Welcoming the Present Moment
Resisting what is keeps us stuck. Welcoming it frees us to allow change.
The Avowal
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace, knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace. ~ Denise Levertov
As You Believe, So It Is
Somehow, being in a human body makes us think that we’re separate from God. In reality, we can never have an experience apart from God, our creator spirit. According to Fr. Thomas Keating, founder of Contemplative Outreach, union with the divine is our birthright. Like a deep embrace, this union is an unearned grace that permeates our inner being. If consented to and allowed free rein, it motivates us to be all that we were created to be. Known as samadhi in yoga, it is the state in which an individual consciousness and universal consciousness unite. Although all humans possess the capacity to experience samadhi or divine union, few pursue it. Experiencing union with God requires an adventurous spirit, an open mind and an open heart, and a willingness to un-learn what you’ve been taught, as fixed thoughts and beliefs about yourself and about God can prevent you from actually experiencing God.
Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. ~ Thomas Keating
Inner silence creates the ideal condition for letting go of preconceived ideas and experiencing the divine directly. Fr. Thomas updated practices from the ancient contemplative Christian tradition and presented a method of silent prayer known as centering prayer. During centering prayer, we drop all definitions of ourselves and of God and stay in the presence of the divine indwelling. By letting go of our efforts, our plans, our thoughts, feelings and agendas, we “attain freefall” and simply rest in God’s embrace. Nearer than breathing, the creator spirit is the ground of our being. When we choose to consciously remain in the presence of that spirit, over time we become who we were created to be: fully human and fully divine.
For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine. The spirit calls us to the transformation of our inmost being, and indeed of all our faculties, into the divine way of being and acting. ~ Thomas Keating
Welcome to the Human Condition
As highly complex biological beings, we humans come in as helpless infants with specific pre-programmed developmental needs that we cannot meet ourselves: We depend upon others to provide fundamental security needs like food and shelter; we depend upon others for love and affection or we will fail to thrive; we depend upon others to accept our need for power and give us a say in what happens to us. Since each of us had to depend upon flawed men and women to meet these fundamental needs, there were times when we experienced a deprivation of these essential needs for security, affection and power and as a consequence, we suffered distressing emotions.
As frustrated, frightened children with little context or experience, distressing emotions caused us to draw incorrect conclusions about God, ourselves, others and about how life is. These decisions, made when we were very young, became guiding beliefs that lodged deep in our unconscious. Over time, our personality formed around these immature beliefs about how to get our needs met. By utilizing our maturing intellect to narrate our own stories, we developed increasingly complex patterns of behavior that rationalize, justify or glorify painful situations so that we can prove to ourselves and others that we’re “okay.”
Unconsciously, this creates a “false self” that pursues certain “emotional programs for happiness” wherein we over identify with who we think we “should” be and disassociate from who we think we “shouldn’t” be. Our false self motivates us to continue to pursue the thwarted developmental needs of childhood long after we’ve reached physical maturity with the capacity to meet many of our own needs. If left unconscious and unaddressed, these beliefs will be the cause of ongoing conflict in adulthood, as we will tend to overreact emotionally whenever a symbol of our security, affection or power gets threatened.
Psychologists say 90% of our desires are unconscious. Our deepest commitments to symbols of security, affection and power are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve. When we experience anxiety and annoyance, it is a certain sign that an unconscious emotional program for happiness has just been frustrated.~ Thomas Keating
Whenever we experience upsetting emotions, it’s highly likely that an unconscious emotional program of the false self has been activated. Whenever something we consider a symbol of security, affection or power is threatened, we panic and react as if it’s life-threatening. We start blaming others for withholding something that we feel entitled to or we seek to get our needs met with outer symbols of security, affection and power that can never satisfy. It’s actually the false self that’s threatened, but since the emotional programs for happiness are unconscious, the threat feels very real.
We can’t think our way out of these emotional programs that cause us to look for happiness where it cannot be found. Instead, we must heal the original wounds of deprivation so that we are no longer ruled by our unconscious programs. Making the unconscious conscious and welcoming healing naturally inclines us to change the direction in which we look for happiness and fulfillment. Centering prayer invites the creator spirit within us to manifest as the “divine therapist,” gradually inviting us to relinquish any unconscious self-made obstacle that blocks the free flow of divine grace through our authentic self.
Welcoming Prayer is the practice that actively lets go of thoughts and feelings that support the false-self system. It embraces painful emotions experienced in the body rather than avoiding them or trying to suppress them. It does not embrace the suffering as such but the presence of the Holy Spirit in the particular pain, whether physical, emotional, or mental. Thus, it is the full acceptance of the content of the present moment. [In] giving the experience over to the Holy Spirit, the false-self system is gradually undermined and the true self liberated.
~Thomas Keating
The Welcoming Prayer can be used whenever you experience discomfort, pain or upset. It’s a gesture of the will that allows you to welcome the creator spirit as you acknowledge the difficulties of being a human. Trusting in the process of divine therapy, you can let it go and allow yourself to be transformed from within. You can quit trying to rearrange outer circumstances and instead let go and let God. Over time, you will free yourself from the unconscious influence of the false self and your authentic self will shine through. The welcoming prayer is a method that complements centering prayer, as it allows you to consent to God’s presence and action whenever you are presented with evidence of an activated false self: worry, anger, fear, blame, shame, etc.
To welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of each day. It is an open-hearted embrace of all that is in ourselves, in others and in the world. ~ Mary Mrozowski
The Welcoming Prayer Method
There are three movements of the prayer:
Feel and sink into what you are experiencing this moment in your body.
“WELCOME” what you are experiencing this moment in your body as an opportunity to consent to the Divine Indwelling.
Let go by saying “I let go of my desire for security, affection, control and embrace this moment as it is.”
Most of us resist the content of the present moment mightily when it contains pain. Welcoming upset, pain or discomfort may sound counterintuitive, but as long as we resist what is, we stay stuck in it. Paradoxically, it is in embracing the moment as it is that we can free ourselves enough to allow change. When we welcome and accept the content of the present moment, whatever it may be, knowing that we are one with the intelligence of the creator spirit, we can open ourselves to the free flow of grace which heals all things and restores us to the divine humans that we were created to be.