The core illusion.

Dear Ones,

In a world full of demands and noise of all kinds, practicing silence may be considered counter-cultural even though every spiritual tradition posits it as an essential practice. In her book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cynthia reminds us that centering prayer is not the silence that involves a cessation of outer noise and busyness alone but the cessation of inner noise or at the very least a healthy detachment from it. This kind of silence is a crucial practice for spiritual transformation and awakening. We gradually experience an awakening from our ordinary awareness in which “we human beings are victims of a tragic case of mistaken identity” (p.10).

Being human has always involved loss, change, crisis and uncomfortable life conditions. Every period of history has come with its own unique challenges, and although our time is not completely unprecedented it would be remiss to negate the current crises we are facing. Whenever we find ourselves in the midst of ongoing trauma it is easy to fall back into ordinary awareness alone and react from this level exclusively. Our selves in time have many preferences, desires, and ways of remaining comfortable and self-soothed. This level of ordinary awareness is not inherently bad or wrong and in fact is a necessary aspect of being in this world. At the same time all spiritual paths reveal that we can awaken to a greater, more abundant reality if we can begin to find a Self beyond who we typically take ourselves to be. As Cynthia says,

“The person I normally take myself to be—that busy, anxious little ‘I’ so preoccupied with its goals, fears, desires, and issues—is never even remotely the whole of who I am, and to seek the fulfillment of my life at this level means to miss out on the bigger life. This is why, according to his teaching, the one who tries to keep his ‘life’ (i.e., the small one) will lose it, and the one who is willing to lose it will find the real thing. Beneath the surface there is a deeper and vastly more authentic Self, but its presence is usually veiled by the clamor of the smaller ‘I’ with its insatiable needs and demands.

This confusion between small self and larger Self (variously known in the traditions as ‘True Self,’ ‘Essential Self,’ or ‘Real I’) is the core illusion of the human condition, and penetrating this illusion is what awakening is all about” (p.10).

Centering prayer allows us to see the human condition for what it is by developing a different type of awareness that is not so preoccupied with dividing the field. It is a spiritual awareness cultivated through the intention of an internal posture of letting go, of noticing where we are caught in various types of thinking coming from little ‘I’s and letting go again. Spiritual awareness allows us to perceive from the Whole, brings with it a capacity to see the nuances and factors that need to be taken into consideration in each particular situation in order to move in the world from wisdom and coherence.

Centering prayer is a way of building the muscle of letting go, of growing the capacity to unclench the fixated thought, emotional, and physical patterns that keep us stuck in the notion that “I am right and other people are wrong.” The fruits of this practice are not so much experienced in the twenty minute period we sit on our mat and do the deal (“if you catch yourself thinking, you let the thought go” p.23) but rather in our lives. We begin to notice that we grow in our ability to make space for polarity rather than polarization and thus to discern rather than judge. As we practice with the aim of being “totally open to God” (p.22) something is strengthened in us. This something becomes more and more a place we can return to in the course of our day as we go about the particular and complex circumstances of our lives.

The practice of surrendering and emptying over time also develops a spiritual non-possessiveness. We cling much less, and operate from a more spacious interior. We relax concerns focused primarily on survival, division and separateness. We gain a deeper sense of real presence and love and succumb less to the imagination with its tendencies towards unhelpful negativity or ideal fantasies. We stop contributing to the emergent properties of terror, rage, and detached disengagement that gain a life of their own and wreak havoc on the collective atmosphere.

We are invited through this practice to be “Totally available, all the way down to that innermost point of your being; deeper than your thinking, deeper than your feelings, deeper than your memories and desires, deeper than your usual psychological sense of yourself—even deeper than your presence!”(p.22).

And so I invite you to join me in the following inner task. Inner tasks come from the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff and have become an important part of our wisdom lineage. Inner tasks are essentially about supporting our work with waking up to our automatic patterns and becoming present in the conditions of our lives as they are. They begin with the foundational work of self-observation. Self-observation is something that only we can do for ourselves and brings with it self-knowledge that is useful for living out our wisdom path.

We return to our aim in centering prayer “to be totally open to God. Totally available, all the way down to that innermost point of your being. . .” As we sit down for our twenty minute period we practice the continual letting go of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. We let them go not because these are bad but because they pull us back to the surface, to our usual notions of our narrative selves based at the ordinary awareness level. We slowly discover through this act of surrender that we are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not our sensations, and that something in us is deeper than the many small i’s we have living within us that we regularly identify with as we go about our daily lives.

Our inner task will be to work with self-observation, recognizing that not everything arising within us – every thought, mood, feeling, impulse, desire, emotion, and so on – is “Real I.” Begin to notice throughout the day these are my thoughts this is not I. These are my emotions this is not I. These are my physical impulses this is not I. Then notice from where you are drawing your awareness deeper in and come to the still point of “I.” Rest in that stillness for a moment amidst whatever noise may be going on and say “thank you” as a recognition that you have remembered yourself.

We work from the Whole on behalf of the collective. May it be so.

With Love,

Heather

*This reflection was first shared in 2021 on Wisdom Waypoints

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, August 4th

No reading, just welcoming our human experience from a deeper place inside

Tuesday, August 5th

Chant: mercy, mercy, mercy, deep within and all around – Henry Schoenfield

Wednesday, August 6th

Chant: Created world, creative world, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between two worlds a bridge (2x), you yourself, within yourself a bridge, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between two worlds a bridge – Epiphany Today

Thursday, August 7th

Intoning I Am Here with gestures

Friday, August 8th with LeMel

Reading: 'Twenty-One For Centering For Z.B.G.'

Help me to examine my days,

To locate moments of fulfillment

Within the hours of misgivings.

Let me plant bright bulbs

For spring blooming after winter’s dark.

Help me to examine my space,

To make a nest of comfort

Among the prickles of danger.

Let me fence out anxiety

With a hedgerow of happiness.

Help me to examine my purpose,

To seek lofty reasons of being

That soar above petty trials.

Let me sow feather grass seed

To wave in summer breezes.

Take up the spade with me, Eternal Life Creator;

Take up the trowel.

Together we will plant

A garden of gladness,

Together in the midst of uncertainty.

– Debbie Perlman in Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise, former Psalmist-in-Residence at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue

Chant: Take up the spade with me, Take up the trowel, Together we plant, oh God, In the midst of uncertainty – LeMel Firestone-Palerm

Saturday, August 9th

Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God – Henry Schoenfield

Reading: “That your world is in agony is no reason to turn your back on it, or to try to escape into private 'spiritual' pursuits. Rilke reminded me that I had the strength and courage to walk out into the world as into my own heart, and to 'love the things / as no one has thought to love them.'” – Joanna Macy, Rilke’s Book of Hours

Sunday, August 10th

Chant: Sink into the taproot of your heart – Heather Ruce

Reading: "Making sense of the world takes so many forms! Some of them just engage the lineage of despair more explicitly than others... you could expand... to so many other forms of art, including the unheralded art of living our everyday lives, and the creation and maintenance of connection. What does it look like to cherish other people? To cultivate our empathy for one another, even when our own experiences are so disparate? If a burning world is our lived reality, how do we continue to steer ourselves towards the sort of compassion that might create a different one?

"...But we do have to figure out how to create narratives — amongst people who hold very similar beliefs, but also with those who do not... All of those ideologies are, at heart, antidotes to the deep sadness at the heart of everyday life. We need better ones." – Anne Helen Petersen, “The World Has Always Been On Fire. What Now?" in her Substack newsletter; May 28, 2025

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