Contemplation 3 – Distractions
12/06/24 21:05 Filed in: Christianity
One of the main themes of contemplation is stillness – moving from stillness of body to stillness of mind and eventually stillness of heart. But in practice, many people experience something quite different. As soon as they try to be quiet before God, distracting thoughts and emotions fill their mind and take away their focus. Why does this happen? What does it say about our prayer? And what can we do about it?
The first stage – stillness of body – is the easiest. Usually we can adopt a suitable posture with no points of tension and learn to relax our body, taking slow and deeper breaths. Learning to slow down and breathe properly is worth doing in itself, in the manic society we live in.
Every contemplative tradition that I know about recommends that you do something at the start of your period of silence to help you focus on being in God's presence. It can be simple as listening to your breath going in and out. You might focus on a simple word or phrase. For example repeating the name 'Jesus' in your mind, as the two syllables match the rhythm of your breath. In eastern Christian traditions, the Jesus Prayer is commonly used: 'Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
But whatever method you choose, you will probably find your focus disappearing as your mental processes re-engage. Your mind begins to wander. Thoughts about the day's business, feelings about people you've met, inner tensions may arise. All these things can occupy your attention almost without you realising it. And this can take up quite a lot of your time. You may feel that your prayer time has been wasted.
The first point to make is that these distractions are a natural and inevitable consequence of the human condition. You may try to quieten your mind, but it continues to operate and to generate all sorts of thoughts and ideas. This affects everyone, from those taking their first steps in contemplation, to those who have been practising for years. It says nothing about the quality of your prayer, either in itself or in comparison with others (and in this field of life, you should never make comparisons).
At some point in your prayer, you will become aware that your attention is elsewhere. The right thing to do is not to engage with the distraction, but simply to acknowledge it and push it away. Just let it go. It helps to return to what you were focusing on before, whether that is your breath, or a word or phrase. You just return to God. And you do this time after time, every time. The distractions won't go away, but eventually you will get better at dealing with them in the right way. There is absolutely no reason to feel discouraged.
You may also find, eventually, that you are better able to maintain your concentration on the subject of your focus. Remaining in a concentrated state does help to keep distractions at bay. And it has other benefits too – as practitioners of the ancient and modern art of mindfulness will tell you. I like this insight by Jon Kabatt-Zinn in a classic mindfulness text entitled Wherever You Go, There You Are (Hyperion, 1994):
A calmness develops with intensive concentration practice that has a remarkably stable quality.
Christian authors also speak of the virtue of persistence. Here is Benignus O'Rourke, in Finding Your Hidden Treasure (DLT, 2010):
It is a long way from the surface of our lives, a long road from the troubled mind to the place of peace in the centre of our being. ‘The longest road,’ wrote Dag Hammarskjöld, is the journey inward. Between you and him lie care, uncertainty, doubt. To reach the place where Christ awaits us we need to be prepared for long periods of silence and quiet, long enough for our doubts to dissolve, our cares to lose their urgent pressures, our uncertainty to give way to trust. To wait in silence for as long as it takes is to be taken eventually to the still centre where we find that the mind has become quiet and the heart is at peace. And, in the stillness, we find God.
In some strange way, the distractions may serve a positive purpose. In the stillness, emotions and painful thoughts that are buried deep in the psyche may start to emerge. The mental health profession is well aware of this. Contemplative writers know that the process of silent prayer can be healing in itself as the God who himself praying in you through the Spirit gets to repair your inner damage.
One more quotation makes the point very well. It comes from the North American writer Cynthia Bourgeault, who is associated with the Contemplative Outreach network. This is from her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (Cowley Publications, 2004):
What really happens when one enters the cloud of unknowing, resting in God beyond thoughts, words, and feelings, is a profound healing of the emotional wounds of a lifetime. As these wounds are gradually surfaced and released in prayer (one simply lets them go non-possessively, rather than retaining them for inspection as in psychoanalysis), more and more the false self weakens and the true self gradually emerges.
The psychology of healing is one of the main themes of her book and has its own section with two chapters on The Divine Therapy and From Healing to Holiness. I had not come across this feature of contemplative prayer before. I find her insights so inspiring. They have helped me to see how God is using my own prayer practice to heal me of my own psychological wounds (many of these self-inflicted).
So my advice to anyone troubled by distractions is the same advice that Tim offered to Dawn at the end of The Office Christmas Special: Never give up.