Finding my Glasses on my Face: At the Corner of Fourth and Walmart, Suffering Speaks.

Silent suffering--either prayerful or dissociated (or both, in their season)--is the core of Christ's wisdom teaching. We've said it previously--only by silence can you empathize with Christ's silence, only in prayer can you know Christ's prayer. But the stakes get higher, even, than that: only in suffering itself does the Fatherhood of God become believable. This was what the Centurion witnessed at the foot of the Cross when, on the basis of Christ's passion alone he said "truly this man was God's son." It's not secret wisdom accessible to a privileged few, not accomplished by work.  Experience is the key of knowledge.  Suffering imprisons us all, in measures unique to each of us, but the power of the keys is in our own hands. [bxA]

What begins on the Mount of the Transfiguration was finished on Golgatha, and it ascends and descends on the Son of Man.  If you're reading this, you might be familiar with Thomas Merton's "Fourth and Walnut" epiphany.  At that particular corner in Louisville, Kentucky, the monk experienced an opening of the mind.  It made him see those around him differently.  "There is," he wrote, "no way of telling people that they are all walking around, shining like the sun."  This is high-end monastic teaching--keep it in mind.  We'll return to it later.

Someone once said "We tell our kids to love Jesus, but we don't teach them to make Jesus' journey."  The fact is, deification has long been a roadmap for "change of mind and heart" by which our "triune brains" come to echo and embody "God in three persons."  To demonstrate this, focusing on the new testament particularly, let's look at the way Christ is presented.

Christ is a prayer event.  Paul's blinding realization said "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," and it attached the name "Christ" to the phenomenon of contemplation.  When the name "apostle" detached from the "beginning to end following of Christ," when "Christ as altered state of consciousness" became an accepted part of orthodoxy, it made prayer a starting point for all apostolic teaching.  As the saying goes "lex orandi, lex credendi."

Christ is a concentration event. We go from many concerns to one.  The apostles wanted to build three tents, but after the cloud and the fear, they were left with Christ alone.  The adulterous woman committed many sins, but once none were left to condemn her, Christ alone remained.  Martha was worried about many things, but there was need of only one.  

Christ is an awareness event: We, by becoming Christ, become all the paradoxes: everything and nothing, causeless cause, becoming a true self by giving up a false one.  Christ is the one whose second touch allows us to look intently at the shadow side of all sorts of opposites, the one who added only persecutions to apostolic recompense.  Desperate, overloaded people, rightly or wrongly, place blame: overcome by anxiety, blinded by supposedly divine mandate, they vent attachment, craving and ego by murdering prophets and messiahs alike.  When God himself incarnates in such a scapegoat, requiring students to become like the teacher is terrible and difficult curriculum. 

Christ is an acceptance event: "Always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also" The sacraments already attune us to both pain and bliss, aversion and attraction. We learn when to set our face like flint, and when to say "into your hands I commend my spirit."  In the end, all sensation is equally revelatory: meanwhile, Christ is the new name for equanimity.

Christ is an identity event: He is before all else that is, the first born of the dead.  Clothed and in his right mind, Legion discovered his true identity in Christ's presence.  This happens only on the other side of unknowing, when the voices are silenced that say "I know who you are, the holy one of God" and we hear ourselves say, instead, "I believe, help my unbelief."  In terms of identity, what Paul said is true. "I live, but not I, Christ lives in me." Jesus said, "before Abraham was, I am."  The Teacher is, indeed, the oneness who comes before all others, ourselves especially.

Christ is a motivational event: he is why we continue to interact with objects of desire after we've ceased wanting them. He is why "working for wages we've ceased to care about" matters. Because they make life with the PEOPLE we care about possible. One side of things is: there are wonderful people out there--wives, brothers, friends--who are worth suffering for.  The other side of things is: people's shadow will emerge in desperate situations.  You and I may well become scapegoats, mirrors to reflect their emerging attachments and to purify our own.  The energy for "one step at a time" may escape us, but that is precisely when "the Christ within" takes over.  We need only move the body. 

Whether Christ shines like the sun at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, I do not know: God knows.  But I know a man in Christ who experienced him at "Fourth and Walmart."  After several hours of chanting "Jesus, mercy" under his breath, he travelled to the massive grocery chain to buy a simple supper for himself and his wife.  Standing in line at the self check out, body still humming with vibrations of the Jesus prayer, this man heard "You are seeing people, but they look like trees.  You are the one who needs two touches from Jesus.  You don't get to see people until you see their suffering."  There is no way of telling yourself that you're just one of many anonymous assholes struggling to afford groceries and barely holding it together emotionally.  Some truths cannot be accepted with the mind alone, but only once they've vibrated like prayer through nervous systems at loose ends with themselves.

Listen, it comes down to this.  People are sinful because they're desperate and trapped--because even the bodies they're born in are decaying; because even when hustle is endless, basic survival needs may go unsufficed.  We might make light of it and say "we find ourselves in a pickle" but that's only to avoid weeping.  For all flesh that lives on the face of the earth, stress finds a release valve in sinful condemnation.  I am not exempt, you are not exempt from that: others may condemn us this week, but we'll forget ourselves and, by next Tuesday, be calling for their crucifixion in turn.  

Each of us capable of misplacing our glasses, while they sit on the bridge of our own nose.  So perhaps it's also true that "No one can say 'truly this was God's son' who has yet to find the lance that pierced Christ's side in their own hand." Egos can bear neither the burden of being a scapegoat nor the honest view of their own blame placing.  But there is one within whom we do not know--our own humble self, the Christ--and he has already given his back to what we would back away from.  Jesus, mercy: only in the name of Christ can any of us stand and walk.

 

In the Name of Jesus: Mantra, part two.

Mantra works because we feel sound and because we choose to think about mantra at the expense of other stressors. Mantra also works with time and practice. It demands that mental energy (attention) and guts energy (intention) be focused over a sustained period. It involves non-attachment: thoughts, sensations and even identity that aren’t the mantra–well, intent to practice renders these unimportant. [bxA]

St. Paul’s mind and words—his attention and intention—were so focused on God that all sound became God’s name.  He said “in him we live and move and have our being” because his prayer had become so all-consuming that everything echoed it back to him.  This is that space the mystics spoke of when they said “the mantra prays itself and I listen.”

We say we pray “in the name of Jesus,” but our mouths (just momenst ago) were talking about groceries and anxiety and manipulations of all sorts. We do not experience the name of Jesus because we have yet to pray it so constantly that all the earth echoes it back to us. Inside ourselves, we must ask “is resentment, as an emotional baseline, manageable? Is my host of worries serving me well? Have either of those helped me to change the things I can?” If not, we must admit what those who chant the name have always known: “mantra was the one thing I could do to help myself. My job was to pay attention to the sound of the name, and to come back when I get distracted.”

This is apostolic teaching, verifiable by experience: withdraw attention and intention from everything that isn’t the name of Jesus, pronounce the name of Jesus continuously, and eventually, everything will echo it back. Peter said “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.” Miracles will always be God’s, but metanoia is for all, always: when separate selves have ceased to be, when all bodies and identities are simply echo chambers for the word, when there is no longer a you or an I at all, then Christ will be all, and in all—we’ll be “in the name of Jesus” because, after all, there is nowhere else we could be.

If, when a part of the body is mentioned in scripture, we would put our own attention on that part of our own body, we would learn a great deal. Indeed, all scripture is useful for growth in bodily awareness. Romans says “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead you will be saved.” That asks us to pay attention to our mouth, and to the center of our chest, as we are praying. Even the subtlest shifts in sensation verify growth in awareness. Note also: the use of the future tense (“you will be saved”) verifies the time and practice required–as well as the divine source of the change.

Remember: “if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” You can, in fact, confess with your lips that Jesus Christ is Lord without moving your mouth. It is as simple as “think about the prayer instead of your anxieties.” (This is a tall order, as the mind is relentlessly cranky, but it improves with practice.) Believing in the heart is an act of the will that moves energy from the hips to the chest. Installing the words “Jesus Christ is Lord” into your silence is better than stewing on your resentment. Installing “belief“ into hips and lower abdomen, watching the energy move up into the center of the chest, this is a better use of energy than stewing on work, or on the vocational, relational crisis du jour. There will be times, sure, when we are too exhausted to direct our minds and wills to high purpose. But if we have yet to log hours in the attempt, it’s doubtful that time is now.

Wisdom says, “you are on the hook to provide yourself with sensations and thoughts that aren’t anxiety and vice” that’s true: the skittish and insecure aftereffects of vice verify it. Mystics can confirm: neither seeing Jesus nor levitating are as important as doing the dishes. Hippies can confirm: throwing sex or drugs at your vulnerabilities, in quantity and without careful integration, is dangerous. The cleanest, slowest form of ego dissolution is the one the Apostles talked about–losing self in the feeling of sound by concentrated return to the feeling of sound, and the name of Jesus. We who have died will be alive with him when self is entirely awash with the sound of the name. He is before all else that is, the first born of the dead. Let us also go and die with him!

That the Students May Become like the Teacher: A Brief Praise for Suffering.

Experience is the key of knowledge. Some of Christ’s teachings only make sense to those who have carried them out. Only silence can reveal the content of Christ’s silences. Only stillness of mind can reveal the true nature of the mind of Christ. Only prayer can reveal the content of Christ’s prayer. And, to put a point on the purpose of this particular writing: one can know nothing of the suffering servant except through suffering itself. [bxA]

If the meaning and purpose of suffering is revealed only in the ever-increasing willingness to endure it, those of us who would learn that lesson have work ahead of us. Patient endurance will take time to form, and it will cause short-term emotional upheaval–so as people formed at the foot of the Cross, followers of the Teacher should start with a few basic commitments. Because we, Christ’s students, want to absorb pain’s lessons: we make a decision to let our suffering cause personal brokenheartedness instead of retaliation. We commit to the reduction of suffering, knowing how much fun our anguish is not. Under no circumstances should conflicts be artificially multiplied so that lessons can be taught–that would be a sign of spiritualized ego–but when suffering happens, it can be skillfully employed to draw us closer to the one, within, who is capable of quietly bearing it. These commitments set boundaries on a learning process that, regrettably, is often spicier than anyone on earth has a taste for.

Suffering can come from loss, it can come from chronic illness or trauma stored in the body. Or, we can simply find ourselves in a time where, though personally aware of the cost of our own manipulations, we are surrounded by people who unquestioningly manipulate to get their needs met–perhaps even gaining by it while we continue to live with loss. To function on a daily basis, we maintain egoic distance from suffering by judging and analyzing it. But learning with the suffering Christ asks that we be quiet, commit to actually feeling the physical and emotional pains in the body, minus the noise of examination. At the end of it, there will be an opportunity to speak compassionately to the body and let go. We will be able to sing the hymn “ But the pains which he endured Alleluia, our salvation have procured Alleluia.” Those who raise their voices will no longer doubt where their redeemer is.

Suffering initiates a grieving process that renders the things we’re attached to less appealing. This is long, slow and depressing, but also the vehicle of the various dark nights. The things we once desired lose their lustre. Emotional skill is necessary here: it is a positive thing to see the sadness and depression creating non-attachment in real time. Each attachment we face is one less time we need to return as someone else’s “Christ in stranger’s guise”--hastening the day when “the Christ within” will ascend to the Father, forever dissolving into cosmic consciousness. But until then, a carefully tuned ear will begin to hear echoes of the gospel story about the pharisee and the publican: and it is right to be wary. 

As a way of connecting with the benefits of ongoing sadness and depression, practitioners may hear themselves saying “thank God I don’t need what others need.” One who has undergone the dark night of the senses simply finds himself collecting less stuff.  But listen: the temptation is real– to wax cynical out of secret jealousy, to judge those still capable of enjoying what we no longer can. It’s our job to focus the mind on where our enjoyment actually is–in the renewal of our spirits–and actively root for those who take enjoyment where they can. Snacks are tasty, toys are groovy, human connection is freaking amazing. Cynically judging these things in others--well, this is ego, attempting to retrench.

If we’re careful: eventually, the emotional character of suffering shifts. Honest grief begins to take the place of “comparative desire.” Incarnation shows itself to be a Cross, on which all who live are suspended: between uncomfortable vulnerabilities, on one side, and, on the other, the humiliating hustle to get survival needs met. No one on earth is capable of that–and when we see our incapacity plainly, we pray “I am sorry for what I numbed myself with when I couldn’t be poor and vulnerable.” We sit in our suffering as the publican sat in the temple, saying “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” To our surprise, such shifts in perspective can even change how physical or emotional pain feels in the body.  The sensations are just as intense, but the intensity is less painful.  The cross feels different when you stop wiggling against the nails, and condemnation feels different when you find the voice that says “Father forgive us–none of us knows how to do this!” After that, snacks are tasty, toys are groovy, human connection is amazing–and we may perhaps rediscover our fascination for them.

Sex, breath and physical sensation, to say nothing of concentration itself–these are, all of them, intense teachers. On a worldwide religious stage, tantric teachers suggest that physical sensations themselves can free us from ego. (And in fact Jesus’ genius may be precisely found in challenging how attached we are to “selflessness being blissful” making nonself accessible to the vulnerable and suffering.)  Famous teachers like Ram Dass said “there isn’t a lot of room for ego when you’re just breathing in and out.” Buddhists who work with the levels of concentration called the jhanas report that thought of self is suspended as our capacity grows to let go of pleasure and willingly embrace pain. In summary, to paraphrase the Trappist monk Thomas Keating: “there is a level on which pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain, because we are grounded in divine love.” Despite how the lesson challenges attachments, the prospect of robust acceptance is real: so it qualifies as a “lesson that’s part of the curriculum regardless of how miserably difficult it is.”

You have heard it said “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Amen I say to you, suffering is one such game, and humility is one such prize. Even the most diligent practitioners will hang their heads, in the end, and say “I’m sorry for the desires I hid behind because I was having trouble being vulnerable and feeling sensations and emotions.” The psalmist said “Have mercy on me God have mercy, for in you, my soul has taken refuge” This points us in the direction of “the Christ within” who can physically bear the intense feelings we cannot. And indeed, though both the sensations of the body (and the emotions they cause) whether blissful or painful, are intense–full acceptance is a source of protection for those willing to feel them. The psalm continues “In the shadow of your wings. I take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.” Even if suffering stinks, it is possible to appreciate it for the breaks it affords selfishly oriented thinking. Without forming a morbid attachment to suffering because of it, we may find ourselves praying that “things that orient us away from ourselves” increase.

And listen, listen: we do NOT need to content ourselves with being in physical or emotional pain because of its lesson value. Half of the curriculum of suffering is “what do you do with difficult emotions and sensations once you’ve felt them fully?” It is the function of emotional and physical suffering to free us from ego. After it’s done so, though, if we’re to avoid retrenchment in resentments, ego energy needs to find expression in prayer for others. Jesus didn’t stop at “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done.” On the other side of taking one on the chin, he prayed “father forgive them.”

Even on a level of sensation, we need not content ourselves with discomfort. Those who are so chronically ill that the drugs stop working go to psychologists trained in pain management– they’re taught to encounter their pain deeply and release it, growing in speed with the internal skills. One of the lessons of mantra practice is “the feeling of sound is more effective than coping mechanisms to relieve stress and release pain.” Let’s unpack this for a minute.

We know pain and trauma causes hyperfocus on the body. Psalm 22 says “I can feel all my bones.” This is incredibly negative as we are first becoming aware of the volume of trauma we carry around. But it doesn’t stay that way. After a while that hypervigilance–once we’re safe enough to allow it to rest from perpetual engagement– becomes energy for highly focused intent and attention. We can kick in as needed, even when we’re averse to the work at hand, concentrate despite things that would once have distracted us. Transforming pain uses all of these skills. A great deal of pain’s discomfort isn’t due to the physical sensation, it’s due to our desire to avoid it, the suffering we’re creating by our judgment of it. Looking our own pain in the face is kind of like emerging from under the covers when there’s a ghost in the room. But on the turbulent sea of Galilee, when the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, they heard “take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Looking our own pain in the face is gross, the way it would be to look at someone we love being beaten horribly and crucified. But the disciples eventually did so, and recalled Zechariah’s words, saying “you shall look upon him whom you have pierced, and mourn him as one mourns an only son.” Again, when Moses nailed a serpent to a pole–strikingly paralleling Christ’s elevation on the cross, Exodus says “all who look at it will live.”

It is the same with physical and emotional pain, the same with the darker parts of our psychology, the same with the annoyingly persistent sinful and suffering world. The Spirit’s energy is subtle and small by design: we can’t both be present to suffering, while also trying to examine or control it. But Christ returned as a stranger so that we would see all suffering as his. Here’s a list of everything we’re told to see as Christ, so extensive it’s exhausting: bread, wine, sheep gates, shepherds, light, clear paths, vines, and life itself. Christ is literally present in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned, the naked. The Spirit says “you can spend your energy doing intellectual work, trying to figure out if what you’re looking at is Christ and what your obligations are. Or you can just stop judging, proclaim everything to be Christ, and commence to all the bits that involve rejoicing.” As we realize that all suffering is Christ’s and grow in our willingness to host that pain in our own bodies: we understand why the epistles exhort us to “always carrying in the body the death of Christ so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also.” If the Spirit’s energy were too insufficient, in fact, to simultaneously “be who we think we are” and also show devotion to Christ, we should throw off self like the tight garment it has always been.  Everything left, in us and in the world, would be Christ, risen indeed.

Francis of Assissi, whose suffering was so great he physically manifested the wounds of Christ, famously stripped in front of his bishop and advocated “following the naked Christ nakedly.” This falls short of justification for showing up to dinner parties in our birthday suits–but it can and must do heavy lifting to inspire us to utilize our suffering in a particular way. Seized by Roman soldiers, an unnamed disciple wiggled out of his clothes and fled Gethsemani naked. Amen, I say to you: this moment is Gethsemani. What need have any of us for the garment of self? Let all who have ears listen, because our suffering’s whispering an answer. "None at all!" Can you hear it? None at all.