Category Archives: mindfulness

The Observing Ego

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The “observing ego” is that ability to self-monitor and make appropriate choices about public, social behavior.  Without this faculty one is knee-deep in abject narcissism.  And I argue that all of us have this problem to some degree, individually and collectively.  That is why we need to be socially involved AND to be sensitive to the feedback we get from others, explicit feedback and feedback that is more subtle.  Some have described it as having “antennae”.  And close, intimate relationships is the arena where the feedback is the richest as those people who are “close” and “intimate” see us best.

Here is Shakespeare’s observation re this issue in Julius Caesar:

And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.

 

Meditative prayer…again!

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I have often quoted a line from Hamlet re prayer.  King Claudius is on his knees, in prayer, saying, “My words fly up.  My thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

That is a very subtle observation as is often the case when something is profound.  Shakespeare noted the distinction between a prosaic, formal, perfunctory prayer and one that is essentially meditation, “thoughts” and “words” conjoined.   Richard Rohr’s blog posting of today presents this notion more eloquently:

In what is commonly called prayer, you and your hurts, needs, and perspectives are still the central reference point, not really God. But you have decided to invite a Major Power in to help you with your already determined solution! God can perhaps help you get what you want, but it is still a self-centered desire, instead of God’s much better role—which is to help you know what you really desire (Luke 11:13, Matthew 7:11). It always takes a bit of time to widen this lens, and therefore the screen, of life.

One goes through serious withdrawal pain for a while until the screen is widened to a high-definition screen. It is work to learn how to pray, largely the work of emptying the mind and filling the heart—that is prayer in one concise and truthful phrase. Or as some say, “pulling the mind down into the heart” until they both operate as one.

The Power of Thought

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Just a couple notes re the power of thought.

Mike Dooley noted, “Freedom from the past, or anything else for that matter always comes in the very instant you stop thinking about it.”

For, thought has a powerful hand in perpetuating our reality. This is true individually and collectively. It makes me think of an old bromide, author unknown, “Our thoughts become us.”

And peripherally related, Shakespeare noted, “Nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

And I close with another observation of Mike Dooley, “Thoughts are things. Choose the good ones.”

Prayer and humility

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I have discoursed several times re prayer and its meditative function. I don’t believe that God sits “up there” waiting to bestow “stuff” on us when we want or to bail us out of a mess we have created with our life. I think prayer, like all dimensions of spirituality, is ultimately a mystery. I don’t know definitively how it works but I do believe that it is important that we pray.  So I think you should pray as you are inclined to pray. You know as much about this mystery as I do. But I hope that you will consider the perspective that I offer from time to time.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs made an interesting point in the Huffington Post that I would like to share. He noted that in the Hebrew language the word “to pray” is a reflexive verb, something you do to yourself. And the root of the word means “to judge”, “rendering the actual translation of prayer as something more akin to self-evaluation. Therefore, when a person stands before God to communicate, she is taking stock of her capabilities, current level of spiritual consciousness and willingness to accept reality for what it truly is. The deeper notion is that we are willfully trying to integrate the inescapable fact that we are utterly dependent on the Creator.”
The upshot of this observation is that humility is an essential element in prayer. And humility always comes hard to those of us who have been educated into “humility.”  And I close with my favorite Shakespearean observation re prayer, King Claudius on his knees in prayer, offering the following observation, “My words fly up.  My thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

Faith and the transitoriness of life

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The goal of all spiritual practice is to help us see that we are more than temporary and meaningless collections of automatic emotional and physical responses. All spiritual practices are designed to lead us to see a higher reality — that we are, in truth, eternal consciousness, occupying physical form for a purpose, animated and connected to the creative and sustaining source of everything. (Rabbi Alan Lurie)

It is challenging to pay attention to “the automatic emotional and physical responses” that we are; for, to borrow a line used in the past, asking one to do this is like asking a fish to see water. We are very ephemeral creatures, existing for but a moment in this mysterious, ever-expanding universe, and it is human nature to take ourselves way to seriously and assume that we objectively grasp “reality”. As Rabbi Lurie noted, our task is to grasp our finitude and affirm, by faith, a “higher reality” which I like to describe as our Source. It is much easier to cling to what Kierkegaard described as the “flotsam and jetsam”, i.e. the prevailing dogma of the day…that we fleetingly see in this vortex of life. The goal is to let go of the “flotsam and jetsam” for a moment and, by faith, cling to the Ultimate.

Much to do about nothing

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I have looked for years for this version of the 11th verse from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It is translated by Witter Bynner:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

Written in the 6th century b.c., this marvelous wisdom has volumes to speak to us, though these “volumes” are qualitative, not quantitative. It is only in our emptiness that we find our fullness, in our nothingness that we find our somethingness, in our death that we find our life.  And this death can take place long before the death of our body.

“Teach us to pray”

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T.S. Eliot declared that, “Prayer is more than an order of words, or the sounds of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.” He recognized that prayer is not a perfunctory performance “because it is what Christians do”. You know, “Wind me up and watch me pray and therefore I’m a Christian.”

Prayer is a mystery and I’m not for sure how to define it. I think it always starts as a “perfunctory performance” but at some point in one’s life it needs to go beyond, to become more of a meditative enterprise.

I love what Shakespeare had to say about prayer in Hamlet. Hamlet’s step father, Claudius, is on his knees praying and lamented, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” Shakespeare recognized that when we merely throw words around, when we trot out the usual “prayer” verbiage, when we are consciously choosing our words so that we “pray right”, then our prayers “never to heaven go.”

I recently started reading Thomas R. Kelley’s book, A Testament of Devotion, and he noted the following re prayer: We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but never lost. All we can say is, ‘Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in the orbit.’

This is an overwhelming notion that I am presenting here. And I don’t have it figured out. And I don’t think the right thing to do is to wait until I have it figured out. The right thing to do is to pray and always remember what the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (See Luke ch. 11))

Narcissim and arrogance of GOP

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Newt Gingrich recently declared that his nomination for the GOP nomination was certain. I’m just appalled at his brazen arrogance but that kind of chutzpa has a definite place in the contemporary Republican party. We all have flashes of narcissism in which we are too sure of ourselves but usually we self-monitor and do not announce our childish whim, realizing that we appear arrogant and over-confident. We have the whim but on some level we immediately pause and say to ourselves, “Now how would this sound to others?”

There is another example from a GOP debate in September. Health care for the indigent was being discussed and Ron Paul was asked about the issue. Wolf Blitzer posed the question to Paul, “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Immediately someone from the Tea Party audience yelled, “Yeah” and that was immediately followed by another “yeah” and then thunderous applause. The candidates were silent for a moment, realizing that the crowd response was really awkward.

Now, I would think that the Tea Party crowd would have realized just how awkward it would appear to applaud and cheer for the hypothetical death of another human being. But “self-monitoring” is not their strong suit and they burst into applause. It was kind of like an earlier debate when the crowd cheered that Rick Perry’s state, Texas, was “leading the league” in executions.

Beauty is always present!

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Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby.  To suffer is not enough.  We must also be in touch with the wonders of life.  They are within us and all around us, everywhere, anytime.  Thich  Nhat Hanh (Being Peace).

Do you ever get caught up in your sorrows and disappointments so that you lose perspective?  I sure do.  But it helps me when I catch myself doing this to stop for a moment, to pause, to exercise “mindfulness”, and appreciate the beauty that is around me.  And, if this beauty is not immediately present, I can recall the beauty that I have seen and will see again.

I have here just one glimpse of beauty that was caught by my mother-in-law’s eye several years ago.  It is stunning.  And deer, and birds, and squirrels, and the rest of god’s critters are just marvelous.  And I didn’t even mention dachshund puppies who just totally slay me, especially the two that I own.

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Damn those human limitations!

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I really love e e cummings. He was just so damned contrary and here I am stuck in my plain-vanilla, humdrum life! It ain’t fair!  He didn’t even obey punctuation! How in the hell did he get by with that? His teachers must have wanted to beat his butt.

Here is one of my favorite of his poems:

WHEN GOD DECIDED TO INVENT

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because

I really do not understand this poem. But it grabs me. The key to the poem is the limitation of the cause-and-effect world that we live in, a relic of that damned time-space continuum. And, I don’t understand that “continuum” either! Not consciously, anyway. But, I know that cummings realized the limitations that we live in and I know he must have found them very frustrating.

Ultimately, the only thing we have is “why” and that brings us face to face with the profound mystery of life. I’m made to think of Einstein’s observation that he had found that at the heart of everything was an “impenetrable mystery”, noting that this experience is what brought to his heart “religious sentiment.” I choose the term “God” but “my god”, how that term is abused.