"You can do that if you want," Sister Rebecca explained to a retreatant who had questioned her about using a yoga position when praying, "but your legs will have to tolerate the strain of being intertwined for an hour or so. Most Americans find this next to impossible—and it can be harmful to one's joints to boot—and probably should use some other posture. But that doesn't mean the value of our prayer will be any less. It's what's in the heart that counts. Certainly prayer doesn't depend on our being in the lotus position."

Sister Rebecca detected some hesitation on the part of the retreatant, so she continued, "You know, since becoming a nun, I've lived all over the world—in the Far East, Europe, and North America—and I've had numerous opportunities to speak with different people on issues of prayer and the inner life. What's been confirmed for me again and again is that spiritual methodology must be subordinate and subservient to the more fundamental intention of the heart. It's so easy to become preoccupied with a particular technique when it actually does lead to some sort of spiritual experience. In fact, if we follow it correctly, for example breathing rhythmically with a prayer word, the experiences may be quite positive, even dazzling, especially in the beginning."

"That's what I mean," the retreatant replied. "I have a friend who spent a lot of time at a Far Eastern monastery putting her life back together after a serious bout with drugs. The few times we talked about the experience, she told me that with all the periods of formal meditation, plus the daily discipline of work she had to do in silence, the interior quiet she experienced was really quite remarkable. But the austerity of the life was too difficult for a more permanent stay, so she returned to college and finished her degree. Several years later, when she was really busy running a restaurant, she'd always think back nostalgically on that year."

"Did she stop meditating?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think so. I believe she still spends some time in silence before going to work, but she complains that it's just not enough time to get really focused the way she was able to do at the monastery. Since she left, I don't think she's ever known the inner peace she experienced there, and she's always trying different things—like going to workshops and retreats, for example—in order to get that back. Her latest interest is in biofeedback, but I wonder whether it's going to give her what she's looking for."

The retreatant sighed. "You know, she never called what she experienced in the monastery 'God,' but I think that's what she meant. It just doesn't seem fair. There has to be a way for people like us to be able to experience the inner peace you monastics always talk about, without sacrificing an ordinary life in the world. I mean, I'm not a person who's cut out for monastic life. Yet the impression I get is that's the only place I'll ever be able to attain inner peace. Isn't there some secret, some series of exercises you're not telling us about?"

Sister Rebecca's face revealed a trace of a smile. "No, I'm afraid not, but in any case, living in the world needn't prevent you from coming to true inner peace. Look, I'm certain a lot of monastics from different religions know the inner silence you speak of—after all, that's an effect of the type of life we live. But just because we generate loads of alpha brain waves doesn't mean that we're experiencing God, or even that we're living as we should. Spiritual life and the contemplative path is much more than just brain waves and peaceful feelings. It's meant to lead to an entire transformation in the way we think about and act towards everything.

"When we feel total relaxation and inner peace, for example, as a result of breathing exercises or stretching (especially if it's for the first time in our lives), we might very easily take this for an experience of God. Obviously it's a 'divine' feeling, but let's not go overboard; that's all that it is. God is beyond anything we experience. You and your friend both have to learn to know God beyond the changing state of your emotions. That requires thoughtfulness and persistence, not magical techniques. And it's really no different for us."

The retreatant may have left disappointed. But Sister Rebecca's wisdom bears repeating: unlike popular, no-nonsense, just-give-me-the-facts pragmatism that promises "sure-fire" results, authentic spiritual practice involves every single aspect of our life. There is no magical shortcut that will give us what we desire. Attaining spiritual maturity and inner peace will take us the rest of our lives. There is no limit to how far we can go on this journey and the amount of virtue and virtuosity in living we can acquire. A technique can help us take any particular step in the spiritual journey, . . . but they are not the way, the path, or the goal.

When Sister Rebecca brought up her conversation with the retreatant in a Saturday evening class, she noted, "I've been thinking about that talk all afternoon. Maybe it was because of the experience of her friend, but I sensed in her a reluctance to believe that spirituality could be lived without being in the right spot, knowing that perfect position, using the best technique. I think she wanted me to tell her precisely what to do and how to do it, and she was clearly disappointed when I didn't provide her with that. Why do so many people get stuck on techniques?"

Father Laurence drew his fingers together and raised them to his lips for a brief moment. "Isn't that the basic premise, the mythology of our technologically driven culture, after all? All we have to do is install the right software, so to speak, and we're set. Yet nothing in the spiritual life works automatically, no matter how technically sophisticated we might be in practicing it.

"The only way to advance spiritually is to advance in consciousness and understanding, and spiritual techniques alone can never provide us with that. No amount of technical proficiency can replace the seeing and knowing that springs from the deepest recesses of your heart. No tool is of any use unless we know what we're building with it. Once we see where we're going, we have a concrete basis for choosing the methods that are most effective to help us move toward our goal."

Brother David raised his hand. "Would you say that another aspect of this problem is today's self-help mentality, especially when it avoids any connection to community?" When Father Laurence nodded for him to continue, Brother David filled out his thought. "I mean that the techniques are everywhere, promising all sorts of things. All anyone has to do is go to a bookstore and choose from thousands of books describing any number of different spiritualities or methods of practice, but they're abstracted from the living communities, the cultures and the faith, of the people who gave both to them. 'Do this technique and you don't have to bother getting involved with everything else that goes with it' is often the implicit subtext. People these days just don't seem interested in getting involved with a community that's going to make demands on them."

"It certainly seems that way," replied Father Laurence. "People are taking up spirituality solely for the sake of a an individualistic agenda. We try to use it as a tonic for the stress and chronic mood swings that are the results of our way of living, instead of attacking the root of the problem, searching for a means to find, live out, and deepen our true beliefs and aspirations. As a result, 'spirituality' becomes our latest drug. Actually, by emphasizing this talismanic character of would-be spiritual techniques, we simply reinforce the exaggerated and ultimately harmful individualism prevalent in American society."

Only when our own practice is linked to community, nourished by the bonds of a shared religious culture—faith, ideas, and struggle—does it have the potential for safely unleashing the spiritual energies in us all that can revitalize and even transform our parched society. This is not to deny the value and necessity of making use of insights from various spiritual traditions, but when we do so without a solid grounding in some kind of stable community, a circle of people with whom we can and do share our life and deepest concerns, our spirituality all too easily succumbs to the dominating tendencies of our own egos and personalities. We then feed on spirituality for ourselves exclusively, dining at a table set for one. Instead of tasting the true freedom of self-transcendence intended by a spiritual life, a healing from our own alienation, we end up insidiously narcissistic and self-preoccupied at the expense of maturity and balance.

It was not for nothing that Jesus said to his disciples,

"I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them bear much fruit, for cut off from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5; translation New Skete).

Christian tradition has always understood this to mean that we truly abide in Jesus together, as a community. This is why the kingdom of God is likened to a great banquet, and why we place so much importance on eucharistic celebrations, where this experience is realized and manifested in a unique way.




Copyright © 1999 by the Monks of New Skete

From In the Spirit of Happiness by the Monks of New Skete (Boston: Little, Brown, Inc., 1999). Used by arrangement with Little, Brown, Inc.