Contemplative Practice: Prayer of the Heart

Gregg’s Reflection

On the Thinker/Feeler scale, I’m way over on the Thinker side. It took two years of intentional work to begin to get in touch with my feelings. So, I struggle when I hear the ancients say, “Put the mind in the heart…..Put the mind in the heart…..Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.”

Meditation was my first experience of silence and stillness. I found on rare occasions, there would be a crack between my thoughts, and I would experience what my Spiritual Director calls nanoseconds of grace. He calls them that because when you realize it is happening, it slips away. God cannot be grasped and held.

For twenty years, Genie and I spent spring and fall in Atlanta, in the midst of frenetic work and life. For summer and winter, we came to our off grid home in the mountains of Colorado. In Atlanta we would walk through the park every day, and in Colorado we are immersed in nature. Silence and solitude are our natural environs out here.

For five years, we have been in Colorado full time. I am now nearly ten years into a regular morning contemplative sit. This is where I sit.

I find sitting in silent contemplation allows me to move from my mind to my heart. Slowly, I am learning to live much nearer to the cave of the heart. Wade into this ancient practice.

Scripture

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Matthew 5:8

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:4-6

My spirit is praying but my mind is left barren.

1 Corinthians 14:14

Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.

John 7:38

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see God.

Hebrews 12:14

Ancient Writings

My heart was deafened by the din of my mind.

St. Augustine

God may be reached and held close by love, but by means of thought never.

Cloud of Unknowing, Ira Progoff, p. 72

The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire.

Rumi

Sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. Carry your mind, your thoughts, from your head to your heart. As you breathe that say: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.“ Say it moving your lips gently, or say it in your mind. Try to put all other thought aside. Be calm, be patient and repeat the process very frequently.

Symeon the New Theologian, The Way of a Pilgrim, p. 10

If you wish to know how these things come about, ask for grace, not instruction, desire not understanding, the groaning of prayer not diligent reading, the Spouse not the teacher, God not man, darkness not clarity, not light but the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God . . . .

Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, 7.6, in The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins, p. 115

St. Teresa of Avila wrote:  'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general.  It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey.  This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.

Thomas Keating

If the soul remains quiet and at rest within itself, it will see the image of God reflected in its own clear waters more resplendent there than in any other things, provided the disturbing turmoil of thoughts dies down.

Francisco de Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, p. 566

Modern Writings

The concentration of attention in the heart—this is the starting point of all true prayer.

St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894), a Russian monk, bishop, and mystic. CAC Morning Devo 2/21/20

One must descend with the mind into the heart, and there stand before the face of the Lord, ever present, all seeing within you. The prayer takes a firm and steadfast hold, when a small fire begins to burn in the heart. Try not to quench this fire, and it will become established in such a way that the prayer repeats itself; and then you will have within you a small murmuring stream.

Theophan the Recluse, The Art of Prayer, p. 110

Make yourself a rule always to be with the Lord, keeping your mind in your heart and do not let your thoughts wander; as often as they stray, turn them back again and keep them at home in the closet of your heart and delight in converse with the Lord.

Theophan the Recluse, The Art of Prayer, Khariton, p. 119

The journey into prayer is directed towards a fundamental return to the heart, finding one’s deepest Center, awakening the profound depths of our being in the presence of God who is the source of our being and life.

Thomas Merton, Conference On Prayer, p. 30

The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts.

Dalai Lama

The desert elders would sink deeply and continually into what they called the “prayer of quiet.” This type of prayer is called apophatic prayer. It does not employ words. Apophatic prayer involves a mindful and relinquishing disposition in the process of communing with God.

This contemplative method of praying does not use images, requests, intercessions, and rituals. It involves the quieting of one’s spirit and the settling into the essence of being, which allows one to be found in the presence of God. The prayer of quiet draws us ever deeper into the Mystery that is worth growing familiar with but is ultimately unknowable in its totality.

There is a boundlessness of the One who we, in English, sometimes call God, and apophatic prayer may lead us into that unknowing to experience the divine beyond what we know.

Lisa Colón DeLay, The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice, p. 102–103.

The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us. In the privacy of our heart, therefore, we can learn not only to know Jesus but, through Jesus, ourselves as well.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 4/17/21

There are some things that can only be known experientially and each generation must learn this for themselves. The prayer of quiet is the most simple and universal path. Nothing will lead us to that place of nakedness and vulnerability more than regular experiences of solitude and silence, where our ego identity falls away, where our explanations don’t mean anything, where our superiority doesn’t matter, and we have to sit there in our naked who-ness.

Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 374

In Centering Prayer, anything that draws us away from our open consent, our resting in God, we call a “thought”. “Thoughts” can include strong emotions and body sensations as well as mental stories and images. Any of these things may be present during our Centering Prayer – they are normal aspects of our human nature. But when we find that they divert our attention, that we find ourselves engaging them instead of abiding with God, we let them go.

Centering Prayer is a practice of trust. As we let go, we trust that we let go to God’s loving arms. We let go of the notion that we need to “do” anything, or change anything about who we are: God loves us into being, and continues to love us exactly as we are. In this abiding trust we enter interior silence; however briefly, whether noticed or unnoticed (dropping from mind to heart). And remember, even if you find yourself letting go over and over again of your efforts, or of anything else, this is not a sign that you are failing – it is the heart of the practice.

You are learning a new way: letting go to God. You will find (or perhaps your loved ones will notice first!) that this new way begins to permeate your life and your way of being in the world, bearing the fruits of the spirit mentioned in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, and self-control. As we let go to God, God brings blessings into the world through us.

Joy Andrews Hayter, Contemplative Outreach November ‘20 Newsletter. Centering Prayer, and Contemplative Outreach emerged from Thomas Keating’s life work.

Your Heart is the Center of your being. It is the very core of our being, the spiritual center. Solitude and silence are ways to get to the heart, because the heart is the place where God speaks to us, where we hear the voice that calls us beloved. In the famous story, Elijah was standing in front of the cave. God was not in the storm, God was not in the fire and not in the earthquake, but God was in that soft little voice (see 1 Kings 19: 11–12). That soft little voice ... speaks to the heart. Prayer and solitude are ways to listen to the voice that speaks to our heart, in the center of our being.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 1/3/21

The Kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21), Jesus said. The prayer of the heart takes these words seriously. When we empty our minds from all thoughts and our hearts from all experiences, we can prepare in the center of our innermost being the home for the God who wants to dwell in us. Then we can say with St. Paul, “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Then we can affirm Luther’s words, “Grace is the experience of being delivered from experience.” And then we can realize that it is not we who pray, but the Spirit of God who prays in us.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 4/28/22

A careful look at the lives of people for whom prayer was indeed “the only thing necessary” (Luke 10:42) shows that three “rules” are always observed: a contemplative reading of The word of God, a silent listening to the voice of God, and a trusting obedience to a spiritual guide. Without the Bible, silent time, and someone to direct us, finding our way to God is practically impossible.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 135

The prayer of the Heart unites mind and heart in the intimacy of the divine love...It is like a murmuring stream that continues underneath  the many waves of every day and opens the possibility of living in a world without being of it and of reaching out to God from the center of our solitude.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 146-147

Descend into the Heart: The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart. A word or phrase repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness, and thus to listen to the voice of God.

When we simply try to sit silently and wait for God to speak to us, we find ourselves bombarded with endless conflicting thoughts and ideas. But when we use a very simple phrase like “be still” or a word such as “Lord” or “Jesus” it is easier to let the many distractions pass by without being misled by them.

Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life and create the quiet space where we can dwell with God. It can be like a ladder along which we can descend into the heart and ascend to God.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 4/21/20

The intellectual faculty in man’s soul, though spiritual, dwells in the brain, that is to say in the head: in the same way, the spiritual faculty which we term the spirit of man, though spiritual, dwells in the heart. To stand guard over the heart, to stand with the mind in the heart—all these are one and the same. The core of the work lies in concentrating the attention and standing before the invisible Lord, not in the head but in the chest, close to the heart and in the heart. When the divine warmth comes, all this will be clear.

Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, p. 190, 194

Light streams freely, joyfully, and generously to reveal both the dangerously delusive falsehoods as well as the simple truths of each of our lives and loves. Yet such liberating insight remains insulated from us by the inner clutter of a reactive mind. St Augustine has often reminded us that the purpose of the Christian life is the “healing of the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.”

Martin Laird, Ocean of Light, p. 57

The more the practice of contemplation declutters the mind, the more the grounding radiance of unity of awareness shines through. The mind cleared of clutter allows the grounding radiance of unitive mind to manifest the fullness of it’s essence. We move from reactive mind to receptive mind to luminous mind. There is a frightened, defensive quality to reactive mind that is always at the ready.

Martin Laird, Ocean of Light, p. 60, 62

In order to move closer to the heart of Jesus, we “lean back toward” him by sinking back into the depth of our own consciousness, sinking down toward the center of our being. . . .Each deeper level that we sink to . . . brings us closer to the heart or center of Jesus, because it is bringing us closer to our own center. . . . As we move back and down and in toward our [own] center, we are overlapping, so to speak, with the reality of Jesus more and more, as we come to corresponding levels of his being. . . . We are coming to know the Sacred Heart from the inside. . . . And our “inside” is coming to be more and more coincident with his “inside.” His Heart is becoming the heart of our heart.

Beatrice Bruteau, Radical Optimism: Rooting Ourselves in Reality p. 91–92, 94, 98.

The heart itself is notoriously difficult to work with directly. But by working with the more mental disciplines of attention and focus, balance and surrender, we bring about the conditions in which the heart can reverberate spontaneously with ‘the infinity of love.’ If we spiritualize the mind, the heart will follow.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 100-101

The term attention of the heart comes from Symeon the New Theologian, who lived 1000 years ago. Presence or Attention to the Heart is the capacity to be fully engaged at every level of one’s being: alive and present to both God and the situation at hand. Symeon sees clearly that ordinary awareness is incapable of carrying out the gospel.

Only when the mind “is in the heart,” grounded and tethered in that deeper wellspring of spiritual awareness,  is it possible to live out the teachings of Jesus without hypocrisy or burnout. The gospel requires a radical openness and compassion that are beyond the capacity of the anxious, fear-ridden ego.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p. 117. 

“Put the mind in the heart…..Put the mind in the heart…..Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.” Page after page of the Philokalia, the same refrain emerges. In our own times the word “heart” has come to be associated primarily with the emotions (as opposed to the mental operations of the mind), so the instruction will inevitably be heard as get out of your mind and into your emotions which is, alas, pretty close to 180° from what the instruction is actually saying. Yes, it is certainly true that the heart’s native language is affectivity— perception through deep feeling.

To unlock the wisdom of these ancient texts, we need to gently set aside our contemporary fascination with emotivity and return to the classic understanding which features the heart in a far more spacious and luminous role. The heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Its primary function is to look beyond the obvious and see into a deeper reality. Faith really designates not a leaping into the dark but a subtle seeing in the dark, but kind of spiritual night vision allows one to see with inner certainty.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 53-54

Like a storm tossed lake, our own waves and agitation get in the way of a clear picture. Training in wisdom has to do with purifying the heart and polishing the mirror of awareness, by gradually freeing it from domination by the small self ego. As the heart becomes undivided, a still and accurately reflecting mirror, it begins to be able to see and swim in the deeper waters of the Divine coming into form.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 87-88

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of the mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; an image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call the “heart.”  Awakening the heart, or the spiritualized mind, is an unlimited process of making the mind more sensitive, focused, energized, subtle, and refined, of joining it to its cosmic milieux, the infinity of love.

Kabir Helminski, Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 55

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God. Matthew 5:8. The heart does not need to be grown or evolved, but it does need to be purified. In its spiritual capacity, the heart is essentially a homing beacon, allowing us to stay aligned with those emanations from more subtle levels of existence. But, when the signals get jammed by the interference of lower-level noise, then it is no longer able to do its beacon work. The Christian Wisdom tradition proclaims that the source of lower-level noise is “the passions.” The problem with the passions is they divide the heart. A heart that is divided, pulled this way and that by competing agendas, is like a wind-tossed sea: unable to reflect on its surface the clear image of the moon. (Structural Conflict)

Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 61

When the first stirrings of what will eventually become full-fledged passionate outbursts appear on the screen of consciousness, they begin as thoughts. At first they are merely that thought-loops, mere flotsam on the endlessly moving river of the mind. But at some point a thought-loop will entrain with one’s sense of identity—an emotional value or point of you is suddenly at stake-and then one is hooked.

A passion is born, and the emotions spew forth. (Amygdala Hijack). Liberation lies in an increasingly developed inner capacity to notice when a thought is beginning to take on an emotional coloration and to nip it in the bud before it becomes a passion-by disidentifying or disengaging from it. This is the essence of the teaching that has held sway in our tradition for more than a thousand years.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 62-63. Learning about Amygdala Hijacks from Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence was a milestone for me. Learning how to nip these responses in the bud was the key to controlling my anger. Gregg

The cave of the heart is entered not only or even primarily through purification and concentration, but through surrender and release. The heart of Centering Prayer is founded entirely on the gesture of surrender, or letting go. Its theological foundation rests on the principle of kenosis (Philippians 2:6), Jesus’s self-emptying love that forms the core of his own self understanding and life practice. During the prayer time, surrender is practiced through the letting go of thoughts as they arise.

With committed practice, this well-rehearsed gesture of release is inwardly imprinted and begins to coalesce as a distant “magnetic center” within you; it can usually be experienced on a subtle physical level as a “drop and release” in the solar plexus region and as a tug to center. Most experienced practitioners begin to feel this tug outside their time of prayer, reminding them of the deepening river of prayer that has begun to flow in them beneath the surface of their ordinary lives.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 67-69

Heart-centered cognition, neuroscientists are now telling us, is really kind of an “operating system,” a way of organizing the perceptual field so that we perceive holographically (through electro-magnetic resonance) rather than through the subject/object differentiation fundamental to brain-centered cognition. Heart-centered cognition is the foundational physiological prerequisite for the emergence of a stable nondual consciousness. Non dual perception is not about what you see but how you see it. It retrains the brain through withdrawing attention from objects (which reinforces mental cognition) and learning to gather it into a central reservoir of spiritual attentiveness.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 153

If you can simply remain faithful to the discipline of dismissing our thoughts during your daily 20 minute period of meditation, the new neural rewiring gradually fill in, allowing you to stabilize heart cognition as your default mode of perception. This takes time and will happen gently and gradually. Assist the work through a willingness to promptly acknowledge and release conditioned patterns, hidden agendas, and polarized thinking whenever you realize you’ve fallen into them.

Try to keep a little hermitage in the center of your being, where you can continue your prayer even during a busy day. A simple prayer such as “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner” can give you much consolation and strength when you allow it to remain present in your inner hermitage. It is the way to let the Spirit of God pray in you.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 8/1/20

The prayer of the heart is indeed the way to the purity of heart that gives us eyes to see the reality of our existence. This purity of heart allows us to see more clearly, not only our own needy, distorted, and anxious self but also the caring face of our compassionate God.

When that vision remains clear and sharp, it will be possible to move into the midst of a tumultuous world with a heart at rest. It is this restful heart that will attract those who are groping to find their way through life. When we have found our rest in God we nothing other than minister. God’s rest will be visible wherever we go and to whomever we meet.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 4/19/21

To the degree that our prayer has become the prayer of our heart we will love more and suffer more, we will see more light and more darkness, more grace and more sin, more of God and more of humanity. To the degree that we have descended into our heart and reached out to God from there, solitude can speak to solitude, deep to deep, and heart to heart. It is there where love and pain are found together.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 5/9/21

Praying is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinction and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.

Henri Nouwen, Way of the Heart, p. 73-74. For more, see Divine Indwelling.

“The chief task of the athlete (monk) is to enter into his heart.“ Macarius the Great. The most profound insight of the Desert Fathers is that entering into the heart is entering into the Kingdom of God. Isaac the Syrian writes, “Eagerly enter into the treasure house that is within you and you will see the things that are in heaven.” They are one and the same.

The ladder to this kingdom is hidden inside you in your soul. And, John Carpathios writes, “It takes great effort and struggle in prayer to reach the state of mind which is free from all disturbance; it is a heaven within the heart, the place, as the Apostle assures us, ‘where Christ dwells within us.’ (2 Cor 13:5).”

Henri Nouwen, Way of the Heart, p. 75

Rejoice always, praying without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:16. Unceasing prayer gives solitude and silence their meaning. In unceasing prayer, we descend with the mind into the heart. Thus we enter through our heart into the heart of God.  When we have been remodeled into the living witness of Christ through solitude, silence, and prayer, we will no longer have to worry about whether we are saying the right thing or making the right gesture, because then Christ will make his presence known even when we are not aware of it.

Henri Nouwen, Way of the Heart, p. 92, 94

The full person God created us to be contains more than we can imagine, but most of us dwell within only a small portion of the superb castle of ourselves.  Opening the door of our heart allows us entrance to the vast treasure of who we are and to the divine presence within us.  ....Sometimes uninvited & unwanted life circumstances push the door open to our inner self & propel us inside....we find ourselves unwillingly drawn to growth, pulled inward when we least expect by undesired experiences like a serious...accident or the death of a dear one...opportunities arise for us to take God's hand and visit our inner territory.  We learn and grow from every situation if we are open to it.

Joyce Rupp

My responsibility is to sink the taproot of my heart into God’s sustaining presence as the foundation of my peace because the more I can sink my heart into God’s sustaining presence, the more I can be present to another. If I’m grounded in the presence of God, I can see the preciousness of the person to whom I speak. The taproot is grounding ourselves in God’s love.  The common ground is the depths of our humanity which is being lost. The prophetic voice speaks ups so it might be renewed and rekindled. We can face the violence of the world when we are grounded. 

Prayer is an act that uncovers our true nature. God infuses into our soul God’s own knowledge of God. Constant prayer is constant because it lies beyond our capacity to do. All we can do is enter into the stream of God’s constant love for us. We die to anything less than infinite love with an infinite being. A sweetness that has no name comes to me. Anonymously share this with loved ones by loving them, since it is impossible to describe. If we had not already tasted it, we would not know what is being talked about. No matter how far you get on the path, know there is infinitely more than you’ve seen so far. There is no end to the endless love of God. 

James Finley, Living School Teaching

We Meet the World with a Heart at Rest. The prayer of the heart is indeed the way to the purity of heart that gives us eyes to see the reality of our existence. This purity of heart allows us to see more clearly, not only our own needy, distorted, and anxious self but also the caring face of our compassionate God. When that vision remains clear and sharp, it will be possible to move into the midst of a tumultuous world with a heart at rest. It is this restful heart that will attract those who are groping to find their way through life. When we have found our rest in God we can do nothing other than minister. God’s rest will be visible wherever we go and to whomever we meet. And before we speak any words, the Spirit of God, praying in us, will make his presence known and gather people into a new body, the body of Christ himself.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devo 4/19/24