Deep Prayer and Pearl Diving

This discussion of deep prayer from Mother Teresa's Secret Fire (discussed here) has come to my mind continually since I read it some weeks ago. There is something about that idea of diving beneath the tumultuous surface into the calmer, deeper waters that makes distractions easier to brush off somehow.

The first means is to use silence. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. We cannot put ourselves directly in the presence of God if we do not practice internal and external silence. (Mother Teresa)

Engaging in deep prayer is much like diving for pearls. Some minimal effort is required for a pearl diver to overcome his natural buoyancy, to arrive at the depths where the treasure lies -- and to remain there for the duration. In prayer as well, there is a kind of natural buoyancy at work, drawing us back to the surface. like the diver, we need some simple, persevering effort to remain there in the depths, where all is quiet and peace in God's presence.

A storm of thoughts and distractions may go on above us, but as long as we provide that minimal inner movement that allows us to stay below. the storms of distraction cannot touch us; they do not affect or interrupt our prayer. Whenever we experience turbulence, whenever we find ourselves buffeted by thoughts, it is a sign that we have been imperceptibly returning to the surface. We need only that small effort once again to return below, like the small kick of the diver's fins, and again we are at peace in an inward Eden. What this means for prayer, and our perennial battle with distractions, is that thoughts and distractions are no longer an obstacle -- we merely stay beneath them, consistently seeking this deeper "place of the heart."

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We need to create our own inner hermitage, an inner sanctum where nothing and no one but God can enter -- where God can abide alone, "face-to-face" with the soul. This is the motive behind Jesus' teaching: "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father... in secret (Mt 6:6).

Finding the "place of the heart" builds on the practice of establishing faith-contact with God at the outset of prayer. Before engaging in prayer, we first take a brief moment to enter into conscious and deliberate contact -- not with a God hidden above the clouds, nor floating on the mind's ruminations, but with the living God abiding in the depths of our soul.

Once we have taken this first step and consciously established faith-contact with God, we simply begin to move the focus of our awareness away from the surface, towards the center of the soul. We shift our attention from the level of the head to the level of the heart. There is nothing difficult or mysterious abut this at all. Though the "heart" referred to here is not the physical heart per se, there is such an intimate, God-made connection between soul and body that by shifting our focus inward, to a level corresponding to the are of the heart, we find ourselves moving towards a deeper level of the soul as well.

This also hit a chord with me because I have found that if I do not say my two customary prayers at the very beginning, then I struggle in prayer much more. I realized this some time before Father Langford's words put it into true focus for me. First I seek God deliberately, using those prayers repeatedly if necessary to calm my mind and soul so that I may attempt to duck my head beneath the surface and begin to listen as well as to talk.