John of the Cross is a brilliant observer of the psychological experience of contemplative prayer, but he comes with some limitations. Even the saints and mystics cannot be read with absolute confidence. We have to bring a certain critical judgment to what we read. In the beginning of the spiritual journey we don't have the foundation necessary to be critical, but as time goes on we get some experience of our own. Then, if some text does not hit us quite right, we need to see if there might not be another and clearer explanation.

The following text is one of the prime sources for any practice leading to contemplative prayer: "If you wish to pray, go into your private room, shut the door and pray to your Father in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6). This is a wisdom saying of enormous importance and has consequences for those interested in contemplative prayer. It is the clarion call to listen and to be open to the divine indwelling.

Abba Isaac was interviewed by a traveler from the West named John Cassian. The latter visited the monasteries of Egypt in the fourth century and gathered wisdom sayings of the elders into a book called the Conferences of Cassian. He then took them back to the West and founded a Western monastery. This tradition filtered into the Rule of St. Benedict, the rule that almost all the contemplative orders of men in the West have followed to the present day.

Here is Abba Isaac's advice to Cassian² - little did he know that he was speaking to someone who would affect the next two thousand years of seekers. Says Abba Isaac, "We need to be especially careful to follow the Gospel precept which instructs us to go into our private room and shut the door, so that we may pray to our Father. And this is how we do it."

Here we find a method offered in the fourth century that answers an objection often raised today, that contemplative prayer cannot be achieved through a method. True, it cannot be achieved by a method alone, but neither can it be achieved without a method unless by God's special intervention. There are different methods of preparing for contemplation, but they all go back to the words of Jesus himself, at least as interpreted by someone who walked the spiritual path for many years in extreme solitude and in a community of seekers.

This is Abba Isaac's commentary. "We pray in our private room whenever we withdraw our hearts completely from the tumult and noise of our thoughts and our worries and when secretly and intimately we offer our prayers to the Lord."

Abba Isaac is obviously talking metaphorically. Few had a private room in Jesus' time. Anyone who had a roof over his head was well-to-do. The term "private room" is a metaphor for the spiritual level of our being. This is a private place beyond the flow of our ordinary psychological awareness, with its endless stream of thoughts, commentaries, and emotional reactions to events taking place in daily life or regurgitated in our memory.

In the method proposed by Jesus, we leave outside for the time of prayer not just the environment, other people, and outside activities, but our thoughts, perceptions, worries, and plans--"the tumult and noise of our thoughts," as Abba Isaac put it. We are to cultivate interior silence and the spiritual level of our being, that is, our spiritual will to God and our passive intellect, which is able to know things by intuition. Abba Isaac continues, "We pray with the door shut when without opening our mouths and in perfect silence, we offer our petitions to the one who pays no attention to words but looks hard at our hearts."

No amount of spiritual "yakking" can take the place of the intention to be with God at the deepest level of our being. This movement into our private room, into the innermost part of our being, is a movement of opening to the divine indwelling. The divine indwelling is the fundamental principle of relating to God in the Christian life, whether we are in prayer or action.

Abba Isaac continues, "We pray in secret, when in our hearts alone and in our recollected spirits." Notice the word "recollected." This prayer is not an afternoon nap. It is not a magic carpet to bliss or a tête á tête with a warm fuzzy. This prayer is getting down to business; it is the movement of faith towards the divine indwelling. Faith is a conviction. Love is a choice, an intention, that enables us to be recollected in interior silence. It prevents the silence from becoming a mental vacuum. We do not make our minds a blank. Rather, we deliberately open ourselves to God whom we believe is present in our inmost being.

Notice that we are to pray in "our hearts alone." The heart, in the desert tradition, represents the will or our inmost being. An alert receptivity is the proper attitude. The Abba continues, "We address God and reveal our wishes only to Him and in such a way that the hostile powers themselves have no inkling of their nature."

This last statement requires a brief commentary regarding the understanding of people of this period. The fathers and mothers of the desert believed that if we are thinking during prayer, the devil can perceive what we are thinking about. In this way he can plan a strategy to suggest thoughts and temptations that will pull us out of the movement towards interior silence. He seeks to draw us out of our private room and back into the tumult and noise of our ordinary psychological awareness. Thus, when we are praying to the Father in secret, it is as if we must hide-hide from others, hide from our thoughts, and hide from ourselves.

The desert mothers and fathers identified the hostile powers as demons and the devil as their chief. They even developed nicknames for them because of their frequent interaction with them. They used to call the devil, "the old boy." In the desert tradition, when somebody gets serious about the spiritual life, the devil gets very nervous. For most of us he just rolls over and goes back to sleep. The activity of our false selves is enough to keep us preoccupied and miserable. But when people become serious about the spiritual journey, the devil is in danger of losing his power over a vast multitude of people.

We find a similar insight in Hindu and Buddhist spirituality as well. Those who are on the spiritual path are pouring positive energy into the atmosphere, which can heal people, even at a distance. Thus if one actually dismantles the false self and becomes a vessel of divine love, the devil is in tough shape. One might wrestle from him a whole neighborhood--or the whole world, for that matter--depending on how powerful one's prayer and how completely divine love takes over one's life. Anthony, having conquered the devils and having reached the transforming union, retired to an abandoned fort full of all kinds of reptiles, symbols in the popular mind of the time of the demons. The fort you might say, represented the military industrial complex of the demons. Through the power of his prayer, he returned the area to peace and opened it up to the reign of God.

John of the Cross says that the hostile powers cannot interfere when we are recollected on the spiritual level of our being. They can't figure out what we are doing.

What are we praying for in "utter silence"? If we are not supposed to open our mouths or to request anything particular by way of petition, what precisely are we doing? Here again the Gospel comes to our rescue with clear instructions. Jesus says in Matthew 7:9, "Which one of you, if your child asks you for a piece of bread, will give him or her a stone?"

In Palestine at that period bread was flat, like pita bread today, so it looked like a stone. Thus a malicious parent could say, "Here Sonny, have a nice piece of bread," and it turns out to be a rock! Or again, "What parent if a child asked for a fish, would give him or her a snake?" In the Sea of Galilee there are fish that look like snakes. A malicious parent could say, "Dear child, you want a fish? Try this poisonous snake." Then Jesus said, "If you, evil as you are, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him."

Do you think when we enter our private room and move to the spiritual level of our being in order to be with God, that God is going to hand us over to the devil? Some fundamentalists have the idea that if we empty our minds of thoughts, we open ourselves to the devil. All I can say is, please read the Gospel again. Do you really think that if you open yourself completely to God in trust and love that God will give you a demon?

When we sit in silent prayer, our whole being is begging for the Holy Spirit, the supreme gift of the Father and the Son. There is no greater gift that we can ask for. If we receive the Holy Spirit, we have everything. By entering our private room and closing our eyes to the external and internal environment, we rest in the presence of the Father who loves us and who sent his Son Jesus and his Spirit to lead and guide us to divine union.

To sum up, we don't need to ask for anything at the time of contemplative prayer. At another time, we may be inspired to ask for this or that for someone, or for ourselves. That's fine. But during our private interview with the Divine Therapist, we are praying in secret. We settle into the present moment which is the only place God actually is. God is not in the past and not in the future. God is right now, to tally present, totally available. Our best response is to be totally available to that presence. We surrender ourselves after the manner of Mary of Bethany. She gave herself to Jesus, recognizing in him the fullness of the Spirit and the manifestation of the Father's unconditional love.

________________
2. Conference Nine.
    Return to text

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpted from The Better Part by Fr. Thomas Keating

You can obtain a copy by visiting the Contemplative Outreach Bookstore.