As you begin to pray, there's one who stands in the way

As I promised, I turn now toward the actual practice of the Jesus Prayer. But first, a warning: be wary of the way your thoughts will want to turn the Jesus Prayer into a mere method. When prayer becomes identified too closely to a method, it's no longer prayer. I've written about this earlier.

That said, there are three simple steps that can guide you as you enter your interior landscape---the kingdom within---and meet with God.

But notice what happens when you read the words, "three simple steps."  See how your thoughts are roused to action.  Even now they're planning ways to climb the ladder of prayer, achieving success, so you can congratulate yourself on becoming good at prayer.  On the other hand, it's possible that they're berating you instead, saying things like:  "That's stupid; there aren't three steps," or, "You've tried this kind of thing before and it never works."

You've come face to face with the ego, the false self---the "mind-made me," or, in the language of the Bible, the "flesh."

Before moving further in the practice of prayer, you must recognize the terribly familiar opponent who now stands ready to bar the way . . . your self.

Avoid gravity

Advent and Christmas are spiritually intense and sobering seasons. They ought to be. We are awakening to God as if from a dead sleep or from a drunken stupor. We awaken to the light, but doing so means we must face the darkness within and around us. Some on this path can become overly serious. Others, aware of the spiritual depth present before them, slide into a hot critique of the material excesses of the holidays. A few get grumpy because we ate too much and exercised too little. Before I return to some guidance on entering more fully the interior, spiritual life through the Jesus Prayer, I invite you during this Epiphany season to:

• Do something, otherwise worthless, that brings you pleasure today,
• As you do, become aware of the muscle tension in your face and jaw,
• While you give yourself to something pleasurable, feel yourself smile,
• And if your smile tilts toward laughter, let go and give yourself to a good chuckle.

Remember this: G.K. Chesterton said, "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."  But devil fell by sheer force of gravity.

The Twelfth Way: Return

Day Twelve in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" You've come at last to the full mystery of Christmas. "Divinity became humanity that humanity might become divinity," said St. Athanasius in the East and St. Augustine in the West. God in Christ and Christ in us, the full presence of God (Colossians 1.27). Your heart is now the home of God, and God the home within your heart. Before this mystery your mind stands dumb; reason cannot think its way across this chasm and bring you home.

But love can.  Love will carry you into the intimate union you were made for.  When you love you cannot be anywhere else but present.  Up till now you've lived far, far away---always somewhere else, distant from God and from your true self, not present to the Presence. But that's changed now.

You've come all this way to Bethlehem only to realize that what you sought in this far away land was not far away after all. It was in you, but you were outside yourself.  You were conscious of everything else but absent to the one thing that really matters. Now you're different---you've entered your inmost self and found the sacred center, the place you can enter wherever you are and whenever you want.  You're more present now to the Presence.  This is the essence of prayer.

So you needn't stay on this mountain.  You can return to writing emails and going to meetings, changing diapers and washing dishes. Go ahead, paint a wall, teach third graders, walk in the woods. But as you do, take another approach (Matthew 2.12): be present.  When you are, everything changes.  When you're present, you're no longer anxiously looking everywhere else for happiness or fulfillment.  You're no longer resisting this moment, even if it's awful; it's awful largely because you want to be elsewhere. When you're present, no longer haunted by the past or obsessing about the future, it's very hard to be unhappy.  When you're present, you're as near as you can be to God---who's as close as your next breath, near as the beating of your heart.

Today, when I get knocked around or confused or sucked too long into the past or future, I'll return to the present---the face before me, the task at my fingertips, the breath filling my lungs.  And in this moment I'll return to the happiness of Christmas: God in Christ and Christ in me.

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The Eleventh Way: Fire

Day Eleven in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" You who walk this way toward Christ---long and fearsome as it may be---who persevere in this difficult inner journey of prayer will come face to face with what you're looking for. Take care though, the life of prayer is not magic---speak the right words, do the right things, and presto, enlightenment. No, you'll never conjure up a mystical experience; the mystical is not magical.

Instead, you'll be lead into the fullness of God (Ephesians 3.19). This fullness is the end of the journey, the goal of all life, the fruit of your spiritual practice. But the moment we say "goal," we're tiptoeing close to danger. The ego loves goals, and talking about the goal of prayer arouses your ego and launches you into the kind of grasping, reaching, and achieving that's the antithesis of true prayer.

So here's what you're to do:

The eleventh way is the way of utter relinquishment. There is no further you can travel. You've come as near to the Light as you can get on your own.  You must now stop and sit still before Christ.  Ask nothing.  Demand nothing.  Accept whatever comes. Open the treasure chest of your heart and keep it open by breathing gently, letting your breath fall into a natural, uncontrolled rhythm.  Offer the three gifts that have carried you here: gold of faith, frankincense of hope, myrrh of love. They're all you have now. And these too you must surrender to Christ. Empty and naked you wait, ready to receive what nothing can buy, earn, or comprehend.

The divine Fire, the Light you've sought from the beginning, will come suddenly and unexpectedly---an exquisite, unexplainable joy. When you no longer care when and how the Fire comes, or what it's like when it does, you're less apt to miss its warmth.

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The Tenth Way: Perseverance

Day Ten in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" The light of the star is leading you uphill now. Bethlehem doesn't sit on a plain; it rests on a mountain. The last stage of your journey is a climb---a sweaty, gasping-for-air ascent toward the light of Christ.

Spiritual enlightenment is no walk in the park. You've crossed snow-covered mountains, crossed raging rivers, defeated bandits on the road, overcome thirst and hunger and fear, trudged on in the darkness against the howls of your inner demons. You're thinner than when you set out. Older. Poorer. In pursuit of this great Light, you've left nearly everything along the winding road behind you.

Your lungs burn with each step upward, but as you pause to catch your breath, you become increasingly aware of another sensation within you---pleasure. At first it seems strange, for why should such hard work, such risk, such fear and deprivation and loss result now in pleasure? Then it dawns on you. All you thought you needed, you don't need; all you thought you couldn't live without, you can live without; all you once thought mattered most, doesn't matter. You are free.  You shudder with a brief and exquisite happiness.

You own nothing now but faith, and the two gifts that cannot be separated from it---hope and love. Three treasures available to all, but possessed only by those who persevere in this difficult inner journey of prayer, those who traverse their own interior geography through landscapes as beautiful and challenging as anything on Earth.  Persevere, and Grace will meet you just beyond the next rise. (Romans 5.3-5)

Today, I will persevere in prayer. I'll yield all I once thought I could not live without. I'll breath-in the brief and exquisite happiness of this holy nakedness. Faith, carry me these last few steps. Hope, hold me. Love, fill me.

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