Contemplative Outreach News
Volume 8, Number 1 - Spring, 1994

Will and Intention || Post-Intensive Scrooge Effect
The Mystery Moves || Mary Caparosa Mrozowski

Will and Intention in Contemplative Prayer
By Father Thomas Keating

Part II

    The sacred word is something like the focusing apparatus on a video camera. If I were panning an audience, I would have to adjust the lens a bit for those up front but those in the middle would then get fuzzy. For those in the middle I would have to adjust the lens again to get them in focus, and once again for those in the rear. In the above simile we are talking about physical clarity. I am using it in another context there. The focusing process that the sacred word serves is not to bring a particular face, object or symbol into focus in the imagination, but to focus our intention when it gets fuzzy. Intention is the most important factor in any contemplative prayer practice, but especially in Centering Prayer in which our only activity consists in maintaining our intention to consent to God's presence and action during the time of prayer.

    The intention becomes fuzzy when stimulated by one of the emotional programs for happiness. Even after one has consciously rejected it for the sake of the values of the gospel, it may still be present in the unconscious. For example, one may have a great emotional investment in the security symbols of a particular culture. The pain of one's insecurity may have been so painful in early childhood that one repressed into the unconscious the very memory of the privation. But the unconscious remembers. The emotions are energy and they don't go away if repressed. They get stored in the body. The body is the storehouse of emotional energy that was not adequately processed. As a result, one develops blockages to the healthy flow of energies in the body and nervous system. This only reinforces the need for compensatory activity to hide the pain. Addictions are the ultimate way of distracting oneself from pain one is unwilling to face.

    The spiritual journey from this aspect is a course in growing up and becoming liberated from childhood fixations at emotional levels that have become disruptive of our adult life and that interfere with our relationships. The journey is a form of divine psychotherapy in which God tries to heal us on every level, beginning with the body and the emotions.

    For each level of emotional intensity there is a corresponding set of almost endless commentaries that are pre-recorded. When a strong emotion goes off, one is instantly besieged by a surge of commentaries, all of which take one farther and farther out of the peace, calm, and detachment that contemplation requires. That is why we need to have a focusing apparatus when our intention, our consent to God's presence and action, begins to get fuzzy because of boats (thoughts) going by on the surface of our awareness that attract or stimulate the programs in the unconscious.

    It is not our attention that needs adjusting, because attention is secondary in Centering Prayer. We are not attending to a particular thought or object, or even to the sacred word as we would be the case in a mantric kid of prayer. Our attention is a general and loving awareness of the presence of God. The actual work of Centering Prayer is ever-so-gently, without effort, consenting to God and letting go of the present moment with its psychological content. If some other thought or feeling causes the unconscious programs to get stimulated along with their commentaries, then before one gets on the boat, one returns to the sacred word. In this way, one develops with time, patience, and may failures, the habit of letting go of thought promptly, not by thinking about the fact that one is thinking, but simply by returning ever-so-gently to the sacred word. If you find yourself on a boat, just get off. There should be no self-recriminations, no sighs, no annoyance that you have had a distraction. Any such reflection is another thought, another boat.

    This prayer recommends itself as a prayer of great simplicity, a simplicity that is characteristic of childhood, which is to be present to the present moment and to forget what happened before. That is why the mood changes of the child are so striking. They go from tears to laughter. Just the consent to return to the sacred word is all the activity that is required in Centering Prayer. Any analyzing, commentaries, guilt feelings, or recriminations are more distracting than the original thought. The original thought may simply have been a  plan for the future or a memory. It is not nearly as effective in taking you out of interior silence as a feeling or an emotionally charged thought such as shame or guilt.

    In this prayer we need to develop a certain jolly acceptance of our thoughts. We can't avoid them all. If we could avoid them all, we would already be perfect in contemplation. I presume if that were the case, you would not now be reading this paper. If you are like 99.9% of the human race, this is a process that is going to take some time and may not even be completed in this lifetime. But cheer up. Every bit of progress is a bonus for the next life.

    Contemplative prayer is a kind of purgatory. Purgatory is a state in which we complete the contemplative journey in the next life if we may not have quite finished it here. Every bit of progress means an enormous benefit for us and for everyone else in the human race. To be on this journey is really the greatest contribution one can make to the human family. This journey does not just involve what happens in prayer, but what happens in prayer enables one to live daily life as a continuation of the purification process. The ups and downs of daily life, including its very everydayness, is the arena in which the Christian journey takes place. God is in solidarity with our lives and deaths, just as they are. Perfection does not consist in feeling perfect or being perfect, but in doing what we are supposed to do without noticing it: loving people without taking any credit. Just doing it.

    To sum up, we use the sacred word only as a focusing apparatus to bring our intention into full clarity, whenever, because of the weakness of human nature and the fact that the emotional programs for happiness in the unconscious are still active, we need some means of returning to our original intention, that is, consent to God's presence and action within us. With regular practice, we develop a certain ease in letting go. We then enter into the cloud of unknowing which develops through repeated small acts of consent. This means that we have dismantled the emotional programs sufficiently that we are alert to when they go off and can return to our original intention much more promptly and indeed, without necessarily returning to the sacred word or sacred symbol.

    The movement established by introducing the sacred word as the symbol of our intention to be open to God's presence and action brings us to the spiritual level of our being, or to use another analogy, to a general attentiveness to the river of consciousness itself rather than to what is passing along the surface of the river. The sacred word is simply the symbol of our intentionality. There is no special word therefore, that is better than another except that some words set off an association of ideas and the tendency to think about other matters. In this prayer we are developing the capacity to wait upon God with loving attentiveness. The loving character is expressed by fidelity to the practice and patience when doing it.

Will and Intention || Post-Intensive Scrooge Effect
The Mystery Moves || Mary Caparosa Mrozowski

The Post-Intensive Scrooge Effect

After emerging from a ten day Intensive Christian Practice Workshop/Retreat at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, my good friend Darleen and I drove to the nearest town. I had begun visualizing savoring a cup of gourmet coffee. We stopped to buy gasoline and drive through a car wash before finding the perfect coffee shop. At each stop, I encountered one or two people who struck me as delightfully open, friendly and bright. They looked at me with clear, pleasant eyes while we exchanged friendly banter. I left each place of business feeling enriched by these encounters, and frankly relieved that so many ordinary people were behaving as if they too had just left a ten day Intensive Retreat. The practice of Centering Prayer sure seemed to be catching on in the Snowmass area! Even a rather scary looking man loitering in front of a bar gave me a shy smile when I turned and looked fully at him with a friendly greeting.

As Darleen and I sipped our chocolate-raspberry decaf beside a brimming river, I remarked that people we met seemed unusually delightful. Then it hit me--I was experiencing what I dubbed "The Scrooge Effect." Because Scrooge is typically identified with stinginess, perhaps this should be called "The Post Intensive Scrooge Effect."

It has been a tradition to watch "A Christmas Carol," the Alistair Sims version, almost every Christmas season. After many viewings, I still feel a tearful open-heartedness at the moment when Ebenezer Scrooge, coming to his senses in his bedroom after his night of reckoning, begins to dance for joy. Flinging open his window, he bids a child who is standing in the snowy street to fetch the prize goose and have it delivered to Tiny Tim's house. All the while, Scrooge chortles and marvels at what an intelligent, willing and energetic lad this is. Of course, everyone he meets that Christmas Day now appears to him as delightful, and on each one he gleefully pours out his love and generosity. The world has been revealed to him in a wholly new way, as though all the grime of self-centeredness had been cleaned from his spectacles. Not only can he see better, but his own love and light can shine forth. I realized that Scrooge's night with the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future could be regarded as a spiritual journey--the short course! Revisiting his past in the company of a Spirit, Scrooge's ability to feel compassion was recovered-compassion for his own losses and disappointments, for the pain and suffering of those close to him, and for the sorrow he had caused others during his lifetime. It was during the final encounter with Death, the awe-filled realization of his own inevitable mortality, that he completed his repentance. His "false self" had been stripped away, leaving his heart open both to the suffering and joy of this world. He began taking action at once to better the lives of others and to reconnect with his own estranged relatives and friends. Thenceforth, "he lived every day as if it was Christmas," everywhere living out the good news of Christ's redeeming love.

My own spiritual journey is not as dramatic or as compressed as was Scrooge's, thank God. Yet, after the intensive experience in Snowmass, I thought, as did Scrooge, that the world had changed. Like Scrooge, I had become aware of my nastiness, pride and perfectionism. I had also experienced the indescribable tenderness of God's healing love. Compassion for my own suffering and inescapable humanness had grown and expanded to include others. Some of the grime of the false self was cleaned off my spectacles, so that I could see Christ's light shining in other people. The experience of being fed by the Holy Spirit on every level (not the least of which was the gourmet cuisine so lovingly dished up on the retreat!) awoke in me the desire to feed others. The experience of being seen by God at my deepest levels granted me the ability to see others in their beauty. Weeks after the workshop, I am still struck by this beauty and am enjoying my fellow humans more than ever.

Kathy Kramer-Howe
Phoenix, Arizona

Will and Intention || Post-Intensive Scrooge Effect
The Mystery Moves || Mary Caparosa Mrozowski

The Mystery Moves: A Centering Poem

In the darkening rest,
Beneath the tumult of thoughts
Memories and storms of the heart,
The mystery moves,
Loosening what is bound,
Releasing what's loose,
Creating space and waves
Flowing to the center.

The mystery moves
About our roots.
Its waters of intimacy,
Not deaf and dumb sleep,
But alive subtle refreshment,
Where peace, silent, healing,
Radiant and pervading
Flows from its source

Kess Frey
Anchorage, Alaska

Mary Caparosa Mrozowski, a member of the Chrysalis House community, died suddenly on October 18, 1993 in Georgetown, Colorado. Mary was in Cotorado giving workshops on contemplative prayer in daily life. She often gave workshops and retreats on Centering Prayer, the Open Mind, Open Heart Practice and Forgiveness--the Key to Freedom.

Mary was a founding member of Chrysalis House a contemplative community located in Warwick, New York that serves the larger community of the New York metropolitan area as a place for deep spiritual work. She was one of the founding members of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd.

Prior to her work with Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., Mary was a vital spiritual force on Long Island, one of the founding members of the Divorced and Separated Catholics and the Beginning Experience. She was a well known leader of Bible Study and self-awareness groups on Long Island.

Mary was an extraordinary woman who touched thousands of people all over the world with her deep spirituality and her deep love of God. She traveled to the Dominican Republic, to Mexico and to Europe with a message of the ever present love of God for all of us.

People were drawn to Mary's openness, clarity of heart, her straightforward honesty and her deep love for the people of God. God's children were her children and she served them with great enthusiasm and peace. She imparted a message that was so gentle yet profound which will be carried on by those she served.

Mary's many friends and relatives will miss her. She is survived by her two married daughters, Judith Thadene Haibreich and Janet Theresa Polidora; her sonsin-law Dr. Uriel Halbreich, Mr. Anthony Polidora; grandchildren, Bethany Eleanor Halbreich, John Michael, Luke Anthony, Mary Judith and Jennifer Ann Polidora; her sister Frances Bove, her brothers Carmen, Larry and Peter.

Will and Intention || Post-Intensive Scrooge Effect
The Mystery Moves || Mary Caparosa Mrozowski