The Ninth Way: Darkness

Day Nine in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" On Christmas, a Light broke into the darkness of the world's night, and a star---marking the crossroads between East and West, North and South---stood sentinel above the place of Christ's coming. You glimpsed this star while still far way, and awakened by fresh hope, left everything behind, setting out on the one journey that truly matters: find the Light, come hell or high water.

The one thing you underestimated was the darkness---it feels like hell and high water. Out here, between the life you left behind and the Light you seek, it's night. Much of the life of prayer is spent here---in between, in the dark. Here, you have more questions than answers; you feel more of God's absence than God's presence; you've set out for the Light, but it's only gotten darker; you wonder if this wasn't so wise after all.

But darkness is the one great necessity in the spiritual life. The saints will all tell you this. Your ego loves daylight, but night unsettles, even unseats it. The ego---the little self-manager within you---doesn't know how to function in the dark. When you can see, your ego knows just what to do. But in the darkness all your mental faculties are disoriented, and you have only your heart of faith to guide you. (Isaiah 50.10-11)

True prayer must take you by the dark path. Only so can you come to the true Light that is true God and not some projection of your ego. In the darkness you must let go of all but faith---all props and pretension, all assumptions and preconceptions.  In the darkness you will be tempted to turn back and return to lesser lights. But if you press forward, blind to all but the faint light of faith, you will find what you're looking for.

Too long I've feared the darkness. Today, I will embrace it as grace---a severe but liberating mercy. I will walk through the darkest valley, and I will be afraid. May my fear strengthen my faith until faith is all I have.

(for a printable version of this post, follow this link)

The Eighth Way: Humility

Day Eight in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" You seek God, but the further you go in this journey the more you keep bumping into yourself.

Let's say you decide to take a few minutes and enter the quiet of prayer; you descend into your heart and journey further toward the intimacy with God you desire. But the moment you do, a riot breaks out within you. Your mind jumps to life and your thoughts leap around inside your brain like a bunch of monkeys on crack. You've come face to face with your ego.

The ego is not pride; rather it's the self-managing faculty within you whose job it's been to take care of you all these years. The ego's not bad; it just thinks it's God. So when you begin to seek God in earnest, it's not amused. It doesn't mind you being religious---if you're religious, it's still in charge telling you how to be good, condemning when you're not, and reminding you of the rules.

So long as the ego still rules the roost, you'll never really know God; your ego can know all about God but that doesn't mean you know God. To advance in the spiritual life your ego must be humbled, and that's no easy task. "Humility," someone's said, "is not thinking less of yourself; it's thinking of yourself less." But that's precisely what the ego can't handle. When you seek God earnestly, it will holler and scream at you, and will try to distract you with a parade of ugly thoughts, fears, even the most beautiful things in the world.

When it does, don't give up; you're moving in the right direction. Concentrate on the light you seek. You're humbling your ego; you're un-selfing yourself. Behind the idol of your humbled ego waits God. Humility, then, is the beginning of wisdom. But know this: it will get darker before it gets lighter; you'll feel more like a fool before you feel wise. You've entered the narrow gate and the way is hard. Only a few walk this way. (Matthew 7.13-14)

Today, rather than just letting my thoughts rule the roost, I'll take a few moments and watch them without following where they want to take me. That ought to infuriate my ego.

(for a printable version of this post, follow this link)

The Seventh Way: Words

Day Seven in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" You will, of course, want to pray along the way---that is, you'll find yourself wanting to speak words to God and about God. Prayer, you think, is about words, and yes, you're right. It is about words, there's no escaping that. But prayer is so much more than words.

In truth, you've been praying all along---from before you awakened to your deep desire or desperation to follow this star to the End. Prayer is not merely asking God for things. It's not just using nice words to massage the Divine. It may include these things, but prayer is essentially your awareness of God. It's not merely the mind or mouth in motion; prayer is an awakened heart, an interior awareness of God. This is why the Bible often shows how the mind and mouth are made dumb---stone silent---when God shows up (Habakkuk 2.20 and Mark 9.7 are just two of many examples).

The problem with words is that we tend to become hypnotized by them. First, we form them and then they form us. We think that once we've attached a label to something we know what it is.  But consonants and vowels can't explain a flower, let alone its Maker. I think that's why God played coy with Moses and gave him a riddle for the divine name rather than a label. "I'm not going to give you a label by which you can think you've got Me figured out," said God, "Just call me 'I Am Who I Am," (Exodus 3.14).

Of course, you must use words, and words have a beauty of their own. The trick is not to be tricked by them. You must not misuse them or attach too much to them, to over-identify with the words themselves.

So when you speak to God or about God, take up a Psalm or little twig of Scripture and lay it on the fire of your growing love for God. "But take care," says God, "and don't misuse the Book; its only aim is to light the way to Me."

Today, I'll not heap up empty phrases. Instead, I'll light a small fire on the hearth of my heart. A few sacred words are all I'll need for kindling.

(for a printable version of this post, follow this link)

The Sixth Way: Desert

Day Six in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" So, you're walking now. It's night, and away from the city lights you're more able to perceive the haunting beauty of the landscape around you. As you do, two things begin to happen to you.

First, with each step you take, each day and stage along the way, you sense a growing anticipation rising within you. Deep within there's a growing conviction that you've finally set out on the one journey that truly matters; you're pursuing the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Source and Goal of all life. All you were made for and destined to be lies at the end of this journey, bathed in the pure radiance of the star's bright light.

Second, you notice you've begun to enter a new and strange land you've never seen before. The familiar landmarks are gone. You've moved off the map. You're lost to all except the light of the star. Anticipation emboldens you, but the strangeness of this new land unnerves you.

If you've not known something of this eagerness and nervousness, you've not gone far enough in the spiritual journey; your praying's been too safe.  At some point, all who seek God are carried into some kind of desert experience, for the desert is the furnace of transformation. In the desert, we're stripped of all that is external. The only thing that remains is the nakedness of the heart's pure trust. This is why every spiritual "athlete," from Abraham to Mother Theresa, was pressed by the Holy Spirit into the desert.

Today, I'll acknowledge that the desert frightens me, but I must not avoid it if I'm to find what I'm looking for.

(For a printable version of this post, follow this link)

The Fifth Way: Walking

Day Five in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" Most of us live life mostly in our heads, but our thoughts are not where real life is lived. Your thoughts may be memories of real experience, they may imagine experience yet to come, but they're not real experience. They're interpretations of the past and projections of what may come. They're illusions, fantasies. Powerful, to be sure, but not ultimately real.

The only life you can live is the one that's coming to you right now. Jesus said, "Don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow has enough worries of its own."  You cannot meet God in the past or the future, but only in the present. So, you must find a way to live here, now, "taking every thought captive" as St. Paul taught.

This is why walking is a spiritual practice. When you walk on the earth, your feet touch the ground. You awaken to your senses, and they root to to this moment. But you can't be in this moment when you're galloping along, eyes fixed on the future (or fleeing the past) lost in your anxious, calculating, or ambitious thoughts.

You're a wise woman, a wise man, when you regularly get down off your high horse, get out of your head, and walk the real earth for a while, aware of what's right around you.  The feet of the God you aim to meet walked this earth; yours ought to as well.

Today, I'll take off my shoes and feel the ground beneath my feet. I'll wiggle my toes in the carpet, stroll in a garden or to the kitchen or copier---and pay attention while I'm doing it. Remember, "the place beneath your feet is holy ground" (Exodus 3.5).

(for a printable version of this post, click on this link)