It is prayer in which the first step of the holistic
spiritual journey of body, mind, heart and soul is to be taken. The recognition of our
disorder, our essential estrangement from God. The Jesus Prayer is a prayer in which we admit our need
to be healed. Many times this healing involves liberation from the
negative effects of negative emotions or the passions. For "if we say we have no sin in us, we are
deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth" (1 John
1:8).
Because prayer is a living reality, a deeply personal
encounter with the uncreated energies of the Triune God, it is not to
be confined to any given classification or rigid analysis. However, in
order to offer some broad, general guidelines for those interested in
using the Jesus Prayer to develop their inner life, Theophan the
Recluse, a 19th century Russian spiritual writer, distinguishes three
levels in the saying of the Prayer: It begins as oral prayer or prayer
of the lips, a simple recitation which Theophan defines as prayers'
"verbal expression and shape."
Although very important, this
level of prayer is still external to us and thus only the first step,
for "the essence or soul of prayer is within a man's mind centered in the heart."
As we enter more deeply into prayer, we reach a level
at which we begin to pray without distraction. Theophan remarks that
at this point, "the mind is focused upon the words" of the
Prayer, "speaking them as if they were our own." The third
and final level is prayer of the heart. At this stage prayer is no
longer something we do but who we are.
The noetic faculty of mind, disengaged from the
thoughts and fantasies of everyday life, centers its energies in the
heart and engages in the Jesus Prayer , while the faculties of the body and the discursive intellect
participate in the fruits of the prayer which include the benefits of
increased health and well being.
When one becomes proficient in prayer, it is possible for one to go about engaging in daily
physical and mental activities while our attention is focused in the
heart.
Throughout the hesychist tradition and especially
in the Philokalia we find a common thread based on a concept almost
entirely lost in the West for near a thousand years. This thread is
the consistent and appropriate rendering of the classical Greek word
nous whose meaning we have discussed in many places throughout this
site and throughout our Quest for Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
This meaning has long been forgotten and today this
important word has been translated in many different ways: We have
seen that is translated by some authors spirit, normally translated in
English as mind, and by Maximos the Confessor and many authors of the
Philokalia as intellect. It also sometimes is translated as reason. It is
important to realize that the nous or spirit is part of the soul. We
are composed of body and soul. Part of the soul is the nous or spirit
The heart focused. sustained repetition of the Jesus Prayer with a positive
feeling of love and appreciation is a medicine
which transforms negative passions into positive holistic health
energies. The heeart centered Jesus Pray harmonizes the body
systems through, the autonomic nervous system, resulting into
increased health benefits and strengthening the immune system and a
reduction in stress hormones.
Just
as the physician puts medications and prescribes healing substances,
so also the name of Jesus when we invoke it with heart centered attention, helps to heal us from the
negative influences of the passions, which weakens the immune system
resulting in disease states.
Our ordinary condition, the condition of all humanity,
is one of fallenness, of spiritual deception, of loss of eternal life.
Our default condition as human beings needs correcting so we can overcome
tendencies that make us prone to negative emotions and actions.
The mechanism of prayer is remarkably helpful is
resetting our default values to one of holistic health and well being.. When the
mind has shifted its attention around the physical area of the heart the
heart will then the heart will join in with its own offering of joyous well
being. The
heart will empathize with the mind by means of the Jesus Prayer said by the mind and heart together. The words of the
prayer ought to be said without hurry. even lingering, so that the
mind and attention can be drawn into the heart.
The passions are the principal cause of
inattentiveness and absentmindedness in prayer. The more they are
redirected in a positive manner in a person, the less is he/she is
distracted in spirit when praying. The passions are brought under
control and redirected little by little by the practice of the virtues
upon which successful prayer is built. Concentration, which is
accessible to man, is granted by God in good time to every struggler
in piety and asceticism who by persistence and ardor proves the
sincerity of his desire to acquire prayer.
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1. At the beginniers level, Take a time-out so that you can temporarily disengage from your
thoughts and feelings-especially stressful ones.
2. Shift your focus of attention to the area around your heart-now feel
your breath coming in through your heart and out through your solar
plexus.
(Practice breathing this way a few times to ease into the technique.)
3. Make a sincere effort to activate a positive feeling.
(This can be a genuine feeling of appreciation or care for someone,
some place or something in your life.)
4. Ask yourself what would be an efficient, effective attitude or
action that would balance and de-stress your system.
5. Quietly sense any change in perception or feeling and sustain it as
long as you can.
Heart perceptions are often subtle. They gently suggest effective
solutions that would be best for you and all concerned. (Also, remember
that the initial breathing focus is not a technique in itself. As in
Eastern Orthodox Hesychastic prayer techniques, berating is simply a means
of focusing the attention in the heart.)
The Jesus Prayer technique is an emotional restructuring
technique, which is can be combined with the Freeze-Frame™.and The Heart
Lock-techniques discussed on other pages of this site. The techniques
focus on building the capacity to sustain
heartfelt positive emotions and physiological coherence for longer
periods.
If desired, practice of this technique may also be facilitated by
music specifically created to promote emotional balance and augment the
favorable psychological and physiological effects of positive affective
states.
The Jesus Prayer technique can be used to
reinforce or "lock in" the coherent psycho physiological patterns
associated with appreciation and other positive affective states developed
with HeartMath techniques. These are the natural fruits of the Jesus
Prayer as identified by Theophan the Recluse in his "Art of
Prayer."
The key elements of the technique are: Focus (in the area
of the heart), Appreciate, and Radiate (love and care). In the midst of
life's perpetual activity, the Heart Lock-In™ offers a simple way to
cultivate and amplify heartfelt positive feelings and their nourishing
effects on the body and psyche.
Jesus Prayer Practice
1. Gently shift your attention to the area around your heart.
2. Shift your breathing so that you are breathing in through the heart
and out through the solar plexus.
3. Activate a genuine feeling of appreciation or care for someone or
something in your life.
4. Make a sincere effort to sustain feelings of appreciation, care or
love while radiating them to yourself and others.
5. When you catch your mind wandering, gently focus your breathing back
through the heart and solar plexus and reconnect with sincere recitation
of the Jesus Prayer
(After you've finished, sincerely sustain your feelings of care and
appreciation as long as you can. This will act as a cushion against
recurring stress or anxiety.)
In closing, consider the following from Symeon the New
Thologian on the Three Mentods of Prayer (Philokalia, Book IV)
Let us now begin to speak about the third method of prayer, which is truly
astonishing and hard to explain. For those ignorant of it, it is not only
difficult to understand but virtually incredible, and there are very few
to be found who practice it. It seems to me that it has deserted us along
with the virtue of obedience.
For it is the love of obedience that delivers us from entanglement with
this evil world, rendering us free from anxiety and impassioned craving.
It makes us wholehearted and unflagging in pursuit of our aim - provided,
of course, that we find an unerring guide. For if through obedience you
make yourself dead to every worldly and bodily attachment, how can
anything transient enslave your intellect?
If you entrust all the care of your soul and body to God and to your
spiritual father, no longer living for yourself or desiring the good
opinion of others, what anxiety can distract 'you?
