Reframe Your SELF

For over two millennia at least, authentic ancient traditions have been telling us that as individuals we're frequently making a very subtle yet devastating mistake in our lives...

We're incorrectly identifying our SELF!  Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but in fact it's not.  In the modern Western world, especially, we're taught from infancy to identify our SELF with our brain, our thoughts and our emotions.  That's right, Descartes has won - we're all taught to believe his maxim, "I think, therefore I am".  

In fact, though, your true "self", your deepest "essence" is none of these things.  It's not your brain, nor is it the mindstream of endless thought running through your head, nor is it the emotions attached to those thoughts or welling up from deep within.  You HAVE a brain, thoughts and emotions, but you are not any one of them, nor any combination of them.

If you believe your brain, thoughts and emotions constitute your personal identity, then you automatically reduce your body to the role of a simple transportation system, a "biological golf cart" if you will.  And this unleashes a host of obstacles in your life and will suck your RESILIENCE dry:

• You will live in your head
• Therefore you will reduce the role of the body to that of a transportation system
• This will induce a pattern of chest breathing, which in turn will push energy higher into your torso and head, leaving you increasingly vulnerable to negative emotional states
• This disrupts the entire human energy system and leads to emotional imbalance
• Chest breathing also has physical consequences, in that it fails to detoxify the major organs as abdominal breathing does 
• It also leads to emotional incompetence - the tendency to either repress emotion or act it out.  Both tendencies leave you as the slave of your emotional world.
• Until you "get back in your body", you'll never master your emotions 

The only way out of this sad state of affairs is to engage in a meditative process.  This allows you to observe the mindstream and realize by your own experience that neither your thoughts nor your emotions are the REAL you.  It also puts your consciousness back inside your body where it belongs instead of letting it wander aimlessly in the world of the senses looking for something to ease the pain.  And there is nothing more painful than repressing emotion.

If you're making this fundamental "anthropological" mistake of identifying your Self with your brain, what you're really doing is reducing who you are to a bunch of acquired, observable characteristics, to the conditioning you've inherited from your society.  You are SO much more than that.


Now here I could get all poetic on you and tell you you're in the image and likeness of God, you're the Buddha nature or you're a being of light.  All of these are true, in that your real capacities exceed anything you've likely experienced.  But in the end, you have to discover all this for yourself or it has no value, it's just more useless information.

So the first step to recovering your personal resilience is to take your consciousness within, where you'll discover the real YOU over time and free yourself from bondage to your mindstream and emotions.  You'll stop living in a past you can't change or a future that's not here yet and discover the joy of being "present" to the "now".


And once you've done that, you're ready for the next step in your healing...

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

A Spiritual Short-Cut to Emotional Tranquility, Less Stress and More Happiness

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Please note: the following post contains a spiritual practice that you should only attempt if you are relatively stable emotionally, self-aware and not under psychiatric care.

Also, remember to join us for tonight's Spiritual Life 1: Foundations teleseminar / webinar at: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=21310599

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As you already know, we'll be examining the meaning of that nebulous phrase, "spiritual life", in my upcoming teleseminar series on the subject.  Whatever it means to you personally, though, there's little doubt you're interested improving your emotional life and increasing your subjective feeling of well-being.  

And that's a key point because it shows us that whatever spiritual life may mean to each of us, one common denominator is that it is somehow intimately related to our emotional being and, through that, to our very core as human beings.  

So what can you do TODAY to calm your mind, settle your emotions, shed your stress and remain increasingly tranquil no matter what's going on around you?  Well, there is one simple practice you could adopt that will do all this for you.  In its best articulated form, it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice, although elements of the ancient Christian mystical tradition and later Taoism both have equivalents.  Please note that you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice this - the results speak for themselves.

The Practice

Choose a day to start your practice.  It should be an ordinary weekday with nothing too unusual happening.  Here's what you'll do:

1. When you wake up, sit up for a few minutes in a meditative posture and focus on your breathing to calm your mind.
   
   
2. Once your mind is as calm as it will get, say to yourself, "Everything I encounter today is simply a projection of my mind.  Pleasant or unpleasant, everything I experience is no more real or substantial than a dream.  If someone acts in a way that is hurtful to me, I can simply remember this is just a projection of my mind so that a negative emotional reaction on my part would make no sense.  If something wonderful happens, I can simply remember that pleasant and unpleasant occurrences are always alternating, so there's no point in getting too excited."
   
   
3. As you take your shower, just say to yourself, "Here I am, washing this dream body with this dream soap."  And when you're getting your breakfast, realize you're pouring dream coffee into a dream mug.
   
   
4. As you go through your day, remind yourself continually that what you experience is a product of your mind.  And remind yourself that the more positive your emotional state now, and the more positively you can affect the state of other people, the more you are planting the seeds of positive experiences for yourself in the future.
   
   

This Spiritual Practice Has Several Advantages...

1. It reminds us that nothing we see or experience in our world exists in the same way that our senses suggest to us.  For example, all "material reality" is largely empty space and fields of energy.  There is no solid "matter" at all.  As Einstein once said, "Reality is an illusion... albeit a very convincing one."
   
   
2. It quickly severs the link between what happens to us and our habitual emotional responses, thus building our inner freedom.
   
   
3. It allows us to maintain a much calmer emotional life while at the same time building positive emotional content throughout the day.
    
   
4. In other words, events will no longer control how we feel.
   
   
5. We naturally find ourselves in the "place of the observer" - one of the principal goals of meditation and of deep prayer.
   
   
6. We find ourselves happier, with less stress and a lot more joy, all for very little effort.

Is there a catch?  Just one: this is a discipline and a practice - it doesn't work unless you do it.  One hint for you before you start - take it easy and begin with few expectations.  It's pretty common near the beginning to feel a sense of "Wow! This is SO cool!!" and then, a day or two later, to feel, "Damn, this is harder than I thought!"  

No worries, though.  That's all totally natural.  Just give it a try and feel free to share what you discover by commenting on this post or dropping us a line.  Enjoy!!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Helping the Japanese People: Remote Resilience Building

It's no secret the Japanese people need all the support and every kind of support we can give them right now.  So how can you personally help out?

Of course you can give financially, and perhaps you can't envisage any other way to help out.  However, according to Authentic Ancient Traditions of self-transformation and according to an increasingly impressive body of scientific research, you may well be able to help Japan even more in a totally different way.

Remote Assistance: Is it Possible?

Can you help someone else acquire more personal resilience?  Can you do this even if the other person is unaware you're doing so?  A number of recent studies in remote healing (also known as "distance healing") tell us the answer is a definite "yes".  You can have a look for yourself at some of these studies in Lynne McTaggart's book, The Field.  Other case studies came to my attention at last year's Energy Psychology Conference.  The bottom line...


The bottom line is that human intention has the documented ability to reliably influence and alter molecular structure and mental state at a distance, any distance, unhindered by known physical laws or the perceived limitations of time and space.  Since this is the case, you and I can in fact contribute to the protection, healing and resolution of the multiple crises that have struck Japan - earthquake, tsunami, reactor meltdown, volcanic eruption, economic turmoil and more.  

A Resilient People

The Japanese have always been a resilient people, a people with a strong sense of identity, of purpose and a people who were very fortunate to learn a great lesson many centuries ago.  They learned that when a person becomes "rightly situated" within him- or herself as a human being, when the correct mind-body relationship is cultivated, that person becomes incredibly strong in every way.


"Hara no aru hito" - "the man with a belly", describes what they mean.  When a person is centered in the Hara, what the Chinese refer to as the dantian, he or she is imperturbable.  So hara no aru hito also conveys the idea of someone who always knows what to do.  Needless to day, the Japanese will need all the hara they have to deal with the present disaster.

What Can We Do?

Going back to the teachings of ancient traditions and the recent scientific evidence supporting them, here are a few simple suggestions you can implement right away.


Before you actually use one of these methods, though, take a few moments and imagine what you would be feeling and experiencing if you were in their place.  This creates empathy and opens up your capacity to use these powerful methods more effectively.

1. Pray for Them.  They need strength on all levels, the healing of trauma, protection from the impact of past and coming events.  And we can pray for the best possible outcome of those aspects of this disaster still in the making - the reactor situations and the volcanic activity.
    
   
2. Embrace Them in Love.  Simply go into a quiet meditative state and with the eye of your heart, embrace them in love.  Love is the single strongest force in the universe.  Nothing has ever or will ever defeat it.  The ancient Christian ascetics who genuinely encountered divine love called it "uncreated energy" - "uncreated" because it is totally different from anything else we know in this world, and infinitely more powerful.  That is why it is said that love is stronger than death.
   
   
3. Tap for Them.  Did you know you can use a tapping procedure such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to help others?  I first heard of the idea of doing this for Japan from Dawson Church, who has been responsible for much of the scientific research on EFT.  He suggested tapping every hour on the hour.  However you do it, it will all help.  If you're a little unclear on how to do it, here's a video to help you.  Keep in mind you that if you're used to a slightly different tapping sequence, you can use that instead.  

As you can see, you really can make a difference, and without even leaving home. 


A friend of mine, John Green, runs an organization here in Ottawa that's ranked number 3 in the world for earthquake rescue.  John and his crew have no doubt already made their way to Japan.  That's their talent and their gift.  We can't all go there, but we can all give our loving support and that support is critical.


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger





 

Prayer, Healing and Resilience

When you hear the word "resilience" and especially terms like "personal resilience", you may get the idea that it's about being "tough".  And you would be right...

...although ancient traditions have a more comprehensive idea of being "tough" than we do.  


Some of the toughest people I've ever met were Orthodox Christian monks living in remote locations, such as on Mount Athos in Greece.  There I encountered men of prayer who, despite being twice my age, sure gave me a run for my money in the "tough" department - just following their daily routine would knock most professional athletes off their feet pretty quickly.  

You're about to see a short video about one such person.  For Orthodox (ancient) Christianity, as for any "authentic ancient tradition", the idea that you could become "resilient" without having a spiritual life, a life connecting you to the Absolute Reality, would be absurd.  


Today we're going to look at what ancient Christianity considered the single most important practice in human life - unceasing prayer of the mind in the heart, also called "noetic prayer".  


As you watch this all-too-short video, I'd encourage you to take very careful note of what Fr. Teofil, our special guest today, has to say:

"Praying for the Unity of Our Own Being"

That's a remarkable statement!  Most people think of prayer as a request for something outside of ourselves, and least of all do they think of it as a means to reunite their inner powers of their mind-body organism.


In fact, the practice of unceasing prayer is quite different from other understandings of prayer for a number of reasons:

1. It's not the usual "give me, give me" approach to prayer (although making requests in prayer is perfectly legitimate)
   
2. Neither is it the "please save my sorry ass" approach we lapse into when our own decisions come back to haunt us ;-)
   
3. It's not so much an activity with a start and end point, but the search for an ongoing meditative state, where you remain immersed in and under the loving influence of the Absolute.

Of course, there are some presuppositions basic to this meditative prayer, the first of which is that God, the Absolute Reality, is "uncreated, personal existence".  That is, God is conscious of you personally and actually loves you personally.  God is not just the amorphous total of "all that is" nor some form of "divine electricity".  Like electricity, God has energy, but face it, electricity never loved anyone.  


The ancient tradition goes so far as to claim that this kind of prayer is the center of spiritual life, simply because it is the one activity that, more than any other, unites the human person to the Source of all life.  And, as Fr. Teofil suggests, it heals and creates wholeness within you while you're on the journey.

Without the knowledge that comes uniquely through noetic prayer, faith remains intellectual, our inner being remains unhealed and the likelihood we will have a genuine encounter with God in this life remains slim.  Unfortunately, though, the ancient teaching on noetic prayer was methodically suppressed in the West over this past millennium.  

As one holy man described the fruits of this kind of prayer:

"Compared to the Uncreated divine light, all the lights of this world, even the sun at high noon, are nothing but darkness.  It is a strange thing: when that true light comes, there takes place a union of the Infinite and Uncreated with the human person, who is created and finite.  By His energies the latter are truly transformed into gods and children of the Most High.  It is then and only then that a person can understand that he really is created in the image and likeness of God."  


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)



 

Sitting Meditation Postures - Mastering the Full Lotus

It's become almost synonymous with sitting meditation the world over.  Some will even tell you it's the "best" meditation posture, advancing all kinds of esoteric arguments to prove their point.  

Yes, it's that darn full lotus posture, the one we all have a love-hate relationship with because so few people, at least in the West, can maintain it comfortably, if they can even get into it in the first place ;-)


So let's set the record straight on the full lotus by looking at the facts:

1. It is a superb posture for meditation; no argument there.  It leaves you perfectly balanced and anchored, and may even alleviate the need for a cushion under your butt. 
   
    
2. There are lots of other, easier meditation postures used in many meditative traditions, such as the ankle lock, perfect posture, the half lotus, kneeling posture and even sitting on a chair or stool.  So any argument that you can only meditate "properly" in the full lotus is, in my opinion, 'full' of something else...
   
3. You need to beware of trying to force yourself to use the full lotus before your body is adequately prepared, because you risk permanent knee damage.

I make no secret of the fact that practicing meditation of some variety, your ability to enter into inner stillness, is one of the keys to your personal resilience.  So finding the right posture for yourself is an important step.  

Here's a super video by Martin Faulks in the UK about how to master the lotus posture.  And for those of you who practice sitting meditation and have no intention of "mastering the full lotus", I'd recommend you watch it anyway, since it briefly covers other postures and has lots of useful material for you:







What makes this such a great presentation?  Just this:

• It gives you some background on the lotus flower as a symbol
• It explains and demonstrates the difference between doing the lotus properly and doing it wrong - which can damage your knees
• It shows you exactly how to train your body for the lotus (training that can benefit you even if you're using one of the other postures, by the way!)
• It emphasizes the critical preparation of the hip joints
• It demonstrates, albeit briefly, the related sitting postures you're more likely to use

The one thing I would add here is that if you're seriously interested in improving your full lotus and maybe getting it to the point where you can use it comfortably to meditate, I'd suggest you start in the spring.  Why?


When the ambient temperature around you warms up, so do your soft tissues, and this makes it much easier for you to stretch with less likelihood of injury.  So if you start your "lotus project" in, say, April, then you'll have about six solid months to work on it before the weather cools off again (of course, the opposite is the case for those of you in the southern hemisphere).  


Enjoy the video and happy meditating!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Between Force and Surrender

If you're not as effective in every area of life as you'd like to be, you might want to consider the 

following...

You can react in one of two ways to pretty much everything in your life.  You can use FORCE 

(willpower) to control it, or you can SURRENDER to it.  Each has its place.  One of my clients 

brought this to my attention a few months ago.  I noticed she seemed unable to do such a 

simple thing as taking just 15-30 minutes each morning to "center" herself.   On the other hand, 

she was fighting furiously (and ineffectively) with her thoughts, with those parts of herself and her 

life she doesn't like.

In other words, she was choosing to SURRENDER to laziness (a terrible enemy you never want 

to surrender to, by the way).  And on the other hand, she was using brute FORCE to fight against 

her thoughts of inadequacy, fear, anxiety, loneliness and a host of others.

Like most of us, my client is in the habit of using FORCE and SURRENDER in exactly the wrong 

way.

We need to FORCE ourselves to lead a powerful life,  rather than giving into to our tendency to 

just let ourselves go.  That takes determination.  It always has and it always will. 

And yet, we need to SURRENDER inwardly to the truth about where we're at NOW.  That means 

we stop RESISTING our neurotic tendencies - our fears, our poor self-image, our sharp edges 

and the rest.  Why?  Because only by seeing reality as it REALLY IS can we overcome those 

neuroses.  

And we don't overcome them by FORCE, by repressing them.  That's what created most of them 

in the first place.  When we calmly stare our uncomfortable aspects in the face in a 

non-judgmental way, we find they begin to lose their hold on us.

There are lots of people who think RESILIENCE is about being tough.  And yes, there’s a place 

for that forceful “yang” approach.  It really is vital to building a deliberate, powerful and 

stress-free life.  However…

Equally important and often ignored is the judicious use of surrender, the “yin” approach, 

particularly on the more subtle emotional and spiritual levels... to the right things at the right 

moments, of course.  In fact, it’s the only way to become a fully functional human being.

Not surprisingly, the most effective tool for learning the proper way to surrender inwardly is the 

process of meditation.  Meditation puts you face to face with the very things you've been 

repressing for years or decades, yet gives you the space and comfort to "create space" for 

them and allow them to dissolve on their own.  New meditators are often astonished at how 

much emotional content they've been repressing and how neurotic it was making them.

If you're interested in learning more about the meditation process and how to transform every 

moment of your life into a meditation that builds your health and calms your thoughts and 

emotions, you can go to:

http://www.harapower.com/ 

The irony is, you'll never learn how to surrender to the REAL, to relax deeply into the essence of 

life and discover your true self, unless you know when to apply force.   Every authentic ancient 

tradition is built on this delicate balance between force and surrender.

Your friend in the "war for peace", 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Meditation and Mastering Your Life

After watching the amazing video below, one Youtube viewer appended this saying from Milarepa, perhaps Tibet's most beloved sage:

If ones tries to vanquish foes in the outer world,
They increase in greater measure.
If one conquers his Self-mind within,
All his foes soon disappear.
~ Milarepa (A tibetan yogi)

So enjoy this beautiful and profound animated video and ask yourself afterward, "How does this apply to MY life?"

To Learn Meditation

...and to begin to taste the incredible experience of life that proficiency in meditation offers to every human being, including you, join me this coming Thursday night at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific, for a special multi-media presentation on:

The Meditation Miracle

4 Steps to Transforming Every Moment into Rock Solid Inner Peace, Health and Happiness

=======================================================================

Thursday October 7 at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific

http://attendthisevent.com/?eventID=15305691

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Watch your email for further information!

~Dr. Symeon Rodger

Noetic Prayer: The "Real Chocolate" of Spiritual Life

In the pre-dawn darkness, broken only by candle light, I felt a tap on the shoulder.  "The 'yerondas' will see you now," said a voice from behind, speaking Greek.  I turned to follow him out of the Church, where we had already been praying for half an hour, and across the compound to another of the monastery's buildings. 

As I entered the abbott's humble quarters, he rose to introduce himself in a very warm and welcoming way, as is typical on Mount Athos, a penninsula jutting into the Aegean off the Greek mainland, where only Orthodox Christian monks have lived for the last thousand years. 

Though we were both multi-lingual, we quickly settled on French as the easiest form of communication for us and began to talk about various things.  I told the abbott I would soon be teaching theology at the university level for the first time and asked his advice. 

"The most important thing is the heart, " he said.  "Theology is not primarily dates, events and facts.  It's primarily the transmission of a living experience.  You need 'the prayer' - it's the key to everything.  The more you get a grip on 'the prayer', the greater the effect of your teaching."

Hmmm... not "prayer" generically, but "the prayer".  An enigmtic expression, yet very clear to the two of us conversing in the candle-lit darkness of the Athonite wilderness. 


What is "The Prayer"?


We've already talked this week about the importance of prayer to your personal resilience and how to begin a life of prayer that gets results and increases your faith in the process.  Today, though, we're going to talk about the highest form of prayer, the "real chocolate" of spiritual life.

It's sometimes called "unceasing prayer" because it becomes eventually a state of being.  And it's technically called "noetic" prayer because it's the prayer of the nous, as opposed to the rational mind.  The nous is the ancient Christian term for your deep, intuitive mind - it's a form of intelligence within you that knows reality directly and not through concepts, the way the rational mind does. 


To clarify, this isn't prayer in the sense of "give me, give me" or "save me from the consequences of my own stupidity".  This kind of prayer is about achieving a living communion, an assimilation of being, with the Absolute Reality. 


We build our resilience by remaining as far as possible integrated into the Absolute (God), under His influence and open to His energies (the energies of God, by the way, is a technical term that goes back at least to the 4th century), and the only way to do this is to cultivate a meditative state of openness and inner stillness. 


What's the catch?  Your mind stream, that internal dialogue that locks you up into an individual, isolated and ego-centric perception of reality is what prevents this.  The more active the mind stream, the more we identify ourselves with our thoughts and fall under the sway of delusive thinking and powerful emotions we don't control.  The Absolute can't act within us under these circumstances. 


Your real self is not your thoughts or your emotions.  So the more you're under the mind stream's influence, the more you lose track of who you are, until finally you totally identify your self with your personality, which is little more than a collection of reactions to past experiences, to cultural brainwashing, to media propaganda, as well as of numerous other influences, including fluctuating hormones, biorhythms and phases of the moon.  In the end, you're totally controlled by your environment and lose your inner freedom.  


Noetic prayer frees you from all that and enables you to become who you really are.  It also opens you up to the Absolute and keeps you that way.  You begin to perceive the world in much more vibrant colors, so to speak, than other people do.


One master of noetic prayer, the famous elder Porphyrios of Athens (d. 1991), knew everyone's name, could communicate with animals and, if you came to see him from overseas, he might tell you clairvoyantly to fix the front step of your house in California and to make sure your sister in Florida sees a specialist for her bad knee.  Such is the power and effect of noetic prayer. 

On my visit to Athos in 1998 I was too late to meet him in person, but we talked to his senior disciple for several hours about the old man.  When another spiritual guide had once told an inquirer to consult Porphyrios, the inquirer protested.  The spiritual guide said, "My child, Father Porphyrios is like a color TV set; I am just a black and white one." 



Beginning to Practice Noetic Prayer:


There are many different approaches that can work for different people.  For modern Western people, it's often best to use basic meditation as a starting point, since this is a very effective way to gain a direct experience of the nous and to separate your self from your mind stream - your thoughts and emotions.


Just use your mental attention to follow your breath in and out.  When thoughts and emotional states arise and try to dominate your inner attention, just ignore them and return your attention to your breathing.  This is called "watchfulness" - using the nous (your mental attention) to keep your mental continuum free of clutter.


The more you do this, the more you'll discover that the centre of your noetic energy is in "the place of the heart."  The place of the heart is in the upper chest, and not everyone experiences it in exactly the same location.   For most, it's in the upper chest, above the physical heart and slightly to the left,  no doubt related to the heart chakra plexus of yogic anatomy.


Now it's time to request the divine presence, and there are several ways to do this.  The continuous repetition of a short prayer text is one of the most often used methods.  In ancient Christianity there were several in use that we know of, including various psalm verses, snipets of hymns, etc.


Eventually the formula that dominated and virtually replaced all others was the now famous "Jesus Prayer".  And when the abbott above talked about "the prayer", this is what he meant.  The text of the Jesus Prayer is "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."  It's also called the "five word prayer" because in the original Greek, it's only five words. 


Repitition of the words, which can be done aloud or just mentally, is often combined with the breathing, though not always. 


However, it's possible to pray noetically and request the divine presence with no words at all.


So it's not an accident the ancient Christian spiritual tradition (paradoxically the best documented and least known or understood spiritual tradition anywhere!) has always been called "hesychasm" - the practice of stillness or silence.  Note that this "silience" is interior and has nothing at all to do with whether you talk or not. 


By keeping your mental attention in the place of the heart, and more generally inside your physical form, you eventually learn how to defeat the disordered emotional drives of your past, as well as all outside influences, so that you experience an extreme inner peace.


Noetic prayer is, on the one hand, like candy - you can't taste it just once. You want to stay there always and you experience a great compulsion to do that.  On the other hand, it's really tough to master and takes continuous and regular practice.  This includes times you set aside to just practice this, because, without separate practice times, your efforts to remain in prayer during the hustle and bustle of the day won't likely bear fruit.


Ultimately, this kind of prayer leads directly to a direct encounter with the one, true and living God.  This is often called theoria (vision) or the vision of the Uncreated Light.  This experience confers real knowledge of God, erases all possibility of doubt in the existence of God, and leaves you in what St. Isaac the Syrian used to call "awstruck wonder".


It is an experience far beyond anything the human imagination can possibly dream up.  All I'll say about it is this, quoting another great master of noetic prayer from the 20th century...


"Compared to the Divine Light, all the lights of this world, even of the sun at high noon, are nothing but darkness.  At that time there takes place a union, a communion of the Infinite and Uncreated with human beings, who are created and limited.  By His energie, the latter are truly transformed into children of the Most High.  It is then and only then that you can be assured in all your being that you really are created in the image and likeness of God.  Every limitation of time and space disappears, you soar above duration and space and find yourself immersed in peace."1

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

1. from The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain, ed. Alexander Golitzin, p.157.

Prayer Requests that Really Work

For the second in this three part series on prayer, we're going to talk about prayer in the most common sense of the word, prayer as requesting a specific outcome.

Lots of people fall into the trap of feeling bad when they pray for some sort of outcome they want.  They feel they're not worthy of it, or that it's selfish or that God just wants them to suffer, so they should just suffer without the result they want.


All of this is deluded thinking.  First, if you're a Christian, you have to consider that the God-man - Christ Himself - taught people to ask for what they want and need.  "Ask and you shall receive," He said.  "Whatever you ask for in prayer, you shall receive."  You'll notice here that He doesn't say he'll reject any request that makes your life more pleasant because He wants you to suffer, and He doesn't say these requests are selfish. 

Now that we've got that out of the way, it's time to learn the essential steps to building a prayer routine that "works".  What do I mean by prayer that "works"?  Simple - you begin to see the fruits of your prayer, both in the sense of inner peace and the concrete results you've asked for (or something better).  And based on that, you develop a deep realization that you're not alone and that help is closer to you than your own breath.  Do you think that would work for you?
 

How to Make Requests in Prayer:

Step 1: Put Yourself in the Divine Presence


Represent God vividly before you.  Do not build a mental picture of Him; just put everything else out of your mind and feel the firm conviction that the power of God is here with you at this moment.  Remember that the direct experience of the ages has revealed two things - the Absolute is totally beyond human imagination, so don't try to imagine God, and the Absolute Reality is benevolent, so banish any childhood ideas that God is out to get you.  Simple be fully present and summon the full attention of your mind and heart.


Step 2: Be Honest with Yourself and with the Divine Presence


If you're not sure that God exists, or that God is personal, or that God is loving or any of that, don't worry.  If you have doubts, express those too.  And know that you can certainly ask God for clarification, for love and compassion.  The Absolute Reality is up to the challenge  ;-)



Step 3: Give Thanks


Give thanks for all the blessings in your life.  Give thanks for your family and friends, for your job and career, for your health and for all the good things that have happened to you.  Don't worry about being exhaustive here, just bring a few things to mind.


Then recall specific prayer requests you've made that have been fulfilled.  Yes, if you're new to this you may have to skip this step for now.  Just keep in mind it's vital to know exactly what you've asked for and exactly what you've received.  This will boost your faith, which in turn is vital to the success of your prayer and your entire spiritual life.  


Step 4: Make Your Requests


Know exactly and clearly what you're asking for.  Make your requests known to the Absolute without the slightest doubt.  Simply assume you will receive your requests and that if you don't receive them immediately, that some even greater benefit is coming to you.  


God is the Uncreated life force behind the entire universe.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  If you think your request is impossible, keep in mind it's absolutely possible for God and that the only barriers to your request are found in yourself and nowhere else.  


What should you pray for?  First of all, ask for spiritual progress for yourself and those close to you.  Ask that all of you will be protected from harm, whether spiritual or physical.  Pray for some people individually, especially those most in need.  Ask for any material thing you need as well.  In short ask for anything you need or want.  And always end by reaffirming the things you've prayed for.  This makes it all the more definite in your own mind and memory.  With it fixed in your memory, you can recall your prayer requests during the day, knowing that they're on their way to you and to the people you've prayed for. 

Of course, we're not talking about requests that are purely selfish in the sense of petty.  Praying to become a billionaire might not be the best idea, for example.  First, you don't need it and second, you probably wouldn't even like the result!  As St. Isaac the Syrian put it (and I'm translating this literally), "Don't ask a king for shit."

Does This Really Work?

Well, if you're a skeptic looking for scientific data, I'd recommend you have a look at Lynne McTaggart's classic book, The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe.  There you'll find the results of some rigorous scientific experiments on distance healing, for example, proving that prayer really can heal people measurably and repeatably, and over any distance.  

I can tell you personally that I'm continually stunned by the results of prayer.  I expect my requests to be granted - not because I'm gritting my teeth and fighting off doubt, but because I've seen it so frequently that it no longer occurs to me that I should doubt.  


It wasn't always like this, of course.  Learning fruitful prayer takes time, persistence and dedication.  But when you've learned well, you have a whole new take on life itself.  You know for a fact you're not alone.  You know for a fact that help is closer to you than your own heartbeat.  And you know that this help is the power that created the Universe in the first place. 

Next time, we'll talk about an even more profound type of prayer - prayer as a continuous inner state of communion with the Divine.  As I said before, this is the "real chocolate", the real nectar of life and it's unfortunately a teaching that has long since disappeared from conventional "religion". 


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Prayer - a Vital Resilience Practice

The requests keep coming in... they never stop.  "Talk more about prayer, meditation and spiritual life." "Will prayer help my health?"  "How does prayer fit into resilience and how is it different from meditation?"  And the list goes on...

So this week I'll do my best to answer and to help you make sense out of all this by talking about prayer.  We're going to do this in three parts.  First we'll talk about some of the basics.  Then, in mid-week, we'll talk about prayer in the sense most people are familiar with, as a request for a specific outcome.  And finally, on Friday, we'll get to the "real chocolate" of spiritual life - prayer as a continuous spiritual communion with the Absolute reality.  

"I Know Lots of People Who Pray... and Most of Them Are Wackos!"

If that statement describes the way you feel, believe me, you're not alone.  I'm a priest of the Orthodox Church and I feel the same way! 

So yes, you'll find lots of deluded people who "pray" frequently.  The Taliban folks pray.  Your Aunt Mildred who keeps beating you over the head with the Bible prays.  The TV evangelist who tells you God wants you to send him your money prays too.  Of course, all these people are praying more to their own delusions than anything else.  Prayer can transform you life into paradise on earth, but... if you stubbornly persist in delusion, it can destroy you.

Back in late 19th century Russia, someone asked a holy man named Theophan the Recluse why so many "religious" people were plain nuts.  The old man, who was a great teacher of prayer, replied that when you put yourself in contact with the Uncreated Being, you either accept that power into your life or you resist and distort it.  If you accept it, you become more like the divine - more loving, more peaceful, more integrated and more whole on every level.  If, however, you resist, you become the opposite of all that.  In short, if you're trying to use prayer to build up your ego instead of get past it, you're on the path to self-destruction. 
 

We, however, are presumably interested in prayer for the right reasons - to feel spiritually connected to the source of life, to fill our hearts with love, gratitude and joy, and to radiate compassion to those around us.  As long as this is our aim, and as long as we're genuinely trying to distinguish truth from falsehood, we're not in any danger of joining the wackos mentioned above.  

Do I Need Prayer to Become Resilient?

Looked at scientifically - and all authentic ancient mystical traditions were rigorously scientific - if the Absolute Reality exists (and they verified this), and if you are therefore in the image of or contain the nature and potentiality of the Absolute within you (also verified), and if the purpose of life is union with / transformation by this Absolute (another verified discovery), then it follows that if you are not consciously in communion with this Absolute, you are falling below you potential, weakening yourself and losing resilience.  Pretty simple, isn't it? 

You'll find a much more detailed discussion of all that in The 5 Pillars of Life, of course, but I can tell you now that in the eyes of any Authentic Ancient Tradition worldwide, if you don't pray, you're like someone who's never experienced real life at all.    

What If I'm Not Sure About God?

That's okay.  If you grew up in a "religious" milieu, you may still be struggling deep down with the idea that God is a cosmic despot with a significant anger-management problem, that He demands blind conformity to what some institution has told you and that if you don't believe in Him 100%, He's already really ticked off with you. 


Nonsense!  Without getting into the particulars, the whole idea of the angry God is a false teaching, according to the original Christian tradition.  There's some more information on this in The 5 Pillars of Life, as well.  Here's an example of what the early Christian tradition really learned about the divine being.  I suggest you read the following very carefully...


"God is good.  He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same.  We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him.  But if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him.  By living in holiness, we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked, we make Him our enemy.  It is not that He grows angry with us in some arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to the demons who torture us.  And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him change, but that through our actions and our turning to God we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God's goodness.  Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind."(1)


St. Silouan of Athos, a great Orthodox Christian spiritual teacher of the 20th century, once said there are only two kinds of spiritual people - those who believe in God and those who know God.  The latter are those who have had a direct, overwhelming encounter with the Uncreated.  

So if you're not too sure if God exists or what God / the Absolute reality is like, that's okay.  You need to be honest with yourself.  There is very little difference between you and the person who, to use Silouan's words, just "believes" but doesn't yet "know".  That person has simply taken a different ideological stand than you have.  However, he or she is still in the dark, in a manner of speaking.  


And yes, there are lots of Christians who'll be happy to tell you they "know" God, but their "knowledge" of God unfortunately has nothing to do with "knowing God" as the ancient mystical tradition taught and still teaches.  And Silouan was a typical example of that tradition. 

Finally, you may also be struggling, even unconsciously, with the whole idea of God as "father" or parental figure.  This can be especially troubling for people who have grown up in dysfunctional family environments where the parental role models were incompetent, if not overtly toxic.  It's no secret that how you related to your parents can have a huge effect on how you conceive of God.  Fortunately, there's an antidote.. a very old antidote that works wonders...

You see, unlike the Christianity of the West over the last millennium, the ancient tradition explicitly taught that you should not take verbal descriptions of God too literally.  Using what we now call "apophatic" theology or "theology by negation", the ancient tradition says that if we say, for example, that God is "good", then we also have to say that God is not "good" as we imagine that word, but good in a way that goes beyond our usual concepts.  And likewise, is we refer to God as "He", using the masculine pronoun (a huge stumbling block for many, given the historical shortcomings of most cultures), then we must also add that we do NOT mean "male as opposed to female" in the sense of human gender.  


So if you find yourself hung up on some of the traditional language about God, know that it was never intended to be taken in the simplistic way you were probably taught, and you can cheerfully dissociate your mental image of God from your parents.  


As Silouan said, after a particularly intense encounter with the Absolute Reality, "God is love insatiable."  When one of Silouan's contemporaries was asked by a younger person why he was always weeping, he answered, "My child, when God appears to you, all you can do is weep for joy!"




What's Coming Up Next:


Next time, we'll talk about putting your requests out there in prayer and how to do it so you get results.  In ancient times, prayer was referred to as "the art of arts and the science of sciences" and there's more to it than you ever imagined...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Spiritual Life: Reality or Delusion (Part 2)

Last time, I talked a bit about how we can discern real spiritual paths from the zillion "spiritual" side-tracks out there that can seriously mess up your life.  

This time, as promised, I'd like to talk about how you can begin an authentic spiritual life or get the one you have back on track. 


Now you may be thinking, "How can I start a spiritual life if I'm not really sure what I believe in yet?"  The answer is simple: if you feel the need to begin or expand your spiritual life, that means you most likely believe already that there is an Absolute Reality behind this visible universe, that life does have meaning, and that you can bring your own life more into alignment with this Absolute Reality than it is right now.  

I've studied spiritual life for decades and met some extraordinary people worldwide while doing so.  And over time I've become less and less interested in the specifics of each person's theological beliefs (as important as those may be) than in what they actually DO in their spiritual lives.  In fact, it's scarcely an exaggeration to say most people I know who would claim to have a spiritual life don't really do much of anything on a daily basis by way of practicing it. 

On the other hand, some of the people with the "busiest" spiritual lives, who "do" lots on a daily basis are primarily engaged in ritual actions that make them "feel" spiritual without actually transforming their consciousness.  In other words, they too have a "spirituality" largely confined to beliefs, to the intellectual level, that doesn't affect how they use their mind-body organism at all. 

Unfortunately, according to every Authentic Ancient Tradition worldwide, that kind of spiritual life is pure self-deception.  Real spiritual life depends not only on what you do, but on doing the one thing that will transform your life...

The 5 Laws of Spiritual Life:

Here are five things to put on your spiritual "to-do" list.  If you do each one consistently, patiently and joyfully, I'll guarantee you'll reap the fruits of your spiritual practice in your own life before long.  Remember, of course, that in spiritual life, the journey itself is to be enjoyed - not because it's easy (it's not), but because of how it changes you.


1. Persevere:
Spiritual life is about repeating the same basic practices over and over until they transform your inner world into paradise.  While you do this you will be tested beyond your current limitations.  You'll find it boring... or painful... or useless... and you have to learn to disregard all that and continue.  That's the plain truth.    


2. Discover the Miracle of Stillness:
Inner stillness is the foundation of every Authentic Ancient Tradition without exception, including the original Christian tradition, where it's called "hesychia", meaning "stillness" or "silence".  This silence is interior and doesn't refer to whether you talk or not.  You discover inner silence by sitting in quiet meditation and using some psycho-somatic method to calm your mind and observe your inner world without getting caught up in the emotional drama.  To get started, simply pray to be open to the truth and to be preserved from harm.  Then go into your stillness practice with that intention.  The most common, safest and powerful method is simply to use your mental attention to observe your breath.  Random thoughts will come, of course, and you can't stop them.   Don't try.  Just bring your attention back to the process if your mind wanders.  


3. Find Inspiration:
It's vital that you stay inspired in your spiritual life, and that's partly why a community of like-minded practitioners has always been considered so important.  Whether or not you can find such a community right away, you do need to find books, articles, videos, etc. to keep you spiritually inspired.  You need to build yourself a steady diet of this inspiration because, if you don't, the pressures of daily life will almost certainly derail your spiritual intentions.


4. Pursue Harmony:
In everything you do, pursue harmony.  This means first and foremost pursuing harmony within yourself, harmony of thought and emotion, harmony between your mind and body.  And then it means harmony with the created world, with your environment, with your spouse, your children your friends and colleagues.  


5. Beware of the Dark Side:
The dark side of spirituality is very real and it's all around you.  You'll find some people telling you that you need to join their group to be saved from hell, or that you need to persecute groups they don't like because God said so, or that you have to fit into their preconceived ideas of behavior and social morality.  Stay away from these people and from what they teach.  You'll find other well-meaning people telling you that we're here to suffer for our sins and the more wretched and miserable we feel, the better our spiritual lives.  That's a tiny bit of truth mixed in with some huge twists, so be careful.  If you're not sure about where the line between truth and delusion is, be sure to solicit the opinions of people of integrity you trust.  That doesn't mean you take their opinions as gospel, just that you ask for help in discerning what's for real and what's not.  


Implement these five steps and you'll be well on your way to a genuine spiritual life.  

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Life is a Game of Inches - Inspiring Video Clip

There's a disease that's running rampant these days.  Seems like 90% of the population is already infected and it's on the rise.   

...yet it goes unrecognized and unopposed.  Why?  Because it's a subtle disease of mind and attitude and stance toward life itself.


As with any disease, you need to know the symptoms.  When you see somebody who's desperately trying to avoid getting "bruised" by life, getting hurt in any way, you found an infected person.  If you ask a friend how they're doing and their answer is, "I'm coping," you've got another one.  When you see somebody who doesn't have the "self-discipline" to stick to a good diet or exercise program, there's a third one for you.  So just what is this disease of the mind?

It's a timid and defensive attitude toward life itself. 


Now turn up your speakers as Al Pacino gives you the diagnosis and the cure in his famous monologue.  Yeah, it's about football on the surface, but in fact it's a very profound message...




You see it in their faces... As Pacino says to his team, "We're in hell, gentlemen."  When we adopt a defensive attitude and "hope" things won't go badly, we're setting ourselves up for failure.  Deep down we're attracting that very failure to ourselves by our own weak and hesitant actions.  There's a reason the SAS adopted the motto "Who dares, wins" - it's a proven fact of life.  You'll see for yourself.  Once you DECIDE to become brave and dauntless in your pursuit of excellence, most of your obstacles will crumble before you.

"Life is a game of inches," he tells the team.  Yes.  And as he says, those inches you need are EVERYWHERE around you.  You really do have the time, energy and capability to make phenomenal progress.  We all do.  So why isn't that happening?  Well, it goes back to basing our life on not wanting to get hurt, on defensiveness, on love of comfort and ease.  Once we do that, we don't see these inches.  We find excuses not to eat well, exercise, meditate, pray, read, show affection to others, work for a cause greater than ourselves...  "I'm too tired."  "Maybe later"...


Unless we start using those "inches" of time and opportunity that life is constantly showering us with, we will indeed wake up one day and realize we're in hell - a hell of our own making.  In the words of a great spiritual master of the 20th century, unless we become determined to take action, the excuses coming from our love of comfort and ease will lull us into compromising our integrity until finally we're asleep on our feet.   

"You have to be willing to die for that inch... because that's what living is!"  If you're still concerned with your own fate, if you're still afraid of pain, then you'll never feel the real pulse of life within you.  That's why every ancient spiritual tradition taught its disciples to expect hardship, to toughen their bodies and minds, to be utterly fearless, to persevere... because....


...you can't actually SURRENDER to the wonder of life until you do.  That's right - if your stance toward life is untrusting and defensive, you can't possibly "surrender" and "bliss out".  First, you need to become that brave and dauntless person who seizes life by the throat.  You can't live unless you're willing to die at any moment - that's the unadulterated truth discovered and joyfully lived by countless people over dozens of centuries.  Base your life on this truth and you won't go wrong.  

So watch this a few times over the next few days, especially when you're feeling defeated or lethargic.  Snap yourself out of it and take action!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger