Tag Archives: ordinary awareness

Moving into the third level of awareness in everyday life

A life in the Spirit, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , , ,

I went to a large memorial service recently. It was full of stories and very moving because the woman being remembered was influential and beloved. I went because she prayed for me.

When we first landed in Philadelphia to plant a church, I knew we were likely to fail if we did not call on gifted people to pray for us. I collected scores of people to intercede who got a regular letter listing our triumphs and trials. Grace Holland was among the first to join in. Whenever I saw her she told me how she was praying and often had a question about something in our letter that intrigued her. She might not have known how much that meant to me; and she might not have really cared, since praying was a reward in itself for her.

Grace’s family is so full of faith and the wildness missionary kids often carry it would have been hard not to have an interesting and spiritually-stimulating morning at the memorial they held. I had a wonderful time. In fact, I have kept mentalizing about it, which led me to write this post.

As a person who has led many meetings for stories, teaching, ceremony and worship, I know members of an audience are not having a singular experience. At any given moment, someone is receiving what is offered with their ordinary awareness, perhaps exclusively. Others will be experiencing it with their spiritual awareness. Still others are blessed in their deepest hearts with an awareness of the presence of God.

Thomas  Keating, the main instigator in the Centering Prayer movement which got rolling in the 1970s, drew a simple target graphic to explain his common-sense description of what is happening when we turn toward God. I have been re-reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s classic expansion on his chart in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.

Ordinary awareness

Some people who attended the funeral probably experienced it entirely with their ordinary awareness. They might have been children. They could have been a distant relation or acquaintance unfamiliar with the family or their brand of Christianity and were caught up with the curiosity of it all. Or they may have been spiritually undeveloped due to lack of opportunity or resistance. People with childhood trauma or children of parents who did not nurture a secure attachment often find it difficult to connect with other people or God and spend much of their time feeling so responsible for their well-being they can’t do anything else.

Ordinary awareness is the reflexive consciousness that only humans have, as far as we know. I have several pictures of a son staring at his fist as a baby coming to the realization he is a separate being from his mother. We all have the capacity to stand outside ourselves and look upon ourselves in the third person. We come to know ourselves as distinct from others with attributes and gifts that need to be expressed to “be ourselves.”

So I experienced the funeral with my ordinary awareness. For instance, I thought I had left with plenty of time to spare after the long drive from Philly to Harrisburg. But I actually just made it to the memorial in time, since the turnpike was jammed due to a car having caught fire. We saw it melted on the shoulder with its poor owners watching the firemen mop up. The feelings stuck with me. Then I entered a large meeting room with quite a few people I had not seen for years and a few I did not want to see. My “monkey mind” was hopping.

At any given moment our awareness is full of stimulating things coming at us which often  stimulate things we have stored up: random thoughts, memories, associations and sensations. We get “triggered,” we like to say, and habitual reactions may lead to a chain reaction that can set off our anxiety. If we did not have that sense of “self” that can step back and see what is going on, we might not be able to endure the chaos. That self-reflexive “I” is probing and measuring the universe all day, and even when we dream it asks things like, “How am I doing?” “Is it safe here?”  “What did she mean by that?” “Am I OK?”

Bourgeault says, “Another name for ‘ordinary awareness’ is ‘egoic thinking.’ It is the normal functioning zone of the human mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Ph.D., a bishop, a nuclear physicist; how brilliantly intellectual or intensely devout you may be. Without spiritual training, your sense of the world and your sense of yourself will be formed at this level of awareness. Even the so-called self-awareness tools of our times, from psychotherapy to Meyers-Briggs  personality typing to the enneagram, spend most of their effort merely resorting and clarifying the characteristics: ‘I am an INFP,’ ‘a gut-centered type,’ ‘a five,’ etc. This may add insights into the workings of the personality, but it’s till ordinary awareness.

Spiritual awareness

The funeral lasted about two hours. So there was a lot of opportunity for ordinary awareness. Plus I had to catch up with some old friends which occupied my mind and heart with pleasantries and tragedies.

Thinking together about our experience afterward, my wife and I realized that shortly after we arrived we had already soaked up the emotion swirling around the room, as a psychologist and psychotherapist might be prone to do. We were primed to be moved beyond our ordinary awareness and into our spiritual awareness. Grace was a well-known worshiper, so a time for that was  included. Almost with the first note, both of us began to cry. And we were drawn beyond ourselves.

As the worship continued, it would have been hard to miss the experience of spiritual awareness all humans are equipped to have whether someone was a Jesus follower of not. The meeting was like a first glimpse of Yosemite Valley, which seems to make everyone pause with awe. I first experienced such wonder under the stars in the Anza-Borrego desert. You may have felt it during a beautiful fall sunset last week. At times I have been drawn in when my friends were dancing or we were meeting an emergency together. And, of course, babies have been born.

Bourgeault says “spiritual awareness is actually a way of perceiving, just as ordinary awareness is a way of perceiving. As with ordinary awareness, there is a sense of identity or selfhood generated through this mode of perception. The big difference between them is that whereas ordinary awareness perceives through self-reflective consciousness, which splits the world into subject and object;  spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging. It’s something like sounding the note G on the piano and instantly hearing the D and the B that surround it and make it a chord. And since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness.“

Holy Spirit awareness.

I was delighted with the smorgasbord of spiritual food we shared with Grace Holland’s family. I think she would have loved it – even the parts she thought we not fully baked yet. She would have loved how the meeting regularly veered into a thin place where we could reach into the bull’s-eye of the target, the goal Father Keating called our “divine awareness.”

The moment in the meeting I remember most, and these moments are usually relatively fleeting for all of us, was when we sang one of Grace’s favorite songs. Her son, Mike, recounted it was a tune that might pop into her ordinary awareness and lead her beyond it at any moment. I have also been moved by it since Maranatha Music released it on Praise 4 in 1980: “I Love you Lord.”

The song arose in the late 1970’s when it tumbled out during Laurie Klein’s quiet time before her toddler woke up. It found its way to Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, which I visited. It was recorded by several musicians in the budding Christian music scene, including 2nd Chapter of Acts, who I followed. It gained general  recognition when Maranatha! Music published it and now Korean choirs sing it, too.

As we sang it, I felt the presence of God course through my body. I was one with God, with those gathered and with everyone who has sang that song throughout my life and throughout the world. I enjoy remembering that experience.

We all have a place at the center of us where our own being and God’s being are mysteriously interwoven, even if we are not aware of it. Bourgeault says, “The divine indwelling is the cornerstone of contemplative prayer. Thomas Keating refers to it as ‘our personal big bang,’ for it reveals the Source of our own being – the explosion of divine love into form which first gave rise to our personal life. It also reveals the direction our heart must travel for a constantly renewed intimacy with this Source. As we enter contemplative prayer, we draw near the wellspring from which our being flows.“

The whole world is full of glory

The big, noisy funeral I attended did not have much silence at all. Maybe I will leave that as a request for own funeral. But I carried a silent place with me as I attended which has been formed by years of attention to God-with-us. We meet God deep within us and all around us. It is beautiful when a song flows out of your personal, private quiet time. But the whole earth is full of the glory of God. We meet God-with-us wherever we go. We can’t make an appointment, per se, but we can expect that glory to erupt into our awareness.

Bourgeault points out that ordinary awareness and spiritual awareness are both necessary for functioning in this world. “But the idea in spiritual transformation is to integrate and reprioritize these levels so that our ordinary awareness is in alignment with and in service to our spiritual awareness (which in turn, as we have seen, is in service to the divine awareness). In that alignment our being flows rightly, from innermost out. When something needs to be done in the outer world, we have sufficient ego strength to do it. But unlike ordinary awareness, which is always doing things to assert itself or fulfill itself, action grounded in our spiritual awareness merely flows out of the divine abundance without regard to outcome or any need to draw attention to itself.”

To hear her family and pastors talk about her, the heart of God and Grace’s own heart were in a deep embrace at the center of her and much of her action flowed from that abundant life. I took that away as a lesson. But more so, I experienced its legacy at her funeral and joined with her in the eternal life of it.

Take the time: Grow in the good soil of God’s garden

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

“All liberating growth takes time.” That’s what Paul Tournier, the Swiss physician and counselor, taught us in one of his many great books, Creative Suffering (1981).

Most of my clients initially see this truth as bad news. One reason is they are paying for therapy, so  a long road to liberation could cost them a lot of money! But the main reason the long process is hard to endure is they can taste the first fruit of freedom and they want it all right now. They regret their time lost on immaturity. It feels like bad news to be reminded it takes time to heal; it takes time to learn and install new habits. I often describe the process of growing into our fullness as creating new “ruts” in the brain as we climb out of the old ones. Both adding the new and filling in the old takes time. This video explains the science of the process.

It is always the right time to grow

The fact that it takes time to experience liberation is actually good news, I think. Whenever I am growing, I am right on time! I may feel like I am late, but I am never too early! If we can let go of our linear, progress-dominated, capitalism-inspired sense of success, the time spent on liberation can come to feel like growth. It can feel free, like growing is our top priority, just like we see in plants as they move from seedling to plant, to flower, to fruit. They have nothing to do but grow.

The Apostle Paul reinforces how we have been restored to our natural growth process in Ephesians 4 when he describes how the gifts of the Holy Spirit we all contribute build up the body of Christ. The Spirit keeps moving in us

until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…We must grow up in every way into him who is the head. (NRSV)

It feels good to be at home as the “plants” we are, growing in the soil of God’s love. That sense of innate capacity for becoming more is a taste of eternity. I’m fine if it takes as long as it takes.  Becoming whole can take as long as I live to complete – I have eternal life! It is not a defeat or an imposition to need maturity! It is a joy that comes with our birthright as the children of God to grow into fullness. Even if it is a struggle to change, growing is a good suffering.

VIDA E MORTE DE JESUS MAFA
Jesus, Gardener of the New Creation

Rut-making prayer

God calls us and coaxes us into our potential in many ways. I know of several men who recently had amazing dreams that convinced them they are loved and worthy. During the day they are prone to proving themselves and working extra hard to be successful and to be valued as a result, they hope. But during the silence of their sleep, their defenses weaken and God meets them. They are always trying to figure out how to get their dreamlife into their schedule!

God, the Healer, meets us in our spiritual awareness but also in the ordinary awareness that often dominates our consciousness and our schedule. That ordinary awareness forms ruts in our brain, the familiar pathways we began learning as infants. But we have a spiritual awareness that leads us in deeper ways that often feel miraculous.  As we intentionally become silent (or listen to our dreams) our receptivity opens us to face the unknown places we have yet to visit in Christ, both in God and in ourselves. It takes time! It is also daunting because it is sometimes frightening to leave our familiar neural pathways, to “unknow” our past and move into new territory in the Spirit, which feels like a place of “unknowing.”

I appreciate how Cynthia Bourgeault explores the process of maturing in her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (2004) as she is quoting Thomas Keating’s book Intimacy with God (1996).

Beginning in infancy (or even before) each of us, in response to our perceived threats to our well-being, develops a false self: a set of protective behaviors driven at root by a sense of need and lack. The essence of the false self is driven, addictive energy, consisting of tremendous emotional investment in compensatory ”emotional programmes for happiness,” as Keating calls them…

It is the false self we bring to the spiritual journey, our “true self” lies buried beneath the accretions and defenses. In all of us there is a huge amount of healing that has to take place before our deep and authentic quest for union with God – which requires tremendous courage and inner presence to sustain – escapes the gravitational pull of our psychological woundedness and self-justification. This, in essence constitutes the spiritual journey.

All liberating growth takes time. Jesus has replanted us in the good soil of his “garden.” We don’t need to fret if we discover we are a seedling. We can enjoy the growing. We are planted in grace, after all. That is enough in itself.

I think the “garden” where our true self grows is accessed best through contemplative prayer. If you want to grow faster, spend more time in silence, listening and feeling your way into your rightful place as the beloved of God. Our false self may flourish in the family, job and religion. But that false self withers in prayer, since is it the nature of contemplative prayer to dissolve it.

I mentioned three books today, any one of them would help you mature. I hope we all grow deeper ruts in which our true selves can flow by cooperating with the Great Healer. Jesus will lead us through the pain of transformation and the joy of growing – no matter how long it takes. We have time.

Lent Did It’s Job: Three levels of awareness

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

risen sunIt has been a wonderful Lent.

At times, I felt a little guilty, because my self-imposed suffering was bearing delectable fruit: some of it tasted new and some of it tasted of well-loved flavors I had been missing. Meanwhile, some people were blowing off the discipline…for what? At times I felt like I was having a feast while strangely invisible to starving people.

I hope you find it acceptable for me to tell you a little about my Lent. One thing I experienced during the season is this reality: any number of my comrades feel that saying anything about ourselves is proud or self-referencing or coercive, so they never give a testimony of God’s work and , as a result, no one gets to know Jesus. Waking up to that shocked me and reformed me, so I am giving my testimony. Lent helped me realize how they had somewhat squeezed me into their tiny, dishonorable mold. They made me afraid.

I’ll be brief, though. I’ll organize my thoughts around the PM Plan, where it quotes Jesus calling us, in Mark 12, to “surrender to loving God with our entire beings.”  Jesus speaks of a whole being as four parts: heart, soul, mind and strength. A whole being can never actually be separated into parts, of course. But these are good categories to help us mentalize: think and feel about what we  think and feel — a basic Christian skill for which Lent was priceless.

 

We say in the PM Plan that the “heart” is: Our ordinary awareness, primarily. The center of our ego, our sense of being a person. Feelings, desires, passions, reflection, moral conviction.

During the Patrick Day Retreat I encouraged us to note our three levels of awareness: ordinary, spiritual and Holy Spirit. It helped me take note.

That retreat was symbolic of my reorientation. I’ve been discouraged, on and off, for a while. The congregation and the whole network have been missionally stalled, in some ways, and I am a missionary. Lent rekindled my fire, got me excited, helped me let go and change. Our focus on the Jesus Prayer spurred my contemplation, so I was hearing the inner voice. And, as you can probably tell, I felt convictions that I, and we, have an important outer voice.

We say that the “mind” is: Our ordinary awareness, primarily. Where we are conscious. Our understanding, ethical awareness, inclinations, attitudes.

During the Justice Conference I was stricken by what caring people can do. And I was also stricken by what Circle of Hope, as caring people, has done. We are the lost poster child church of the Justice Conference. I felt the same way when we were speaking to the Atlantic Conference of the BIC about our Compassion Teams. We demonstrate remarkable, authentic passion. I love who God has made us!

But sometimes I have felt concerned because it seems like our radicality, our incarnational mentality, and our covenant intensity, just wear people out. I get afraid that people might lazily let it all go. But when I saw “pop” church popping up in our region I got competitive for reality. What’s more, my trauma study helped me see that learned helplessness is a constant threat when people are oppressed; you might have heard about that in this blog post. The church is floundering and pandering; the world is demanding and deceiving. I feel called to be an antidote, if I can.

We say what Jesus means by “strength” is: Not only bodily strength, but primarily. Our ability, capacity, potency. The power we are given to exercise.

I feel better when my Lenten fast has the corollary benefit of reducing my weight and making me aware of my body. When I am feeding myself in a healthy way and requiring my body to match my morals, I feel better and act with more freedom, I am more open.

I forced a personal retreat into my busy schedule at one point during Lent just because it needed to be done. I damned the consequences. The fact that I did that made me stronger. And the consequences weren’t that big a deal anyway. I also regularly force spiritual direction into my schedule and it makes me a stronger counselor and director myself. My doctoral studies are also way too much to do, but have also proven to be too strengthening not to do.

We say that the “soul” is: Our spiritual awareness. Where we most deeply connect with God. The life in us that transcends time. The place of accountability. The seat of sorrow, joy, suffering.

This is where Lent was most valuable, as you might expect. I am desperate for hours in “Holy Spirit awareness.” And although my heart, mind and strength propel me there, it is in my soul that I am most allured. During Lent, I felt remarkably, consciously relieved of lazy habits of self-protection and self-soothing. I think a lot of that was due to my study in trauma and revisiting my psychological character style. For instance, at one of the Holy Week observances I described my childhood home as “unsafe” — an admission I don’t usually allow. My friend’s response was so kind that a flood of emotions surged up. I was getting healed some more. During the Way of the Cross walk and during the vigil I realized the erosive benefits of Lent. I might long for something to knock me “off my horse” all the time, but the regular disciplines of exercising my spiritual awareness form me as they save me. The fact that I went on the walk helped me become aware of Jesus and walk with Him.

As I decided what to put into this testimony it was such a joy to realize that there is so much more to tell! It was a rich season in a rich life. God was with me and I was with God. I was in a body that is a real church and God was with us. I had put my hand to the plow and the way forward was challenging, but exciting — and I did not want to look back or elsewhere. One the main convictions I received was that I needed to talk about all that. So I have begun. Thanks for walking with me.

I’m sure you have a lot to tell, yourself. Right now at Circle of Hope Daily Prayer we are having the first of our quarterly times to talk back, reveal ourselves, and tell each other what God has been doing from January through March. That is hardly the only place you could give witness to God’s work in your life through Jesus, but it is a good one.

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