Changed by Silence - 2

There are many methods to enable the process of stopping the flow of uncontrolled thoughts and enable some amount of mental silence. Each has its advantages and limitations. I will not even try to list them.

Whichever process or methods a person chooses to use, there are a variety of challenges. To start, you must turn-off and turn away from all of the visual, musical, verbal, and other media that are omni-present as background stimulation and distraction. It is the first step to interior silence because all of those external distractions are designed to intrude and interrupt your thoughts. For persons who have grown to need multiple sources of stimulation, choosing to turn-off and turn away is a radical, counter-cultural act. It probably will be hard to do. Your natural resistance to change will urge you to quit, to return to the familiar. Making a commitment to a trial period, like silent prayer for five minutes a day for two weeks, may be a good strategy.

Without the external noise, you will become aware of whatever inner thoughts, feelings and images you have. If this is your first time to focus on interior experiences, you might be surprised by the amount, loudness and persistence of all of the thoughts. This is what the Buddhists call “monkey mind.” Picture a group of monkeys swinging around in the trees, making all kinds of noise, and doing nothing in particular. That is what all of those thoughts are doing – often circling around, not accomplishing anything, chattering away.

In Arm Chair Mystic: Easing into Contemplative Prayer, Mark E. Thibodeaux offers some very good advice about dealing with monkey mind distractions:

My anxiety, distress, guilt and anger about the distractions are far more detrimental to my prayer than the distractions themselves. The most effective way to diminish the distractions, then, is not to worry about them at all. (p. 120) 

If you are looking for an easy-to-read, simple and clear guide to moving into silent prayer, I highly recommend this book.

As you become more experienced with silence in your interior landscape, and the surface chatter quiets down, deeper thoughts and feelings begin to emerge. These appear from under the surface because there is now the interior space for them to emerge. These thoughts and feelings present a different challenge, often involving remembering and re-experiencing unresolved, and often deeply painful, memories or fears. They are different than the chattering, and the content may become so powerful that it needs separate attention through specific therapeutic or spiritual work outside of the prayer time. It may be important to explore this material outside of your time of prayer.

I have been scanning through my journals from the last 12 years, and have realized how significant writing in a journal has been in exploring my own interior landscape. It has allow me to move into silent prayer in various ways. Writing all of the chatter in my mind onto paper honors it, while allowing me to leave it behind. Writing also allows me to work through the dark material, the emerging memories or fears, and lets me decide what I want to take to therapy or my spiritual director for further exploration. And there are many times when writing in my journal is itself a form of prayer.

Enough for now – I hope to continue this later.