The Monkey Brain

Yesterday on Facebook, I saw a video on meditation by a Buddhist monk.  I had heard the expression "the monkey brain" before, but had never really thought about what it meant.  It's a good expression, giving us an image of the chattering, leaping-around brain that cannot be stilled.  When I took a course in college on Second Language Acquisition, I learned that the language center of the brain is always active; it cannot be stilled; nor can it be turned off.

Anyone who has ever tried to pray will instantly recognize and relate to the monkey brain.  We call it "distraction."  Immediately we sit down and become quiet, and the monkey brain begins to remind us of all the things we have to do.  In fact, we are instantly tempted to get up and do those things right away -- pay the bills, load the dishwasher, call a friend, etc.  Or, if not things to do, the monkey brain will begin to center on past grievances.  We endlessly rehearse situations in which we were hurt, or even slightly disturbed, when conversations did not go our way, or when someone slightly disagreed with our opinions.  We justify our position and mentally dismiss that of the other person.  But no matter how many times we "go over" things, the monkey brain is still not satisfied.  Like a two-year old who wants the same book read again and again, the monkey brain loves to play the same video in our heads, reinforcing the feelings which we may or may not want to strengthen.  The monkey brain controls our thoughts; we do not control it.

St. Teresa of Avila addressed distraction in prayer by telling her sisters to simply treat it as a two-year old child jumping up and down and saying "Momma, Momma, Momma."  Just look over the shoulder of the monkey brain at the Person of Jesus standing quietly behind it.  Just gaze at His Image standing there, and the gaze is enough, even when we cannot formulate a thought.

I remember when my Dad stopped smoking after having smoked all of his life.  As a child, I had no concept of how difficult that must have been, when everything in your body and mind are screaming for comfort and the nicotine rush.  Years later, after I had become so addicted to coffee that I needed it to function and even to think clearly, I asked my Dad how he had successfully given up smoking.  "Every time I wanted a cigarette," he said, "I would say a Hail Mary."

Here's the connection:  the monkey brain and the addictions of the body are very much related to one another:  they crave, even demand, attention, and will not allow us to rest until we cave in to them.  They cannot be stilled, and they cannot be turned off.  On the facebook video, the monk acknowledged that.  He did not advise people to "discipline" or to ignore the monkey brain; instead his advice was to "give the monkey brain a job, something to do."  He tells the monkey brain to pay attention to breathing: breathe in; breathe out.  "Good idea," says the monkey brain, "I will watch the breath."  That occupies the language center and allows us to gaze at God just as we would distract the two-year-old demanding attention by giving him an engaging toy.

The "repeater prayers" of the Rosary have the same effect on the mind.  They are designed to calm the monkey brain by giving it a job -- occupying the language center with something to do -- so that the mind can focus or meditate on something beyond our usual mental occupations: rehearsing what someone said or did to us, or what we have to do today.

[Some of what we call "distraction" may actually be the Holy Spirit, the Helper, putting our lives in order.  I keep a small notebook and a pen beside the chair where I pray in order to jot down things that come to me in prayer -- reminders of things I have to do.  Once the brain is satisfied that we will take care of the business of its concern, it will rest.  And I have put those things under the direction of the Holy Spirit, so I can rest also.]

Whenever I teach the class on prayer in RCIA, someone usually brings up a common objection to the Rosary from the Protestant standpoint -- that is, Jesus' teaching on prayer from Matthew 6:7:  When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.  And then Jesus gives them the Our Father, a "formula prayer," if you will.  I do not think Jesus is referring here to "repeater prayers," but rather to making a show of prayer.  If we read the context of Matthew 6, it becomes more clear.

St. Paul tells us in Ephesian 6 to "pray in the Spirit on all occasions."  His prayer in the Spirit seems to refer to praying in tongues  (see Corinthians 11-13).  After many years of praying in tongues, I have come to the conclusion that the Rosary and the prayer in the Spirit have the same effect -- both occupy the language center of the brain so that our spirit is free to commune with God without the distraction of words.  A mother speaks to her infant in the womb without words.  Before the child can speak or even understand, parents croon and speak a "prayer language" that the child understands with his/her spirit.  God does not need our words; in any case, the words of the Our Father are really all we need if we dwell on them.  But we need to communicate with our heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit.  And often, the only way to do so is to keep the monkey brain occupied with a task that allows our spirits to soar free!

The Great Adventure of Life

Paul Tournier (12 May 1898 – 7 October 1986) was a Swiss physician and author who had acquired a worldwide audience for his work in pastoral counseling . His ideas had a significant impact on the spiritual and psychosocial aspects of routine patient care, and he has been called the twentieth century's most famous Christian physician. I discovered Paul Tournier's book The Person Reborn about 20 years ago, and I was stunned by his insights into the human spirit. Fortunately, I copied a chapter of the book at the time I was reading it, and later made a number of copies to share with a class I was teaching on the bible. While cleaning out files last week, I found the copied chapter and began re-reading this master of the spiritual life. Reading the chapter more than once made me go find Tournier's book on my shelf (still there even after a hurricane and a move from Louisiana to Mississippi). In accord with my decision to pass along some of the best ideas I have encountered, I am happy to share the following excerpt: We are like a child who has been given a beautiful mechanical toy as a Christmas present. His father says to him: "Come along, and I'll show you how to make it go. The child replies: "No, I want to do it myself!" He tries, gets angry and sulky, takes it to pieces, damages it, and finally admits his incompetence. Defeated, he hands it to his father saying: "There, you make it work." We too have received a beautiful and very complicated toy: life. We try to make it work on our own. We think we are having some success; but then things begin to go wrong, and we run into personal or social disasters. the more we struggle to put things right with our own strength, the worse does the situation become, until at last we come back to God, and offering our lives to him, say: "Take over; I can't manage it on my own." I am always struck by the extreme simplicity of this decisive inner movement. From then on a man has a new attitude. He has realized that only the Author of life can coordinate all the complicated mechanisms that go to make up life. He does not have to disown the intellect, science, or technology; he simply decides that now he will ask God how to use them He surrenders himself; he hands over his life, his person, all his faculties, and all his possessions to God, not knowing what He will do with them. He renounces grand personal plans. He lives each moment as it comes, step by step, eagerly seeking to know what God expects of him. I have stressed the difficulty of know what God's guidance is. I must now assert that despite all the hidden reefs and all our mistakes, God's guidance is more precious and more fruitful than anything else. Seeking after it in every circumstance of our lives is a wonderful adventure -- the great adventure of life with God. It takes all those who commit themselves to it much farther than they expect. It is the source of an ever-buoyant enthusiasm. When I have talked to people about "accepting their lives," they have often objected that it is difficult. I am as convinced of this as they are. I think now that it is preferable to speak of "loving one's life," which is a less passive term. The positive adventure resulting from the abandonment of one's life to Christ makes it possible, gladly to accept everything in that life that remains painful, and in spite of it to love one's life, because even suffering becomes a source of adventure. Pascal laid stress on the boredom, the inner void, which man is constantly trying to forget. "It is unbelievable," a woman writes in a letter to me, "how life repeats itself. We change our surroundings and our jobs, but our outlook remains the same." There are many who think that, until they find that when they give their lives to God, their outlook changes fundamentally overnight, and the result is that everything changes around them. I am so grateful to authors like Paul Tournier who have the gift of putting into words what I have experienced in my life. It is frustrating to know things that I cannot express clearly, but it is such a joy to discover and then to re-discover people who can speak the Truth of experience into my very soul.

Rhema!

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him (I Sam. 3:7).

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God...and this is the word that was preached to you (I Peter 1:23).

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you (James 1:21).

Before the "Word of the Lord" was ever written, it was always spoken.  That is, the "Word of the Lord" is, as Hebrews tells us, a "living and active" word, "sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow...." (Heb. 4:12).  St. James tells us that [God] chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created (I:18).   The Word of God is not merely a concept, an idea, an expression of meaning in an intellectual sense, but it lives and moves and delivers in the sense of bringing to birth.

The Greek of the New Testament actually uses two different words for what is translated into English as "Word" of the Lord.  The Logos is the Word, the Divine Expression or Manifestation from the beginning, as John tells; Rhema is the Word that is spoken to us, the Word that comes to us, or that comes alive in us.

Scripture tells us that the Word of the Lord stands forever (Is. 40:8).  It is outside of us, objectively alive apart from whether we know and recognize it or not.  It "comes;" it is fulfilled; it is creative; it rules history.  One time I looked up the meaning of "word" in the Hebrew and discovered that the "Word of the Lord" is the Proclamation of God, the Promise of God, the Purpose (Plan) of God, the Provision of God, the Providence of God, and the Power of God to accomplish all that it says.

The Word of the Lord (Logos) stands forever with us or without us; it does not need us to be true or to accomplish its purpose.  But each one of us, like Samuel, must eventually come into some kind of relationship with the Word of the Lord.  It must be revealed to us (Rhema) as living and true if we are, like Samuel, to "know" the Lord.  God reveals Himself by His impact on the life of individuals and on the history of His people.  His Truth (I am the Truth) is not a religious system of principles, but a way to be followed step by step.  God reveals Truth to us by revealing Himself.

God is a living Person.  It is not enough to study Scripture if it does not lead us to an encounter with the Living God, Who personally intervenes in our lives -- creating us, saving us, purifying us, lifting us up as He did throughout all of history.

From the beginning, when the Word of the Lord came to people, it lifted them up and moved them to act: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the Prophets, the Apostles (Pentecost), etc.  It moved not only the mind of man, but also his heart and body.  We say that all Scripture is inspired by God, but that inspiration is not restricted to the time of the actual writing of it.  Rather, the inspiration continues to our reading of it as well.  The same Living Holy Spirit Who hovered over the divine writer still hovers over us as we read or listen to the Word of the Lord.  We await His Rhema, His speaking to us a living Word which impacts our hearts, minds, souls, and lives.

No one can experience Scripture without the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit.  We can study the Word for years, but until we are born again of water and the Spirit, we cannot understand or know the One who explains all things to us.  Prayer is not just saying things to God, but awaiting His Word to us, His living Word, the One that brings us to new life and reveals not just ideas to us, but God Himself.

Let us begin; let us ask; let us ask for a new and living Word.  He is waiting for us.

Magnificat

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!

In the opening lines of Mary's "Magnificat," we have a wonderful secret:  that is, when the soul "magnifies" the Lord, the spirit "rejoices."

I don't know how many people have ever made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, or considered the relationship between the two.  But it is clear that what the soul does has a huge impact upon the spirit.  Deuteronomy 6:5 commands us to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  If we consider that our "humanness" or "personness" is made up of body, soul, and spirit, we see a correspondence to the command.

Whenever the Bible refers to the heart, it is referring to the inner core, the spirit.  In fact, the two words are used interchangeably throughout the Old Testament.  Many people consider that the spirit and the soul are interchangeable terms, but they are not. Our "soul" consists of our will, our emotions, and our mind, or intellect.  The soul is the intermediary between the body and the spirit.  If our minds are affected by Altzheimer's or dementia, our will and our emotions are diminished also, but we are still the same "person," or "spirit."

The spirit is the part of us where God indwells, the part of us that is most in communion with the Spirit of the Lord.  It does not depend on our holy thoughts, or on our emotions, which may be all over the place, or even totally shut down.  We often choose the wrong things in life, but our spirits can still be the dwelling place of the Most High.  This is a hard concept, but an example from the Old Testament can make it more clear:  David's "soul" went astray in a disastrous way at one point in his life.  He directed his "soul" toward the wrong things:  his mind dwelt on the forbidden wife of Uriah; his will made horrible choices, because of his wayward emotions.  As a result, his spirit-- the part of him most connected to God -- was cast down in grief.  He was separated from fellowship, or communion, with the Most High.  In a sense, he was separated from the part of himself that was most himself, his inner core -- the part of him that was the image and likeness of God.

And yet, even in his sin, God said of David, "I have found a man after my own heart -- that is, after my own spirit.

It helps to picture these distinctions if we can imagine ourselves as a composite of three concentric circles.  The innermost, or smallest, circle represents the spirit, or core, or our personality.  The second circle represents our "soul," and the outermost circle represents the body.  Obviously, the whole personality works together and one "part" of us is deeply connected to and affects the other "parts."

I love the Magnificat because it so illustrates how the parts affect one another.  Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord!"  If we take that apart and reflect on its meaning, we see that Mary's mind, will, and emotions "magnify" the Lord.  We would call that prayer, to begin with:  her mind is focused on what God has done not only for her, but for His people, according to His promise.  She is familiar with the promise of God, the history of her people.  She has been thinking about what God has promised.  For the Jews, study was a form of prayer, and every synagogue had study rooms, where one could go to study the Scriptures.

When we read Scripture, we are directing our minds to the promises of God, to how He has fulfilled His promises throughout history.  And the result of directing our minds to the works of God is that our emotions are also directed to Him in faith, hope, and love, that He will continue to work in our history as He has worked in the past.  And so our wills are strengthened to choose the work of God over the work of Satan and the work of the world.

I learned a long time ago, that, although we all seek "joy," we cannot give ourselves joy, any more than we can give ourselves love, peace, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit.  These are called "fruits" because they are the result of the Spirit dwelling in us and imparting to us the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity.  Joy resides in our spirit, not in our minds, emotions, or wills.  It is the result, or the overflow, of directing our "souls" in prayer to consider what God has done for us.

My soul doth magnify the Lord -- we turn our magnifying glasses (souls) upon the works of God -- and my spirit rejoices in what He has done for me, for us, for mankind.

If we want to dance with the world, that is where our souls will turn to "magnify" the sounds of the world. But no matter how frantically we spin, our spirits will never rejoice, and we cannot make them do so.  If we want to dance with God in our spirits, we must first turn our souls to magnify His Name!

Closer Than Our Breath and Our Thoughts

In my last entry, I wrote, "We don't often realize how close the Helper is to us -- closer than our breath and our thoughts..."  Yesterday, I had an amazing experience of how true that statement is.

I had gone in for a bronchoscope because my latest CT scan showed a spot that had grown somewhat since the scan done in 2016.  Unlike the first time I had the procedure in 2010, I was a little apprehensive about this one.  In 2010, the CT scan showed a tumor covering the entire right lung; all the doctor had to do was grab a piece from the top. This time, there was a small circle at the bottom and rear of the left lung -- a place much more difficult to reach with the bronchoscope.  According to my doctor, they could not have reached that spot until 2 years ago, but now they have developed radiologically-guided scopes that can get there.

Given my allergies and reactions to all kinds of medicines and anesthetics, and given the location of the spot, I wondered whether the procedure was not more dangerous than the area of concern.  The video-tutorial sent by the hospital, detailing all the things that could possibly go wrong did not help either.  However, I asked Father Mike to anoint me the day before the procedure and continued in prayer up until the next day.

From the moment Father began to recite the scripture from James 5:14*, a profound peace came upon me, deepening even more--almost to the point of sleep-- with his anointing.  All that day, and the next -- the day of the procedure -- all I had to do was to recall the anointing, and the peace returned afresh.  As I lay in the pre-op room, peace and joy surrounded me, and I found myself contented to pray for others for the three hours I had to wait.

As I opened my eyes in the recovery room, I discovered the 23rd Psalm literally dancing through my mind -- from beginning to end, with absolutely no effort on my part to recall the words or even to think about what I was saying.  It was as though a video of the words, with beautiful sound, was playing in my head.  I felt that it was more like I was seeing them unfold before my eyes than that I was thinking about them:  The Lord is my Shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul.

The video slowed down significantly at the words, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.  Thy rod and Thy staff, they give me comfort....You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.

And the Psalm continued all the way to the end.  I was amazed that there had been no effort at all on my part to remember the words or the sequence of them.

I lay there for a few moments, feeling like a small child being bathed in the Word of the Lord  - a Word that brought peace to my entire being: body, mind, and soul.  The recovery nurse saw me lying there smiling and began speaking to me, asking me questions.  Here was the amazing thing -- because of the anesthesia, I could not recall the answers to the simplest questions she asked.  My mind seemed to still be "under" or have gone on vacation.  I was trying hard to relate to her, in simple conversation.  She was asking about retirement and travel, and I could not recall the names of the places I had been to, even though I could see the pictures in my mind.   Thinking about this after she left, I was even more amazed that the 23rd Psalm had, in a sense, floated before me so vividly -- every word -- without any effort on my part.  I doubt that I could have recalled it if I had tried, but I had not "tried" at all.  It was just there, in front of me, when I woke up.  And it had power: more like be ministered TO me rather than coming from me:

The word of God is living and active, more powerful than any two-edged sword,... judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

Psalm 119 says,    I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you (v. 11).

And,                      I am laid low in the dust; renew my life according to your word (v, 25).

And,                     My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word (v. 28).

Isaiah 55:            As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

The Holy Spirit, the Helper, is closer to us than our breath and our thoughts.  When we are laid low in the dust, He is present, bending over us as on the day of Creation, breathing into us the powerful and uplifting Word of the Lord:  Light! Be!  Of what should we be afraid?  The Lord is with us, and He still sends His Word to create, to heal, to redeem us!

* [The words from James 5:  Is any one of you sick? He should call the priests of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.  If he has sinned, he will be forgiven....The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.]