Prayer Is A New Creation

The same God who said, Let there be light shining out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, shining in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

The light that shines above the heavens and the earth, the light that shines above all worlds, that is the light that shines in your heart. (Chandogya Upanishad)

Prayer is dangerous. Prayer is risky business. In prayer, you risk being changed, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15). Prayer is a naked plunge into infinite possibility. And we must be clear that the one who takes the plunge is not the one who will emerge.

The former self will be annihilated in the darkness of the unpredictable, and what emerges will be someone new. "Your old self is crucified with Christ" (Rom. 6). "You have died; your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3). Yet St. Paul describes the new person who emerges from this terrible transforming darkness, not in terms of destruction, but creation. The one who is reborn from the womb of prayer is a kaine ktisis, in Greek, "a new creation" (Gal. 6). "Put off the old self with all its past deeds, and put on the new self... created anew in the image of its creator" (Col. 3).

For Paul, what happens in an encounter with God is no less than re-creation. We are born out of prayer in dazzling freshness, as if in the first moment of the world. With absolutely nothing behind us, we are bathed in the spaciousness of eternity. Prayer has no memory, no tradition. It is always new wine, and it will burst any old bottle. The archetype of the new creature, the image in which we are re-created, is Christ. 

 

Christ is not the personality we were comfortable being before, with its familiar litany of accomplishments and resume of proud deeds. All the dross of personality is burned away by dark flames: our God is a consuming fire, and it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the One Who Is. This is why, in the deepest prayer, memory is of no use. Good deeds are vain. In fact, they are a hindrance to prayer and must be scorched. Our past is of less value than a weather report in yesterday's newspaper. For, "if anyone be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Behold, all is made new" (2 Cor. 5).

What we used to call our self - that bundle of memories, beliefs and preferences - has dissolved into nothing. "If anyone thinks that he is something, when in fact he is nothing, he deceives himself" (Gal 6). Are you ready to become nobody? Are you willing to be annihilated? In Exodus, chapter 33, we read that no one can see God and live. If you become that No One, then you can see God. For in the same chapter Moses speaks with God "face to face, as a man speaks with his friends." Not only does Moses see God, but many go up with him to the mountaintop and behold the divine face: Aaron, Nadab, Abiyah, and seventy elders of Israel! How could they have survived? Scholars assume that this contradiction is an example of the Bible's multiple authorship, and an alternative version of the story. But this does not explain why the scribes who edited the Bible would leave such a glaring contradiction in the scripture. Wherever we find a paradox, we are coming very close to truth. We must look deeper.

Psalm 27 declares: "You speak to my heart and say, seek my face; your face, Lord, will I seek." Job receives the vision of God and cries, "Now my eye sees Thee!" (Job 47) Can we endure such a paradox? We are called to prayer by a God who wishes us to see His face, and yet destroys us for doing so! The explanation must be this: we can only see God if we are willing to die, if we are willing to become whatever scant cinder remains when all we thought we were has been incinerated. 

O blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom! Prayer is a poverty that enriches, a death that renews, a destruction that creates, and a darkness that enlightens. Prayer is the fire on Mt. Sinai, which burns the tree of life without consuming it. Yes, prayer is dangerous business.

When Moses comes down from the mountain he is so dangerous to behold that he must wear a veil! Yet Moses is the pattern of self-transformation which we are all called to imitate. Referring to Moses in 2 Corinthians 3:17, Paul writes: “Now all of us, with faces unveiled, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed, from glory unto glory, into that same image.” I quake when I hear these words! They breathe a dangerous spirit. Not only do they tell us that we, like Moses, are entitled to see the glory of God, but if we are willing to die to our old selves, we will be transformed into the very thing that we behold - for he says, "as in a mirror." This is, in fact, the classic experience of the Christian mystics.

According to the Cistercian theologian, Richard of St. Victor (12th C.): "The soul sheds its very self altogether and puts on the divine life, and being wholly conformed to the beauty that it has seen, passes wholly into that glory... Then the soul is altogether melted into Him whom she loves." His contemporary, St. Bernard, declares: “There is a point of rapture where the soul forgets itself and passes wholly into God.” In the words of Meister Eckhart (14th C): “The ground of God and the ground of the soul are one and the same ground.” St. Catherine of Genoa (15th C.) simply says: “My me is God, nor do I recognize any other me except God.”

Such radical expressions of divine union reflect Paul's own statement that, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." What, then, is the mirror where God and God’s image meet face to face? It is the mirror of silence. But this is a living silence pregnant with God's Word, an opulent darkness radiant with God's face. When we have the courage to lose ourselves in this silence and gaze into this darkness, we see the very image of God as our own Self… But this is our real Self, whom we have not met until now, and whom we can only meet in the now of prayer.

In the beginning, at the creation of the universe, God speaks to the silence, saying, "Let there be light.” This silence-before-creation is the very silence within us, and we must understand "the beginning" to be, not a beginning in time, but the center and origin of our soul. Here we behold the light spoken in the first moment of creation. The abyss of our deepest Self is irradiated by the brilliance of our Creator. How marvelous! The very moment I return to my center, which is silence, and my being, which is no-thing, I Am the very seed of creation. When I have become precisely nobody, the whole cosmos rings like an unstruck chime in my heart. Effortless and graceful as a breath, galaxies uncoil from my heart: "For the same God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts!" (2 Cor. 4)

In his Oration on the Fifth Beatitude, St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th C.) writes: "Just as one sees the sun in a mirror... so you possess within yourself that for which you yearn, if you return to the grace of the image that was placed in you from the beginning."

How then may we "return to grace?" Through silence. This means silencing our thoughts, those little demons who will to create what only God can create in us. Yet the will cannot be silenced by an act of will! Oh who then will silence this inner gossip? St. Isaac of Nineveh (7th C.) writes: "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!"

All we need do is begin the practice: Grace will carry out the work. The early masters of Christian prayer were called Hesychasts. Their method of prayer was Hesychasm, which in Greek simply means silence. Hesychastic prayer makes the heart a garden of God, where the Word of creation is spoken again. But the only fertile ground where the seed of the Word can be planted is silence, a mind free from thoughts.

Such prayer is the ceaseless work of discarding the known for the unknown. As soon as we formulate our experience of prayer into something known - a rule, a technique - we turn the image of God into an idol and our own spirit into a relic. As there can be no past in prayer, so there can be no doctrine. What you discovered a moment ago, you must abandon this instant. Then you grow lighter, lighter, poorer, poorer in spirit, until you become nothing. Only then are you light enough to fall on your knees.

No one can follow you into this prayer. You leave no tracks. If you leave a trace, you are not worth following. This is why people have had such a hard time following Jesus. He left no footprints. He never wrote anything down in a book. He strolled over country roads from mystery to mystery, and not even his disciples could agree on what he said or what it meant. Hence we have alternate versions of his sayings in the four Gospels. Every word he spoke left a deeper silence. In his awful Presence, it was very difficult to remember a single word.

Intelligent men and women could hardly recall anything he taught, for their minds were struck dumb with love. And just as his words could not be recalled, so his actions could not be imitated. Every act left a deeper stillness. When he moved, it was the stillness before creation, moving through itself.

You are like Jesus when you pray. You have nowhere to lay your head, no property to stand on, no position or office to hold. All you need is the gaze of God. You drink that gaze. You gaze into God's gaze, which sees your original goodness, that gaze which by gazing at you imparts goodness to your being. You look into that gaze which sees in a moment all the stars of heaven and they are made. Into that gaze you will gaze and also be created. As you see in the mirror of your soul the one who always sees you, who by seeing you creates you holy and innocent each moment, you will cry, "Lord, thy gaze is love!" And you will die of this love.

Now here is a secret. Before the heavens and earth were made, there was nothing at all but the Spirit. She was like a sea of crystal, a boundless mirror of glass. God was pure seeing, gazing at Himself in this mirror. When God looked, He saw Jesus, begotten as an image of light in the form of a cross, which pierced the four directions, creating space itself. Then, in that same mirror, Jesus looked at Himself and saw you. You were born of that gaze, in the mirror of the Spirit. You became one spark of his self-knowledge. And that is why, when you look at yourself in the same mirror, you see God.

Now you may ask, "O Lord, is it me or Thee, the one I see in the mirror of prayer?" On the level of the question, there is no answer. On the level of the answer, the question does not arise. For the answer is perfect silence: the silence at the center of your soul, where God rests before creating anything.

After hearing all this, I am sure that you want to begin to pray, and your would like to learn some method to practice, some prayer to repeat. So I will tell you about the prayer that re-creates the universe. It consists of a single Word. This Word is a faint almost imperceptible seed, a ripple in the ocean of silence. Yet the ripple contains the sea, and the faintest breath of the mantra contains the Logos, the Christ, the Word of creation.

The subtle vibration of the mantra is the very power that created the universe, set the stars in their circuits, and whirled the galaxies out of dust. Obviously, you cannot "do" this prayer. It has already been done. You cannot practice this word. It has already been spoken. It is being spoken this very instant at the center of your soul. All you can do is be still and watch this prayer happen. Be very quiet and hear this word spoken. God is the one who practices this prayer inside you. The breath of God passing through your heart makes the sound of this divine Word. And the breath that makes this sound is the Spirit.

Any one who says, "I am praying," is a liar. Only God can breathe the Word of prayer. Prayer begins in God, flows from God through the heart as you breathe in, and returns to God as you breathe out. So the purest prayer is simply to breathe. Paul understood this and wrote in scripture: "It is the Spirit who cries out within us, Abba, Father!" As God breathes Spirit through you, your heart fills up and overflows with a gentle golden radiance, sweet nectar containing the essence of the Milky Way streams down your spine. The healing breath of God gushes forth from your heart and illumines every cell of your body. As you gaze into this abysmal radiance, you can see the savior's face gazing back. And when you see this holy face gazing out of your own center, you will need no further proof that, behind the processes of the universe, there is no mere void or energy or law - but a Person.

In her deepest prayer, your soul is so at one with Christ that she forgets she is praying. She only rests in the immersion of love. She dissolves and diffuses in Christ, and Christ in her. She is like a drop of water in a cup of milk: though it remains water, it becomes milk. The substance of the soul takes the unbounded form of Christ's radiance, and permeates the whole body of Christ, which is to say, all other souls in the cosmos. Christ himself spoke of this union when he prayed for his followers in chapter 17 of John's Gospel, "that they may all be one, even as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us."

Yet this unity does not annihilate the individuality of the person, but rather, enhances it. How should one describe such a mystery. Each of us is a unique and sparkling resonance, a logos, at the center of an infinite web of sparkling centers.

In such a deep ocean of silence, the soul is no longer an object, for she has returned to the Divine Subject. She no longer has any created thing-ness, for she is just as she was when God first whispered her as a word, a logos, a spark of his own self-delight. Now I assure you that no soul who has tasted even a drop of this union has ever fully recovered. There always remains a deep inward part of her that is rapt and dumbfounded by love forever.