Why Walk?

Love reading others posts about the 'why'?  Still figuring out my thoughts....'The Way'... GEEO has a trip!...Loved 'Walk Across America'- read years ago...even had a book on Monastery's in Spain and France years ago.. gave it away.. wish I still had it.. so many callings this year.

Part 1 Becoming Still
The reader of this post will have many reasons to make the journey to Santiago de Compostela. For some it is just a long walk, a healthy holiday. For others it is a deeply penitential act of religious devotion. In the film “the Way” the character Jack said “there is one thing I am sure of, no–one just walks the way of St James”. That inner reason, that motivation, that call? That draws you to the way to Santiago is what I call the inner pilgrimage.

I have now walked four Camino’s and on every Camino I have encountered Pilgrims who are walking and are not sure how to navigate their inner Camino. For some the inner Camino is clear, they are at a cross roads and need clarity, some they are in grief or are dying and are struggling to meet death, for many they are at the end of a relationship or a career and don’t know where to go now.

However, for most, it is the biggest question (and the hardest question), who am I, and what am I living for? In Luke’s Gospel in the New Testament there is recorded a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”… Prayer takes many shapes. For many it is what I call God Bless Mummy and Daddy prayers, or shopping list prayers. These are fine and I think possibly nearly all of us do this sort of praying. I call this transactional prayer. However these series of posts are not about that.

The type of praying I am exploring in these posts are called broadly “contemplative prayer”. A simple way of putting this is, what I call “falling in love prayer”. A clergy person friend recently asked me to explain what a “contemplative” was, “I responded” simply, “it is someone who is in love with God, and seeks to see the divine life in all”.

A famous Spanish Franciscan named Ramon Lull wrote a beautiful book called “the Book of the Lover and the Beloved”, This book is a series of meditations of a man in love. The opening paragraph asks this question, “is there anything remaining in me that doesn’t know it is loved”. This type of prayer is about going to the very core of our being and knowing the source of all love, God themselves, and ourselves as God’s beloved.

The Trappist mystic Thomas Merton talked about something called the dualistic self. He called it the “True Self and the False Self”. The False Self”, is the ambitious, competitive, aggressive, self-seeking, self-serving, driven, me, me, me mind, that finds its identity in things, titles, wealth and power. The Camino is packed with people like this who have served this false self and are waking up to its tyranny. The false self is our inner drive to project who we aren’t. It can become a profound slave driver and I promise you it will wreck your outer as well as your inner Camino.

Most of humanity is subject to this inner tyrant. Western Culture is full of its noise. Social media and advertising are driven entirely by the false self. This “mind” always wants to be in control, despite being uncontrollable. It is filled with anxiety, you will find it all over your Camino, how many Km’s must I walk today, have I got the right kit, will I get a top bunk, is there an ATM, I don’t want to know those people. The false self will cause all sorts of anxious thoughts and you can walk all 800 km’s from St Jean to Santiago and this beast will still be in control. …. The false mind, the anxious mind, will be your biggest obstacle to your Camino, especially to your inner Camino. So the inner Camino begins by learning to silence the “False Self” so that we can meet the real self however gruesome that true self might be at first.

So before you begin your Camino, (I would suggest several months out), begin in week one to sit in silence for five minutes, every day. Gradually increase the time up to 20 -30 minutes a day before you go on your Camino. Don’t rush, this is powerful stuff. You cannot meet the Divine life and still be the same.
Learning to be still …. This is very hard for Western “False Self, people”. Begin by finding a quiet place with no distractions. Sit upright, cross legged or on a prayer stool or in a straight backed chair and calm your breathing allowing your breathing to be at one with your heart rate. Tense your muscles up and allow them to become relaxed, making several long hard inhalations and exhalations of breath. I would then either make the sign of the cross or pray a simple prayer such as “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on me a Sinner”.

Then I choose a very few words, in my case I simply say “I love you” I say this on the outbreath and on the in breath I mentally say “I am loved”. Daring to declare the truth of how God feels about you can be the very hardest thing we know. The “false self” will identify your relationship with God by your Sins, shortcomings, failures, self hatred and often the negative declarations your own parents, teachers or clergy have said over you. Push those thoughts and feelings aside and simply breath “I love you” .. “You love me”.

Don’t worry about the emotions they will come, the “false self” has wired your mind for so long, you cannot imagine yourself in love with God and even less God in love with you. Yet Christ’s death on the Cross screams “I love you”, in doing this you are simply agreeing with the truth of who you are in Christ. So for a while you may well be working on simply rejecting “religious lies”. If things come up in your mind like God bless, Mummy and Daddy type prayers, the shopping, that thing that needs to happen by Friday pops into your mind, jot it down and silence it and get back to breathing “I love you, I am loved” ..

Trying to be totally silent will be impossible, so don’t beat yourself up if all sorts of distractions pop into your head. Stilling the mind and emptying it of anxiety is very hard to do. The False self has been in charge for so long, the brain has been wired to let it have first say. What we are learning here is to be still so we can pray, really pray. From a place of rest, truth, and stillness.

Continue this process for a set time, five good minutes is better than twenty chaotic minutes.
Learning to be still is the beginning of your inner journey. Learn this skill and you can start each day of you Camino ready to hear…

Next on the #InnerCamino is learning to walk with the Jesus Prayer
Further reading:
Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Cynthia Bourgault
The Lover and the Beloved, Ramon Lull
The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen
Fr Richard Rohr Thomas Merton Non Dualism