David talks with his publicist, Sara McMillan, about his latest book Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (released by Brazos Press in February 2012).

Sara:   Some of us are still digesting your last book - Soulful Spirituality - and suddenly another one appears on the scene!  I wonder if you see this latest one as something entirely new or as an extension of what you did in Soulful Spirituality or your other recent books?

David:  I suspect that anyone who has been reading my books will have seen this coming and won’t be surprised in the least.  They will certainly be familiar with my interest in the intersect of psychology and spirituality and they will know that the organizing framework that I bring to that interest has long been transformation.  In any of my recent books books they will have heard me often talk of the notion of becoming.  But, as far back as Psychotherapy and the Spiritual Quest (1988) my focus has been the role of spirituality in human actualization.  I have also often focused on the important role of awakening and awareness as the core of spirituality.  So, all the ingredients have been there.  It was simply time for a much fuller exploration of how these things go together.

Sara:   Something else that I have sensed to be lurking in the background of your recent books that I notice comes to the foreground in this one is the contribution of the mystics to this question of human becoming.

David:  That’s very true.

Sara:   When did you first get interested in the mystics and in their contribution to human development?

David:  I started reading Thomas Merton in my twenties and to this day he remains my favourite Christian mystic. Merton stirred my spirit but boggled my mind.  I couldn’t contain him or the vision he presented but also couldn’t, at least for long, fail to notice the way he spoke to deep longings within me. I felt drawn to the journey he described but wasn’t ready to personally make it my own for many years.  But long before I started on that journey myself, it was obvious to me that the mystics - Christian and otherwise - had critical relevance to psychology. In fact, psychology felt dreadfully truncated when it failed to include contemplative insights.  In many ways it would be true to say that I have been working on this book for 30 years.  That long ago I wrote an outline of a book which, although it looks quite different from the Table of Contents of Spirituality and the Awakening Self, was to be a book on the contributions of the mystics to developmental psychology.  The only problem was, at the time, I had only engaged with the mystics as an intellectual exercise.  It took much longer for me to be ready to to make the contemplative journey my own but it was only after doing so that I was ready to write this book.

Sara:   In the Preface you describe this book as drawing from the insights of perennial philosophy, evolutionary theology, comparative spirituality and developmental psychology. That’s quite an ambitious task and it makes the book sound pretty academic.  Who is your intended audience and how will this book work for readers of your past books?

David:  While it is fair to describe this book as involving a lot of big ideas, its tone and style are far from academic.  When I say that the ideas it presents are big I mean that he concepts it discussses cannot be reduced to simple definitions; no encounter with the mystery of our being can be.  However, this book is just as accessible as any of my recent ones.  It is a bit longer and it certainly isn’t a quick read. But, if you seek an understanding of the possibilities of the personal transformation that is involved in authentic human awakening, then this is definitely the book for you.

Sara:   What would be the most comparable books on the market, things that those who will be most interested in this new book might well have read?

David: Author’s like Richard Rohr, James Hillman, Gerald May, and Thomas Moore, all address similar issues from somewhat similar perspectives.  Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality is perhaps closest to this book as he, like me, has long been interested in the way in which the insights of the mystics inform our understanding of human psychology and spirituality. However, his book does not situate this understanding within Christian spirituality and theology, something that is very central to what I undertake in Spirituality and the Awakening Self.

Sara:   What would you say is the most important insight you draw from the Christian mystics in this book?

David:  The mystics offer us a number of valuable gifts that I think are tremendously important to contemporary Christians.  Among the most valuable of them is that they encourage us to trust in the darkness rather than simply try to eliminate it, they remind us of the importance of the alignment of head and heart, and teach a way of unifying a divided consciousness.  But perhaps more basic than any of these is their understanding of the fact that all of life is returning to God.  Life, as they point out, is the continuous outflow of the very life of God - a flow that if we follow it, returns us to our Source, the Ground of our Being.  All human becoming involves, therefore, a fuller engagement with this outflowing life of God.  The map of human developmental possibilities sketched by the mystics is a map that includes possibilities that developmental psychologists could never imagine because it maps our journey toward union with God.  It is a map that shows us the contours of a transformational journey of not just a single awakening but of a life lived increasingly awake and fully conscious. Or, put in lanauge I use in this book, it is a map of the expansion of consciousness.

Sara:   That sounds interesting, but is it practical?  How is this book relevant to those of us modern individuals who have never felt the same attraction to the mystics that you have?

David:  Actually, it is profoundly practical.  It is relevant to anyone who seeks to become more than they are and who is open to authentic transformation, not merely the small incremental steps of growth. Once mysticism is demystified what we discover is that, unlike theologians, mystics are not interested in ideas and concepts but real life.  This is why they serve as such helpful guides for anyone seeking to live fully immersed in the in the flow of the river of transformational becoming that I would call the Life of God.

Sara:   I am beginning to see what you mean by big concepts!  What do you mean by transformation?

David:  Transformation is a term that in common usage simply implies change.  Sometimes the bar is set rather low and the change might be quite small.  Someone, for example, might speak of a spa treatment as having been transformational.  They probably mean that it was refreshing.  At a slightly more profound level, another person might speak of having lost a lot of weight as transformational.  By this, they might mean that they feel like a new person.

My use of the concept of transformation is quite specific.  By transformation I mean an enduring expansion of consciousness that expresses itself in four ways: increased awareness, a broader, more inclusive identity, a larger framework for meaning-making – (how we understand and make sense of our self, others, God and the world), and a reorganization of personality that results in a changed way of being in the world. The core of this book is an exploration of how this happens, why we tend to avoid it, and how we can facilitate it in ourselves and in our communities.

Sara:  What is the relationship between transformation and growth?

David: Growth is hard plodding work. There are no short cuts and what we avoid dealing with will always hold us back. Small steps of growth usually occur within a single line of development.  But the lines converge as we move up them so eventually growth in our emotional functioning, moral development or self regulation will begin to spill over into other closely related lines of development.  When it does, this enhances our readiness for transformational shifts of consciousness by raising the platform on which we stand and from which we view the world.  Transformation is a movement between the major platforms.  It isn’t just a slightly larger perspective but a whole new view, a whole new platform on which we stand and engage the world.  Growth is incremental but transformation is more like a quantum leap forward or a major paradigm shift.  The big shifts of transformation are best seen after the fact.  The new and larger platform we suddenly find ourselves standing on isn’t something we have built ourselves or achieved through our efforts. It is a gift that we were able to receive by being ready to take the risk of letting go of old ways of seeing and living. Our growth prepares us for it but can never produce it.  It is what Christians call a grace. 

Sara:  This really is a book of big ideas, isn’t it?

David: Yes, it certainly is. My intention is to help readers see how vast a horizon lies ahead of us, a horizon that we are unable to see when we settle for the plodding work of growth.  Those who no longer seek growth have, of course, an even more truncated horizon - a horizon consisting simply of either survival or maximizing pleasure.  But, those who seek growth - and I think it safe to assume that most of those who have been reading my books are within that group - often get bogged down with our self-improvement projects.  We tire of trying to be a better Christians, or even better human beings.  Our call is to something much bigger than self-improvement.  The flow of the river of life is pulling us toward becoming not just better but more.  It’s a call to become and be a new being. It’s a call to know and be our true self-in-God. 

Sara:  Now that’s more familiar. 

David: Yes, the concept of the true self is something I have written of in recent books but in this one I place it in a developmental framework. The concept is the same; it’s just my focus that is slightly different.  Because, after all, if I didn’t have something new  to say, I wouldn’t really have a reason to write another book, would I?

Sara: No, you wouldn’t.  But, you have also brought us back to my opening question so perhaps this is a good time to wrap this up.  Anything else you would like to add before we do? 

David: Nothing more than to thank you for the conversation and express the hope that my readers will again feel themselves drawn into this conversation when they read the book. 

Sara: I think they will.  In fact, that reminds me of another thing I really liked about this book and that is the questions and answers you included at the end of each chapter.  Many of these questions anticipated my own and I expect readers will find the same.  So, thank you for again offering yourself in dialogue - both here and in the book.

The Spirit of God is the engine behind all human becoming.  We might think that we are that engine, but this is far from true. This is why it is more accurate to describe the journey of awakening and unfolding as involving steps of response rather than steps of initiative – response to the initiatives of the Spirit who continuously invites, woos, supports, sustains, and enables our becoming.  Or, if I can change the metaphor, the whole thing is a dance.  Your partner is the Spirit who has already entered the dance floor and is calling for you to come.  The Spirit will lead the dance.  You only need to follow.  Don’t hold back trying to first learn the dance steps.  Just get out onto the floor and trust your partner to teach you everything you need to know and to give you everything you need to receive.

One of the great paradoxes of the transformational journey is that effort and initiative are both counterproductive.  All that is required of you is consent that is offered in openness and faith.  Effort may sometimes be enough to change behaviour but it is never enough to awaken a self.  But do not read this limitation of effort in awakening as suggesting that our role is simply to passively await awakening.  The offering of consent involves an active response.  Awakening is always an active response to the Spirit and if what we offer is not a response to Spirit, it is not a spiritual response.

Contemporary understandings of Christian spirituality miss this truth much more often than they recognize it.  So often the spiritual journey is presented in terms of what we must do. And what we are told we must do is to be faithful in our effort and discipline.  This is a recipe for spiritual disaster because what it does is strengthen the false self.  When the spiritual journey is my own self-improvement project the major product will be an ego that is in even more control than before the journey began.

Even the notion of seeking God seems misguided.  Describing her own spiritual journey, Simone Weil stated that she had never understood all the talk about seeking God because never once in her life had she sought after God.  God found her even without her seeking. Like the fish in the Sufi tale that was swimming around madly seeking for the sea only to be confronted by the wise old fish who told it that it could now relax because it was already in the sea, we too do not need to seek the God in whom we exist.  Instead, we need to awaken to the truth and reality of our existence.  Awakening is not an achievement. It is a grace – a gift that we can receive if we are willing to receive it in openness and faith.

Anthony de Mello reminds us that we do not need to engineer our own awakening by means of a story of the river and one sitting by it seeking enlightenment.  Noticing this person striving to attain something that he could not produce, the river said: “Does one really have to fret about enlightenment?  No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound.”  We too are homeward bound when we notice and then respond to the invitations of Spirit to become all we were meant to be.

From Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, February 2012).

Many things keep us content with our small selves and block us from becoming all we can be. None, however, is more important than the fact that most of us go through life as sleepwalkers and, even after a moment of awakening, tend to quickly drift off once again into a sleep of self-preoccupied oblivion and of a mindless robot shuffling through a somnambulistic fog. This is the reason spiritual teachers have always taught the importance of awareness. Hasidic Jews tell a story of a young man who approached Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael one afternoon. “Rebbe,” the young man asked with great seriousness, “what is the way to God?” The rebbe looked up from his work and answered: “There is no way to God, for God is not other than here and now. The truth you seek is not hidden from you; you simply do not notice it. It is here for you if you will only awake.”

This is the truth that has been proclaimed by all the great Christian mystics across Christian history. And it is the truth taught from cover to cover of the Bible. In his Areopagus sermon, Paul declares that God “is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:27–28). God is closer than our next breath. Job even reminds us that not only is God the source of each breath, but each breath also is God’s breath (Job 27:3). How much more intimate could our relationship with God be? God is not absent. It is we who fail to notice divine presence. It’s all a matter of awareness.

A great variety of experiences can serve as the messenger that brings us an invitation to awareness and offers us the potential of an awakening. Unfortunately, however, we usually evaluate these events negatively and, instead of welcoming them, do everything we can to ignore, minimize, or avoid them. In general, anything that produces significant internal conflict, a disruption of meaning and self-coherence, or a sense that our way of being in the world needs to change—any such thing has this potential to awaken us. Some of these emerge from the circumstances of our life. A divorce, major financial reversal, death of a spouse or child, natural catastrophe, or a business failure can all contain a hidden gift of a potential awakening. Many people speak of a significant and valued change to the course of their life following such unwelcome events. Sometimes these changes are limited to behavior or lifestyle, but deeper transformations of self are also possible when one moves beyond simply trying to get back to how things were before the crisis.

One of the most powerful invitations to awakening comes from journeying with other people in relationships of intentional love. Rather than regarding love as a feeling, we need to start thinking of love as an action. Intentionally committing to journey with others in love is a commitment to consciously choose to express love. This commitment opens us to the possibility of awakening because living in such a way calls forth who we really are. The more intimate the relationship, the more it will inevitably present us with opportunities to awaken. The most important of these invitations to awaken are associated with the tensions that necessarily form a part of any relationship. Our default response to these tensions is annoyance (fight) or defensiveness (flight). Awakening demands quite a different posture. It demands hospitality to the tension or conflict and presence to your self and the other.

Conscious or intentional love also involves an expectation. Instead of looking to the relationship primarily for either gratification or shelter, we can learn to welcome its power to wake us up in the areas of life where we are asleep. This approach puts us on a path. It commits us to movement and change by showing us where we most need to grow. Embracing relationship as a path also gives us practice in learning to use each difficulty along the way as an opportunity to connect more deeply, not just with a partner, but with our own aliveness.

A commitment to live in these sorts of loving relationships is probably the most accessible of all means of awakening. It is available to anyone who is in any form of relationship. Such relationships do not need to be romantic or even ongoing—although the more ongoing and the more intense, the more opportunities the relationship will present for awakening. The bottom line is not the ‘who’ but the ‘how’: the direction of the energy flow. On a path of conscious love the energy is always radiating outward; it is never self-defended or congealed. The how is a path of love. It is love that allows one to move from defensiveness to openness, and it is love that allows people in a relationship to stay present and open to each other when they otherwise would want to either attack or run and hide. It is love that allows partners to work their way through inner logjams that would otherwise normally take much longer to resolve.

Awakening isn’t transformation.  But it is the doorway to transformation. The approach to this doorway is noticing that we need to awaken and how quickly we drift back off into a somnambulistic fog even after we do so.  This is why Jesus so often urged his followers to awaken from their stupor and be attentive.  He gives us the same invitation.

From Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, February 2012).

Dr. Donald Woodside is a recently retired psychiatrist with whom I worked closely in a children’s mental health center in Canada for many years. But more than that, he has been a valued friend and spiritual companion. His spiritual journey draws together Christian faith with Buddhist meditation practice lived out within a Quaker fellowship.  If you feel some tension emerging within you at the thought of holding these things together you are not alone. Don has lived these tensions for many years, struggling to understand how his Christian faith fits with drawing insights and practices from another religion.

Christians are sometimes nervous about learning from other religious traditions.  Vatican II urged Roman Catholics to appreciate the value of the teachings of other religions but Protestants sometimes seem to feel that God’s honour depends on other religious traditions containing absolutely no truth or value.  This is surprising given the Biblical assertion that Jesus is the light that enlightens all humans (John 1:9) and that God has left evidence of the Divine Self in all cultures and religions (Acts 14: 17).  Scriptures also confirm that knowledge of God exists outside the Judeo-Christian tradition (think, for example, of Melchizedek, the Canaanite Priest-king who is described as knowing the true God).  And, on several occasions Jesus himself urged his fellow Jews to learn from the faith of those outside Judaism.  We see the same openness to other religions in much of Christian history.  By his own admission, the Neo-Platonists helped Saint Augustine understand the gospel; Aristotle helped Thomas Aquinas understand Scriptures; and even John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism.  Is it not conceivable, therefore, that Christians might learn from the Buddha – and other great religious thinkers and traditions – things that can help them more clearly understand God’s revelation in Christ?  That has certainly been my experience, and it is the reason I wanted to share this conversation with my friend for whom this has also been deeply true.

But what I wanted to talk with him about was not these more abstract possibilities of interfaith learning but rather his own journey as a Quaker who loves Jesus and whose spirit has been shaped by decades of practice of both meditation and contemplative prayer.  What follows is longer than my usual blog entries but I think you will find our conversation interesting.

David:   To get us started, tell me a bit about your early religious background.

Don:      I grew up in a liberal Christian church, attended regularly, and was influenced both by my mother’s more emotive faith and my father’s rational and critical views. As a teenager I struggled with the idea of the physical resurrection of Christ, eventually decided I couldn’t believe in it, and abandoned any religious faith. I did, however, have a vague interest in Eastern religions stemming mostly from literature, especially such writers as A. J. Cronin, Joseph Conrad, and E. M. Forster.

David:   Can you get back in touch with the appeal of Eastern religions at that age?  What parts of you were not satisfied by liberal Protestantism that seemed to be called to life by Eastern religions?

Don:      Eastern religions touched me in ways that are hard to describe. Perhaps it was the possibility of being changed personally – a transforming experience that would give a different relationship with everyday life. It seemed like the Eastern religions held the promise of wisdom and a connection to the divine. A highly moral life was about as close as we Westerners seemed to get.

David:   At some point I know these interests led you to the East.  When was that, and how did those experiences influence your spiritual journey?

Don:      Those interests were part of what drew me to two years of medical work in Malaysia. While I was there I wasn’t attracted to the religious practices I witnessed. Chinese Buddhism seemed to me to be largely devotional and superstitious, with no mention of meditation.  I was impressed when I saw Hindus walk on hot coals and go into trances but it seemed far removed from anything I might want to or be able to do. From a spiritual point of view I was a confirmed, if curious, skeptic. After my work in Malaysia, I felt disconnected and alienated, especially by the Vietnam war.

David:   Aha, so I hear the emergence of political sensitivities that I know have formed an important part of your spiritual journey.

Don:      Malaysian medicine was definitely two tiered! The rich were very rich, the poor very poor. Not only did I see the Vietnam war as the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place, but I came to see that development aid was propping up corrupt regimes in many countries. My presence in a remote hospital in Malaysia facilitated the movement of Malaysian doctors to urban areas. The work was rewarding, even inspiring at times, but the overall impact seemed questionable.

David:   Tell me about your first exposure to Buddhist meditation.

Don:      In Sri Lanka I searched out a Buddhist retreat centre and was immediately impressed by the Buddha’s analysis of the human predicament – the world as burning with the fire of greed, the fire of hatred, and the fire of delusion. That resonated deeply in me and I was drawn by his advice not to believe him, but try meditation for myself.  By a connection made there, I then went to study meditation with Anagarika Munindra in Bodh Gaya. On first meeting him I asked him to tell me about meditation but he declined, inviting me to a 10 day silent retreat starting the next day! With trepidation I agreed. It was the hardest work I had ever done. But after it was over I shaved my head to help my commitment to stay and practice, and I stayed for four months. I was tempted to ordain as a monk, and work in a local medical clinic with nearby forest people. But my questing spirit drove me on.  There is however, no question that this was a life-changing experience that opened my spiritual eye.

David:   When did you first begin the serious practice of meditation, and how do you actually meditate?

Don:      I began to meditate on a regular basis, several times a week, in 1978 when I joined a local meditation group which I still attend. I also began attending 9 day retreats at a Buddhist meditation centre in Massachusetts.  My basic practice is often called ‘mindfulness’. I start by watching the breath. When my mind settles, I let go of the breath and relax into choice-less awareness. Mindfulness is the basic tool.  It’s a kind of unattached awareness of each object of consciousness – such as a thought, sensation, or judgment – as it arises and passes, without identifying with it as ‘I’ or ‘mine’. Beyond this I also use the practices of lovingkindness and compassion to open my heart. If I am feeling distressed or angry, I may spend the whole time on lovingkindness.  Whatever practice I use, thinking frequently intrudes! On a longer retreat I reach a point where thinking is less and less of a distraction, and there are longer periods when the mind settles and becomes quiet and transparent.  I find this really quite similar to the Quaker practice of stilling the mind. The main difference is that in a Quaker meeting we are always available to be a vehicle for spoken ministry if we are sufficiently moved by the Holy Spirit, and we are listening to each other – either literally or in spirit – whereas meditation is more do-it-yourself, even in a group setting.

David:   How does your practice of meditation relate to more explicitly Christian approaches to meditation?

Don:      I think meditation is very similar to centering prayer.  It is allowing the mind to rest in God’s peace, and gently returning each time one is distracted. In both we aim to see ourselves as part of the whole of God’s world, not separate.  In meditation I don’t use a sacred word, although there are forms of meditation that do. One important difference, however, is that in prayer I don’t have a sense of effort to become something different. Prayer is about silence, waiting and listening in a relationship with the divine.

David:   I want to come back to this, but I see that I suddenly got you talking about Christianity.  Let’s back up a bit so you can tell me how this once again became part of your journey.

Don:      In the spring of 1980 I suffered a lengthy and disabling laryngitis, and needing complete silence went to an Easter retreat at Loyola House in Guelph (Canada). I was stunned by the realization that the passion of Christ was ongoing – that somehow it was going on through me, and it was calling on me to respond. It touched my heart very deeply. I returned for most Easter retreats for the next 20 years, each year a different aspect of the passion becoming prominent.  In 1980 my wife and I also started attending a Quaker meeting. We were looking for a spiritual home for ourselves and our children and were drawn by the spiritual seeking and companionship.  We felt we had come home. We gradually became involved in the life of the meeting, the prayerful manner of doing business, and in the peace witness. Being mentored by more seasoned Friends inspired me to become a conscientious objector to military taxation, and the meeting supported me in this.  But the real connection with Christianity occurred when I did the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in 1986. I had the sense of God knowing my innermost thoughts; no secrets, no difference between inside and out. And I experienced the presence of the indwelling Christ as my companion.

David:   Say a bit more about that.

Don:      As you know, the Ignatian Exercises involve a lot of imaginative dialogue with Christ, much of it stimulated by passages from the gospels. The language of the Exercises was from 16th century Spanish Catholicism.  This was pretty foreign to me.  But I did understand the focus on feelings, especially the consolation of a connection with God.  After engaging in these dialogues daily for several months, I had the sense of talking to a presence who was both historical and past, inhabiting some sacred space, as well as timelessly present and indwelling.  Christ was God’s human face – God’s presence. I felt identified with Christ in some mysterious way, and was touched deeply by his teaching that “I am the vine, and you are the branches”.  When I prayed, I sensed that God was listening in on my thoughts even as I formulated a prayer, so there was no room for hiding.

David:   How do you decide when to pray and when to meditate?

Don:      On one level I experience them as the same. Both are responses to the divine in ourselves and in others. Both are movements of reconciliation with all of life as God’s world. Both embody surrender of the self.  But there is a choice to be made. Most of my daily practice is meditation. I have a range of techniques that I use to focus my mind and settle into a mode of receptivity. Sometimes this turns into prayer, this involving waiting and listening. When I awaken at night and just want to get back to sleep, I meditate. But when I feel distressed, overwhelmed, and anxious, I pray. I express my need, and I recall Isaiah, where God says, ‘I have carved you in the palms of my hands’. I then feel held in love.

David:   You say that prayer involves waiting and listening. Does this make prayer more relational than meditation?  Waiting on someone.  Listening to someone?  Is that a meaningful way of distinguishing between the two?

Don:      I have always experienced prayer as relational. I recall being on a 2 month meditation retreat some years ago, and spending an hour a day in prayer rather than meditation. It was the first time I had  felt a clear difference. There was a sense of movement in prayer, out of myself into something unknown and vast but loving. This felt different from the unfolding stillness of meditation. Now, if I am feeling fear or despair, I drift towards a more relational, verbal “someone-out-there” kind of prayer. Sometimes I use the Jesus prayer. However, over the years my sense of God has become less of a person or power, and more a divine presence, an embracing mystery, in which I and all creation have a home. One effect of both the Ignatian exercises and Buddhist meditation has been to soften the boundaries of self, so that God, as I said earlier, is experienced as both inside and outside me.  A Korean Christian I once read described Buddhism as emptying and Christianity as filling.  For some years I practiced that way; first I would empty, then I would fill. These two things are no longer different for me. When I am empty, it means self is in abeyance, and I am filled by all things which are present. These things exist for themselves, not for me, and are sacred. So emptying of self is the same as filling with the divine.  But still I feel a difference, and yes, prayer is more relational.

David:   Your definition of prayer as waiting and listening reminds me of Cynthia Bourgeault’s wonderful recent book, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening – a book you recommended that I read.  She describes contemplative prayer as “wordless, trusting openness of self to the divine presence”, going on to argue such a trusting openness is something that is known to children and needs to be recovered by adults. Viewed from this perspective, contemplative prayer is not, as commonly thought and asserted, advanced prayer but rather the most basic, most natural form of prayer that exists.  What do you think of this?  And, if it is so natural, why do we have to work so hard to recover it as a way of experiencing God?

Don:      Becoming children is a natural part of our development, and includes a deep capacity for unstinting trust. But becoming as children is not so easy. We all suffer from what Bourgeault calls “a case of mistaken identity”, by which she means our identification with the self of thought and action, of doing and having, which is a necessary part of our development as functioning adult human beings. To have a contemplative relationship with God, we have to clear the chatter and the selfish wishes, and even surrender the self feeling and images of God we have.  Reading Bourgault’s description of centering prayer as a surrender method of meditation was an aha experience for me. I recognized it as a fine description of what I have done in Quaker meeting for years; sitting in silent expectation, open to others and to myself, constantly returning to the stillness; sifting through arising thoughts without being averse to them but also without being attached. There is no question that it is often hard work. But sometimes, when self has calmed down, it is entirely natural and effortless to rest in the Spirit.

David:   I sometimes think of contemplative prayer as simply being with God.  This places the emphasis on being rather than doing, and reminds us that, in essence, contemplative prayer is nothing more than openness to God.  How does this relate to your own understanding and practice?

Don:      I too understand contemplative prayer as being with God, surrounded and infused by the energy of the Holy Spirit. My part in entering this relationship is to let go. One of the things I let go of is any notion of who or what God is. I surrender, I rest, I am held in a gentle embrace. I sometimes have the feeling that the Holy Spirit transports me outside of time and space, into an eternal time in which Jesus is as present now as historically. This sounds dramatic, but it isn’t.  It is subtle.  My mind certainly can run on about God. When it does, I simply allow such thoughts to pass through, content with not knowing.

David:   I know that you are very active in the peace movement and are a conscientious objector to the use of your taxes for military purposes.  How do contemplative prayer and social action relate to each other?

Don:      When I was in India, a Gandhian teacher told me a story about the Mahatma.  Gandhi was asked, “if you are so interested in the holy life, why  are you not in the Himalayas meditating?” He answered, “My Himalayas are in your feet; if your feet are in Delhi, I must be in Delhi also.” I was taken by that statement.  Contemplative prayer brings the eternal inside. It moves from a prayer of supplication or adoration of an external God, to a relationship with a divine presence which does not respect boundaries. If God is everywhere (or, as described by Basil Pennington, “a sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere”),  then everything we do, everyone we interact with is in some sense a home to what is holy.  As a result, I have a responsibility and a desire to respect what Quakers would describe as “that of God in all persons”. If your eyes have  been opened, you can’t be complacent; if your eyes are truly open, you have to act on what you see.

David:    Beyond these already diverse spiritual traditions, I know that you have also been involved in other spiritual practices associated with workshops that you regularly attend in Arizona.  What can you tell me about these?

Don:       For a number of years I have been working with two women in Arizona who start from the other end of the tension between the self and the divine and work up. They have developed imaginative techniques based on the methods of Stanislavsky, the Russian drama teacher. When I work with them we are on our feet responding to emotionally authentic situations and learning to let spontaneity flow.  The challenge is to get oneself out of the way and connect with others on a level of energy where there are no boundaries.  I trust their sure footed guidance, their spiritual groundedness, and the powerful experiences and insights which have resulted.

David:   OK, but let’s now go back to the question I am sure many of those listening in on our conversation have been wanting me to ask for some time now.  How does Buddhist meditation fit with Christian prayer?  Aren’t Christianity and Buddhism incompatible?

Don:      It was painful for a long time to feel divided loyalties. The scripture which posed the most direct challenge to me was, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me”. But when I looked deeply at this teaching of Jesus, I saw that it could be interpreted as “faith in me is a gateway to the kingdom of God”, that we don’t get to God except by love and surrender. Allegiance to Christ is allegiance to the force of love penetrating him and ourselves. That teaching isn’t in conflict with teachings of the Buddha. We can get to selflessness by different routes. But there is only one God. Buddhists talk of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the truth and the teachings), and the Sangha (the community). I take refuge in God. Who or what is God?  My understanding of this is best reflected by Christians theologians such as Marcus Borg and John Spong.  For me, God is not a person, but neither is God impersonal. We are like fish in the sea, which cannot know the sea they are immersed in. We humans are immersed in God and at least from our vantage point this makes God indescribable.  Buddhism has given me a framework for understanding how human beings fall into error or sin, greed, hatred, and the “illusion  of self” based on basic phenomena of consciousness. It has given me a method for investigating  this consciousness, for validating the teachings for myself – a way of waking up and opening my heart. This path has been a blessing to me. On the other hand, in Christianity God meets me where I am, says I am acceptable, and comes to me as the risen Christ. I don’t have to achieve anything. I don’t have to believe that I will ever escape my limitations. This unconditional acceptance has been a great relief and a great sense of coming home, turning daily life into an opportunity for devotion.  It would be easier to have allegiance to only one, but I can't turn my back on either. I don’t know exactly where all this is going, but I trust it is for the good and I no longer struggle. I am reassured by a quotation from the early Quaker, William Penn, who said, “The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here make them strangers”.

David:   What a blessing that you can now rest in God’s unconditional acceptance of you and no longer struggle with the need to understand how your life and its streams of influence fit together.  Everything belongs, doesn’t it?  It all comes together in God. Thank you for sharing your journey. You raise a number of important issues I’ll be thinking about until our next conversation.  So, thanks, friend – or perhaps I should say Friend!