In an early season of practice we are so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we think we are these thoughts and feelings and miss the distinction between thoughts and awareness that St. Teresa and countless others have discovered.
The great masters presume this awkwardness we all know and so they teach in a practical way the cultivation of awareness.
When the light of awareness illumines no more than a torch does, we should expect innumerable variations of a couple of interior movements. By far the most common experience is to find ourselves forever chasing thoughts. Saint Hesychios observes, “As soon as a thought appears in our minds we chase after it and become embroiled in it.” When we become embroiled in our thoughts, we immediately become one of the cast of characters in the inner drama. Often the lines of this scripted interiority arc something like “Oh my goodness, I’ve become embroiled in my thoughts,” or “I shouldn’t be having any thoughts,” or ”I’m so bad at this.”
Often this script is accompanied by a demented stage director, who stays out of sight but is always within our range of hearing: “blame others without relent”; “envy others’ success”; “compare yourself with others to enflame your own self-loathing”; “victimize others to avoid your own pain.” These inner commentaries do nothing but embroil us more deeply and add to a lifetime’s momentum of deriving our sense of self from whatever it is in us that talks and talks and talks and talks and talks to ourselves about all this.
As an antidote St. Hesychios offers a simple practice of awareness: “closely scrutinize every mental image or provocation.” His suggestion is deceptively simple. Normally we are so caught up in the mind-stream of our thoughts that before we know it, we are swept along. In order to practice what St. Hesychios is teaching we have to stop chasing the thoughts, if only for a moment. We usually find that we cannot do this very well. But with practice of this inner turning around, however, and stopping long enough to look squarely at these thoughts, we learn that we can do this. In this way we do exactly what Jesus did during the temptation in the desert (Mt 4:1-11). He refused to get caught up in inner commentary. Instead he recited short passages of Scripture.
When St. Hesychios says that awareness consists in closely scrutinizing thoughts, he is trying to place us in a different relationship with the thoughts. He is not telling us that thoughts should not be there if they happen to be there. Putting his advice into practice will, over (much) time, help us learn to be an engaged and receptively detached witness of all this inner commentary that appears and disappears in our mind. Gradually we learn to stop deriving our sense of identity from this habitual inner chatter no matter how incessantly it continues to chatter.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
SEEING BY TORCHLIGHT (Part II)
In an early season of practice we are so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we think we are these thoughts and feelings and miss the distinction between thoughts and awareness that St. Teresa and countless others have discovered.
The great masters presume this awkwardness we all know and so they teach in a practical way the cultivation of awareness.
When the light of awareness illumines no more than a torch does, we should expect innumerable variations of a couple of interior movements. By far the most common experience is to find ourselves forever chasing thoughts. Saint Hesychios observes, “As soon as a thought appears in our minds we chase after it and become embroiled in it.” When we become embroiled in our thoughts, we immediately become one of the cast of characters in the inner drama. Often the lines of this scripted interiority arc something like “Oh my goodness, I’ve become embroiled in my thoughts,” or “I shouldn’t be having any thoughts,” or ”I’m so bad at this.”
Often this script is accompanied by a demented stage director, who stays out of sight but is always within our range of hearing: “blame others without relent”; “envy others’ success”; “compare yourself with others to enflame your own self-loathing”; “victimize others to avoid your own pain.” These inner commentaries do nothing but embroil us more deeply and add to a lifetime’s momentum of deriving our sense of self from whatever it is in us that talks and talks and talks and talks and talks to ourselves about all this.
As an antidote St. Hesychios offers a simple practice of awareness: “closely scrutinize every mental image or provocation.” His suggestion is deceptively simple. Normally we are so caught up in the mind-stream of our thoughts that before we know it, we are swept along. In order to practice what St. Hesychios is teaching we have to stop chasing the thoughts, if only for a moment. We usually find that we cannot do this very well. But with practice of this inner turning around, however, and stopping long enough to look squarely at these thoughts, we learn that we can do this. In this way we do exactly what Jesus did during the temptation in the desert (Mt 4:1-11). He refused to get caught up in inner commentary. Instead he recited short passages of Scripture.
When St. Hesychios says that awareness consists in closely scrutinizing thoughts, he is trying to place us in a different relationship with the thoughts. He is not telling us that thoughts should not be there if they happen to be there. Putting his advice into practice will, over (much) time, help us learn to be an engaged and receptively detached witness of all this inner commentary that appears and disappears in our mind. Gradually we learn to stop deriving our sense of identity from this habitual inner chatter no matter how incessantly it continues to chatter.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
Categories
Archives
Trending
View Our Live Stream Services
Keep In Touch