Richard Rohr describes authentic prayer and contemplation as a mutual gaze of love:
Much of the early work of contemplation is discovering a way to observe ourselves from a compassionate and nonjudgmental distance until we can eventually live more and more of our lives from this calm inner awareness and acceptance. In a contemplative stance, we find ourselves smiling, sighing, and weeping at ourselves, much more than needing either to hate or to congratulate ourselves—because we are finally looking at ourselves with the eyes of God.
In these moments, we are letting God gaze at us, in the way only God can gaze—with infinite mercy, love, and compassion. God initiates a positive gaze, which now goes in both directions. (Unfortunately, we seldom allow that to happen.)
As we receive God’s compassionate gaze in contemplation, all negative energy and motivation is slowly exposed and eventually falls away as counterproductive and useless. There will be no mistrust, fear, or negativity in either direction! If we resort to any form of shaming ourselves, we will slip back into defense, denial, and overcompensation. We will not be able to “know as fully as we are known” (see 1 Corinthians 13:12).
But if we can connect with the Indwelling Presence, where the “Spirit bears common witness with our spirit” (see Romans 8:16), it can and will change our lives! This mutually loving gaze is always initiated by God and grace. Once we learn to rest there, nothing less ever satisfies. This is foundational.
To keep this space within ourselves open, we need some form of meditative practice—something much more than “saying” prayers. Authentic prayer is invariably a matter of both emptying the mind and filling the heart, and often one follows the other. We have to move beyond recited, formulaic, and social prayers to bring the mind down into the heart.
So when you pray, try to stay beneath your thoughts, neither fighting them nor thinking them. Everything that comes also goes, usually in waves. Hold yourself at a more profound level, perhaps in your chest, solar plexus, or deep breath, but stay in your body-self somehow. Do not rise to the mind and its endlessly repetitive commentary.
Just rest in what I like to call our animal contentment. It will feel exactly like nothing, like emptiness. Stay crouched there at the cellular level, without shame or fear, long enough for the Deeper Source to reveal itself. Universal love flows through you from that Deeper Source as a vital energy much more than an idea.
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Just This (CAC Publishing, 2017), 58–59, 62–63.
Image Credit and inspiration: Patrick Hendry, untitled (detail), 2015, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. A person stands in a contemplative “just this” moment with the night sky.
Story from Our Community:
Every morning I enjoy quiet time, reading and just “being.” Yesterday, I noticed cobwebs on the window that looks out at nature: my deck, plants, birds, and trees. My initial reaction was to get a broom and wipe them away. Then I noticed baby spiders, a mama nearby, and the beautiful intricacy of the web. It was a “just this” moment. I am grateful that I am beginning to wake up, really see, and feel the joy.
—Joan V.
