Apophatic Prayer - Part III - November 22

I’ve come to lament the fact that for more than forty years of my spiritual journey, I thought that prayer was all about words…MY words to God. But as Peter Campbell and Edwin McMahon tell us in their book, Bio-Spirituality, “There can be so much self-deception in a talking-to-God kind of prayer…We can use talking to God as an escape from being in touch with the truth of ourselves.”

The silent, listening form of prayer known as "apophatic prayer" offers a stark alternative to all words-based understandings of prayer, and as such, it challenges us to the very core. For when it comes to our core - our spiritual, soulful core - words will always fail us. Language will always fall short.

In advocating the silent forms of contemplative prayer, McMahon and Campbell note that such forms "help us put our bodies and all that’s inside us where our good intentions are.” For in practices like apophatic prayer, “We must let go of the controlling mind and all its chatter, and let go into what the body knows…For in silence, we have to risk letting the answers come as they will, NOT just make them up ourselves [through our own words and wordiness].

Finally, McMahon and Campbell assure us that “There is wisdom IN our bodies…But this wisdom lies behind an obscuring veil within ourselves…It is even possible that our mind itself is that veil…The letting go required to pass beyond this barrier [of the mind] contradicts all our cultural conditioning," along with all our educational and religious programming as well. "This is because human transformation depends upon far more than information…The critical factor for deep spiritual change is NOT understanding, but an experience, a movement in the body’s awareness…Loosening the reins of control and letting ourselves experience such graced wisdom are the two essential ingredients of bio-spirituality.”

So that is what we are here to do again tonight…Set aside our words and our wordiness…Quiet our minds…Relinquish control…Loosen the reins…and let the genuine wisdom and grace of God speak to us, directly to our hearts…

We will share two periods of silence, each lasting 15 minutes. We’ll have a brief stretch break in between. If you find that you need an anchor to come back to as you fight off that monkey mind, try something physical, such as your breathing in and out, or a single syllable such as "Om," "Lord," or, given where we are in November, just "thanks."

Let us Pray…

Looking Ahead - On Tuesday, November 29, the Living Vision Community will meet at the Manna Food Bank on McBride Park Rd. in McBride Industrial Park off of W. Conway Rd. We will gather at 7:15 and work until 8:30 repacking food and assisting Manna as they address the hunger needs of our three county area. ALL are welcome to join us in the practice of no-strings-attached service to others. For more information email tobyjones48@gmail.com    

Shalom, Toby

Living Vision's Practice of Apophatic Prayer Continues...

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, the Living Vision Community gathered again at Yoga Roots for our second week of practicing Apophatic Prayer. Below you will find the introduction I offered as instructive material. I hope you will find it useful as you go further in this ancient and challenging practice. Please remember that EVERYONE is welcome at our gatherings. Invite your friends and share this blog address with them so we can broaden this important conversation....

Last Tuesday, we began our journey into the silent world of Apophatic Prayer. You will remember that the word “apophatic” comes from a Greek word meaning “to deny.” What is “denied” in apophatic prayer is the notion or assumption that God can be expressed or defined in words. The world of apophatic prayer is one that seeks to re-establish and reaffirm God’s ineffable, indescribable, mysterious nature.

Our interest in entering this practice is to see what happens to our faith when it is moved to a place or a realm that is beyond words. I like the way one of my fellow bloggers, Peregrinatus, puts it in the blog “Thin Spaces:”

“For a Western Christian, the use of language and rational understanding has been a primary mode for understanding and relating to God. This [verbal and rational approach] has essentially stripped God of His innate mystery by quantifying and theologizing God into language. We create a mental image of God…{without realizing that] our intellect, language and conceptions are simply insufficient to convey the transcendent otherness of God. The mental tools we use [in attempt] to describe our experience of Reality [Can actually] darken our understanding and hide us from the experience of God's unique otherness.

Peregrinatus continues, “Apophatic prayer and apophatic theology is one vehicle that allows us to move beyond our conceptual box and experience the living God just as God is.”

Daniel Wolpert, whom I quoted extensively in my introductory remarks last week puts it this way: “As we enter the practice of apophatic prayer, we come to the realization that we know nothing of God; and so we must simply surrender and wait for God to know us.” Wolpert continues: “This complete release, this ultimate letting go, catapults us to a space that appears completely empty…We are no longer in control…All our understanding about God is suddenly of no use to us.” And so, Wolpert concludes, “we can only admit that we are helpless before God…and we must trust our Creator to come and find us.”

As with all contemplative and spiritual practices, apophatic prayer may seem tedious and even fruitless to us at first. And that’s ok. But over time, there ARE some things that WILL begin to happen, particularly as we undertake this practice together, in our group setting…

1) You will begin to feel the support and presence of this group – a group that is abiding WITH you in this often challenging and empty silence…

2) Each of us will begin to “soften” through the practice – our minds WILL gradually slow down…with practice – and that’s why we call this a spiritual ‘practice’ – our monkey minds will relax, and be less consumed.

3) Another benefit of our practice together over time, Wolpert says, is that “the hard edges we set to get through the world will begin to rub away here, through our common practice…Our faces will relax along with our minds, our shoulders will sink down, and our hearts will begin to open up to each other,” in this realm beyond words. We will begin to feel tremendous love and compassion for each other as a by-product of our shared silence.

Remember that as we enter this particular form of silent prayer, we try not to rely on words or phrases or constant repetition to center us. We simply try to sit through the noise in our minds. We may use one single word or syllable as a sort of periodic, emergency anchor. We may also want to use a silent mental image as our anchor. I mentioned last week that I like to picture myself on God’s lap being held and cuddled.

We’ll share two periods of silence this evening – both of 15 minutes. Each phase will begin and end with the bell….Let us pray...

Please leave your comments below, sharing your experiences with apophatic prayer!

LV's Fall Series on Spiritual Practices Kicks Off!

Last night at 7:30, six of us gathered at Yoga Roots to begin practicing contemplative disciplines together. We began with Apophatic Prayer. For your edification, this is the introductory material I offered in case you want to try this at home! But better yet, join us next Tuesday, Nov. 15, when we'll continue our immersion in this challenging, humbling, and clarifying practice.

The anonymous author of the contemplative classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, says that “all human virtue is comprised in the twin qualities of Humility and Charity…He who has these, has all.” Our author goes on to define humility as, “self-knowledge, that terrible vision of the soul as it is…a glimpse which first induces self abasement and then self-purification, which is the beginning of all spiritual growth…”

We have come here tonight to begin or perhaps re-start our spiritual growth. And thus, we have come here to be humbled…and humbled we shall be. For the discipline we shall endeavor to practice tonight and through the month of November is one of the most humbling there is – apophatic prayer.

If you grew up at all like me, you probably have always thought about prayer as an expression in words. But tonight and in the weeks to come we will explore what happens when we seek to move our faith beyond words. We will explore what happens when we even seek to move beyond our thoughts about God, beyond our understanding of God. In a sense, we go back in time to the heart of faith, when, according to Judeo-Christian scripture, Moses asked God what his name was and God responded, “Yahweh,” which is not a name at all. “I am who I am. I will be who I will be.” Translation – ‘I am beyond your human words, your human names, and your human understandings, and I always will be.’ 

The word “apophatic” comes from a Greek word meaning “to deny.” It is also related to school of theology known as “negative theology” – negative in the sense that it rejects all attempts to define, describe, or even understand God. God, after all, is ineffable, utterly beyond human words, so in apophatic prayer we seek to move our faith and faith practices beyond words as well.

Apophatic prayer is not only an externally silent form of prayer, but it seeks to also be silent internally, where there are no words used or called upon for internal focus, except for a single syllable or “anchor word,” to which I’ll return in a few moments. Seeking this silence both without and within is likely to be extraordinarily uncomfortable for all of us, and particularly for American Christians. The very first thing we should expect to encounter in this form of silent meditation is what contemplative writer Daniel Wolpert calls, “the fallen reality of our minds.” While the novice to apophatic prayer may think he/she is about to encounter God, what he/she will most assuredly encounter first is him/herself…”our self loathing, our shame, our lack of self-worth.” And most of all, and here’s the humbling part, we are likely to encounter our complete inability to control our own minds. We find out in this discipline just how out of control our minds are and how powerless we are to do anything about that.

And so, in apophatic prayer we place ourselves - and our runaway minds - at the mercy of God. We admit how broken and unspiritual we really are and wait for God to come to us.

So what we will do in a few moments is sit in silence together. We may use the sound and rhythm of our breathing to focus us. And we also may wish to use a single word as an anchor to chase away at least some of thoughts that will plague us. Your single anchor word might be “God,” “Yahweh,” Jesus,” “Om,” “love,” or “mercy.” Come back to your one word as you seek to quiet your mind enough to listen for the still small voice of your Creator. We’ll share silence for two chunks of time – 10 and 15 minutes, with a little break in between, for a total of 25 minutes tonight. A bell will begin and end each period of silence.

I’ll close this introduction to tonight’s practice with one of my favorite stories about Mother Theresa. The late Peter Jennings was asked just before he died who his most memorable interview was with. He said without hesitating that it was Mother Theresa. When asked why, he said that he’d never forgotten one exchange they had. “I asked her, ‘Mother Theresa, when you pray, what do you say?’ She scrunched up her face in a confused expression and said, ‘Say?…I don’t say anything. I listen…I listen.”

And so, Let the listening begin…Let us pray…