendom that has been

handed down faithfully and precisely from master to disciple, remaining

intact over sixteen hundred years. In this sense, the Jesus Prayer/Prayer

of the Heart tradition is more akin to the way in which Buddhist or Hindu

meditation is handed down from generation to generation than it is to

anything comparable in the West.

The use of the Jesus Prayer and the teachings about contemplation that

surrounded it spread from master to disciple through the deserts of Egypt,

and then came into prominence in the sixth century at the well-known and

ancient monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, established by Emperor

Justinian I in 527. In the fourteenth century the center of the Yeshua

Prayer movement moved to Mt. Athos, Greece.

…In our day, Mt. Athos and to a lesser degree, St. Catherine's

of Sinai, continue as centers of practice of the Jesus Prayer."

Prayer of the Heart was understood then and now to be the way we anchor our attention (awareness) and our intention (will), fully in the Heart of Christ. This practice takes place during formal times of prayer in silence and sitting. The Prayer of the Heart is also a practice that is ceaseless. It takes place throughout the day, in the midst of activity, with a habitual and ongoing return to the name of Yeshua in moment to moment presence and self-offering love, in all that we do, in our natural inhalation and exhalation of the breath.  This way the invitation to a life of ceaseless prayer from Yeshua and the apostle Paul is seen as both possible and desirable for all. All who breathe can breathe Yeshua.

We have an expression of reassurance in our culture when a person is fearful; we say "Breathe easy."  When we are in the middle of life, breath is a way that we re-orient to abiding in the present moment when our consciousness has been captivated by memories of a painful past or a dreaded imagined future. When we can root and ground in the present moment we can live where God lives, in the present eternal moment.

"In the seventh century, John Climacus advised: 'Let your calling to mind of Jesus be continually combined with your breathing and you will know the meaning of silence.' " (Taylor, p.73)

Indeed to breathe is to breathe Life, and a powerful word for God in the Jewish tradition is Ruach, or Life-Breath. To breathe fully with attention and intention is to participation in the flow of the Spirit God who is our true Life. This is our antidote to the mind's compulsion for control and fixation with past pain and future possibility. To breathe Ruach, or Life- Breath, is to breathe Yeshua, and to root and ground in what is real and true. Actualizing this Truth of the Christ Life is much beyond any relaxation technique.

When I breathe Yeshua, I participate in the Spirit of God with full attention and intention. Yeshua is the gift of God (He proclaimed to the Samaritan woman at the well). If we open to receive Him, He is given to us infinitely as gift, without expectation. And the Life of God becomes a spring of Living Water welling up within us. In my breath I bow ceaselessly in the attention of presence and adoration. In my breath I offer ceaselessly in love with hands extended, with the intention of being poured out in all that I am and all that I am given. To breathe Yeshua is to continually say "yes" to receive Him, and to say "yes" to our self-gift of Love in the offering to Him of our own life and humanity. I breathe in Yeshua; I breathe out Yeshua. I breathe in the gift of God's Life; I breathe out in offering the gift of my own life in God. In my breath I sink into and abide in communion in the Heart of Christ. In this inner communion with Christ I touch the Kingdom and the Kingdom touches me.

The Fire in the Cave of the Heart

The Fire in the Cave of the Heart

In 1970 at age 21 I was lost in a cloud of despair, confusion, clinical and existential depression. Crowded by suicidal thoughts and the torment of my own mind I cried out for help. The help came in a remembrance, as the ancients of the Middle Eastern desert tradition would say, a “remembrance of God.” The experience began with a memory of being a small child, hiding in the tall grass behind my grandmother’s house (where we also lived). Seated on the ground, cross legged, with eyes closed my attention and intention were rooted in a shining Presence within, felt in the area of the anatomical heart. The Presence was alive, Life Itself, Luminous and enveloping. As was my pattern as a child, I stayed there for a while, immersed in that Presence. I thought of it as “the Friend,” and nothing unusual. In this remembrance at age 21, I remembered again the interior sanctuary of “the Friend” and went there, and the “Remembrance of God” became actualized in the present moment, and the hellish torments of the mind were lifted.

Heaven only knows why I, or any young child, “forgets” the Kingdom of God within. Yet expulsion from that interior Garden where we walk in the cool of the evening with the Beloved (Genesis) seems to be the human pattern of development. We become immersed in the world of socially constructed reality and form an egoic self to be our vehicle in this world, and we lose the memory of our Source and Origin immersed in forgetfulness until we may experience a spiritual awakening in adult life. But then, at age 21, I knew that this reawakening to the central truth of our existence was real and I could base my life on it. We “re-member” our divided life of separateness in this truth, or we lose it in the dissolution of forgetfulness.

It is good to encourage all those who nurture their longing for the “re-membering” of their Life in “the Friend.” The name often given for this interior sanctuary space of Divine Light and Presence across many traditions is the “cave of the heart.” This luminous Presence of Life itself in the ancient desert tradition of Christianity is the very Fire of the Spirit of Christ. This simple truth is the essence of the Christian mystical teaching. And our exploration of the mystical Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a focus on this simple truth, a truth too often ignored by the historical representations of Christianity that we know today as “churchianity.” In the canonical Gospel of Mathew Yeshua (Aramaic form of Jesus) says “ I have come that they might have Life, and have it fully.” (Matt. 10:10). He was referring to the transmission of his own Life and Essence as the purpose of his mission and teaching. His Life and Essence are the “Living Flame of Love” at the center of the heart or spiritual center, so poetically named by the mystic John of the Cross. And our purpose is to let our humanity be a vessel of this Light and Fire of Christ. As Abba Joseph, the ancient desert teacher and guide says, “Why not become all Fire!” (Apothegmata) This theological teaching of Theosis is the core teaching of Eastern Christianity and the summation of humanity’s life purpose. To become “Yeshua’s Fire” is our life’s purpose.

Since that day in 1970 I have grown in the “re-membering” of a divided life, and based my life’s journey in the simplicity and immediacy of the teaching of that experience. I have found support and accountability through my work with spiritual teachers, both in Zen and contemplative Christianity. In reclaiming my Christian roots I have come to understand that meaning of salvation is spiritual healing, a coming home to the Center. As the Christian mystic and teacher John Main says, “Meditation is coming home to our own center and realizing it is the gateway to the Center of all.”(The Heart of Creation )

On this path we realize that the gift and self-transmission of Yeshua is a divinized soul, and humanity, not a divinized institution. And we realize Yeshua’s truth that the real temple is the heart, and not the bricks and mortar building on the hill. It is the truth for which he was crucified by the religious and political authorities of his time. On that day in 1970 I learned that salvation is not a distant or historic event that happened in biblical times, nor at the end of time or biological life, it is a process of healing that is, and can be life-long in every moment of life through the soul’s accessibility to the Living Flame of Love within that extends outward into our humanity and all the world. I learned as Yeshua says “. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.” (Jn. 14:20) That day can be every day, when we live out our life’s purpose.

The world was introduced to a stunning paradox in 1945 when the atomic bomb was first exploded and used as an instrument of mass death at Hiroshima, the same year The Gospel of Thomas was uncovered in a dirt bank close to limestone caves near the settlement of Nag Hamadi in Upper Egypt. In December of that year, two Egyptian brothers found several papyri in a large earthenware vessel while digging for fertilizer. The Nag Hamadi scriptures were a collection of ancient scriptures that was not included in the canon of the Bible. Archaeologists believe the scriptures were hidden by nearby monks of the monastic community of Khenoboskion, founded by St Pachomius, to keep them safe from destruction by warring religious factions. The Gospel of Thomas was one work of 53 parchments written in Sahidic Coptic, the last remaining language still close to the extinct ancient Egyptian pharaonic language. I often think Divine Providence works in its own ways and gives to the soul of humankind those needed wisdom resources when it is ready. The Spirit blows where She will.

A few years ago in a public forum I asked Marcus Borg, scholar and theologian (author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First time, The God We Never Knew, and The Heart of Christianity) the question: “Is authentic religious faith about believing the right things?” His answer was. “No, it’s about right relationship.” I have spent much of my 60 years consciously in love with the relational Living Flame of Love within that Yeshua the Christ offers us, yet chronically disappointed with those denominations and historic structures who claim to be his representative and repository of his teaching and presence on earth. The great tragedy of the Christian movement is that it has lost its way in collective “forgetfulness” investing its energies in external forms and structures, becoming yet another manifestation of those “principalities and powers” who rule this world. The radical teaching of Yeshua of the “Kingdom within” that the temple is in the deep heart, and not in bricks and mortar on the hill, has not been fully actualized in our world.

What is the nature of this “right relationship” that is the foundation of true religious faith? As Yeshua says in the canonical Gospel, “ I am the Vine, you are the branches.”(John 15:5) The ontological reality of our innate oneness with the Divine can however remain unrealized, unactualized. And that would explain the state of the human condition and its manifold brokenness. In the ancient mystic tradition of Eastern and Western Christianity, the image of God within, the Inner Light of the Divine at the center of our being, remains a hidden truth, until we actualize that Light in a growing inner communion with God and express it in our relational life with the other beings we walk with in this life. Hence our relational life with the Divine has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension of realization. The unrealized relationship with the Divine by the human soul is a study in existential failure, spiritual suffering, and even evil, when human consciousness implodes onto itself in a life of narcissistic self absorption, rather than God absorption, with all the resultant collective evils of violence, war, poverty, and exploitation.

Religious faith as relationship implies direct and conscious experience of the Divine, yet the religious denominations throughout time have emphasized the mediation of the Divine through scriptural interpretation of concepts or the institutional and priestly mediation of sacramental grace and ritual. This describes the historical struggle in Western Christianity between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, salvation alone through correct beliefs, or correct affiliation with the “divinized” institution, rather than interior union with the Divine Light within. Eastern Christianity, in contrast, has had a profound spiritual theology of transformative relationship with the Divine through unitive experience in the teaching of Theosis, or Divinization of the soul from within, but has relegated the ancient praxis of Prayer of Heart of inner communion with God to a few male monks on Mt. Athos or Mt. Sinai and beyond the reach of most ordinary humans.

The question presents itself to many sincere people of faith, why has Christianity as an historic movement failed to be a transformative agent in those historic communities who claim to be followers of Yeshua? Why the historic failures of religious wars, injustice, persecution, cruelty, and injustice? Why the negligence of the poor, complicity with colonial subjugation of entire peoples, complicity with mass exterminations of Jewish and indigenous peoples? Why has Christian faith failed to be a dynamic practice in modern secular societies? Why do so many contemporary Christians not experience an interior ongoing presence of God as a vital force in their lives? Today most Christians can tell you about their doctrinal and denominational affiliation and identity. They can tell you very little, if anything, about their daily practice of conscious interior communion with God.

In the space of my own lifetime (1948- present) humankind has embarked on a growth in technological knowledge and development at the service of military domination and commercial greed that has brought us to a point of a growing danger of extinction from a nuclear holocaust or environmental collapse of the life systems that support us. Prominent writers, philosophers, and spiritual teachers speak of a growing race between our capacity to grow in consciousness to guide the growth and use of new technologies that shape our earth and civilization, and our unconscious, destructive capacity to misuse these same creations to lead us to a path of destruction for our species and ecosystem.

The Gospel of Thomas stands in marked contrast to the Canonical Gospels. The Canonical Gospels were adopted as part of the official biblical Canon by the Council of Nicea that was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D., who insisted that with the merging of the Christian religion with the Roman Empire there must be codified and standardized official scriptures and doctrines (Nicene Creed). At the time of the Council of Nicea there were a number of Gospel texts in circulation throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. From among these the Council of Nicea chose four, in addition to other books and letters to be included in the official scriptures of the nascent Roman Catholic Church. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of diverse sayings from Yeshua, the Christ. In contrast with the canonical Gospels there is no narrative. There is no beginning or end, no birth, death, or resurrection narrative. The Gospel of Thomas is above all a collection of mystical teachings. It addresses directly the question that the mystic seeks to answer, how to have conscious communion with ultimate Mystery, we call God, or whom Yeshua addressed personally as “Abba, or “papa,” and named more generally as “Allaha,” an Aramaic term as the Source of all being. The Gospel of Thomas is considered by many scholars to be an older text, and some believe it is the “Q” text, which has been a source for later texts, and possibly dates from 50 A.D. The Gospel of Thomas is organized into short sayings or “logions.” Many of these resemble the sayings of Yeshua in the canonical texts but clearly point towards a more mystical interiority.

In contrast the canonical Gospels, derived from the oral traditions of diverse Christian communities of the first century, have an emphasis on a narrative structure. Among the four books of the Gospel there are a number of mystical references, especially in the Gospel of John and the “I AM” statements made by Christ. However, the structure of each of these Gospels is a narrative encompassing the life of Christ and focusing on the three years of his active ministry. This is a critical point. A religion based on narrative is a religion based on a story. Without the mystical teaching at the core of religion, the task of the follower begins by believing the story, and culminates with an act of allegiance aligning oneself with the historic victor in the story. This is mythic religion, and it is what mostly passes for religion now and in times past. Essentially the believer makes the choice for membership on the winning team in the competition for dominance of history. The messiah or savior in this story is the one who comes solely at the end of time in a personal or collective parousia, not the one who comes each moment of life restoring the soul to oneness with the Divine in a lifetime of healing.

Now this understanding of the power of story is not surprising since the psychological school of social constructivism bases its theory on the idea that humans make meaning through story. We tell stories all the time to each other about where we come from and where we are going and what happens along the way. And we know through the psychotherapeutic school of narrative therapy that there are some stories that are liberating and some that are oppressive. Stories help with defining identity and tribal/group affiliation. A collectivized institutionalized religious story and our allegiance to it does not in itself provide us with an awakening to a unitive experience with the Divine and ongoing commitment to a transformation of the soul that is the rightful promise of the practice of authentic religious faith. Rather a rigidified and triumphalist identity is likely to lead to the pattern of colonial conquests, forced mass conversions, abuses of power, persecution of nonconformity, and religious wars that history has brought. Uniting the temporal power of the Roman Imperium, and the Catholic religious structures and ideology formalized at the Council of Nicea brought into being a social political order that would dominate the world for centuries, and an active persecution of any competing religious ideas or movements. Armed with the Augustinian ideology of original sin and salvation through the Church alone brought us a divinization of the institution in a manicheistic polarized view of human history rather than a divinization and healing of the soul from within leading to a more unified and healed world.

The Gospel of Thomas does not stand against the narrative Gospels. Rather it completes them. While the canonical Gospels present us a story rooted in time and history, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is rooted in timelessness and the present moment. The Gospel of Thomas reveals the truth of the identity of Christ as the Living Flame of the Light and Fire of Divine Love at the center of the spirit, and reveals the mission of Christ as the One who kindles the Flame of His own essence in the soul human beings. ( “Yeshua said: I have cast fire upon the world, and now I tend it to a blaze.” Logion 10) We are invited to draw near and become ourselves this lit flame of Divine Light and Love. (“Yeshua said:Whoever is near to me is near to the Fire.” Logion 82) The Gospel of Thomas is called a gnostic text yet wrongly associated with gnostic dualistic mythology. What you see in the sayings of Yeshua in this work is the deconstruction of mythology and the invitation into living the experiential knowledge or “gnosis” or “nous”, or “da’ath” (Hebrew) of the ultimate mystery of the Living God. This is “Contemplation” defined by Gregory the Great as the unmediated knowledge of God infused by Love. Without the mystic teaching of Yeshua we are likely to have the result we have had historically, an institutional ‘churchianity” of diverse denominations rooted in historical conditions that no longer exist. A grounded mystic teaching can and will bear fruit in the development of a tradition of sustained spiritual praxis (practice) whose expressions are transmitted from teacher to student and from generation to generation, each growing from the learning of the spiritual elders of the preceding generation. It is a Fire that is kindled and tended in the Cave of the Heart.

In our world now and throughout time we have seen the results of human life without lived consecration, human life that is lived in forgetfulness and separation from the Divine Life within. The result of a life that is not holy, not consecrated, is desecration, of all that is good, holy, life-giving and healing. This has been the norm throughout time and history. We are at a juncture in history when this awakening to the immediacy and ever present Living Flame of Love within is necessary not only for our own individual salvation, but also for the preservation of the planet and for the web of life that sustains us all. The ancient mystic wisdom traditions of the world are reviving in our time, and that includes the ancient Christian wisdom tradition of Prayer of the Heart as a practice of inner communion with Christ in the sanctuary of the Heart, and with a theology of Theosis, the divinization of the soul of humankind. Christians must not only believe in the historical Jesus/Yeshua to find spiritual healing, they must come to experience the Christ, the Living Flame of Love at the Center of the Spirit. Christ Savior and Messiah of the Soul, here and now. To actualize and live this truth “Tending Yeshua’s Fire in the Cave of the Heart” must be the core, not the periphery, of Christian faith and practice.

You are the peace of all things calm
You are the place to hide from harm
You are the light that shines in dark
You are the heart's eternal spark
You are the door that's open wide
You are the guest who waits inside
You are the stranger at the door
You are the calling of the poor
You are my Lord and with me from ill
You are the light, the truth, the way
You are my Savior this very day.
(celtic prayer)

Theosis and the Center

Theosis and the Center
by Bill Ryan

"Meditation is returning to the Center and there finding the gateway to the Center of All." John Main

We live in a time when humankind can no longer afford to misuse religion to seek power and domination over others. The voices that seek an apocalyptic clash of religious superiority and exclusive truth claims through military violence cannot prevail. Now, more than ever we must seek to understand the "sapientia perennis," the perennial wisdom that is at the source of all authentic religious inspiration and the common ground of awakening to Ultimate Mystery that the great sages and saints across time and traditions have pointed to. Militant fundamentalism in the 21st century, armed with nuclear weapons, presents a threat to human survival and the survival of all creation. As we speak at least one U.S. presidential candidate is advocating the nuclear destruction of Mecca and other Muslim religious sites as an appropriate strategy.

Those of us who name ourselves as followers of Christ must also remind ourselves that in the name of Christ, a thirty years war was fought in Europe, decimating the population and infrastructure of entire nations, with countless acts of barbarity and brutality done for the sake of exclusive truth claims. We must also remind ourselves of the forced conversions of millions of indigenous peoples who were enslaved or murdered in the name of the cross of Christ. In similar ways other world religions have their own stories of inflicting violence and domination, and subjugation of others for the sake of allegiance to a creed. And today terrible civil conflicts continue in the name of religion in Iraq, between Muslim and Muslim, in India, between Muslim and Hindu, in Sri Lanka and Thailand between Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim.

Who Owns God?
Who owns God or the Ultimate? By any name or definition? Authentic religious inspiration should never be about exclusive pronouncements of allegiance to a "winning team" or the claim to have exclusive ownership of Divinity or access to God. Yet throughout time and history wars and persecutions have been about these exclusive claims for purposes of power and dominance. And yet, the mystics and saints remind us, though rarely we listen, that the real spiritual question facing a person on the journey is who owns us? Are we surrendered consecrated beings? Are our lives offered ceaselessly to the love of the Divine in service and healing to God's Creation, or are our lives possessed by the demons of our own obsessions for power, security, and greed in a vain attempt to escape the truth of the powerlessness of our own fragile and transitory passage in this life?

As the Benedictine mystic and teacher of contemplation, John Main O.S.B. has said, the solution is for us all to "return to the Center" and there find the gateway to the Center of all. For those on the Christian path by returning to the Center we can find the center of our own Faith, the Heart of Christ, and the central teaching of the human journey, the journey of Theosis, of the call to become transformed in Christ. To find and realize Christ at the Center we must journey to the Center, the "Deep Heart" of our deepest inner being, the sanctuary of the Beloved, and innermost dwelling place of Christ within us. As Jesus has told us in his Gospel teachings, the really good news is this: God is accessible, forever offered, forever present in the Inner Kingdom, and that our true worship and sacred dwelling of Communion with Him is not the building of bricks and mortar on the hill but Love's sanctuary at the Center. Our primary impediment is the mind's obsessions and the behavioral compulsions that flow from them. Abiding in the Heart in Prayer of the Heart offers us this freedom from such enslavement. The book, Pathways to the Heart- Sufism and the Christian East is about the common ground of our liberation in the God Mystery in the Heart as taught in the Semitic mysticism of Eastern Christianity and mystical Islam.

The Center and The Transformation of Theosis
One of the great contributions that Thomas Keating has made to the modern world is to synthesize the ancient wisdom of contemplative prayer and present it in modern terms. Among the teaching devices I received from him that remains helpful is a simple diagram. The diagram is a circle with concentric circles within. The circle is a metaphoric representation of the human soul or consciousness. Between the concentric circles are layers of soul or consciousness. The first layer near the outer layer or surface of soul is labeled as "ordinary consciousness." By this Fr. Keating means this is the layer that most human beings spend most of our time and focus in. It is a relatively unawakened state, based on the competitive separateness that dominates most social interactions, infused by the conditioning of the culture in which we have been socialized to live. The next layer is called "spiritual consciousness." For some this may be fleeting, for others it may be expansive and well developed. It represents the degree that our orientation to life comes from the interior life of God in contrast to a life dominated by egoic separateness and the values of the culture. Another circle close to the center is called "true self." This is the "unconditioned life" of our true identity and being as child of God, animated by the Divine Indwelling, the Imago Dei or Image of God within us. This is the outer layer of the "deep heart" or Center that John Main references. And deepest of all, beyond our intentional reach but still beckoning to us, is the Center of the center, the "Divine Indwelling." This is the seat of Christ's Presence within us. As Merton says, "it is not at our disposal," (Le Pointe Vierge) but those of us who are on the journey of transformative prayer, ever seek to bring our soul to the "disposal" or access of the Beloved's Presence within us.

The process of prayer and transformative life in God is to bring the entirety of the soul to be accessible, to be a "lit flame" of this Divine Fire within, to be a lamp of the Divine Light within. Faithfulness in a lifetime of growing communion and surrendered self to the Source within is what makes "Theosis" or divinization of our humanity, possible. This "Light Within," as Thomas Kelly calls it, is the common ground of all true religious inspiration. Our mutual reverence of it, our realization of Divine Life in ourselves and our mutual adoration of the Beloved in all human beings, can be the basis of healing the great religious divides that so afflict and torment humankind. It can also be the basis of an appreciation of the diversity in the world that honors differences while not trying to make them disappear artificially.

So much blood has been spilled between the Abrahamic Faiths who have common ancestry, over who "owns" God, over who is "chosen" and over who has the rights to possession and dominance over the historical sites of Jerusalem. Such delusion and such hatred stand in resistance to the Great Mercy that enfolds us all. What we all have is the common inheritance as children of the Most High. What we all have is the common challenge to become surrendered to that Great Mystery we so love and adore rather than seek to own or possess a fictional exclusive right over that same Holy Mystery. The sanctuary of the Most High is within each of us, in the "Deep Heart. Jesus said we need just come close to it, "as a little child." Why should bricks and mortar and stones be our obsession? In summarizing this simple Wisdom I recall the words of the Coptic hermit, Abuna Matta al- Maskin who stated: "Jerusalem the Holy is right here, in and around these caves; for what else is my cave except where my Savior Christ was born; what else is my cave but the place where my Savior Christ was take to rest, what else is my cave but the place where He most gloriously rose again from the dead. Jerusalem is here, right here and all the spiritual riches of the Holy City are found in this 'wadi.' (cell)." (Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom, p.92) The cave of the heart, the interior communion with Christ we open to in our daily practice of Prayer of the Heart, is the path to peace within us and peace between us.

Delving Deeply into the Jesus Prayer

Theophan the Recluse says:
"Delve deeply into the Jesus Prayer." Martin Laird speaks in his book Into the Silent Land of the use of the Prayer word as a doorway into the communion realm of Christ in every day life as well as formal silence. He advises us not to think of this as magic or as something mechanical, and he is right. I have written in my book, Breathing Yeshua, in the opening of the first chapter, " Our inner spiritual work turns on the tension of the mind's compulsion for control and the freedom of the heart's willingness to open and surrender in love. " This interior opening then, of the heart, the center of our being, to surrender to and in Christ's Love is this doorway. The Jesus Prayer, as we delve the depths of it, leads us not into magical thinking, but into the very Heart of Christ, who is mercy. What arises in the mind as we try to approach this limitless Mercy that we know as the Christ experience, are all our resistances to surrender, to releasing from the mind's compulsions for control. If we think about our "mental obsessions" sometimes called demons in the desert tradition, they are all about the compulsion for control in some form or other. And we live in a universe where we have no control ultimately over external things, we only have the choice to give ourselves in love to God in life, and in each moment. What allows us to make this surrender is trust in the Realm of Mercy that we know as Christ. And the root word for Faith, Fidare, or Fides (Latin), is trust or to trust in, to be entrusted to. We leap then, in this praxis of Faith. We leap in longing for our true heart's desire. The Heart knows what we frequently do not know, in our souls too often dominated by culture and the ego-mind, that our heart's desire is Christ, our Beginning and our End, our Life's completion, our true Beloved. Our Heart knows that the false refuges of the mind offer no true solace or home, no strategy for control, and that there is only one true Refuge, to Abide in Yeshua's Love, as he has invited.

These are words of love, but what do they have to do with everyday, every moment existence, our practice of the prayer word? The prayer word, and most especially when our prayer word is the name of the Beloved of our Heart, is the homing pigeon, the anchor in what is real and true. It is the reminder of our continual bowing to our Beloved and the offering of our soul, our life, and all human existence as we know it, all of Creation's suffering to the Realm of Mercy. This is the only medicine for the healing of our obsessions for control. It is an every-moment practice.

I have a clear recollection pointing to this Realm of Mercy, coming to me from my earliest days in school. I grew up much of the time attending Roman Catholic parochial schools in a pre-Vatican II era. This was an expectation of all dutiful Catholic parents of that time, even for a single parent mother, as was my mother. I remember one of the prayer gestures given to me by nuns who taught me was this: -"When you are in distress, or when you hear of another soul in distress, when you hear an ambulance pass by, when you find yourself disappointed in life, when you find yourself discouraged, no matter what is happening to you or to another, when you think of the tragic things happening to people in the world, think of Jesus and "offer up" whatever it is, to that greater Mercy that is Him, because it matters, for oneself and for all."

Now at the time I don't pretend to have understood what precisely all that meant, but intuitively it seemed "right". It fit. No doubt there were some nuns, or some students who incorporated that practice as a form of magical thinking. But I did not pretend, even then, that my prayerful practice would necessarily change events or remove suffering from the world. Yet, it always gave me somewhere to go, and it fed the trust in the Greater Life, the Greater Mercy, the Greater Healing that encompasses us all. It was a true practice of Faith, then as a first, second, or third grader, and it is today.

Therefore it is important for us to look upon our practice of the prayer word in this way. It is a meeting of a contemplative prayer of union and a contemplative prayer of mercy (what we call intercessory prayer), for ourselves and for all God's creatures, all beings who inhabit our universe. When we truly let go of the mind's compulsion for control, and bow and offer our life and existence and everything in it, in love and givenness, in self-surrender and self-relinquishment, we become accessible to the God of Infinite Mercy who is total Self-Gift in Christ to us. There are practical teachings to be learned, yet this is not a mental technique. It is our lifetime of home-coming, and our Prayer Word is our calling out in love to the One who is our Home, as love beacon, and it will last until we draw our last breath and open to a finality of healing in the welcoming arms of the Divine Beloved who is the Source and Goal of our prayer. What was taught to me as a first grader has not changed. What I can do always is "offer it up." The "It" I am offering, I have learned, is everything in life. And I have come to know that there is a Greater who Offers and Receives in me. Our souls are the medium of this Eucharistic banquet of Life of God's Gift of Self to us and our self-giving to God. We are the consecrated bread and wine, lifted up in Christ, each moment of life and given, joined in the eternal wedding banquet and with the Bridegroom.

To me this what it means to delve deeply into the Jesus Prayer, or the true meaning of our prayer word.

Peace and Blessings to all,

Bill Ryan