Prayer as Kindness to Self - Vince Brackett

SPEAKER NOTES

Intro

::So, how kind are you to yourself?::

My sense is most people are very self-critical. And, needless to say, that sucks for us.

Personally, I have extremely high standards for myself, which can end up leading to me being very hard on myself.

I learned a few years back, for example, how out of touch with my body I am, as a result of this.

Like if I’m working on something that feels important I will forget to eat lunch. I will have had my head down pushing myself to meet my standards so much that suddenly it’s 3pm and I realize I didn’t even notice that most fundamental of signals our bodies send us: I am hungry.

Or I sometimes don’t notice pain in my body until I lay down at the end of the day. Oh, my shoulder hurts. Wait it’s been hurting all day.

You may be more in touch with your body than me, but I wonder if that self-punishing instinct sounds familiar in one way or another?

And I wonder if, in addition, the inverse of that sounds familiar too: that because of a self-punishing instinct in you, you then find yourself totally shutting down as the only way to recover from the overdrive you’ve been in. Binging Netflix beyond the acceptable amount, or overeating, or over drinking, or isolating away from friends and family. When we do those things we tell ourselves we’re doing self care, but often it’s still punishing ourselves just in a different way.

So I think a lot about this, and have come across lots of good ideas out there to improve at this. This morning I want to throw out a spiritual suggestion for improving at being kind to ourselves.

Contemplative Prayer

It is my personal most-utilized prayer practice over the last five months of my life: contemplative prayer, or what is often called meditation. I’ve been participating in a weekly online group that is learning about this and trying it out, and it’s been really rewarding for me.

::A key scripture from the Bible that describes contemplative prayer would be from Psalm 46::

Be still and know that I am God.

Most foundationally, the practice builds on one of the ways we see Jesus pray throughout the Gospels

Mat 14:22-23 Then [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone.

Mar 1:35 Rising very early before dawn, [Jesus] left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.

Luke 5:15-16 The report about [Jesus] spread all the more, and great crowds assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their ailments, but he would withdraw to deserted places to pray.

These are examples of Jesus in contemplative prayer or mediation. This is not the only way Jesus prays or the only that we find in the Bible as an encouraged form of prayer, ::it’s one of roughly three:: (as some smart people of faith have argued — that there are essentially three different types of prayer — like with anything, creating hard categories is artificial, but that idea has still been helpful to me):

1. Contemplative (what we’re talking about today)
2. Relational (which is like ongoing, conversational prayer that happens in the midst of regular life, as opposed to the set aside time/space of contemplation)
3. Asking/Requests (which is probably the most common conception of prayer — “God, bring relief to my ill or hurting family member”, or “God bring justice or help to this situation beyond my control”)

We talk about all three of these at Brown Line. And today we’re zooming in specifically on contemplative.

Here’s the basic idea behind it

- Contemplative masters, from the first century after Jesus (known as the the Desert Fathers and Mothers) all the way down to contemporary 20th century teachers (names like Thomas Merton or the Trappist Monks) argue that:
- ::Life is like being under a waterfall:: — all of our experiences and thoughts and feelings are tumbling down on us, and so we are constantly in reactivity mode, reacting to that deluge of water tumbling down
- Contemplative prayer is an attempt to get behind the waterfall, to get out of reactivity mode: that is what it means to be still and know that God is God.
- Behind the waterfall, we just observe all of the experiences and thoughts and feelings cascading down, rather than react to them… we don’t judge them, we don’t try to hold them back… we’re just observing

That has a very mystical sound to it — I know — but the practicals of contemplative prayer are actually pretty simple:

- You try to follow your breath to keep yourself quiet and still. In… Out… In… Out…
- And then, as the thoughts and feelings you are observing distract you or send you down some tangent in your brain, or as some noise or thing around you distracts you, you *welcome* the distraction rather than judge it (more on that in a minute), and then return to your breath
- The Trappist monks said to strive for doing this 20 minutes in the morning, and then 20 minutes in the evening
    - 20 minutes in the morning is for sanity
    - 20 minutes in the evening is for transformation
- I love that

Now, let’s be honest, in now 5 months of actively working at this, I have not once actually been able to pull off two prayers of 20 minutes.

- But I’m consistently now doing one 20 minute prayer in the morning (So I guess I’m not transforming, but I’m more sane.)
- No, seriously, I love the idea behind the two times of 20 minutes, I am going to continue striving for that, but in the meantime, any amount of this is good! 
- (There is an interesting attraction the time frame of 20 minutes — the Trappist monks in particular called 20 minutes a holy amount of time.)

So, what do they mean by welcoming distractions rather than judging them? This is important. This is the “kindness to self” piece that has been so revolutionary for me.

- The best way I’ve had this demonstrated to me is by using a simple phrase that, seriously, feels downright magical to me right now
- The phrase is: ::“Of course I…”::
- Like this:
    - “Of course I’m distracted thinking about the big Santa event again, I’m stressed out about it going well.”… 
    - “Of course I just fell asleep for a minute. My son and daughter were both up in the middle of the night and I didn’t sleep well.”
    - “Of course I was just rehearsing what I want to say to that person. I’m mad at them.”
- Do you hear how *kind* that phrasing is to myself?
- Do you hear how the “of course” phrasing leads me to be *not in the least* self-critical or berating of myself for being distracted?
- Seriously, just this phrase — SO incredibly useful - because it can cut down all the ways we (or any unhealthy religion we may have encountered) work ourselves into a lather about being “not good enough” or “not holy enough”, AND (even more importantly) it can cut down all the ways we (or unhealthy religion we’ve encountered) make God out to be scandalized by normal human thinkings and feelings — which is just the opposite of Jesus-centered faith — again, that is the celebration at the heart of Christmas — God became human, and knows what that means. 
- So use this phrasing in literally every way your mind wanders
    - “Of course I’m thinking about my partner or spouse in a certain way... we haven’t been together in a while.”
    - “Of course I’m thinking about that person I’m longing to be with, I’m single and tired of it.”
- God is not scandalized by our humanity, he loves our humanity! 
- And so we should as well!

That’s the power of this! ::Contemplative prayer is a way to practice self-kindness.:: And, according to the contemplative masters, we can’t understate how important learning this sort of internal posture toward ourselves is to a healthy spirituality. They say that when we’re feeling kindness toward ourselves in the present moment, in the midst of what is presently true for us right now (no matter what that is), we’re feeling God’s Holy Spirit. That’s the hoped-for result of contemplative prayer:

- It’s not “an answered prayer” like in asking/requesting prayer
- And it’s not even “hearing God speak or guide” like in relational/conversational prayer
- It’s “feeling God’s Holy Spirit”

What that feels like is a feeling of peace, of “everything I need is available to me right now in this present moment,” of “God is working on my behalf, and I need only be still right now.”

I wonder if you’ve ever felt something like this? Maybe you have, you’ve just never used the language “the Holy Spirit” to describe it? My first every spiritual experience when I was 17 years old was this kind of experience. I didn’t have the language of “God’s Holy Spirit” at the time, I just felt incredible peace and hope. Contemplative prayer is by no means the only way in to experiencing this, but it is an excellent pathway.

So, here’s how this has gone for me… my current clip is one 20 min time of prayer, 4 or 5 times a week - I feel good about that!

- I’m a morning person so I wake up a half hour before the rest of my house. 
- I make a mug of coffee
- I set a timer for 20 minutes on my phone,
- I start by trying to follow my breath
- And then whenever I get distracted I use the “of course” language to name the distraction and try to welcome it rather than judge it
- And then I return to following my breath once I remember to.
- And then I repeat that over and over again because I get distracted by my to do list or by a sound in my house or by a random thought or idea like every 30 seconds.
- Usually, the time I’m logging distracted is significantly longer than the time I’m logging just following my breath, and that’s totally fine.
    - Because the measure of success is NOT how little distraction I experienced, it is simply that I kept at it.
    - That’s another important piece here in the spirit of “kindness to self” — the measure of success (of whether you did contemplative prayer or not) is NOT how little you were distracted… it’s NOT the case that if you were distracted less it was a better prayer… that sort of attempt to measure the experience is missing the point.
    - In one sense, the more distractions the better, because that’s more opportunity to be kind to yourself, and therefore more opportunity to feel the Holy Spirit
    - That approach is so kind to ourselves it takes serious work to believe and operate that way, right?
    - I listened to a podcast interview with someone who is a decades-long practitioner of this type of prayer, and what stood out to me was how non-controversial it was for him to be distracted. He was like, “Yeah, sometimes I spend my whole 20 minutes distracted. and that’s fine. The timer goes off. And I continue on in my day.” — Not a hint of frustration or disappointment or failure in his voice. Why? Because, even if it was 20 minutes of distractions, those distractions gave him more practice being kind to himself, and therefore more time with the Holy Spirit.
- So, as I mentioned, I’m 5 months in now actively trying to do this. And personally I have been finding exactly what the contemplative masters claim I will
    - Most of these 20 minutes of prayer, I experience for at least a minute or so a wave of incredible peace. Often longer, but even the one minute waves have a lasting impact on my days. 
    - I think it’s because I’m such a responsibility-taker and do-er that when I have that feeling of “God is working on my behalf, I need only be still”, it feels safe for me to stop thinking about all my stresses and responsibilities — I can put them on the back burner, and not just begrudgingly. Like I actually do feel in that moment that that is the best, most wise thing for me to do. Because God is working on my behalf. I can feel it.
    - And I am kinder to myself! For real guys, the “of course” phrasing thing has been like magic to me. Something about the way that’s training me to talk to myself really is decreasing how much I judge what I’m feeling.

::So here’s the recommendation I’ll leave us with:::

Strive for a regular practice of contemplative prayer at whatever increment of 5 mins feels right to you

- 5 mins: Beginner to prayer
- 10 mins: Some prayer experience
- 15 mins: Ready for or wanting a challenge in prayer
- 20 mins: Lots of confidence in prayer

To review

- Set aside and quiet time/space
- Set a timer
- Start by following your breath
- Welcome every observation and distraction, don’t judge them
- Return to your breath
- Repeat
- Assess the experience NOT by how little distraction you experienced, but by how kind you were to yourself.
- Welcome the Holy Spirit.