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Continuing our conversation about Spiritual Bypass…A quick review. Spiritual Bypass is the very common, but unconscious use of spiritual disciplines/practices/beliefs to avoid the difficult process of addressing internal conflicts or anxieties that threaten to press into our conscious experience and disrupt our sense of calm. They may challenge our view of ourselves as a devout person or defy our sense of acceptable doctrine. If these thoughts and feelings become conscious, we fear our faith will be destroyed and so ward them off. We pray harder, longer, better…but inadvertently we’ve taken charge of our belief system in a way that prevents a genuine encounter with God. We’re stuck being someone we aren’t, perpetually producing an image of ourselves to others and even to ourselves by believing correctly. This often leads to a rigidity in ability to adapt to life’s challenges and we end up cut off from ourselves, others and particularly from God. It’s hard to detect on our own because so much of the process is unconscious.

Research scientists have compiled a strong body of evidence that spiritual techniques are associated with stress relief and declines in depression and anxiety. (Here’s a link to a short summary piece on this from HuffPost: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/prayer-improves-health_b_9…). The relationship between prayer and spiritual health has been measured and participants’ feel closer to God and report a stronger sense of identity which may explain the symptom relief related to depression and anxiety; however, if a person is unconsciously repeating old patterns of thoughts and feelings as s/he relates to God (which is often the case when practices and beliefs are held over longer periods of time), the benefits may disappear. What’s happening within at more unconscious levels is that the person has shifted from an earlier openness about genuine feelings of need, fault or anxiety and is bypassing these negative feelings by shaping their prayer to meet expected demands that reflect their past experience with early caregivers more than a present and genuine encounter with divine Love.

So prayer must be practiced with a ruthless openness. We must pause and assess what we actually feel, think and believe in the moment and wonder what hidden yearnings may be active just under the surface of our awareness. I believe, but help my unbelief (Mark 9:24) is a needed and curative prayer for us all. More on this next week.

Last week, in writing about Spiritual Bypass, I stated, when we numb out negative thoughts and feelings, even if our conscious intent is to be faithful to God by doing so, we numb out all feeling and thwart genuine growth. The unavoidable psychological reality is that when our unconscious fears lead us to block instead of welcome our genuine thoughts and feelings, we inevitable block our growth as well. Our practices of prayer can thus, either hinder our growth if we slide unconsciously into Spiritual Bypass or they can offer us much needed space, psychological safety and comfort to process unconscious material within us that needs attention.

If you’ve finding yourself bored when you pray or unable to stay focused for very long that can be a clue that change is needed. Something is amiss and your unconscious mind is brewing for change. If you find yourself distressed and angry with God and unable to communicate freely with God that too is a clue that change is needed. If you feel distant from God when you once felt close, there may be feelings that you’ve been afraid to feel lurking in your unconscious mind and creating this sense of distance.

What should we do when we suspect we’ve fallen into an unhelpful practice or set of beliefs? Make space for the negative and wait. Contemplative prayer is a centuries old tradition within Christianity (see https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/ for detailed information). Although these practices began long before we had psychological language for them, they open us up to deeper, unconscious thoughts and feelings that can influence our experiences with others including our experiences with God. Buddhist thought has impacted much of the psychological literature over the last decade with a special emphasis on mindfulness.

These practices have existed within Christian tradition as well. It’s unfortunate that many contemporary Christians have been taught to fear such practices. Since the brain is dramatically and positively influenced by these focusing and soothing routines in prayer, it seems wise and good to become attuned to them and to ways to open ourselves to a deeper experience with God through them. Our brains were made by God and for God. Our awareness continually needs to be reoriented to the reality of our whole experience, conscious and unconscious, if we hope to remain open to grow and remedy our strong tendency to slide into Spiritual Bypass. We’ll keep considering these paths to a deeper psychological and spiritual freedom in the coming weeks.

In 1986 when Bon Jovi had the #1 song, Livin’ on a Prayer, about Tommy and Gina trying to make it by loving each other in desperate economic times, I was learning the profound impact that prayer can have on our well-being. For many Christians in the U.S. prayer is a daily habit according to research from the Pew Research Center (http://www.pewforum.org/religious-land…/frequency-of-prayer/). Back in 1986, I began my own journey with Christian contemplative prayer and began to understand that I could live on prayer and needed to. I had done a lot of talking, pleading and searching via my prayers since I became a Christian in 1969, but I had not learned to listen. The impact of this shift in my praying brought profound peace and sparked a continuing interest in helping myself and others understand how ‘livin’ on a prayer’ was a wise way to live when it included contemplative listening in prayer.

Although for years research on prayer was disregarded by serious scientists that has slowly changed, too. NIH has funded studies on prayer and its effects when previously they refused to review any study with the word prayer in it. The bottom line here is that prayer can be helpful in many ways. Studies and various reports are consistent in suggesting potential health benefits of prayer and spiritual interventions. While these studies cannot, of course, prove God’s existence or God’s interest in relationship with human beings, they do point to significant value derived by people who prayer and by people who are prayed for. Particularly contemplative prayer which has a long tradition in both Protestant and Catholic Christian traditions as well as Eastern religious practices, evokes a relaxation response in the brain and throughout the body that lowers stress and promotes healing. For more on this see: Renovare for protestants https://renovare.org/about/overview, and Centering prayer for Catholics: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/…/ca…/centering-prayer – although I have benefited and would recommend both of these sites regardless of your religious background or lack of religious experience.

I’ll continue to explore the science of spiritual experience here at Hallowood Institute and to offer insights into the favorable outcomes associated with the integration of Christian spirituality with psychological thought and practice. I hope you’ll stay connected to this blog and other events offered by Hallowood Institute. In coming weeks look for more on prayer and its complexity.

One of the first and continuing gifts of psychological study to the healthy practice of spirituality is the overarching concept of the division of our experience as human beings into conscious and unconscious processes. The ancient writings of the Hebrew scriptures note it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (NIV translation of Nehemiah 17:9). Another paraphrase of this passage expands to “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, GOD, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be” (The Message). This division of our understanding is important to take in. I often consider this reality of my limited knowledge of my own motivations as another sign that things are not as they should be in this world. This isn’t an explanation meant to blame each of us for our pain, but it is a plausible explanation of the realities we all experience. We are separated from ourselves.

In Christian thought, Jesus saves us from all destructive separations and draws us into a healing process that lasts a lifetime. Much of our mental distress results from mistaken notions of when and how this process occurs. One and done? Probably not. The spiritual path that Christian theology suggests is one of continuing change, as the early writings of the New Testament repeatedly underline. Attitudes about all kinds of things change as you read through the history of the early followers of Jesus in the book of Acts. There’s a flexibility that we would do well to imitate more than we do. However, my main point here is that we are divided beings. We know some of what we intend and choose, but we do not know all of our motives. We surprise ourselves with what comes to our minds, our voices and our choices. The unconscious processes occurring within us outside of our awareness are real and potent. The spiritual path requires that we deal with this reality or our spiritual practices will become destructive and unhealthy as well. What is good, can be spoiled. This is where our practices of prayer can be helpful. I’ll have more to say about all this in the coming weeks. I hope you’ll keep reading.

Several years ago, I took a 7-day silent retreat. The first thing my spiritual director instructed me to do on retreat was to sleep. I was surprised, to say the least. But I decided I should place my doubts aside and do as instructed. So I slept. I took naps and I slept 8 hours at night. I had no idea I was as tired as I was. I had pushed myself and kept my task list going relentlessly. I thought I was being a good person by working hard. Being quiet and sleeping created a whole new kind of energy for me. Later in the week, I began writing down all the insights and encouragement I was gleaning from the experience. I still refer to this list as a sort of compass for my life. Who knew sleep could be so important?

In the U.S. many of us sleep too little. The average is 6.8 hours per day. Sleep researchers suggest that 7-9 hours daily is a healthy range. A lack of sleep has been associated with health problems and cognitive impairment. Our brains use our sleeping hours to do a kind of housekeeping, clearing away neurotoxins and detritus in the system. Our nervous system resets so we are fresh to meet new stressful situations. We organize and store memories and consolidate learning. There’s a lot happening when we rest. Perhaps this is why the wisdom of rest was written into the Bible’s instructions for the early Hebrew people. Rest was an important part of living a godly life.

Depression can cause people to sleep too much or too little. Creating a healthy cycle of rest and work is part of a good plan to improve mood stability. For 2019, consider tracking your sleep as a part of your resolutions for healthy living. Give your brain a chance to reset and prepare for the important engagements of your life. When circumstances prevent you from good rest, remember to be gentle with yourself. Taking 10 deep breaths can help. A 20-minute nap can replenish you. Allow yourself to strategize for more rest soon.

Neuroscience has been helping us understand more fully how our brains work in fascinating and sometimes troubling ways. We process the information that coming to us from our environments in patterned ways and this means that we pay attention to the things that confirm our already existing thoughts and feelings and tend to ignore things that differ from our current perceptions. So this Christmas, if you expect to be hurried, frazzled and under-appreciated, you’re likely to find that’s true. If you expect your family and friends to overlook you, you’re likely to find evidence that they do. This pattern happens even with our expectations of God. If you expect God to neglect you, you set yourself up for that sadness, too.

What might help us discover more about reality rather than following our perceptions around throughout the season? Try telling yourself a new story this year. See if you can focus your attention each day on something new that is happening. Maybe the new thing could be as simple as your practice of pausing for a few moments each day to notice something new/different. This is a risky practice. It involves inviting your brain to refocus on what it doesn’t know yet. Just like Mary had to refocus her attention on having a Child when she “knew” that was not possible according to everything she knew before. Try pondering (thinking slowly and intentionally) about this story of birth in the midst of risky and new circumstances. Ponder this every day for a few minutes for a week and see if your perceptions and expectations change, even just a bit. Take the risk.

Madeleine L’Engle left us a poem to help with this pondering practice. The Risk of Birth by Madeleine L’Engle (1973):

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn-
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn-
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

One reason many of us struggle to forgive, particularly in Christian circles, is that we avoid conflicts rather than facing them. In the process of forgiving we have to admit that a conflict exists. The psychological literature is clear that the first step in forgiving is this admission that a conflict has occurred and that there’s real hurt involved. We need to speak honestly about conflicts and acknowledge our reactions: anger, bitterness, hurt, along with a desire to get over these troubling feelings. This can be a slow and repetitious path. To say the obvious: forgiveness takes time. If rushed, the reoccurrence of negative emotion is guaranteed.

The next step in forgiving is an intentional effort to empathize with the offender. This is hard. When we are deeply hurt we easily think our offender is defined by this awful behavior towards us. Bryan Stevenson* points out a deeper truth: none of us is as bad as our worst actions. The truth is that we are all complex creatures who defy labels. This heroic step of adding empathy to our internal dialogue about the offender is an attempt to see from the other person’s perspective, but even more it is an attempt to summon concern for the offender as a child of God. We are not at this step, trying to convince ourselves or anyone else that the offender is right or justified. We are including in our narrative of the conflict that s/he is loved and valued by God. Again the path is steep and the going slow, but progress is possible and significant for our well being and that of others around us.

*Bryan Stevenson (2015). Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Random House.

In the secular psychological literature on forgiving there is a distinction drawn between forgiving and reconciliation. Researchers point out that we can let go of angry and vengeful feelings and actions, but not be ready to trust the offender enough to relate openly with him/her again. It may actually not be safe or possible to do so. Perpetrators may not be worthy of trust ever again. This makes the process of forgiving complex and arduous. I do not want to convey an overly simplistic approach. So we who forgive, must repeat our pardon as long as necessary. No limits. But we do not have to behave as if the violation never happened. Forgiving can be done alone. Reconciliation is about both the victim and the perpetrator.

From a Christian perspective, the work of forgiveness begins with a personal encounter with our forgiving God, as I mentioned in an earlier post. We can only hope to forgive when we have intimately known that we are forgiven for our errors. For many people, this step is rushed or avoided. That will steal any power to forgive we might have. We need help from beyond ourselves to be true forgivers.

Our nature is to assess cause or blame. Our first questions are often: what happened? Who did this? How could she? Jesus seems completely disinterested in this pursuit, but remains intent upon restoring relationships (asking God to forgive, excuse and restore relationship with those who kill him as they drive in the nails). This can make the distinction between forgiving and reconciliation more blurry than the psychological literature suggests. For Christians, forgiving is Jesus’ instruction to us. It’s part of living the abundant, good life. So how do we know if we’ve forgiven someone when the bitter feelings return when we see them across the room or on the street?

I want to suggest that we first put aside trying to evaluate our ability to forgive and reconcile and instead allow ourselves to focus on the present moment through prayer and being mindful of the Spirit with us and within us. When anger or hurt rise up, it means we are invited again to name our pain with the Spirit right there to comfort us. Forgiving and discerning when we can or cannot reconcile requires attending intentionally to the hurt we are suffering rather than ignoring or repressing it. Naming the pain with Jesus is always our option, even our calling. We can’t forgive if we can’t allow ourselves to recall the hurt.*

*See Everett L. Worthington, (2003), Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity for a more complete discussion.