Tag Archives: Morton Kelsey

We cannot “skip grades” in spiritual development

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

Let’s start with Morton Kelsey, the agnostic pastor who met God through Jungian therapy and became a spiritual guide for others. He knows quite a bit about not graduating from previous “grades” in spiritual development, yet he is positive about our capacity to keep moving along the inner way. Here is a quote from one of his more than 50 books:

“We can grow at any time. The human being is far more plastic than most of us ordinarily believe. However, the task that we need to learn, the development we need to achieve, can only be accomplished earlier or later at a much higher cost than at its proper time. Much of psychotherapy consists of providing the environment in which people can live through a stage that they missed before. Spiritual direction…will involve this kind of direction and counseling and companionship for the simple reasons that the various stages each provide essential elements in a full and mature religious life. We cannot skip grades in spiritual development.” – Companions on the Inner Way

Inhibited spiritual development

The metaphor of “skipping grades” does not completely suit Kelsey’s point, since we don’t pass tests to get from one stage of development to another and no one can really judge what our final mark should be. But the metaphor does picture our need to cross boundaries of maturation to get into further stages. Jesus called the process moving along the “narrow way that leads to life.” And we know he was well acquainted with people who  stubbornly stayed on the way that leads to death.

As a psychotherapist, I am accustomed to exploring the past to find unfinished psychological issues. As a spiritual director, I accompany my companions on their parallel journey into wholeness. Along the way we bump into incomplete loves and assumptions that inhibit their growth and joy. As a developing person, I am also on the way. None of us are managing to skip grades, as much as we might like to.

We might start exploring entire sides of ourselves at 50, even, and wonder what we were doing at twenty. Whenever we become aware, some of us get excited to see the new possibilities; but others are daunted at the work they see ahead. My client’s development may start very basically: they need to survive and get to square one. Soon they may feel some confidence and receive some affirmation. Then they are likely to discover that the  lacks they note and the abundance they feel both hint at the possibility of trust and happiness. God wastes nothing; it can all come to good. My own experience and the experience of others convinces me we often have unfinished work from the past stages of our development that either blocks us from progressing or taints the development we have achieved. What needs to get finished can cause us a lot of suffering. But God is with us.

One thing that helps us keep moving through the suffering on our narrow way is  understanding the stages of how we develop so we can identify what we are still carrying  or even reliving from our past — especially from our childhood or adolescence. Exploring the way we grow also helps examine our adult development (or lack of it), which is often left unpondered, as if becoming an adult were the end point. Kelsey inspired me to look at it all again in seven stages and look for the kind of things that keep us “held back” so to speak.

The seven stages of our spiritual development

Nothing I am about to list is particularly new. I’ve written about it myself, many times. But I found it useful to explore it again, now that I am where I am today. You are probably down the road to life somewhere new, yourself. Let’s see if we can note what is unfinished and could use some love from you and maybe some new choices.

Stage 1

Knowing what you now know about how your family was working when you were born, imagine how you were being prepared for your spiritual journey.

Children are like tender plants. They can be educated, but mostly they must be allowed to unfold so they are open to relating to a loving God who can give them confidence in the ultimate nature of the universe. Faith takes root early. If they are not tended with grace  they can be closed to that possibility and live in deep-rooted fear or worthlessness because of what they have experienced with the humans on which they relied. Fear and shame also take root early. The most essential element in early Christian nurture is consistent human warmth and understanding, kindness and love. Unless people receive these things as children they find it very difficult to believe in them as adults.

We learned a lot by the time we got to kindergarten. How did you learn to see the world? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Sunday school – Christ Church Denver

Stage 2

Try to remember being you in elementary school. By the age of 3-4 we are able to store memories, but first-hand experiences are more likely to be stored when we have language more developed in our growing brain. How did you experience God as a child? Did your environment encourage spirituality?

In the stage of early childhood we begin to develop our sense of personhood and distinguish between inner and outer awareness. That “I am who I am” is called the ego. We need that self awareness to differentiate our spiritual awareness within it. Later on, we may need to let go of aspects of the view of self we developed as a child, but you can’t give up what you have not achieved. At this stage we learn language to express ourselves. We develop our left brain with reading and math, and our right brain with music, painting and stories. A great need in this stage is acceptance by others for who I am becoming. If I am nurtured with warmth and love I will take on the values of my parents and develop a conscience. If I am controlled and punished or violated, I may turn to violence and fear. We should avoid leading children to dig into the unconscious at this point. We’re not ready for that.

We developed an enduring view of self through reflection and comparison by 4th or 5th grade. Can you remember what is was like to see yourself and be seen (or not)? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 3

Think back on your teen years and your early twenties. Our struggle for autonomy took a winding road to get where we arrived. We needed to rebel against the structures that formed us to either make them our own or go another way. What did you do? Did you have anyone to trust with your spiritual journey?

Sometime between 11 and 15 (and earlier all the time, it seems) our hormones push us into puberty and we come to the first bloom of our sense of autonomy. During this stage we test everything and are tested, this includes psychologically and spiritually. In the U.S. we have generally lost the formal initiation rites traditional cultures have, so many are left alone to find their own way. At this point in life, it is useful if caring adults are understanding of the process: parents and, especially, another trusted adult who can help us deal with fears and doubts about ourselves and God. Rebellion against the religious values of parents is almost necessary if we are ever to have faith of our own. It is during this stage that young people become open to the unconscious and to spiritual awareness. Check our Robert Johnson’s take on the process in He and She.

The pressure to become adults may have resulted in a significant season of depression by the end of our teen years. Who had you become by then? How did it feel? Who or what did you trust? Did you experience God? Make a commitment? Set a direction? Get derailed? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 4

You can probably remember your late twenties (if you aren’t there right now). You may never have really moved beyond them. Early adulthood often includes our most life-changing and enduring experiences of God and community, but sometimes results in our long-lasting distance from both. You may be in the middle of the troubles associated with finding your own way and deciding how to align.

The process of differentiation and reorientation that began with puberty may take a long time for many people, and some get arrested at this point. Young adulthood is a continuation for the foundation of sexual intimacy, vocation/career, individuality and mutual responsibility. We must be led by our own convictions and establish our own patterns. We may have many professions over our lifetime, but we should complete this stage by becoming proficient in one. In the postmodern era, it seems like this is one of the most emotionally trying stages of development. The fruitless search for meaning young adults face and the gnawing sense that their present work and future opportunities are slim often lead to despair and avoidance. All the drawing power of our screens does the greatest damage here: porn, games, gambling, shopping, presenting our image, comparison, and relationships apps. The confusion and despair can be met with spiritual direction and companionship, but many churches are dominated by inattentive old people, so that can be hard to find.

How are you doing or how did you do? Did you come to a full sense of yourself? Find a place in the world? Did you form an adult relationship with God? Or did you get sidetracked or are still in the middle of it? By this time you have a life story. How do you tell it? How did you tell it? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 5

Can you name what your middle age has been like, if you are there? The transition can be confusing. Middle age is when we are most likely to experience running into the wall of the unfinished development of our previous stages. It is a struggle to get into the future or into deeper realms of ourselves when we are stuck in our past.

This fifth stage might hit precociously spiritual people during puberty or young adulthood, but more likely comes between 35 and 50. It is often called the midlife crisis. We have developed and achieved some status, perhaps. But we are not satisfied and death is becoming more real. The children may be less needy or gone and the profession may feel old or unsuitable. Some people may return to childhood faith and move beyond it into deeper meaning. Others may look at their struggle and pronounce it purposeless. Toggling between beauty and boredom, bounty and bitterness is not uncommon. Our society gives little help with a search for meaning, and religion seems coopted by the endless power struggle all around us. Some accept fundamentalism in the Christian or political sense and give up their independence and critical capacities, as we can presently see. This is a time in life when fellow strugglers and spiritual directors are crucial. We are confronting our inner depth but also looking into the abyss.

How are you doing or how did you do it? Did you get into the second half of your life or are you still working on that? By this time, others may have saddled you with a life story. How do they tell it? Are you stuck in their view of you?  Are you disappointed that your idealization of yourself is not accomplished? Can you connect with God and others with a deeper spiritual awareness yet? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 6

Eventually, our bodies tell us we are old. Most of us do not have a plan for that time and many of us realize we need to develop the spiritual and relational resources we are missing.

Old age is not always a golden age because we have not successfully passed through the first five stages effectively. Most of us have more time to explore the possibilities, however. We may have less family obligations and more disposable income. We can simplify our lives and focus on what is most important to us. Many people allow their religious and creative impulses to emerge. Many interesting books and biographies are written by people in this stage because we are drawn to remember and take stock of our lives. Most of us become more able to accept our flaws and reconcile with others. But some of us are overcome by the fears that were held back by our resilience, which is now waning.

What is your story of this stage? You may think of your past as your story, but old age is also a wonderful time to develop. What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 7

The final stage, of course, which we will definitely not be skipping is death. In this age when centenarians are being minted at an unprecedented rate, it makes sense to consider what it means to die, and what it means to be dying for quite some time.

Some may see their final days as “there is nothing to be done but grin and bear it.” Younger people who doubt any life beyond this one, often feel like old people just rub their noses in their mortality — the nursing homes are full of their parents. Helping the dying die well is a valuable service for which more and more people are needed. Preparing to die by living well and knowing how to die well is a worthy endeavor at any stage. Paul was wise enough to know “I die daily.” He said, “To die is gain.” It made him brave to face his end no matter when it happened.

If you are in this stage, thank God you are still reading and thinking along with us. We need your wisdom, prayer and love. We even need your frailty to call out our compassion. Accompanying you to death helps us honor our own death and encourages us to get serious about what comes next. How are you doing with the Lord’s promise of eternal, abundant life? It is never too late to move beyond what blocks our experience of life. Like Kelsey taught, “We can grow at any time. The human being is far more plastic than most of us ordinarily believe.” What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

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Today is John and Betty Stam Day! Get to know these interesting examples of missionary passion at The Transhistorical Body. 

Spontaneous experiences of the beyond

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

Have you ever tried to list the times you felt like you had touched a dimension of reality that is beyond your purely physical senses? The first experiences that came to my mind were a moment in a prayer meeting as a teen, a time I turned the the corner and viewed Yosemite Valley, a waking dream that became a series of visions, and many times in worship as we sang a song. Once I got started, these spontaneous experiences began to multiply. I began to think “When was I NOT aware?”

Maybe we’ve all been getting more aware for decades

The whole way we got sucked into the internet and now A.I., even if it is becoming one giant advertisement, might be a societal yearning for the mystery in the machine and an overwhelming need to know. The way people are loading up with myths about their coercive and fraudulent leaders all over the world may actually be them loosening the chains of rationalism and looking beyond what has passed for truth into something larger.

Those are not new theories, of course. The militaristic capitalism of the U.S. has been pushing people into a new dimension for decades. In the 1980’s, my literary mentor, Morton T. Kelsey was writing, “The Greeks have twelve different words to describe their intercourse with a nonphysical dimension of reality.” (And, no, he doesn’t think “intercourse” means they spawned The Devil’s Child). In English, on the other hand, we have “at least thirty expressions to convey psychological depression but only one moth-eaten and much abused word to describe our relationship with a spiritual dimension of reality: the word mysticism” (in Companions on the Inner Way).

Hindus have twenty to thirty words to describe various aspects of spiritual experience but relatively few words to deal with different aspects of physical matter. Eurocentric people, on the other hand, have dozens of words for matter and, of course, came up with the periodic table to describe over a hundred different elements of it.

Aldous Huxley 1946

This lack of development in his culture disturbed Aldous Huxley, who went on to experiment with some consciousness-expanding “elements” to heighten his spiritual experience. He lamented that humans are equipped to have a vast array of experiences but are preoccupied with sense perception. He said our preoccupation with processing sensory data acts as a “reducing valve.” What’s more, language itself gets in the way. The limits of our native tongues reduce our awareness of non-physical reality to the words we have to describe it, and trick us into confusing “words for actual things” (in The Doors of Perception).

We experience the spiritual dimension

Of course, Huxley is railing against being stuck in an “immanent frame” as he is repeatedly speaking from outside it. He is far from the only one seeking and finding what is beyond our materialist prison. I think most of us have some stories to tell about what we’ve discovered about the other side of life.

Kelsey noted dozens of distinguishable, non-physical experiences and classified them in five groups of different kinds:

  • Direct, spontaneous experiences that happen as a “surprise” and often prove life-changing.
  • Common experiences that intimate or reveal another dimension of reality (rainbows, sunsets, childbirth).
  • Experiences sought after by various methods, especially religious. They are often also spontaneous.
  • Neurotic or psychotic. These are also natural, but not typical: voices, visions, dissociation. Some people hide their experiences because they will be thrown in this category.
  • Sought-for experiences that could prove harmful to the naïve.

I have been a lifelong Christian largely because I wandered into territories that were non-physical and indescribable with the language I had to use. Unexpected, spontaneous experiences made a permanent change in how I viewed myself and reality. I understood what upended Paul’s life on the way to Damascus, and I could see why Francis of Assisi left his life of privilege behind to obey God’s call to “restore my church.”

To hear the media talk about it, we Americans are more materialistic than ever, led by Christians who equate faith with power and wealth, and by a godless president bound by his own self-determination. But I’m not sure about that. I greeted a young woman in my elevator yesterday whose cell phone screen was a picture of Buddha. Like the movie I linked above, our screens are also full of supernatural experiences — it is kind of a joke that I like Moana so much. People who use ketamine and other drugs continue to follow Huxley’s lead to seek pathways to enlightenment. Maybe we are actually becoming more spiritually aware than ever.

Characteristics of spontaneous experiences of the spiritual dimension

Leaving the other four of Kelsey’s categories for later, I would like to note the characteristics of the first, “spontaneous” group. I suspect you have been invited into the non-physical world (or just call it the other part of your life) for as long as you have been alive. You might not have told anyone about your experiences, since someone might think they aren’t normal.

We can start with the four characteristics William James offered in The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902, compiled from lectures he gave as a psychologist from Harvard.

  1. They are experiences, not ideas. They are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t had one.
  2. They convey understanding, illuminate, reveal. We know we are meeting something or someone beyond our own limitations. They carry authority.
  3. They almost never last for more than half an hour and usually just for a few seconds, Trying to stay in one can cause psychological problems.
  4. They can’t be achieved, just given. We are passive responders, like trees in the sun, not agents.
  5. We are drawn toward the reality in spite of ourselves. We are satisfied by something we did not know we wanted.
  6. The encounter is more than we can cope with. We are likely confronted by a sense of our comparative nothingness and our infinite faultiness.
  7. The experience could be dazzling darkness or the clearest of pictures. It could be seen as a sense of abstract merging or personal presence, depending on whether the focus is detachment or attachment, which are complimentary yearnings.
  8. Christians often report meeting the Lover whose awesome goodness is consummated in self-giving love. Sufi and Hasidic traditions also note this.
  9. You may have experienced this otherness in your pit of despair or been touched in your core torment. You may have been healed or comforted. If you have focused on detachment, as Buddhists or mindfulness practitioners often do, this is an unlikely experience.

I have focused on the positive-feeling spontaneous experiences we all may have had. There are other “numinous” (some say “paranormal”) experiences that also point to non-physical reality.

  • The dead. TV shows are full of references to meetings with or senses of the deceased (like Aunt Ada and Madame Dashkova in the Gilded Age).
  • We also have visions and fertile imaginations. Jung called us to swim in the collective unconscious.
  • We may be guided by someone speaking for God, or something. We may hear a voice we trust to lead us, which should be validated by others we trust.
  • There are psychological patterns of one’s culture or of all humanity which empower or possess us.
  • The fearsome spiritual darkness we encounter convinces us of the evils of the non-physical world.
  • Many people have described their brief view into an “out of the body” realm when they faced death.

Why don’t you try out my suggestion for making a list? It would be interesting to see how many encounters you could name . You may have been talked out of admitting them because someone thought it might be dangerous to “open that can of worms” and convinced you to shut down that part of your capacity and “stay safe.” But we are not really in control of all the dimensions of reality, not even what’s being worked out in us, so you may have gotten a good idea of something beyond the reducing valve, anyway. Honoring the experiences we’ve had, softens our hearts and minds for receiving all the rest of our lives that may yet to be enjoyed.

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Yesterday was Alexander Solzhenitsyn Day! We decided not to have him compete with Flannery O’Connor, so we invite you to celebrate his life today at The Transhistorical Body.

Six emotions from the abyss: They are rippling through this time

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

I was languidly reading this Morton Kelsey book from 1983: Companions on the Inner Way: The Art of Spiritual Guidance, when I got stuck on Chapter 5: “Atheism, Agnosticism and Spiritual Guidance.” I discovered that long before I had to disable Copilot (a Microsoft A.I. invader hoping to monetize my creativity), Kelsey pondered the spiritual diseases of modern/post-modern life. That sickness is coming to the fore, right now, since the electorate (probably) unleashed the sociopathic Trump on the world and he brought a slew of grandiose, incompetent individualists with him. Their wickedness is infectious.

Just last week the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Collins “doubled down” on “no amnesty” for undocumented farmworkers and implied that a mythic number of “able-bodied” Medicaid recipients could fill in for them, all in the cause of creating an “all-American workforce” [YouTube]. Then President Trump hosted a televised roundtable with African leaders in which a favored reporter asked the group if they would support Trump receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (for suggesting the depopulation of Gaza and sending stealth bombers from the heartland to bomb Iran, I suppose). Several fawning leaders cravenly supported the notion. Then the President complimented the Liberian president, Joseph Boakai, on his good English, apparently not knowing that Liberia was created by Americans and the official language has been English since 1847 [YouTube]. Once again, the slavers and the autocrats who enable them are set loose on the world. It is depressing. Many of us can’t see a way out of it, yet.

The abyss

Not seeing the way is just what Kelsey was exploring, too. So I had to pause. He realized his way of seeing was too shallow. His intellect was not enough to keep him in the faith he needed. Like Abbe Huvelin said, “In faith we have just enough light to follow the right way, but on either side there is the abyss.” Kelsey saw that, left alone with his own understanding, he would keep falling into the abyss.

It was getting to know about Carl Jung  that helped him come to “realize that the spiritual world was real and the Divine Lover could be known and shared.” After that realization, his experience of love plus intellectual belief kept him out of the pit. He says,

Later I met Jung, who told how he was jolted out of the rational, materialistic agnosticism of his medical training. He learned that there was a nonphysical dimension to reality, which was observable to anyone who would take the trouble to experience it. It was, as he said, as experienceable as were the two moons of Jupiter to those in Galileo’s time who would take the trouble to look through the telescope. He believed that one of the most important therapeutic tasks was to free people caught in the constricting materialism of our time and open them up to a more adequate view of reality. He viewed the person wholly caught up in materialism as more sick than amoral or immoral. We need to outthink our materialistic world, just as the early Christians outthought the ancient world.

Kelsey was writing during the “Reagan Revolution” years which did not come to full fruit until Trump and his minions took over. The unleashing of sick, unfettered greed backed by the power of the American war machine is overwhelming. It is not hard to see a wave of depression rippling through the country in reaction — and it has to be depressing for African leaders to abase themselves on international TV. If there is no more meaning to life than winning the economic battle for supremacy there are steep personal prices to pay.

We have meaning

One of Jung’s important contributions to psychology and theology was his recognition that the inability to believe in anything, or the belief in a meaningless world, can be classified as disease or sickness which can cause as much damage as childhood trauma, acute tension or a dose of poison. If anyone believes they have no meaningful place in the universe, it can result in emotional and physical illness.

We yearn to join in the meaning of the universe. But it is all-too-easy to fall into the abyss when we are overwhelmed by meaninglessness. Suicide studies draw the simple conclusion that relying on hotlines to give desperate people attention and shore up their reason to live, providing a moment of community to shore up their capacity to take up their lonely responsibility, are not enough. The linked study concludes what I think is obvious: “Giving a person a job or proper health care can also be a suicide-prevention tool,” since such care allows for a minimal sense of meaning and value.

The present regime calls such practical, caring measures “socialist,” I think. Instead, they practice devaluing people, like when an ICE army invaded the heart of Los Angeles last week, teaching kids at a summer camp to hide [YouTube]. The message the regime delivers everyday is clearly received, especially by the most vulnerable. For instance, the Trevor Project reports a huge increase in the use of their hotlines after Trump’s election and inauguration.

The six signs of the abyss

Kelsey lists six “devastating emotions” which result from a sense of being an alien in a hostile or indifferent universe. The first three are related.

  1. Fear

The sense of being an alien is a hostile or indifferent universe leads to fear of meaninglessness, fear of extinction at death, fear that we are faced with more than we can handle, fear that no one loves me, and fear of sickness.

  1. Anger

Anger is the aggressive reaction to the same threatening feelings. Sometimes we turn our anger inward where it burns like a slow smoldering, consuming fire. Sometimes it strikes out in hatred and revenge.  Many say we are living in an “age of rage.”

  1. Stress

Stress is the understandable result  of our belief that we, alone, have the power to protect ourselves from threat and we must do this by our own relentless alertness and energy. In a meaningless world we are faced with an impossible task, so stress is inevitable.

  1. Depression

Depression is the unconscious twin of stress; it is giving up in the face of hopelessness. When there is no friendliness in the universe, there is less reason to expect it from human beings and less reason to reach out.

  1. Loneliness

A gnawing loneliness is the inevitable circumstance that accompanies separation from social meaning. It is presently epidemic. Before DOGE got to HHS, the agency advised us on health issues. The Surgeon General produced a notable study on loneliness in 2023. Now we have RFK Jr’s “MAHA” report.

  1. Psychic infection

All these things make us susceptible to psychic infection, which is the contamination  by the fear, anger, stress, depression and lonely hopelessness of others. Drugs of every kind have been unleashed to combat this infection, but they don’t quite hit the spot. When we are wallowing in our own and in society’s abyss, we need some meaning, some love, some supernatural connection. As Jung said, “The approach to the numinous is the real therapy.”

People are fond of saying things like “The world has been crazy before, we’ll be OK.” I appreciate those good people who have a psychological KN95 mask to wear and seem immune to infection. I, on the other hand, am suffering the wounds of political disaster, climate change, out-of-control militarism and whatever A.I. is going to do to me. What’s more, I experience Kelsey’s six devastating emotions in my beloved clients, who are bravely struggling for meaning in the middle of our oppositional society.

Rather than relying on Nature to right itself, I turn to Jesus who has two important things to say to us today. I hope focusing on them is like seeing the moons of Jupiter. They are a lens that reveals meaning in our suffering and a lens that looks beyond the borders of our understanding into Love.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” – John 6:67-69

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Speaking of people who know how to suffer for righteousness’ sake, today is Argula von Grumbach Day! This Reformation era woman used her gifts and people noticed, to good ends and bad. Get to know her at The Transhistorical Body.

The contemplative prayer of imagination: Resist and restore

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What if you want to use Lent to get out of your head and into your heart? What if you want to explore the depths of your life: mind, heart, soul, strength and have a meaningful life that resists the forces that try to consume it? Last Saturday during our retreat, one of the answers was: learn to pray — and learn to use your imagination. Life in Christ is bigger than such an “answer” of course. But developing a spiritual life is the key to meaning, key to surviving.

Morton Kelsey offered a checklist for venturing inward. It is a good one, since it does not skip to “what I can do on my own,” but attends to our context and community, which are so crucial. To venture inward: 1) attend to the regular disciplines of your community (cell, Sunday meeting, team), 2) keep a spiritual journal, 3) talk about your inner life, 4) receive spiritual direction (could be formal or friendship), 5) learn to become quiet, 6) unleash your imagination.

peering into the inner life

Be quiet. Contemplation is the core prayer

Prayer takes many forms. In every form it is communing with God, relating Spirit to spirit. We intercede and move God. We worship and praise God. We confess and reconcile with God. We have conversations that are full of complaining and questioning. But until we learn to be quiet and find out what is on the other side of silence, our prayer is a bit superficial and missing the deep experiences of connection we crave. The core prayer we need to learn might be summed up with the word contemplation: the basic yearning of our hearts turned to seeking, our innate spiritual capacity stepping toward connection.

Via negativa contemplation

There are two intertwining roads in contemplative prayer; one is often emphasized more by one group than another. First, there is the via negativa, the apophatic way, (the word means “other than speaking,” or “denial”). This way stresses how God is best known by negation, elimination, forgetting, unknowing, without images and symbols, and in darkness. God is other than humanity. God is “not this, not that.”

On this way all images, thoughts, symbols, etc. must be eliminated, because, as St. John of the Cross points out, “all the being of creatures compared with the infinite being of God is nothing. Nothing which could possibly be imagined or comprehended in this life can be a proximate means of union with God.” We enter this nothingness to meet God.

Learning to be quiet needs to travel on this way, since we need to turn away from our self-controlled, world-controlled existence to meet God. In prayer, we need to deal with the distractions that inhibit our solitude.

Via affirmativa contemplation

The other road is the via affirmativa, the kataphatic way, (the word means “much speaking,” or “affirmation”). This way underscores how we can find God in all people, in all experiences, in all things.

It emphasizes a definite similarity between God and creatures. We are made in God’s image, male and female. The world is an expression of God’s character. As Paul taught the Athenians:  “In God we live and move and have our being.” God can be reached by creatures, images, and symbols, because the Lord is manifested in creation and salvation history. The incarnation of God in Christ forces us to take our own experiences as relevant, symbolic and part of an ongoing story of salvation. We are God’s workmanship and Jesus not only symbolizes this blessing, He remains with us to bring about its fullness.

The goal of contemplation is love

All humans are made to seek. We are lonely for God. So very few are spirituality-free. In most Hindu and Buddhist practices, people are taught that the universe is, ultimately, impersonal mind (as in “may the force be with you”). Jesus-followers see the universe as lover. God is so interested in the created world that s/he became incarnate, so interested in humans that Jesus died for us. God enables us to be companions and fellow workers by meeting us Spirit to spirit. The context of our meeting is love; the ultimate goal of meditation is love, even when it is apophatic.

Our communion with God in prayer is, in itself, resistance to the forces that attempt to usurp God’s proper place in the world and on our lives. If you are alone in solitude with God, that relationship has an impact, even if you don’t take much action as a result. It is likely we will take action, however,  since our contemplation regularly gives us our direction and stokes our courage to act. Contemplation allows us to fight evil that arises in us and outside us. We each do this in our own way, but in similar fashion. One’s experience of the world of the Spirit depends on their psychology, which can be understood and developed, and on their world view, which can change. So contemplation is unique to each one who practices, but is unified in the One who meets each of us where we are beginning today.

The kataphatic prayer of imagination

On Saturday, we offered two suggestions for praying in a more “kataphatic” way, making full use of symbols, dreams and the art of imagination.  One way to experience inner meaning is meditating on your inner experiences: coming to silence, going back into the images of your dreams and fantasies, first consciously, then allowing them to go as they will. We noted that most of our spiritual guidance comes from our conscious experience, which is the tip of the iceberg of us. We were trying to learn more about how to receive direction from our inner experience of what is normally unconscious. Many people avoid this territory because it seems vast and dark. But we are not to be absorbed into it, we are to encounter love in it. We have a basic direction for our contemplation – Jesus describes God as the loving father of a returning prodigal. It is clear who is the object of our prayer and who we are.

God’s character

So our conscious minds can lead us and our unconscious, our dreams, can lead us. When people describe their unconscious experience it is as varied as they are. But for everyone, using our imaginations to explore our inner depths starts with two simple things: 1) one must be convinced that thinking and feeling in images is important, 2) one must spend enough time to break away from the concerns of the waking realm. We explored this path in two ways last Saturday. I thought you might like some of the teaching to encourage your journey through Lent.

Ignatius and praying the Bible. 

Try Ignatius of Loyola‘s approach to praying the Bible through imagination and entering into a deeper connection with God as a result.

Matthew 19:13-15 – Jesus and the children

Allow twenty to thirty minutes for the exercise.

  1. As the passage is read for the first time, try to hear it as if it is fresh and new—as if you are hearing it for the first time. Read Mt. 19:13-15 slowly
  2. As the passage is read for the second time, enter in to the event Place yourself as a child in the scene as it is read. Read passage again in a slow, meditative manner
  3. Answer the following questions: How do you feel as you walked through the crowd? Are you warm? Do you feel a breeze? Can you feel the hand of your parent or adult as you walk toward Jesus? What do you hear? Birds? Animal sounds? The voice of Jesus? The disciples trying to send you away? What do you smell? Is it a dusty day? Can you smell the animals? The body odor of the crowd? What do you see? Can you see the legs of the people in front of you? Can you see Jesus? The other children?
  4. Go to Jesus and hear him tell the disciples that he wants to be with you
  5. Climb up in the lap of Jesus or sit beside him and let him embrace you
  6. Experience the deep love that is offered to you a. Let it wash over you and rest in the places that you are experiencing some type of emotional pain Let it be a balm to the rejection or abandonment that you have experienced Let it be to you the love that you desire, yet have never experienced to this extreme. Rest in that love for a while
  7. If you want to talk with Jesus, you may
  8. Otherwise, just sit and let Jesus embrace you.

Morton Kelsey and the prayer of waking dreams

Try Morton’s Kelsey’s explanation of imaging prayer.

In The Other Side of Silence (and elsewhere), Morton Kelsey points out when we are still, images will appear naturally, as they do in our dreams. There is a vast, mostly unexplored territory in our unconscious, that impacts us deeply. It is a territory where God is much needed and very available. We can follow the revelations in our literal dreams or our waking dreams, listen to them, and find meaning in what they reveal about our deep places where God is relating to us Spirit to spirit. On the way to being quiet, we will need to dismiss many distractions. But we can recognize deeper images that arise from a place where we are communing with God.

God be with you on the journey! It is a step by step process and each step along the way is moving through eternity. God is with us and we are learning to become fully present to God. Your way is uniquely your own,  but it is also connected to everyone alive with the Spirit, and deeply connected to our Creator.