
I. Three JewelsThere are three precious jewels which you were given in your mother's womb. I am only going to remind you of their value, for you have let them get tarnished. Once you understand the value of what you already have, you will experience the deepest meditation and the highest form of prayer just by breathing. Before you set out on this life, your Inward Teacher gave you these three talismans to take on your journey: Breath, Heart, Silence.
The human body itself is the great sacrament. When you are fully embodied, no further sacrament is needed. If we would but attend to this body with as much devotion as we attend to church buildings, we would enter the temple of God at once!
As the center of the temple is the Holy of Holies, the center of the body is the Heart. The Heart is not merely a physical organ, but the seat of the soul. The Heart is like a radio: it is constructed out of physical matter but in such a way as to receive invisible energies, turning them into music. We can attune our hearts to God just as surely as we can set our radio to our favorite channel. In this prayer, we quite literally put our awareness there, in that beating organ at the center of the body. Prayer is a sacrament: spiritual presence in a physical object. When your attention rests in the Heart, you pass through a tiny golden portal to the Kingdom. Eternity dwells in a tiny spark at the center of your heart. Passing through that infinitesimal point, you discover yourself in God. This is the door of which Jesus spoke: "I am the door."
Down through the door of the Heart flows the Breath, the carrier of all that nourishes and heals. Breath is the unacknowledged physician in every human body. It cleanses each cell, enlivens each atom. If we would employ the power of our breath, we would not need to worry about the growing costs of health care. As our Heart is the physical sign of the soul, so our Breath is the physical sign of God's Spirit. The Biblical authors knew this. In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures they used the same word to express both spirit and breath. The double meaning of the Hebrew
ruach and the Greek
pneuma corresponds to the double reality of our own breath. Breath is both the vehicle for oxygen and the host for spiritual energy. Each great religious tradition acknowledges this subtle energy in the breath: it is called
chi in China,
prana in India,
spiritus in the West.
Just breathing is the purest prayer. What turns ordinary respiration into worship?
Awareness. Fully conscious of breath, I discover that each breath is a gift. I am not breathing: I am breathed by God. Inhalation is grace; exhalation is surrender. Breathing in, breathing out:
grace and surrender. Merely
observing this gift, with
awareness, transforms mechanical act into angelic sacrament.
The jewel of Silence is our third birthright. St. Gregory of Nyssa in the 7th Century wrote, "Above all things, love silence. Out of your silence will arise something that will draw you into deeper silence. If you practice this, inexpressible Light will dawn upon you."
When we become aware of the Silence that is always here, beneath the static chatter of our thoughts, we immediately enter the kingdom of the present moment. Silence is the space where God dwells. Only when we enter the spacious silence of the present moment can we meet God. For God is never in the future, never in the past. God is
presence itself.
"Take no thought for tomorrow," Jesus declared. He always brought his listeners into the Kingdom of Now. They asked when the kingdom would come and he replied, "The kingdom of heaven is right here, in the midst of you!" He declared, "Before Abraham was, I AM." The whole spiritual journey is from here to now. Those who aren't ready for this journey study old maps.
Then how do we dwell in silent presence without being swept into the past and future by a flood of thoughts?
First, we acknowledge the fact that
thinking creates time. The past and future only exist as thoughts. They have no objective reality whatsoever. We carry past and future in our heads, but our hearts always beat in the Kingdom of Now.
Failure to acknowledge this is the seed of suffering. Our memories of time past and our anxieties of time future are simply stresses carried in the neurons of our brain. Time is a neurological phenomena, a chemical-electric activity in the cortex. Time is anxiety, anxiety is time.
The solution to the problem of time is simply to
become aware of time as a sensation in the brain. Watch time forming inside you as a knot of thoughts, fears, desires. See how you label this knot
past and
future. Instead of being mesmerized and absorbed by mental images, inner movies about what happened or what might happen, be aware of these thoughts
as physical sensations. The moment you become aware, "Ah, this is just a passing thought, just some chemical activity in my brain," the thought loses its grip on your brain. You can observe the sensation that underlies the thought, without converting it into a mental picture. Then, penetrating that sensation without resistance, you can rest in the silence that is always there, behind every thought. This silence is the pure awareness that observes thoughts, but is never a thought. It is the stillness of the space where thoughts come and go.
This still space of awareness is the real you: the watcher of thoughts and not the thoughts you are watching. This is why Jesus said, "Watch and pray". For the watcher, not the thinker, finds God.
Only silence can watch thoughts come and go, and silence is always in the present. Silence not only brings stillness, it brings the end of time. The end of time is Now.
Let each breath be an anchor that moors you to the silent depth of the heart. Follow your exhalation from the mind into the heart. At the very end of the exhalation, you will discover a moment of complete emptiness, just before inhalation begins. In that emptiness, there is no thought, no mind, no time: just silent emptiness. This is Christ's
kinosis, or self-emptiness. "He emptied himself" (Philippians 2). Rest in that measureless empty stillness at the end of the exhalation, where this little stream of soul returns to the ocean of Spirit. From that depth will rise the inhalation, your next breath, a gift. Yes, you will discover that this breath is not really yours. It is the gift of the infinite.
Heart Mandala with the seed syllable, "Hum".
II. INSTRUCTIONS
These meditation instructions should be practiced, not analyzed. With eyes closed, practice each step for awhile until it becomes natural and easy. Then move to the next step. Don't try to force your way through the whole sequence at one time. Use the instructions that work. Own them. In the end, they flow together as one simple process carried out, not by your effort, but by Grace. The Grace of your Inner Teacher.
• Close your eyes and observe the breath. Observe with gentle attention, not forced concentration. Let the breath flow naturally from the nostrils down to the abdomen. Be aware of it all the way.
• As you breathe out, let go of tension. Let go of any subtle
holding in the muscles of the shoulders, chest, or belly. As you release muscle tension, let go of the past. Release memories, simply by returning attention to the breath. As you breathe out, can you give up any subtle tension you are still holding in the rib cage, the diaphram?
• Allow awareness to sink from the head to the heart, quite literally. Gaze down into your heart and feel it beating. Give it room to beat. Feel its warmth. With awareness in the heart, observe whatever sensation comes, without analyzing or labeling the sensation "good" or "bad," "pain" or "pleasure." You may have denied your heart for a long time. Attention here might release strange feelings: heat, cold, fluttering, anger, fear, sadness. These words are just labels. Feel the sensations as energy without words. Eventually, you will experience a glow of happiness without cause. Don't let this confuse you: the innate joy of the heart is causeless. It is your birthright.
You don't have to accomplish anything in order to deserve happiness.• Now you are simply breathing in the heart. At the end of your exhalation, notice the stillness, emptiness, silence: the still point. This is the door. Here,
surrender. This is the boundless space from which creation arises, the formless void mentioned in the first verse of the Bible. It is there even before God says, 'Let there be light.'
• After spending some time observing the exhalation in silent surrender, become aware of the inhalation. Observe each in-breath as a stream of living energy, flowing into your heart.
• Receive the inhalation with gratitude. Note its effortlessness. The breath is
given. It is not something you work for. With this awareness, you will feel a soft thrill, a warmth deep in the heart. This is the outward and physical sign of Grace.
• Continue for as long as you wish, just resting and breathing through the heart. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be more profound. With every inhalation,
receive. With every exhalation,
offer. Breathing is the whole story of salvation: gift and response. Your breath is Holy Communion on the heart's alter. The Holy Breath, which is the Holy Spirit, consecrates and transmutes your body into the body of Christ.
Eastern Orthodox icon: 'Heart of Christ'
III. The Divine NameWhen you find yourself gazing down into the heart, you have become Mary gazing down at the newborn child. A strange and wonderful sensation arises which is both physical and spiritual: it is what you have been seeking. All other desires are but shadows of this yearning for the birth of Christ in you. When empty of thought, silently watching, untainted by time, awareness is a virgin womb. The Christian Gnostic,Valentinus, wrote that "the true Virgin Mother is the mystical eternal silence." That mystical eternal silence is the mothering womb of your pure and simple awareness. St. Bonaventure wrote: "You too must be a Mary if you would give birth to the Christ."
The Christ of God is born in the womb of awareness as an Inward Light. The Spirit who begets Him is your breath. Your heart is the manger, for there is no room in the busy inn of your mind.
It sometimes happens that, even when we plunge into the ocean of silence, our heart is so filled with gratitude that it needs to cry out, to express the beauty it gives birth to. This requires no more than a single word - a prayer word - what the Orthodox masters called
eucharistos monologistos, "one-word prayer." We must remember that this word is the effect, not the cause, of prayer. The word is not a technique but an effulgence. The word is the gift of silence.
In the East, this prayer word is called
mantra, which means
vehicle for the mind in Sanskrit. In the Orthodox tradition of Christianity, it is called the Name.
The prayer word is neither a mechanical repetition nor a focus of concentration. The word need not be uttered on every breath. It is felt, not spoken, a breath of silence. As when a bird soars in a stream of wind, only beating its wings with a gentle occasional pulse to sustain that effortless air-born flight, we invoke the Name.
Breathing out or breathing in, gently and without effort hear the Name. Let the Name arise on the breath, as a white bubble arises on the crest of a wave. Praying the divine Name fuses breath and mind in the heart. As the Name is carried on the breath, it sends its subtle but powerful energy into every cell of the body, thrilling each electron with joy. This is how the word of prayer becomes the Word of creation, which God speaks in the genesis of heaven and earth. "In the beginning was the Word.... all things were created through Him." So the Indian Mandukya Upanishad declares, "The syllable Om is eternal Godhead, and is the universe. Whatever was, whatever is, whatever shall be, is Om." When the Word vibrates in the Heart, we attune ourselves to the source of creation. Then we become a channel for the Word to bless all sentient beings, and re-create the world through our humble awareness.
The ancient masters of Christian prayer experienced this epiphany through the name of Jesus. By means of the breath, Orthodox masters carried
Jesus into their hearts. St. Hesychius of Jerusalem (4th Century) spoke of "breathing Jesus Christ." In the 6th Century, St. John Climacus wrote, "Let the Name of Jesus be joined to your breath: then you shall know the use of silence." A later saint, Nichodimus of the Holy Mountain, wrote, "Let Jesus be your breath."
I invite you to listen to God's Breath in your heart. The Spirit will reveal a prayer-word appropriate for you, a word that links you to the Christ of God. After all, the original Aramaic meaning of
messiah is
God's out-breathing.Prayer is not your work, but God's work in you. When divine breath centers to a single fiery seed of love in your heart, it's silence vibrates with the thunder of God's Name. The Word incarnates in your body. Though you are not aware of its true amplitude, this Word sends forth a wave of healing that ripples through every photon of light, every atom of creation, regenerating not your flesh alone, but all humanity. Your body is inter-woven in one particle-field with every child in Darfur and every mother in Tibet. This is as true in quantum physics as in the Church's phrase, "universal body of Christ."
IV. The Culture of PrayerWe need to confess that there is a spiritual void in our hearts. Most of today's social and economic problems arise from our denial of that void. We deny the void by stuffing it: filling it with alcohol, stimulants, fat food, nerve-pounding music, instant sex, even violence. The busy-ness of work can be a way to stuff our inner void. Even shopping! Strolling through the mall, we buy not out of necessity, but despair. Our national economy thrives on spiritual emptiness.
Ironically, the solution is right where the problem is:
the heart. Nowhere but here will we find the antidote to our anger, our anxiety, and the dryness of our workdays. If we would but take some time each morning and evening to enter the heart through prayer, this would be the little leaven to raise the loaf, a little salt to bring out the taste of life. You can renew your world by renewing your heart. As the heart feels the world, so the world becomes....
This prayer is not a flight from darkness: it embraces darkness. Prayer regards inner emptiness as sacred ground. Embrace your emptiness, and you will become the space of compassion. Embrace your darkness, and you will find radiance in the void.