A rule of prayer

Marshall McLuhan once said that he came into the Catholic Church "on my knees." He meant that the only way to truly become a Catholic (or, I think it's fair to say, a serious Christian of any sort) is through prayer. I think he's right; rather, I know from my personal experience that he's right. As I've indicated before in my writing, it was the neglect of regular prayer that set me up for a brittleness that was finally broken under the serious stresses of my spiritual life with regard to my relationship to the Church. I had made the error of thinking that as long as I had the intellectual side worked out, and fulfilled my sacramental duties, that I would be fine. But it's not true. As I look back over my life as an adult Christian, it's plain to me that the times of the greatest spiritual fruitfulness have been times when I followed a regular rule of prayer. And not just petitionary prayer, but prayer in the sense of disciplining the mind to be still in the presence of the Holy, and to seek to be filled up with God. That's so difficult for me, because my mind is always racing, always seeking stimulation. I lose focus, I get nervous, I break my rule. The rule of prayer is the one thing that will keep me on the right path, yet it is the hardest thing for me to stick to, because it requires ... stillness. I can spend hours reading books about prayer, but actually praying, well, that's the hard thing.

After my last confession, I returned to a daily prayer discipline, and already I can tell what a difference it makes. Even before I became Orthodox, I began trying to practice hesychasm, which is to say, a form of meditative prayer centered on the Jesus Prayer. Wiki explains:

In solitude and retirement the Hesychast repeats the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The Hesychast prays the Jesus Prayer 'with the heart'—with meaning, with intent, 'for real'. He never treats the Jesus Prayer as a string of syllables whose 'surface' or overt verbal meaning is secondary or unimportant. He considers bare repetition of the Jesus Prayer as a mere string of syllables, perhaps with a 'mystical' inner meaning beyond the overt verbal meaning, to be worthless or even dangerous. This emphasis on the actual, real invocation of Jesus Christ marks a divergence from Eastern forms of meditation.

There is a very great emphasis on humility in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, great cautions being given in the texts about the disaster that will befall the would-be Hesychast if he proceeds in pride, arrogance or conceit. It is also assumed in the Hesychast texts that the Hesychast is a member of the Orthodox Church in good standing.

While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the Hesychast cultivates sobriety (Gr. nepsis). Sobriety is the mental ascesis described above that rejects the tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The Hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and to the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all.

Obviously a beginner and a layman like me is not going to reach that level of detachment and ascesis, at least not for many years. But it's the ideal. A fantastic book about Orthodox Christian prayer and spirituality is Kyriacos Markides' "The Mountain of Silence," which I can't recommend highly enough to all Christians, and those curious about Eastern Christian spirituality.
After reading it, I began to pray the Jesus Prayer on a prayer rope for at least a half hour a day. After a month of that, I was really being transformed -- I was much more spiritually and emotionally grounded, slower to anger, quicker to forgive. And those close to me noticed the change. It's not that this is a form of "magic," but the real fruit of being in prayerful communion every day with God. The object of all Christian life is to acquire the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and to be made Christ-like. As St. Seraphim of Sarov explained to a curious layman in this famous exchange:

"The Lord has revealed to me," said the great Elder, "that in your childhood you had a great desire to know the aim of our Christian life, and that you continually asked many great spiritual persons about it."

I must say here that from the age of twelve this thought had constantly troubled me. I had, in fact, approached many clergy about it; but their answers had not satisfied me. This was not known to the Elder.

"But no one," continued Father Seraphim, "has given you a precise answer. They have said to you: 'Go to Church, pray to God, do the commandments of God, do good—that is the aim of the Christian life.' Some were even indignant with you for being occupied with profane curiosity and said to you: 'Do not seek things that are beyond you.' But they did not speak as they should. And now poor Seraphim will explain to you in what this aim really consists.

"Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian activities, however good they may be in themselves, do not constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as the indispensable means of reaching this end. The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ's sake, they are only means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. But mark, my son, only the good deed done for Christ's sake brings us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. All that is not done for Christ's sake, even though it be good, brings neither reward in the future life nor the grace of God in this. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ said: He who gathers not with Me scatters (Luke 11:23). Not that a good deed can be called anything but gathering, since even though it is not done for Christ's sake, yet it is good. Scripture says: In every nation he who fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to Him (Acts 10:35).

"As we see from the sacred narrative, the man who works righteousness is so pleasing to God that the Angel of the Lord appeared at the hour of prayer to Cornelius, the God-fearing and righteous centurion, and said: 'Send to Joppa to Simon the Tanner; there shalt thou find Peter and he will tell thee the words of eternal life, whereby thou shalt be saved and all thy house.' Thus the Lord uses all His divine means to give such a man in return for his good works the opportunity not to lose his reward in the future life. But to this end we must begin here with a right faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who came into the world to save sinners and Who, through our acquiring for ourselves the grace of the Holy Spirit, brings into our hearts the Kingdom of God and opens the way for us to win the blessings of the future life. But the acceptability to God of good deeds not done for Christ's sake is limited to this: the Creator gives the means to make them living (cp Heb. 6:1). It rests with man to make them living or not. That is why the Lord said to the Jews: If you had been blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, We see, and your sin remains on you (Jn. 9:41). If a man like Cornelius enjoys the favour of God for his deeds, though not done for Christ's sake, and then believes in His Son, such deeds will be imputed to him as done for Christ's sake merely for faith in Him. But in the opposite event a man has no right to complain that his good has been no use. It never is, except when it is done for Christ's sake, since good done for Him not only merits a crown of righteousness in the world to come, but also in this present life fills us with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, as it is said: God gives not the Spirit by measure. The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. (Jn. 3:34-35).

"That's it, your Godliness. In acquiring this Spirit of God consists the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, vigil, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ's sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God."

"What do you mean by acquiring?" I asked Father Seraphim. "Somehow I don't understand that."
[snip]
"Of course, every good deed done for Christ's sake gives us the grace of the Holy Spirit, but prayer gives us it most of all, for it is always at hand, so to speak, as an instrument for acquiring the grace of the Spirit. For instance, you would like to go to Church, but there is no Church or the Service is over; you would like to give alms to a beggar, but there isn't one, or you have nothing to give; you would like to preserve your virginity [6], but you have not the strength to do so because of your temperament, or because of the violence of the wiles of the enemy which on account of your human weakness you cannot withstand; you would like to do some other good deed for Christ's sake, but either you have not the strength or the opportunity is lacking. This certainly does not apply to prayer. Prayer is always possible for everyone, rich and poor, noble and humble, strong and weak, healthy and sick, righteous and sinful.

All this came to mind this past week when I heard a radio interview with Sharon Begley, the Wall Street Journal science columnist who has written a new book about how neuroscientists are discovering -- in part through studies done on Tibetan Buddhist monks -- that prayer and meditation can actually change the brain (read an introductory excerpt to the first chapter of Begley's book here. Many of the prayer and meditation techniques that the Tibetan Buddhists use, and that scientists have found help fight depression and other maladies, sound a lot like the wisdom of the ancient Christian monks, which still lives today. For example, learning to practice "mindfulness" as a way of separating oneself from unwanted thoughts, and shooing them away, sounds a lot like the Orthodox prayer technique of isolating "logismoi" and dismissing them -- this as a way of achieving spiritual purification and mastery over the passions. Of course it would be wrong, both from a Buddhist and a Christian point of view, to say that this is the same thing, but the similarities are remarkable -- and this is why Markides, a sociologist, has written that it's a tragedy that so many Westerners travel so far, metaphorically and literally, for the path to spiritual enlightenment, and never realize that Christianity, their own tradition, has such rich resources of its own.

Just to be clear, from a Christian point of view, these techniques are meant to help us unite with a specific being, the living God, and cannot be seen on the same level as Buddhist techniques, which have a different goal. Still, for our purposes, it's interesting to me to come to understand how critical prayer, and prayerfulness, is to achieving the kind of detachment from the world, indeed the holiness, that Christ says we must seek and practice. Has anybody heard of any scientific research done on the minds and bodies of Christian monks and/or nuns, that might shed light on how a life of prayer and asceticism has affected them in materially measurable ways? If so, please post them in the comboxes.

Also, I'd be interested to know how you pray. Do you have a Rule of Prayer? What fruits have you seen from it? How do you avoid falling away from it? Do some forms or techniques of prayer work better for you? Why? For me, the Jesus Prayer, like the Rosary, has a way of detaching me from my thoughts and opening my mind up for contemplation and stillness. Others I know find them monotonous and defeating.