“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.” (Romans 12:2)
The need for the Peace of Christ, which is not of this world, is pressing. The hour is late. Sinners struggling to be Christian in the USA should work hard now to be IN the “Super-American” but not OF it. Pursue “trinitarian communion in Christ” everywhere, all the time. This is a conscious effort to BE “the measure of yeast” referred to in the famous parable (Matthew 13:33).
I present the following method of prayer in hopes that this may prove useful to persons working towards that end:
The method is designed to help in the effort to “swim upstream” in contemporary midwestern American reality – a reality based on the personal car where 99.9 % of the people drive, no one ever walks and where public transportation is virtually nonexistent. The aim is not to be in the same place as other persons driving vehicles (although this may happen with some frequency through this effort). The aim is to be yourself “in Christ,” “loving thy neighbor as thyself” while navigating through “carland” without being subsumed within the “Super-American.”
This is my derivation of a theme first presented by the “esoteric Christian” writer Georg Gurdjieff.
I apply this method while driving a car on the way to-and-from places where consumers are gathered and then, after parking in the associated mega-parking-lot, in the place itself. For example, I often applied this method in trips to Walmart and to the K-Star casino (near Wichita, Kansas – I never gamble but found the casino to be a good venue for this method).
This method is all about what you do with your attention, which is your love. You can move this around inside your body. In this case we are trying to bring awareness of self-as-body into the center of the chest, where the heart resides. The guiding principle is that the way to remain “in Christ” in this reality, the way to “stay on the narrow path” to wherever you are going, is to actively remember “thyself” as a unified trinity in the Peace of Christ, while annonymously loving the other people whom you encounter in random passing.
Without an active effort to remember what “thyself” feels like in the Peace of Christ, one is quickly subsumed within the “collective” of carland – a “place” that is inherently violent. There is indeed a kind of “peace” that comes from “going with the flow” in this reality. The whole point is that this “peace” is not the Peace of Christ.
From the place of being gathered in “thyself,” one actively loves thy randomly passing neighbor. This requires noticing the others and experiencing a sense of their “weight” as a person-occupying-a-body (which is, of course, greatly amplified by the momentum of their vehicle). You are trying to navigate IN “carland” without becoming a part of it. Be aware that you are likely to experience considerable “turbulence” within your “presence” as a person-in-a-body as you actively “equilibrate” with other people in cars (and trucks). Some complications arise from the tendency of Americans to hold themselves as what I call “auto-body-minds,” whose sense of self-as-body occupying perceptual volume is inseparable from their sense of self-as-body-in-a-vehicle-moving-quickly.
Their “weight” presses upon you. You react to this sense of “weight” by “pushing out” against it from within the chest. This is conquering and even transforming the “not-I” in yourself that does not love this person by projecting your attention, that is, your love. In the process you are effectively “making room” for “I am in Christ” in your own chest, with unknown and unknowable consequences for the persons with whom you are interacting in this manner or even who are simply passing nearby.
The process can be quite painful. As the floodgates of compassion open in your heart, you begin to feel the struggle and pain of other consumers in carland, and you remember that the Creator loves everyone.
The prayer itself is simple:
I am.
I am can.
I can wish.
I wish to be myself in Christ.
When formulating the thought “I am,” you are trying to remember what it feels like to be “thyself” in the Peace of Christ. Remain mindful of the hundreds of “personality states” or different, transient manifestations of “I of the moment” that you’re capable of. “I am” only where these hundreds of “personality states” with all their pridefulness, judgments and negative emotions have receded into the background and there is actual, physical love for neighbors passing by in vehicles in carland.
Once you have parked in some mega-parking lot, continue with exactly the same method of prayer. Now, instead of people in cars passing by, the people are more immediately “in the flesh” with shopping carts. Can you feel their “weight?” Is there something inside you that does not love the person you are passing, or that one moving ten yards away? Struggle against it! This this is “not I!” Wish to love! Wish to be “thyself” in Christ! Ask the Lord to let you back in to the Peace. Feel the pain and suffering of others. Open the “rusty valves” in your heart and experience compassion for all of God’s other children, especially in Palaces of Pathos like Walmart and casinos.
Sometimes, attractions emerge when you do this work. Everyone is your lover. Your love flows to someone and they like it. Accept this. Do not fight it. Linger awhile in it on your way forward. You do not have the right to stop it.
Other times, the context of “neighbors” is so “heavy” that you spend most of your effort just getting back to “I am,” actively loving, never resenting the “presence” of the others, “making room” for yourself. You don’t have to be in exactly the same “space” with them in that their sense of self-as-body need not coincide exactly with a state of “mutual presence” with yours as is more likely to happen when you’re talking with them “in the flesh” “on the ground.” As long as you are “pushing out” against the sense of their “weight” while holding “I love you” in your heart, it will work out.
Yes, it hurts. Just like it hurts to have spikes pounded through your hands and feet and be left to die a slow agonizing death. But you do it anyway, intentionally, because the alternative is to “fall asleep” within the “Super-American” – to lose all memory of the Peace of Christ, which is not of this world, and feel only the false peace of “go with the ceaseless flow” in the river of vehicles fueled by petro-wars that flows through the “Reagan economic miracle.”
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