The Dilemma of Encouraging “Nothingness”

I began my intentional spiritual journey 25 years ago. As a graduate student of chemistry in the mid-eighties I dappled with centering prayer. My intellect grabbed on to the scientific analogy between finding my “ground” or “center” and locking onto my own spiritual resonance frequency. I remember being able to “tune out” the chatter of my mind, much like shimming (fine-tuning) on an FID in an NMR experiment, trying to maximize the signal to noise ratio. Once I had spiritually “locked on to my own frequency” I was able to transcend the noise of my ego. It felt as if there was a sense of heightened awareness, or some type of enlightenment. However, I didn’t get too far with this as my ego simply gratified itself thinking that it was now at a new spiritual level! I was experiencing the generic arrogance that goes with trying to “achieve” spiritual depth.
Through the next two decades I occasionally tried to sit in silence with centering prayer, but found I gleaned more spiritual wisdom through lectio divina and dialoging with God. During these prayers I sat as openly as I could and I tried to “hear” God through His Word, through intuition, through my life’s events, and through others. St. Ignatius called this type of listening “active indifference,” where you try to be open to whichever way you discern that God is leading you, rather than you leading yourself. Occasionally, a gut feeling or a word or phrase might come to me at some random time during the day which would seem to point me in the way that God had wanted me to go. More often, over a period of time, there would be multiple coincidences that would seem to indicate a course of action desired by God. Note that these would be of a general nature and not a specific directive. Rarely, however, did I have great confidence in discerning God’s will for me and I was plagued with insatiable spiritual hunger. With my scientific mindset of optimizing the desired outcome by controlling the individual variables, this inability to know God’s will with any certainty caused me great anxiety.
At the roadblock of frustration caused by my inability to know God with certainty, my “failure” to control my relationship with Him and my lack of fulfillment in verbal prayer, I returned to the practice of centering prayer a couple of years ago. This intentional silent prayer paves the way for the possibility of contemplative prayer. Initially, I experienced a number of spiritual consolations, which drew me closer to God and satisfied my intimate longing for love and belonging. As I continued in the practice of centering prayer, the consolations diminished and I was left with just sitting faithfully in God’s presence, being as open and receptive to His love as I was able. I was aware of the lack of consolations, but I was at peace with this decrease. I had less need for them as I was in contact with the “ground of my being.”
What do I mean by the “ground of my being?” My best guess is that it is my soul; it is core to who I am and how God knows me. It is a place of pure being, in both a noun and verb sense. It has a different form than what I used to think was my soul. In fact it is formless, but seems to have some quality of heavy substance, a density to which I am drawn and yet there is a sense of nothingness. At and in this place, I just am. I am stripped down to nothing except being, being in God’s presence. There is something as foundational as to who I am at this point. I want to help others meet who they are at this point -- a naked and loved being in God’s presence. But knowing oneself at this level feels like there is “nothing” to one’s self. Perhaps it is the self emptying of self that allows one to be known in this capacity, known only by one’s core, or soul, rather than by external attributes and achievements. And yet this to me is Ultimate Knowing and Ultimate Known. This is the fundamental experience we are called to enter into, and yet it is also the big dilemma. How do you encourage others to embark on this arduous spiritual journey in hopes that they too might experience their “nothingness,” out of which they might find their true and fundamental identity?

Spiritual Harvest – Letting the Soul Grow into Itself

I’ve noticed a funny thing about myself lately. It finally jelled as to what was happening. Over the last 10-15 years I have become an avid bibliophile, reading spiritual works with an insatiable appetite. I was hungry for deep soul-feeding knowledge. I remember being aghast when I entered into a nine month spiritual retreat (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) and was told by my retreat director that I was to abstain from spiritual reading, except for the Bible, for the duration of the retreat! I knew that the withdrawal would be painful, but I agreed to the conditions none the less. Shortly thereafter, I came to realize that this was a very wise suggestion for me as I came to understand that when I was experiencing difficulty in prayer (resistance or dryness) this was when I was most likely to abandon my prayer and pick up a spiritual book. I was living vicariously through someone else’s spiritual experiences and these always seemed so much more interesting than my own.

Five years later, oddly enough, I am now at a point where I have little interest in spiritual reading. Actually, it is as if I have an inability to concentrate on spiritual books; I am sated to over-full with taking in new ideas. While I still relish a good mystery or science fiction novel, the only spiritual material I can absorb is poetry, which until recently I never seemed to understand. I was reluctant acknowledge this gradual change; in the back of my mind I had the gnawing fear that I was entering into early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. I described it to my friends as a feeling of “losing my edge” or mental acuity.

I have recently completed a 10 day silent meditation retreat where I abstained from most of my normal stimulation inputs – talking, cell phones, email, books and music. This time was replaced with wordless centering prayer, spiritual direction sessions, liturgy and nature walks. I learned that the usual white noise of life can cause unnoticed sensory overload, which greatly inhibits the process of settling into oneself.

It also became clear to me that I am in a season of harvest. I have spent years plowing, tilling, planting, fertilizing and weeding my soul. Now it is time to let my inner most depths ripen to fruition. I need silence – the silence of books, conversations, and thoughts in order to allow my soul to grow into itself. Although spiritual companions are invaluable guides, this allowing of my soul to grow into itself is a solitary journey inward, as only God has the ultimate ability to coax me to completion.

P.S. My aversion to spiritual reading has increased, but not my attraction to buying books. I keep buying books, knowing that someday I’ll enter back into the feeding mode of the spiritual lifecycle.

Welcome

Greetings! My name is Carolyn. I have recently returned from a 10 day silent retreat in a Trappist monastery. Before this experience I used to feel like a solitary contemplative, living and praying alone and on the fringe of society. While meditating in silence with the other 21 retreatants it was evident that I was not a singleton, but one of many souls called to experience God through deeper interior silence.
As I was leaving the retreat I was reminded of the notion of a “monastery without walls” in James Finley’s book Christian Meditation. I like this idea of trying to live out a spiritually intentional life in the secular world. Why not push this envelope further and create a new community, a “spiritual space without place”. In the past, people were drawn to religious orders to live out their spiritual journey with others called to a similar lifestyle. This community provided structure, security, identity, instruction and companionship. However, there has been a staggering decline in people entering the vowed religious life. Do people today still hunger for this place of spiritual belonging? Are many souls still restless, searching for deeper meaning? Is there a desire to develop authentic rather than superficial relationships? Is this type of community possible in today’s busy world? Maybe we need to rethink the old “brick and mortar” spiritual community and develop one using modern lifestyle technologies. Is it possible to create a vibrant, interactive, supportive, affirming and wisdom-filled spiritual community online? Is it possible to foster companions on the contemplative spiritual journey? I think that it is. This is our aim at www.silentjourney.org . Welcome to my blog about my own silent journey.