Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
When I first learned Centering Prayer—a prayer of quiet and stillness during which the pray-er consents to the Presence and activity of the Holy One—I recall the instructions about how to deal with distracting thoughts. “Imagine them as clouds floating away as you let them go.” The instruction was accompanied by a hand gesture: up, off, and away, indicating some far-off place. I never found the instruction very helpful.
Later, I would come to recognize that this instruction did not help because it felt disconnected. The Ignatian spirituality tradition, conversely, would teach me that “thoughts”— ideas, memories, feelings, and sensations—were one of the ways that God might address me. Why brush that communication off into the clouds!? At the same time, I can recognize how easy it is to become attached to those same “thoughts,” and become too scrupulous about their coming and going.
In recent years, I benefitted from Martin Laird’s teaching on “thoughts” in contemplative prayer. He suggests that we neither push away, nor cling to, our thoughts. When a thought addresses me by rising to my consciousness, I must face it, recognize it, and then let it be on its way. By neither ignoring, nor clinging to it, I can allow it to connect with me, and be a possible teacher along the sacred path, without getting caught up in it.
In this way, both positive and negative things can teach me. Both joy and sorrow can break my heart open. I need not reject any one thing, if I neither cling to, nor push it away. Both “either” and “or” can instruct me in the ways of healing and wholeness.
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- What role do your thoughts—or ideas, memories, feelings, and sensations—play in your prayer life? Do you tend to let them float away? Do you struggle with clinging too tight?
- Can you think of a time when a thought (or idea, memory, feeling) has been a teacher on your sacred path? How was God addressing you in this moment? How did you respond?
- Are there particular practices, chants, or teachings that support you in neither clinging nor pushing away?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
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