Hi folks,<br><br>Last night was our first new-format gathering. We talked about some basics of a Gnostic approach to spiritual practice and tried a new approach to the Jesus Prayer. I thought I'd share some of what came up.<br>
<br>The basics of spiritual practice in our tradition it seems to me are, loosely, awareness training and prayer.<br><br>Awareness training shows up in most spiritual traditions because without it, you find yourself subject to your mind and emotions and unable to bring much attention to the what you're trying to do, whether that's sharing in liturgy, prayer, transformative practices or whatever. The basics of awareness training are simple: pick something to focus on, compassionately return your attention to that point of focus when it drifts, repeat; try to improve your ability to focus for longer periods and with greater quality and depth.<br>
<br>Favourite objects of concentration are: the breath, images (statues, ikons, crucifixes, iconic shapes like hexagrams and so on) and words (centering prayer, for instance, is based on using significant words like "Abba" - which means Daddy or "Maranatha" - which means Come Lord! - Aramaic has a lovely open, sonorous tone for the job).<br>
<br>Many things may happen in awareness training, but one way to explain the point of it is to improve your ability to be present with what's happening.<br><br>Prayer, by contrast, as I see it, is an activity in which we adjust our patterns of thinking and feeling to align with the beneficial presence of the Divine in which we are constantly bathed.<br>
<br>The Jesus Prayer is a nice example of the ways this can work. The prayer is old and simple. The words are:<br><br>Lord, have mercy<br><br>or in Greek:<br><br>Kyrie, eleison<br><br>I like the Greek because it makes it clearer that the sense of "mercy" (eleison) is less Bohemian Rhapsody and more Florence Nightingale. The prayer is voicing a longing for healing. One form of the classical instructions for the prayer are to pray is from the heart, with a devoted yearning for the beloved Lord (Kyrie).<br>
<br>So the way the prayer is to be approached internally is to begin with cultivating a sense of devoted yearning and to offer that with the word "Kyrie" and then open oneself to received the grace and peace of the Divine with the word "eleison". <br>
<br>Simple to say, but as one gets more practiced in cultivating the kind of thinking and feeling the prayer describes, I would say that two things happen:<br><br>First, in the praying of the prayer the sense of division from the object of prayer become softer and begin to dissolve and the prayer naturally becomes softer and then silent. It becomes hard to stay so attached to you the subject, praying to an imagined Divine object and the pray-er, the pray-ing and the prayed-to are One.<br>
<br>Second, that we achieve at least briefly what is called in Greek "metanoia" - a change in mind or in thought. We understand that in loving we are loved and that that is a fundamental condition of our existence. As we persist with the prayer, that change becomes more certain, less something we hope and more something we know.<br>
<br>And we Gnostics are, after all, all about the knowing.<br><br>I love that very simple prayer and it's a treasure for me that in every Eucharist service we say it, linking the liturgy to our own private spiritual practice and to the practice of countless lay folk, monk and nuns since the first century, right back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers.<br>
<br>Saint Uriel's meets next Sunday for prayer and discussion at 6pm at 15 Francis St. I pray that you can join us.<br><br>My blessings on you and your week ahead,<br><blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 0pt;">Reverend Father Tim Mansfield<br>
Rector, <a href="http://www.saint-uriels.org">Parish of Saint Uriel the Archangel</a>, Sydney, Australia<br>
<a href="http://www.johannite.org">Apostolic Johannite Church</a></blockquote><br>