Worship as an Individual Experience

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  • #29422
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    Mark606
    Participant

    Thanks very much for that story, Carl. I’ve never heard of Hesychastic before. But the practice just goes to show how much humankind has struggled for so long with ways to connect with God. And I think your story reflects on how individualistic this approach can be. In the final analysis, I believe that whatever works in the transition from prayer to worship is a good experience. Your transition to a state where worship comes much more naturally to you “of its own” is powerful stuff. And it’s good to hear you mention that your worship experience is strongly related to your all-out commitment to the “sincere desire to feel His presence.” This helps us all to verify our own experiences.

    It is interesting that you (and Mara) note that, at this stage of your worship experience, you find it difficult to qualify that experience. I have heard this several times. When I looked at your link to contemplative prayer, I was fascinated with the statement in the second paragraph, which seems to relate to this transition.

    “Centering Prayer emphasizes prayer as a personal relationship with God and as a movement beyond conversation with Christ to communion with Christ.”

    From conversation to communion. For a long time, I struggled with the term “communion,” primarily because of its links to Christian ritual. But if we look at some common synonyms for the term “communion”, they include the words: sharing, cooperation, interaction, togetherness, and intimacy.

    In many ways, I think that worship is this ability to intimately and continually share a life with God and, when we reach that point, it becomes difficult to describe.

    “The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God…” 111:5.1

    #29423
    Carl R
    Carl R
    Participant

    Since my second post seems to have vanished I’m attempting to re-post…

     

    Given the length of this post and the somewhat technical nature of my comments, if my previous post didn’t resonate it’s probably best to skip this one.  :-)

    I’m very familiar with both of those practices and there are some inherent dangers in each which I won’t go into. I did use the centering prayer approach to focus my mind, it did help me learn to pray without ceasing. I used the phrase “Lord have mercy,” all day long, which helped bring my mind back into attunement when it wanted to stray. Also, I found many of Thomas Keating’s books on contemplative prayer to be quite inspiring, but I did not like the rigidity and impersonality of his technique. Both methods have some value but neither are as good as the alter ego approach in my experience, which is person-to-person communion.

    *******

    I probably should have been more explicit that I was taking it for granted that one was already praying along the lines of what the UB teaches.  That said, I don’t think it’s fair to call Keating’s teaching on prayer “impersonal” in that both in his books and elsewhere he states that it is “both a relationship to God and a discipline to foster that relationship.”  (For example, see here.)  I would agree that he doesn’t give that as much emphasis as he should, but on the other hand given that he is operating within the Christian tradition it doesn’t seem unjustified for him to assume that his readers know that this about a relationship with God and remind them constantly.  Christian mysticism did inherit certain implicit tendencies toward impersonality from Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism but I don’t think it takes much spiritual dexterity to avoid them, at least for the average UB reader.

    There is a specific technique to Centering Prayer, and it does require regular practice, so in that sense I guess it’s “rigid.”  But at a certain place on the path that can be a good thing for all the reasons that practice and regularity can be good things, if not turned into fetishes.  Besides, Keating is explicit that the technique-ness of Centering Prayer is a a modification made in order to adapt it to contemporary needs and expectations, and not essential to its nature.  One can go and read St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avilla and fit the best of their teachings into one’s prayer life in a more spontaneous way and get the same results, but all kinds of things about modern life make this difficult for most of us.

    With both forms of contemplative prayer that I mentioned, I think it’s useful to keep in mind that they are much like taking a certain practice from psychology or a good self-help book and putting it into practice in our marriage or some other important relationship.  (Keating is more or less explicit about this in the quote above, and elsewhere.)  Those techniques at first can seem rigid and unnatural, but if they are good techniques then eventually we internalize the method and make it ours and it becomes quite natural.  Similarly, in Zen, zazen is at first a very rigid practice but eventually becomes the very end of Zen itself and not at all a mere technical means.

    Regarding serious, objective dangers with Centering Prayer, the only serious issue that I know of for a reasonably theologically sophisticated practitioner (in the UB sense) with a modicum of common sense would be a spontaneous kundalini awakening of the scary kind.  Phillip St. Romain has written about his experiences along this line (although his ultimate take on them was positive), and as he points out some of the medieval Christian mystics seem to have had similar experiences as well.  I think that a practitioner who takes the revelators advice about moderation in mysticism seriously, and doesn’t have extremely anomalous genetics in regard to Kundalini / Qi flow, has very little to worry about.  It seems to me that reading St. Romain and also Lee Sanela on the subject, and taking their advice in the unlikely event that things get a little too weird, should be plenty protection enough.

    With hesychasm, and given the modicum of UB-consistent tweaking I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I don’t know of any dangers that wouldn’t apply to anything involving a certain method of breathing, and of course the breathing method isn’t essential anyway.  I’ve never found the Jesus Prayer or other superficially mantra-like elements to be of use of interest and have never practiced them seriously.  When I think of it I’m thinking of is with hesychasm is “Standing before God with the mind in the heart.”  Kalistos Ware’s book The Art of Prayer has been the biggest influence on my thought and practice in understanding what it means to stand before God with the mind in the heart.  Even though my achievements in the practice have been very modest it has been of great value to my spiritual life as a whole.

    Again, however, I offer neither practice as anything other than possible prescriptive means of bridging a certain phase or dimension of one’s spiritual life.  Are they as specific practices essential?  Absolutely not.  But while countless married couples have had happy relationships without ever incorporating seemingly impersonal techniques offered by psychologists and counselors I see no reason why those techniques cannot be of real value in many relationships.  I know I’ve benefited from them all.

    All of them have potential pitfalls if used improperly, but I know of no tool or method of any kind that if misused doesn’t have potential dangers.  Even faith itself can be highly dangerous if abused, as we see ad infinitum in the lives of religious fanatics, and yet that very faith if tempered by wisdom is the key to eternal life.

    #29424
    Carl R
    Carl R
    Participant

    What do you think the pitfalls and potential dangers are of using the alter ego approach?

    ******

    My previous post was so long that I’m hesitant to try to give your question the answer it deserves, but maybe this will give some idea:

    91:3.3 (997.1) As it is conceived by successive generations of praying mortals, the alter ego evolves up through ghosts, fetishes, and spirits to polytheistic gods, and eventually to the One God, a divine being embodying the highest ideals and the loftiest aspirations of the praying ego.

    In a nutshell, I’d say that the pitfalls and potential dangers of the alter ego approach, as described above, are bound tightly with all the problems inherent in religious fetishism, ghost cults, polytheism, and even fanatical monotheism.  That is, all the problems inherent in God in man’s image.  More specifically, having one’s prayer life be directed toward an alter ego that is in the context of prayer pretty much by definition God (or at least a god) in man’s image.  Once we are actually praying to God without an image, there is no more alter ego involved.

    But, as before, I think that even the best methods have potential problems so I hardly dispute the revelator’s endorsement of the alter ego method.  But as I understand the paper the focus is on prayer and not worship and communion.  I have been thinking of hesychasm and Centering Prayer as means (despite the confusing use of the word “prayer” in the traditions) of fostering communion and thereby, ultimately, worship.  I’ve just been assuming  the pre-existence of a prayer life along the lines of the what is described in the paper quoted from above.

    #29426
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    More specifically, having one’s prayer life be directed toward an alter ego that is in the context of prayer pretty much by definition God (or at least a god) in man’s image.  Once we are actually praying to God without an image, there is no more alter ego involved.

    What is the problem with praying to a God whom you imagine to be another personality?  The alter ego approach is about talking to another person whom you can relate to.  Initially that relation may be more human than Godlike, but the approach is meant to progress.  In a childlike, praying mind the person you imagine yourself talking to would be a friendly person who is interested and attentive, right? That’s the alter ego, the one who cares deeply, the one different than your own.

    It’s not so much the image of God we have, but the feeling of his presence, which in itself, breaks down the barriers of communication. Having a loving companion to share inner most thoughts and feelings with is precious no matter what image is conjured in the material mind during the process.  Spiritual things must be loved in order to be known.  People are built to love other people.  So, being in love with your alter ego, whom you’re hoping and praying to as God, is much better than being in love with your regular everyday ego, wouldn’t you say? If the Adjuster is you, then he is the alter-you, the one you are striving to become and the one you want to be conversing and communicating with.

    110:7.4  Subsequent to mortal fusion the Adjusters share your destiny and experience; they are you.

    But as I understand the paper the focus is on prayer and not worship and communion.

    I’m quite sure the paper is also about worship and communion.  The alter ego approach is an approach of communion with God in the soul.  The alter ego lives in the soul.  The ego lives in the material mind.  Communion is nothing more than communication, a conversation, which begins with words.  The Spirit of Truth, who is the Word of God, is the translator between human words and God’s divine thought. The more you do it, the more adept you become and the fewer words needed.  Prayer becomes a perpetual attitude of willingness to share the inner life with your divine alter ego, God himself.  And we know that sharing the inner life is the same as doing God’s will.

    111:5.1  The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God—with the very God who has made such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible.

     

     

    #29427
    Avatar
    Mark606
    Participant

    Thanks again, Bonita. Yes, the alter ego approach describes the natural way in which prayer evolves. I’m not so sure it’s the “best” technique, but the book does say it is “…the more effective technique for most practical purposes…” From the wording of this paragraph (91:3.7), I get the impression that a loftier approach in prayer would be to “…strive to grasp the concept of the Universal Father on Paradise.” But like you say, the technique is essential for us to develop the concept of God as a person.

    It was good to review the differences between prayer and worship. One of my favorite lines from your quotes is, “But in practical religious experience there exists no reason why prayer should not be addressed to God the Father as a part of true worship.” In other words, we don’t really need to make efforts to separate the two – God will figure that out for us.

    I particularly enjoy the quote “Prayer is spiritually sustaining, but worship is divinely creative.” When my daughter was a teenager, she idolized a pop star. She tried to dress like her, speak like her, and even sing like her. She started to become that which she idolized. From this observation, I began to understand why worship is the most transformative experience we can have.

    “Worship, taught Jesus, makes one increasingly like the being who is worshiped. Worship is a transforming experience…” 146:2.17

    And because “…we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be,” I believe it is important for us to understand the nature and attributes of God to the highest possible levels of our imaginations. This could be why the first three papers of the book discuss these topics in detail. And, of course, one of the easiest ways for us to understand the nature of God is through the life and teachings of Jesus. 2:0.1

    #29428
    Avatar
    Mark606
    Participant

    Thanks Kern. I think a lot of people like the musical technique. I particularly like listening to “My Sweet Lord” by Lennon. And a friend tells me one of his favorite times to worship is when he’s driving his pickup and listening to Enya.

    #29429
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    It was good to review the differences between prayer and worship. One of my favorite lines from your quotes is, “But in practical religious experience there exists no reason why prayer should not be addressed to God the Father as a part of true worship.” In other words, we don’t really need to make efforts to separate the two – God will figure that out for us.

    Exactly.  In fact, we’re told that our minds can rarely become highly conscious of true worship because it takes place on superconscious levels (5:3.7). That’s the level we’re supposed to strive for, but we don’t live there yet. It’s all about developing a worshipful attitude, because the ” . . . reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened . . .” by doing so. (102:4.5) And that’s what I call the gateway phenomenon.  A worshipful attitude keeps the gateway to the soul opened  by those two higher adjutants of worship and wisdom.  The adjutant of wisdom is in intimate contact with the Holy Spirit, the supermind of the soul, and the Holy Spirit is in intimate contact with the Spirit of Truth who interprets the language of God to the meanings of man.

    And because “…we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be,” I believe it is important for us to understand the nature and attributes of God to the highest possible levels of our imaginations.

    Yes, and that is why Jesus emphasized the importance of setting the creative imagination free (179:5.4), and why TUB tells us that the Adjuster communicates best in liberated but controlled channels of creative imagination (109:5.1).  By controlled I believe they mean using the alter ego approach of direct person-to-person communication, regardless of ” . . . what we comprehend him to be . . .”

     

    #29430
    Carl R
    Carl R
    Participant

    What is the problem with praying to a God whom you imagine to be another personality? The alter ego approach is about talking to another person whom you can relate to.

    ****

    I’ve said quite clearly that I don’t think I’m all for the alter ego approach as described in the section of Paper 91 The Evolution of Prayer, Section 3 Prayer and the Alter Ego, which as far as my searches have been able to discover are the only places in the book where the alter ego is mentioned.  As I’ve stated more than once in this thread, I was simply taking it as a given in the spiritual life and was dealing with other matters.  As also mentioned before, even faith–the very crux of eternal survival–can have serious problems associated with it (fanaticism, presumption, etc.) so why should we expect the alter ego approach to prayer to be immune from the possibility of abuse and misunderstanding?

    Bonita wrote, in part:

    I’m quite sure the paper is also about worship and communion.

    *****

    It certainly does include elements on worship, communion, and mysticism.  Nonetheless, what I said was that its focus was on prayer and that is plenty accurate enough regarding thrust of the paper as a whole, esp. as it pertains to the point of this thread.  Both the content of the section on the alter ego and its title could not be more explicit in about having prayer as their primary focus .

    #29431
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    . . . so why should we expect the alter ego approach to prayer to be immune from the possibility of abuse and misunderstanding?

    Oh for sure.  There are monstrous problems with it when the approach is directed toward the subconscious rather than the superconscious.  Just like any other form of mysticism, there are those who are directionally confused.  Channeling the subconscious alter ego has been a problem for eons. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about prayer, which is supposed to have one dominate direction, as opposed to mysticism which can go in either direction . . . hence the confusion and potential abuse.

    #29432
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    I guess I’m going to have to clarify what I just wrote  in my last panel because I wasn’t clear.  We know that prayer can entice the mind to look in both directions for help, but it is not looking for the alter ego in both directions.  The alter ego TUB is talking about  only lives in the superconscious.

    #29440
    Bonita
    Bonita
    Participant

    In regards to the alter ego approach, it’s important to realize that this is a conversational approach to Deity.  I will agree that initially these conversations can be rather childish, but what makes them work is that they are childlike.  A childlike approach to prayer provides the proper attitude which is a parent-child, creature-Creator, son-Father attitude.  Those who are turned off by the alter ego approach because it seems childish might try to consider its childlikeness, if that’s even a word.

    We know that the attitude of prayer is its most important aspect.  God listens to the soul’s attitude rather than the words (91:8.12). This is why the attitude of thankfulness is so helpful.  Gratitude is an acknowledgement of the gift. Actually, the many gifts we receive from God: faith, insight, salvation, sonship, the Adjuster and life itself, to mention a few.

    We’re also told that no one gets into the kingdom without childlike trust (140:10.4).  The kingdom is within us (170:1.13), it is in the soul where the divine alter ego does his work. We’re also told our greatest adventure in this life is to strive for soul-consciousness, and with a wholehearted effort reach for the borderland of contact with the superconscious presence of the Adjuster, our divine alter ego (196:3.34).  Such an adventure begins with a conversation, a dialogue, a fellowship.  God will foster that dialogue, regardless of how primitive it may be, because it has potential value, and value depends upon relationships (100:3.5).  So, there’s no shame in having  just a little talk with your Father.

    91:1.4  Prayer is only monologuous in the most primitive type of mind.

    123:3.6 During this year Joseph and Mary had trouble with Jesus about his prayers. He insisted on talking to his heavenly Father much as he would talk to Joseph, his earthly father. This departure from the more solemn and reverent modes of communication with Deity was a bit disconcerting to his parents, especially to his mother, but there was no persuading him to change; he would say his prayers just as he had been taught, after which he insisted on having “just a little talk with my Father in heaven.”

     

    #29442
    Moderator-1
    Moderator-1
    Moderator
    Carl R wrote:  Before I reply to Bonita, can anyone still see my second post?  For some strange reason it’s not showing up in my browser, though obviously Bonita read it.

    I found 2 posts Carl – in the Spam folder.  They were posted 8 Jan.  I de-spammed them. See above.

    Moderator-1

    #29444
    Carl R
    Carl R
    Participant

    Thanks!

    #29448
    Carl R
    Carl R
    Participant

    In regards to the alter ego approach, it’s important to realize that this is a conversational approach to Deity. I will agree that initially these conversations can be rather childish, but what makes them work is that they are childlike. A childlike approach to prayer provides the proper attitude which is a parent-child, creature-Creator, son-Father attitude. Those who are turned off by the alter ego approach because it seems childish might try to consider its childlikeness, if that’s even a word.

    I don’t know of anyone in this thread who is turned off by the alter ego approach, but my street-psychology sense of most atheists is that when it comes to prayer they dislike the childlike aspects at least as much as the childish.  Indeed, within the logic of their worldview there is no real distinction.  This is true in a lot of spiritual circles as well.  At least for most of his career (I haven’t checked recently) even Ken Wilber, the supposed arch-champion of integral spirituality, has had a condescending attitude toward childlike prayer and related spiritual practices and attitudes.  One example of this is that, like many Buddhist intellectuals, he looks on Pure Land Buddhism as a kind of populist regression.

    Anyway, I think all here agree that the most “effective technique for most practical purposes will be to revert to the concept of a near-by alter ego.”

    **

    Below are some additional thoughts in relation to this thread that are more general than my response to Bonita above:

    **

    As the quote I use in my signature line and similar ones in TUB indicate, there are things besides prayer that can profoundly enhance the experience of worship.  Hence my mentioning hesychasm and Centering Prayer although, with more tweaking, things like pranayama, Taoist neigong, and zazen can do the job as well.  If forced to chose between these and nature I’d chose nature, but these days pristine nature–and even the full glory of the night sky–is unavailable most of the time to many if not most people.

    Besides helping with concentration, calm, and physical health if done correctly, after a few years of practice they us to be more considerably more open to the numinous qualities of experience.  The feeling of the numinous is much like that which is engendered by being in nature, but by somewhat different means, then getting out for an extended stay in pristine nature.  They do it by opening us to the “divine energies” referred to in this quote on Taoism:

    94:6.8 (1034.3)  That faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world, and by which man ascends to spiritual union with Tao, the Eternal Deity and Creator Absolute of the universes.

    While I have only had small tastes of them, when the divine energies are truly flowing it is a profoundly beautiful experience to say the least.  And the calm, openness, and surrender that all the disciplines I’ve mentioned require is, at a minimum, a kind of proto- version of the childlike faith that Jesus taught.  And that’s no small thing, even if it doesn’t always lead to full faith.

    The ecstatic numinosity of those energies when they unfold can indeed be a problem for mystics, and I should have thought to mention this when discussing the related but much less common problems with extreme kundalini awakenings.  (For those not familiar with what I mean by “divine energies”, kundalini, etc. the artist Alex Grey gives a good–if rather clinical–visual sense of certain aspects of them in part of his Sacred Mirrors painting here.  I believe it will be obvious which of the paintings I’m referring to.)

     Everything I’ve experienced and read leads me to believe that the ecstatic quality of the experience, esp. if combine with natural beauty (as it so often is in monasteries, etc.) can strongly tempt many to social withdrawal in order to abandon the more trying parts of loving service and just focus on the ecstacy of the numinous.  Indeed, Scott Meredith frequently uses drug-culture terminology in talking about these energies in his book Juice: Radical Taiji Energetics.

    But then, countless people throughout history have had precisely the same reaction to natural beauty.  I’ve known quite a few of them personally.  But just as I would never try to talk someone out of natural beauty as a means of inspiring worship because it can be so abused, I would not try to talk them out of the more intelligent forms of mediation.

    #29449
    Bradly
    Bradly
    Participant

    One of the most effective ways to worship, for me, is through music. As a child attending church services, the hymns always spoke to me more than the sermons; and the music always touched my heart in ways that reading or speaking scripture could not. As an adult, I sing with a community choir and I use those rehearsal times and performances as opportunities for sincere expression of my love for God and my appreciation for His goodness. Even secular songs – especially songs about nature (such as choral works that have Robert Frost’s poetry as the lyrics), can inspire a worshipful attitude. Listening to high quality music can do it too; but singing is something special, for me anyway.

    I feel the same way Keryn….my favorite part of every service are hymns (I turn the ‘blood’ hymns into ‘love’ hymns by word substitution – and I sing it loud!).  I almost always do my UB reading and studies to inspirational music (defined by each of us differently) and think music is a form of substitute for nature…and its own musical inspirations of wind in the grass and trees and birds and insects, etc.

    But I pray every day, many times a day and do strive to elevate the thanksgiving and best wishes/hopes for others (my form of prayer) to adoration and worship.  Communion to me is more a feeling than anything else….a feeling of belonging and being loved….an enveloping presence.

    ;-)

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