by Doug Hammack
Last week we saw how the ancient spiritual practice of silence challenges the tyranny of desire. This week we look at how we can fare well when we challenge the powerful desires of our senses.
Relaxing Our Sense Desires
This entry was posted in Inner Peace and tagged ancient spiritual paths, desire, growth, inner rest, peace, surrender. Bookmark the permalink.
I’ve been doing a series of series of lessons for a while now
• The theme behind each of these has been interior quietude
• carving out inner quiet, inner space, inner peace
I’ve spoken on several elements, that when we have them in place…
• Or when we have them removed from us…
• Afford us the space for inner quiet
The premise on which these lessons have been based is this…
• We have a core belief that the Spirit of God dwells in each of us
• That the journey to God is not an external one, but internal
• That a primary ways we access God is by quieting ourselves
• So, we join the ancients in developing internal and external ways to heighten our awareness of what is already in us
• We develop an internal posture of listening, receptivity
• We develop an external posture of stillness, quietness, meditation
Further, we’ve said, the spiritual journey is not pursued by hard work, trying hard, or by striving against sin
• We just don’t advance on the journey by working to be delivered of bad habits, or by trying hard to do good and avoid bad
No, the spiritual journey, I’ve said so many times, is a journey of awareness of what already is
• A journey of becoming aware of the Light and Life w/in us
• A journey of becoming aware of Divine power and presence in us
But…
awareness is not easy!
There are layers and layers of stuff on top of the Divine light in us
• Layers of belief, layers of lesser gods we worship
• Layers of hurts that distort our perspective
• Layers of training that make our instincts betray us
• Layers, layers, layers
…and these layers don’t give way easily at all
And further…
The way we do advance on the journey is very counter-intuitive
• Instead of greater doing, we find our way by less doing
• Instead of trying harder, we find our way by letting go
• Instead of striving, we find our way by relaxing
• Counter to the values of the society that trained us…
one of the most important things we can do on the journey is quiet our inner lives
So in each of these lesson series…
we’ve looked at several ways to quiet our inner beings…
ways to enter into Sabbath consciousness…
ways to carve out inner space, and inner quiet
• we’ve been seeking the ability to maintain inner stillness while we’re engaged in…
• raising kids, doing jobs, running errands, preparing sales presentation
first, we talked about staying present in this moment
• being trained not to borrow troubles/future, regrets/past
• These steal away our peace
Second, we talked about not to getting stuck in lower rungs of human need
Together, we looked at the ways Jesus calls us to climb the ladder of human need
• We feeling we need to pursue survival needs a little longer…
• Need to stay w/ our safety/security needs a little longer…
• Need to consolidate our belonging needs a little longer…
• But all the while, Jesus calls us to ascend, to climb higher
• To let those more base human needs take care of themselves
• To believe they are met before it looks to us like they are
• To give ourselves to the pursuit of the higher human needs
Self-actualization was Maslow’s word
Jesus’ words were KOG, or eternity, or some such
And in this last lesson, we saw that even the way we define ourselves is another thing that steals away peace
• When we see ourselves as our descriptive selves
• We set ourselves on a treadmill for life
• Always trying to get a favorable comparison of our descriptors
And in each of these I brought out the wisdom of the ancients
• Again and again, I said that we are not the first to find ourselves in the human condition
• We are not the first to feel lost and needing something bigger
We’ve seen that the ancients discovered a set of spiritual practices that work to elevate us from to a higher plane of being
• To a transcended our limited sense of self
• To overcome the fear that traps us in the lower rungs of need
• To focus our minds on the present moment instead of past/future
And these ancient paths, these ancient disciplines serve as conduits of freedom and life to our souls
• Conduits of the inner quietude we need to access the Divine w/in
• The redemptive power of Jesus is already w/in us
• But access to our own innermost parts is a bit problematic
• So, we do things…
• We pursue Truth
• We read spiritually, we posture ourselves in surrender to God
• We share the journey w/ other spiritual seekers
• Drawing insight, perspective, encouragement from one another
• We sing songs, we read scriptures, we serve one another and those in need
A body of classical spiritual disciplines has developed over time…
Practices like fasting, meditating, studying, fellowshipping, praying…
• and when we do these things, those before us discovered
• the fruit in our lives is rich, deep, and transforming
Today, I want to embark on a fourth peace-stealer
A fourth way our inner peace is taken from us
A fourth way the inner Light of God gets suffocated, choked out
I want to talk for a couple of lessons, about how…
unbridled, unfocused desire steals away our peace
Desire drives us!
Body desires, heart desires, validation desires, descriptive self desires
• desire for cookie will drive me out of chair when I’m exhausted
• I’ll sacrifice my need for rest, to gain the desire for a treat
By giving attention to our desires
By learning to run our desires instead of our desires running us…
• We carve out more of the inner leisure, inner peace necessary to access the Divine Center in each of us
And I want to begin in a funny place, by looking at the ancient spiritual practice of silence
• Our spiritual forefathers and foremothers understood something about the discipline of silence
• They understood that training in silence would begin to unravel the power of desire to control us
That’s what these spiritual disciplines do
They are something we can do…
…about something, about which we can do nothing
The ancient spiritual disciplines are something we can do…
…about something, about which we can do nothing
Think about it this way…
It is in our nature to grow into spiritual maturity
It is on our nature over time to see
• layers of fear/shame which keep our true selves, our Divine Light selves from radiating out dissolve
• To use Paul’s words, it is in our nature to walk in newness of life
• to overcome habits of sin and shortcoming that plague us
And something inside us tells us this is our destiny
So off we go to do something about it
• And we marshal power of our will, the effort of our mind/heart
• And we come up short, but that’s ok because we are at the core, good people, and we want to do well
• So we try harder, we redouble our efforts
• We recommit, we rekindle our passion, we try even harder
And after some number of years…
(the number varying by how fierce our commitment is, how great our need to be validated by God is…)
• awaken to find ourselves exhausted, bankrupted, ready to give up
Who will deliver me from this body of death? That’s what Paul cried
The radiant Divine light w/in us is so clouded, so covered, so wrapped in these lesser expressions of our humanity…
• We can despair at ever being free
It seems that mire, dirt, and a morass of ugliness has no problem finding its way out of us
• Mistreatment of our bodies, our minds, our friends…
• Mistreating others when we’re stressed, worried, afraid…
• These things seem to come out of us effortlessly
But for all our efforts at lives of steady, consistent virtue…
• For all our efforts to contain our fear, clamp down on our impatience, control our tempers, our lusts, our envy, our greed…
• For all our efforts to replace fear w/ peace, replace impatience w/ steadfastness, replace envy w/ peace, lust w/ love, and greed…
…virtue just does not seem to come as effortlessly
A frontal attack on the vices…
This is the definition of vanity the author of Ephesians talked about
• It’s all vanity, he said, it’s all emptiness, it’s pointless, it’s chasing after the wind, it’s silly, and above all, it’s useless
In a book I read 30 years ago, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster quoted a guy I’ve never heard of…
• Heini Arnold
• As long as we think we can save ourselves by our own will power, we will only make the evil in us stronger than ever.
Hard work and human effort works is an exercise in frustration when it comes to developing lives of steadfast virtue and grace
• And for the particularly resilient, it can go for quite a while
• But cracks show up soon enough
But what we cannot do through focus of mind and will…
• We can see unfold in us by another door
And the ancients have discovered certain practices, certain spiritual disciplines are that other door
• They are ways to access Divine grace
• Ways to find what we feared could not be found
• Ways to do something about that, about which we can do nothing
Once many realize that we can’t do anything about our perennial weaknesses and failures, they come very near to giving up
• Since we cannot attain to the expression of the Divine Light w/in by force of effort, many feel like throwing in the towel
So shall we?
Shall we give up on the fruitful life set before us?
Shall we succumb to the power of those lesser layers?
Give in to the frustrations of our inability to vanquish them?
Again, to quote Paul: me gonoito:
The most powerful negative the Greek language can muster
(translation mine)
What cannot be done by frontal assault
Can nevertheless be experienced through the back door
And the back door…
This is where the classical spiritual disciplines come in
Something we can do about, that, about which we can do nothing
The disciplines put us in a place to experience what God is always doing
• The disciplines get our lesser selves out of the way long enough for us to experience the redemptive work God is always doing
• The disciplines quiet the competing voices inside of us
• Quiet the distractions all around us
• And avail us of the redemptive reality that is always all around us
When our humanity intersects the Divine, what we could not do by force of will, we find happening w/in us by another way
An old saying from moral theology circles…
• “virtue is easy”
• this is not saying that working hard to be virtuous is easy
• We know that!
• What it is saying is that when we finally attain virtue, it will not be because we worked hard at it
Let’s go back to the image of a growing tree I use so often…
• Spiritual maturity…
• Accessing the Divine Light inside of us
• Living out the virtue of that Divine Light
• Well, this is like fruit growing on a tree: effortless!
However, for a tree to bear fruit effortlessly…
• it must be rooted in soil, exposed to sunlight, and have water rained upon it in sufficient amount
• When these elements are present, growing fruit is easy
The spiritual disciplines avail us of the sunlight, rain, and soil of the soul
• And when the genetic code of the Divine in us has grown
• Well virtue is easy
• It comes out of us, not because we try so hard at it
• It comes out of us because it is our nature to be virtuous
• We are good, we are kind, we are gracious, we are wise…
Now…
One of those ancient and recognized sunlight-and-soil disciplines…
SLIDE 14 CANDLE 2
Is the practice of silence
• In the right setting, the practice of not-speaking, acts as soil, sunlight, and rain upon the tree of Divine Life that indwells us
Here’s what the wise and spiritual who came before us tell us…
• When we relax our compulsion to speak, it awakens us
• We see things about ourselves
Same thing happens when we fast
• We see how grouchy, how irritable we are under the surface
• Something that was subsidized or covered over is shown us
When we are silent, we realize how urgent the desire to speak is
And if we participate w/ the discipline…
• We begin to ask ourselves…
• Where does the urgency to speak come from?
• What fear drives us me to so much chatter about stuff that really doesn’t matter?
And if we listen for the Inner Voice, those from before us even tell us what to expect…
• Often we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not isolated in universe
• We seek to avoid our fear that we are existentially alone
• We try to draw affirmation to ourselves
• We try to distract ourselves from the fundamental mysteries of our existence
• We work hard to keep loneliness at bay
This loneliness is a big one…
• child moving into a new neighborhood, a teen in college dorm
• even successful people isolated by their success
• loneliness is painful, so it drives make, or to listen to noise
• tv, radio, action, go, go, go
but silence, the ancients teach us, teaches us the difference between loneliness and solitude
• loneliness believes there is nothing w/in us, and so experiences the silence as an inner emptiness
• solitude believes there is Life, Light, and the Divine w/in us, so it experiences silence as inner fulfillment
Chatter, noise, and excessive talking…
These work to cover over dominant position a lesser self has w/in us
But when we spend time in the discipline of silence
When we set aside time not to talk ourselves
When we set aside time not to gravitate to the chat/talk of others
…we begin to expose these lesser dimensions of ourselves
…and the exposure invites the redeeming work of HS w/in us
Now I know I’m speaking to some parents of kids
Some who work in a corporate madhouse
• And so for some of us, the idea of silence sounds like a vacation
• When the kids are screaming, the boss is chomping @ bit…
• We fantasize about silence
But when the noise abates and the crisis nature around us subsides…
• Many people have a deep discomfort w/ sustained silence
• After a little while, we reach for the TV, radio, music
• We get a book, a magazine, something to ward off the silence
Silence sometimes makes us feel helpless
We’ve gotten used to using words to control our environment
• if we’re silent, we lose control
• so silence forces us to trust something outside ourselves
• something to keep the universe in line
• something to keep my life on track
• and for most of us, that something is not the Divine presence
• for most of us, that something is our hard work, our tireless effort, and our many spoken words
But the ancients understood that the discipline of silence exposed w/in us the fault lines of our lesser selves
• The fear that the universe was unsafe
• The drive to keep things controlled by our efforts
• Our interior sense of lacking something that needed to be filled
• What we’re afraid of
…all these things exposed, uprooted, dug up in silence
But on the other hand…
The ancients understood that practice of long stretches of stillness, being alone, being quiet, not speaking or being spoken to…
• This is one of the places the Divine intersects the human
• At that place, we find that Another comes for us
• This is where the redemptive work of Jesus is transacted
Silence is not a discipline to simply expose our weaknesses, fears, lack…
• Silence is the environment in which the Divine transforms us
• The Divine, gently breaks down the unconscious defenses we’ve set against the very redemptive work of God we desire
And when the Divine is given access to our souls through this ancient spiritual path of silence…
• Silence can become our ally
• It can become tranquilizing, even liberating
So, I encourage you to take up the regular practice of this ancient spiritual path
• create some space to be free of talking, free not to talk
• do not sing or play music, or listen to another sing or play
• no news, commentary, information, coming in, going out
perhaps an early morning walk in the neighborhood
or a lunchtime walk on the greenways
• I feel for the parents of small children in this regard
• That short little season of life is one of the most difficult times to find space for silence
• But if you have two parents, help one another, be creative
Make time to gaze at the land and the sky
• Ask for permission not to speak w/ your people for a while
• After a time, even the internal dialogue quiets down
• Your internal conversations run their course
• Your internal plan-making run its course
• And your heart settles into a very still place
And in these places, the ancients tell us; God intersects us
• The Divine seed w/in us bears fruit
• Things we cannot do by force of will, simply begin to grow naturally
So here’s a dose of hope for today…
• Remember, he life of Jesus is in your makeup
• The life of the Spirit is in your being
• And thus, the life of virtue is in you
The seed of all the wisdom you need is in you
The seed of all the courage you need is in you
The seed of clarity over confusion
…all in you
If you deprive yourself of distractions (as silence does)…
• One of two things will happen
• You’ll be driven to panic by the urges for noisiness
• Or you’ll have forged in you, a new, transcended self
• The redemption of Jesus will be manifest in you
• The true self God has made you to be will emerge from within
As we end…
I want to be careful not to make this an easy sell
• We’ve been trained since childhood to avoid silence
• We’ve found noise, chatter, talk music, magazines, internet…
• We’ve found these help us avoid what we don’t want to see
• They help us avoid parts in us we don’t like
• Help us avoid the fear of isolation that is the human condition
• Avoid existential isolation, cover it up
• Prattling on w/ our voices
• Listen to others prattle on w/ theirs…
• This is a masterful strategy of avoidance
• And a hard habit to break
But to take on this discipline, we will have to break the habit
• We’ll have to face the fears inside us
• But once we do, the ancients swear to us…
that God-work; God-Spirit; God-redemption…
that these are right there inside us
So…
1. take advantage of little solitudes throughout the day
• Use your drive to work (straight path, few turns/lights)
• Use the time before bed instead of TV
• stay late at work or come early a few minutes each day
• I knew a friend who sat in car for 9 minutes each evening
He saw it as preparing for the night w/ the family
I think he tapped into an ancient wisdom of silence
2. find a quiet place to go to intentionally
• park, church, and unused room
3. do things but don’t explain them
• Let a judgment of you go by with no self-defense
• Let people’s images of you be formed w/o you bolstering them up
Follow the ancient paths
Gain for yourself the blessings that accrue to those who follow them