A
friend of mine, trying to get past a block that she felt about prayer and
worship, went to a religious conference and spent hours plying with the
participants with questions. She
reported finding that many of them had a beautiful relationship with God, while
many others said they took no time for spiritual communion and confessed that
they did not know how to go about it.
Prayer and worship are spontaneous expressions of the soul. At the depth, they cannot be scheduled, and they go beyond
words. There are times when
discourse about them is beside the point. Even
with these sublime experiences, however, there are paths of thoroughness, ways
for reflection that help the mind prepare for the richest plunge into
simplicity. We can think of it as a
process that begins in honest conversation and moves through thanksgiving to a
"face-to-face," "heart-to-heart" relating with God.
A
word about terminology should prevent confusion.
In simplest terms, prayer, as I will focus on it here, is asking God for
blessings, material or spiritual, for self or others.
I will focus on the prayer for wisdom.
Worship goes beyond asking for something. Worship is our deepest and most direct enjoyment of God.
The terms "prayer" and "worship" naturally mean
different things to different people. In
this chapter I do not try to cover the activities of group worship in community.
What I call worship some people classify as a phase of prayer, and what
some call worship is a social, organized event where people sing songs, repeat a
prayer, recite a creed, hear a sermon, and participate in a sacred ritual.
It is sad how easy it is to go through one of these services without
experiencing what I call worship. Such
services may keep people so occupied with words and other external stimuli that
the opportunity for the intimate experience I have in mind never happens except
perchance alongside some other activity. The
conductors of worship do not give people time for a total, quiet, and sustained
focus on God. A minister let me
address his congregation on the subject of worship one Sunday evening, and I
told him that I was going to give the people five minutes of silence for worship
at the end of our discussion. The
minister was worried about how his lower middle-class congregation would take
it. Would they be restless?
Uncomfortable? They loved it.
In
this chapter I share with you the principles of prayer I have found
extraordinarily helpful in spiritual counseling and a concept of worship that I
find promotes growth more than any other practice I know.
Science-centered and humanistic readers who may transplant this chapter
into their own philosophies, taking the thoughts on prayer as suggestions for
how to access the creativity of the unconscious depths of the human psyche, and
taking the thoughts on worship as suggestions for celebrating the wonders of
nature and the grandeur of the finest human achievements.
Thoroughness in
prayer
Thinking
is so useful that there is a tendency to think compulsively, so that any problem
becomes an excuse for relentless thinking.
There are courses on critical thinking, seminars on problem solving, and
volumes of information that require thinking.
Although the demands for thinking are greater than ever, it is surprising
how little attention is given to prayer, for example, in books on management.
Prayer
elevates thinking and transforms it from a monologue into an odd kind of
dialogue--odd, because the thoughts that form in one's consciousness in response
to prayer are not normally the voice of God; they are one's best available
thinking, done under the influence of spiritual attention.
Prayer economizes on thinking time, and it promotes the realizations at
which thinking, working overtime, was aiming.
What is more natural than to walk around in a self-centered perspective?
Just opening the door in prayer, however, releases that self-centeredness
and lets a wider perspective shine in. Any
time of honestly opening toward God can be prayer, including writing in a
journal or discussing issues in a family council.
A
philosophy of living should help us find better ways of fulfilling our needs and
desires. Some religious teachings,
however, disparage desire. Desire,
they say, comes from the ego, and a spiritual path must overcome the ego. They claim that a negative discipline of controlling the
desires of the flesh must precede the higher phases of our spiritual journey.
The strategies of overcoming the ego are varied; they range from fierce
psychological attack to gently refocusing the attention when we are distracted
in meditation.
Prayer,
however, encourages the hungry heart to express itself.
Prayer helps us become aware of our desire. Prayer helps us be honest about our feelings, lets them
emerge fully into the space where we let them appear in that patient space of
the mind that we surround with our trust in God.
We do not repress desires or merely change the subject.
We let desire become a theme for reflection and transformation.
Integral living brings together energies from all levels of the
personality. Prayer transforms
desire by spiritual attention.
What
do I mean by spiritual attention? Two
things: first of all, when I am identified with my desire, when I am in the
"I want" mode, I let that demand be pronounced as I look toward God. Second, when I am in a higher place, not identified with the
desire, when I can say, "There is this desire," then I look at it with
God in the background.
It
is surprising how much a momentary prayer, breathed on the run, can do.
It opens up the self to the stream of divine blessing and quickly enables
the spirit to adjust your angle of approach to a challenging situation.
Nevertheless, some people know prayer only as a momentary verbalizing of
wishes, and they attempt to use prayer as a sort of magical technique to get
things to happen. The fact that
prayer can become trivialized shows the need to take time occasionally for a
thorough prayer process. The
insights gained from a thorough process make momentary prayer more effective.
Again, there are simple and thorough approaches here, and they should
each be cherished so that neither obscures the other. The trust and openness and directness of simple prayer are
essential in the thorough process as well.
In
the spiritual counseling that I have been privileged to do, I have consistently
found people to benefit from one or more of the thoughts mentioned here. Nevertheless prayer is, in its essence, a heartfelt,
spontaneous upreach to God. There
are dangers in proposing a series of phases or steps or principles, in that we
may feel smug about touching every base when we may need some other, new
teaching. Or we may insist on
systematically moving through a sequence when the soul is trying to shift into a
different gear. Prayer is
relational, and the principles of prayer are offered not to domesticate a
spiritual relationship to the walls of the intellect but to facilitate
intelligent progress in that relationship, to catapult the mind toward authentic
communion.
Of
the many types of prayer in religion, I will focus on prayer as a request,
specifically, for a knowledge of God's will; and I will assume you are praying
for your own insight. It is true
that these principles of prayer can be adapted to praying for others.
You can pray for their success in satisfying the conditions of
thoroughness. And you can pray for
divine guidance in discovering how to help them.
But the focus here is on seeking wisdom for yourself.
Since
prayer addresses God, it takes faith, from beginning to end, in every aspect of
the prayer process. Sometimes I
hear someone say, "God is so great, and I'm so little, I don't see how God
could be concerned with my
problems." These people need
most to experience the indwelling presence of God in prayer.
A little confession, a little honest expression of our desire for God's
love, can open things up. The
experience of answered prayer shows us that God does care about details in our
lives that we may think are not especially important.
It's a little scary, because it shows us that the way we live, even in
little ways, in ways we hardly realize, does
matter to God's purposes. God is
prepared to wash your feet, so to speak, to cleanse in ways that no one else
will stoop to do, in ways so intimate that no one else can.
It
also takes faith to believe in yourself. You
can seek and find and choose and do the will of God.
God trusts a lot to us, and, as imperfect as we are, if we supremely
desire to do his will, even though we might not understand it perfectly, we'll
be moving in the right direction, and we'll remain teachable.
If we run into a wall, we'll be better able to figure out how to avoid
that wall in the future or how to use a tactical retreat to get reinforcements and pick up a
battering ram.
The
fact that we are praying to God has
another important implication. Orienting
yourself to God imparts a new framework for prayer.
How natural it is, when beset by some pressing problem, to react in some
degree of panic. Our natural
framework is the immediate situation that cries out for help.
It would be foolish to deny that an anguished cry of the heart may be an
effective prayer; and yet, in a prayer process that has the chance to be
thorough, a different framework is possible: "Here I am.
I have made my choice: I am on my way to You; I have begun the quest for
perfection. This situation I'm in
is showing up a specific growth need that I have.
Please give me the wisdom I need to solve the problem."
It is a very different experience to pray in the transformed framework!
To
pray to God is to address the Source of reality, and prayer cannot be sincere
unless we face reality's challenges. Prayer
gives provides a refreshing break from immediate involvement in our tasks, but
it does not give an escape from life's intense testing or its monotony, its pain
or its seductive ease, its inexorable logic or its baffling contradictions, its
justice or its unfairness and cruelty. To
mobilize your stamina, first consider what you may have to go through.
The will of God may point in the direction of one alternative or another.
Look down the roads and try to get a sense of the difficulties they may
bring. If you are not ready to face
the difficulties, you are not ready to ask openly for a revelation of the divine
will. Take the time to gather your
forces. Try to come to a sense of the
beauty of the evolutionary struggle. Come
to that place where you can say, "I'm ready for whatever may come."
Prayer
is not a way of getting God to do your homework for you.
At the very least, we can think up possible responses to our situation.
Sometimes it is the divine way to enhance our attention to the desired
alternative, to impart an extra luminosity to a particular thought that we are
considering. But spiritual
encouragement cannot alight upon a project that has not yet come to mind, and
doing our homework in a careful and creative review of the situation can bring a
rich array of alternatives to mind. Doing
the homework of prayer involves the scientific and philosophic labor of
gathering and facing facts and thinking about them as well as possible after
conversation and study. Sometimes
the homework is not merely intellectual. Sometimes
you can fix a situation yourself with a little application of intelligence.
You don't tow your car in to a mechanic if all you need is a jump start.
In fact, doing your utmost to handle a situation is ideal. It can be exhausting, but exhausting yourself in a good cause
is a badge of honor. It would be
convenient if a more moderate effort would suffice, and a modest effort often
does enable good ideas to surface. But
the more you dredge out the channels of receptivity the more input you can be
given.
Having
done one's utmost to make adjustments, to figure things out, one is ready to go
onto the mountain, so to speak, to open up to the divine response. This is not to say that one has not sought guidance in
pursuing the earlier phases of the prayer process.
It is just that the dramatic posing of the question in the most direct
way waits until the questioner is truly ready to receive and respond to the
divine.
This
is the time for surrender. Prayer
listens as well as speaks. In order
to listen well, one must let go of all that one has been able to achieve in
comprehending the problem. Prayer
opens the soul to be touched in ways that are not pre-determined.
Of course the mind has its desires about how things should work out.
Of course the soul has its cravings for supreme values that seem to be at
stake. It may take time to realize
what these attachments are. Then
release them.
Spiritual
surrender is not the abject laying down of one's will by an individual longing
for rapture. The will of the faith
child is ennobled, not abased, in prayer. The
reason for surrender is that even one's highest previously conceived ideas and
ideals may not be what infinite wisdom aims to satisfy at present.
Then
what happens? In the silence of
listening there occurs an enhanced revelation of truth and beauty and goodness. A shift occurs in the configuration of the meaning-value
landscape. I recall the story of
the nineteenth-century visionary who so well charted on foot the path for the
first railroad to be built through the Rocky Mountains. I imagine him trying to plot his course when a summer storm
would come up. Not being able to
see which path to choose through the mountains, he simply had to be patient
until the weather would clear up. Even
then he would like to have been able to see miles and miles ahead, but could
only see the next pass in the mountain range.
I
have been describing ideals: the divine revelation is evident and the decision
to be taken is clear. But when the
ideal does not occur, if listening discerns nothing, should one persist in
receptive openness or return to earlier phases of the process or act on the best
we know thus far? It can be hard to
sort out these alternatives. Sometimes
a period of mental quiet is granted just for the purpose of communion between
God and the soul. Sometimes a
question is posed in a given situation that is not well oriented to what God is
wanting to give the person; front-burner growth needs are not being addressed,
and the prayer is inappropriate. Sometimes
there is the divine wisdom of a delayed response.
As we grow, our prayers become better attuned to the will of God: we know
more what sort of blessings he is in the business of providing, and we
increasingly perceive the answer to our prayers.
The
quest to know the will of God is often frustrated because the focus is too
exclusively on what is to be done,
whereas the will of God has two other dimensions that are at least as important.
First, the will of God is first and foremost that
we supremely desire the will of God. If
our desire is not supreme, then discovering what to do will be harder.
Second, how we do something may
be more important than what we do.
The
question also arises of how to interpret the input into the mind.
After going through all the indicated preparation, there is a tendency to
regard any alteration of the meaning-value landscape as coming from God.
And there are experiences which are such compelling presentations that we
cannot honestly doubt that they furnish grounds for immediate decision and
action. Nevertheless the subconscious is also a source of fresh
energies and creative syntheses. When
we contemplate the situation as we comprehend it, with its landscape of meanings
and values, it has a certain configuration or Gestalt.
Certain features are highlighted and certain features are in the
background or not consciously present at all.
In the response to prayer, there is a shift in this configuration.
My point is that it is possible for such a shift to come from
subconscious factors as well as from the superconscious divine spirit.
What is to be done about this predicament? The question arises not only in prayer but also with regard
to a variety of phenomena including dreams and various mystical experiences.
To begin with, we can be glad that prayer is so effective at tapping the
deep psychic sources of energy as it reaches toward the spirit for spiritual
strength and divine wisdom. Thus prayer can assist in unifying the human life,
coordinating our energies.
It
is here that the individual must assume the responsibility for recognizing the
caliber of the meanings and values on which decision and action is to be based.
Set aside speculations about the source.
Set aside worries about the possible admixture of subconscious and
superconscious factors. Set aside
worries about the inability to sort things out analytically.
Discernment grows slowly. God
does not expect anything more than our responsible best, and God does not will
that we make a decision for an option that we are incapable of discerning at a
given stage in our growth. We are
beginners. To know and do the will
of God is as lofty a goal as may be conceived, and working even with the best
prayer process cannot short-circuit the course of experience needed for
discernment to grow.
Prayer
culminates in decision and action and commitment to actually accomplish the will
of God. Without a follow-through a
tennis stroke is impotent. And how
can God give guidance to one who is not prepared to respond by making a
decision? Prayer without decision
readiness is like asking God to submit a recommendation for the individual to
study and dispose of. Now there is
no more time for delay. Decision
does not merely resolve to do something; it is already the beginning of the
action. And the course of action
may require considerable vigor to see through to the end, the full accomplishing
of the divine will. Marshalling
one's determination to get the job done is the final stage of the prayer
process.
Self-forgetting
worship
Prayer
can lead into service or into worship. Once
the hungry heart has unburdened itself and has been satisfied in prayer, once it
feels its deepest needs being filled, it is ready for a level of relating to God
that transcends need, hunger, desire. It
is ready to express love with all the heart and mind and strength.
Prayer
leads to thanksgiving. When we pray well, we can already begin to feel the divine
response. As that response fills us
up with happiness, thanksgiving comes very naturally. In thanksgiving we affirm what we feel to be of value, and we
acknowledge God as its Source. Thanking
is more than just giving a report of our feelings, transferring information.
It is a free act, irreducible to elements.
We thank in response to a gift. Thanksgiving
is a person-to-person transaction. The
attitude of thanksgiving carried into daily life is strikingly effective in
bringing to our attention the good that is present and possible in our
situation. As a culmination of
prayer, thanksgiving holds us in that appreciation of values and that turning to
God that is the very threshold of worship.
If
the diligent mind can follow through the phases of the prayer process, worship
goes beyond what the mind can do. Worship
is the most direct contact that we have with God.
Think of the difference in the regard for a parent by a child who wants
something and the child who is simply enjoying the presence of the parent.
Both moments are legitimate, but only the second has the fullest
interpersonal quality. Worship goes
beyond the mind's delight in truth, enjoyment of beauty, or satisfying
contemplation of goodness. This is
because the mystery of the infinite Personality is never exhausted by the values
we have been able to comprehend thus far; there are always surprises on the path
ahead.
Worship
is the summit of spiritual experience and mercifully does not need to be
understood. Some people describe
worship as a feeling, some as an insight, some as an experience of love. Worship is sometimes filled with emotion, yet is not emotion.
It may take flight on the wings of thinking, yet is beyond thinking. Worship, though based on the concept of God, uses its concept
as a trampoline. Words cannot
delimit it; the experience is between the worshiper and God. One time it is experienced as spiritual rest, attunement with
the eternal now; another time as inspiring, creative, and future-oriented.
Worship may be directed to the Father as to a person contrasted with an
indefinite background of other reality, or it may be the celebration of God as
the center and circumference of all reality, identification with the Whole.
Someone
hearing a description of worship might well wonder, "Can I do that?"
The capacity to worship and to grow in spontaneity in worship is God's
gift to everyone. Humans inherently have the capacity to know God and to
receive his love and to return that love. Everyone
has the capacity to recognize and contemplate divine values and the ability to
sharpen that intuition through study and experience and reflection.
The impulse to worship will give rise to the genuine article whenever the
soul feels values and the spirit is given the opportunity to lead.
The
following teachings have challenged and stimulated me for years, and I offer
them to the adventurer. Everyone is
provided with the intuitive ability to sift and sort and discern the teachings
and practices that are helpful at a given phase of life.
Again, balance is needed between the simplicity and complexity.
Too much attention to complex teachings blocks the worship experience
itself. Any tracing of complexity
should ideally follow the simplicity of the one-to-one relation with God.
Again, "The secret of worship is to do it."
This advice speaks for the simplicity of worship, which does not depend
upon mastering complex teachings but on sincerity in loving God.
The complex concept given here is only intended to make the worship
experience more thorough and complete and satisfying.
One
more caveat. Teaching about worship
risks distracting the worshiper from the marvelous personality of God and the
magnificent qualities of the good and loving divine nature and the awesome
attributes of all knowing and all-powerful sovereign whom we adore.
A discourse about worship is secondary.
God is the point, the focus, the goal, the joy, the Source and Center.
The
blessings of worship are so abundant that is easy to desire worship for its
benefits. Therefore I have found it
helpful, in order to move into worship, to pray for help to make the transition
beyond prayer. Since a request
comes within the province of prayer, it may seem paradoxical to pray to be
carried beyond the attitude of prayer. Nevertheless,
I can attest that this prayer has been effective.
The
human impulse to worship is evident from a look at history.
We humans have worshipped the things of nature, departed ancestors, gods
and goddesses of every description, nothingness, the universe as a whole, and
the heavenly Creator. Those who
acknowledge nothing divine tend to channel their devotion toward human leaders
or toward material, intellectual, or social goals.
It remains our deepest act of freedom to choose whether or not to worship
God, to consecrate our lives to him. In
the end, the alternatives seem to be two: to order life around a center of
gravity that is either the self or God.
In
group worship those who conduct the worship may help.
One can prime the pump by bringing the character of God to mind by
reading and praying and singing. Nevertheless,
worship in its genuineness takes off as a spontaneous response to our
recognition of God. That
recognition is more than intellectual, more than rehearsing a list of the
characteristics of God; it is a recognition of divine values felt in the soul. As we advance in our capacity to interpret and appreciate the
phenomena of daily life we find more occasions that give rise to worship, and as
we take time for communion apart from work and study and play, prayer and
meditation provide the occasions for this soul response to arise.
The soul does not have to be instructed to worship.
The soul does not have to be told to begin worshiping.
The soul only needs a chance, given an experience of the values of
divinity. The soul takes off like a
racehorse out of a gate, like a stick set free to float downstream, like the
true self who loves to turn homeward toward the one who loves us infinitely.
If
the soul needs a chance, if we, in our heart of hearts, need a chance to
worship, then the mind must cooperate. The
mind must permit a process that is beyond itself to go on.
Like a parent who lets the child go on forth with a teacher who can take
the child places where the parent cannot lead, the mind must let the worship
experience proceed. The mind
consents, trusting that its highest philosophy and theology and conception of
religious truth can be permitted to relax, entrusting the guidance of the
worship experience to the spirit. The
mortal mind is blessed just to be around when such a sublime experience is
transpiring as the worship of God.
Monks
aspiring to worship for sustained periods of time have spilled ink over
countless pages about what to do with the mind's tendencies toward distraction. But the point (as most agree) is not to chastise, belittle,
or repress the mind. Artistic
philosophy improvises a more humane, holistic, and gentle technique with the
mind, shifting gears into the reflection-and-prayer mode as the occasion demands
and finding its way back to worship through the contemplation of meanings and
values. It should not be surprising
that the indwelling spirit, whose impulses are so relevant to practical life,
should sometimes be responsible for a "distracting" thought.
It is not the task of the intellect to police the process, reminding the
self of its proper focus. It is the
mind's privilege to participate in self-forgetting worship.
It
is not, then, the mind or a priest or musician or philosopher or theologian or
reader of inspired teachings that is the true conductor of worship but the
divine spirit. The self learns to
cease resisting, to trust in faith. The
spirit will carry our worship into the subtle activities that leave the human
understanding behind.
In
the end, returning to the "simplicity" of it all, worship is an
interpersonal affair: the human personality worshiping God.
It is the sustaining interpersonal character of worship that guides it
through the puzzles that may arise. For
example, what to make of the pleasure associated with the joy of worship?
How much of that is a biochemical phenomenon?
The wise worshiper does not let his or her focus long be upstaged either
with the pleasure as a phenomenon in itself or with speculation about its
source. God has created us in such a way that we can enjoy the
experience of worship; and inputs to the mind's enjoyment can come from material
as well as spiritual sources, and whatever range of the self happens to be
activated at a particular time need not be an issue.
In either case, God is the ultimate source of joy.
The wholeheartedness of worship does not require any particular physical
or emotional response; neither does a physical or emotional response embarrass
the worshipful intention. The point
is to sustain the worshipful intention so that the experience of joy is
sustained as a joyous experience of God.
It
should be noted that some of the most important insights from worship arise not
in times of being happy and on top of the world, but in times of being in the
depths. Thus there is a danger in
striving for or clinging to specific feelings.
Having a crystallized idea of the proper sentiment to attain blocks
progress.
The
creature-Creator relationship shall not be regimented.
One may run across a helpful proposed sequence to follow in worship, for
example, You are; You are in us; we are in You. Though much benefit may be derived from helpful suggestions,
making a rigid practice of them misses the point.
Conclusion
As astronomy probes outer space, spiritual experience probes inner space.
As the wonders of the night sky deepen as we learn more of light and
motion and the structure of galaxies, the wonders of simple prayer and worship
deepen as we probe and practice principles of thoroughness.
A
full prayer quest for wisdom gathers faith, focuses on the next step toward
one's destiny, mobilizes great attitudes, does the homework of trying to find a
human solution, surrenders completely
in openness to divine input, decides, and commits to getting the job done
completely.
A full worship experience begins in the awareness of values, turns in
gratitude to God as the source of those blessings, and moves into high gear as
the mind lets the divine spirit take the initiative.
The human personality as a whole worships Deity Personality as a whole.
I
sometimes contrast the life of prayer with the life of worship.
If prayer is a striving for values and worship is a celebration of
values, then it is possible for one mode or the other to predominate in life.
In the life of prayer, primarily a striving for values, worship occurs at
a break in the action, imparting a foretaste of the promised destiny of all
noble endeavor. Worship disengages
the gears of forward effort and gives a refreshing pause.
The life of worship is not necessarily a matter of having fragments of
hymns spontaneously pouring forth from one's background consciousness to fill
the unoccupied moments of the day. What
is essential, rather, is that the daily life of actualizing value potentials
should take place within an illumined faith grasp of the presence of the eternal
God. There is a sense of
participating in the process of emergence of truth and beauty and goodness.
Striving is then free of anxiety and compulsion.
To experience the summit of truth requires that we move beyond self and
even beyond the self's deepest convictions about the needs of others.
Such a radical openness to the divine lets beauty in and prepares service
to others that carries the flavor of genuineness.
When, in any situation, we can rise from a contemplation of facts to a
consideration of meanings to an appreciation of supreme values and to the
worship of the one who reveals divinity in the values the creature can
apprehend, then the experience of truth has come to its fullness.
And this fullness yields the joy and liberty of living in the family of
God. In this way the pursuit of
truth leads to beauty and goodness.