Have you ever had the experience of feeling “disillusioned?”
Perhaps it was with a friend or family member who shared with you something that changed how you saw and understood them. Or maybe it was with an institution – a space you trusted and depended upon but then witnessed something that caused your certainty to stumble.
This feeling of disillusionment can be traumatic and filled with the despair of losing what was once held sacred and solid. It can introduce itself loudly or come upon us with great stealth – either way, bringing with it the violence of change and igniting our inner fears of the unknown. So often paired with an experience of lostness, it brings us to question where we stand in the Universe:
Who am I now given what I have seen? Where do I go? How do I move forward?
And yet, any event or experience that brings us into the spirit of questioning is also an invitation into creatively stepping forward into something new. Parker Palmer once wrote
“Instead of commiserating and offering a shoulder to cry on when a friend says that he or she [or they] is disillusioned, we ought to congratulate, celebrate, and ask the friend how we can help the process go deeper still.”
Disillusionment is the act of seeing beyond the illusions we have grown accustomed to. We see the world more clearly and in so doing, let go of what we thought we knew; we become dis-illusioned. It is a sacred act of seeing what is real in the here and now.
Centering Prayer as a Practice of Disillusionment
There is a quote I heard once from Nana Veary that rumbles through my head quite often, especially when I feel my anger or frustration with someone else surging; she wrote,
“silence shatters the illusion that you and I are separate.”
Everywhere we go, we are bombarded with messages of separateness – stories about how the world works, who we are, who we can be, and who we most certainly don’t want to be. These are the core messages found in most advertising and, at last count, we see upwards of 4,000 ads each day. 4,000 daily reminders of our differences, our personal flaws, and our not-good-enough-ness.
And yet silence invites us to see through this noise and these messages being foisted upon us. When we sit for a practice like Centering Prayer, we are consenting to the silence that shatters the illusions we live within. It is as revolutionary as it is countercultural.
The Silence of Centering Prayer
In the silence, our protections fade. We learn to let down our walls, the stories we tell ourselves to protect ourselves. It can be a raw and deeply transformative experience, both for those for whom society’s illusions are working and for those who are brutalized by them. It is in the intimacy of the quiet that the Divine’s closeness becomes apparent as we come face to face with that which is real.
Every time we take 10, 15, 20 minutes to set an intention and to move internally with our sacred word, we are therefore building the capacity to be disillusioned. We are building the muscle that will allow us to see more and more clearly, more and more often.
In a world filled with so many invitations not to do this – to instead consume abundantly and distract ourselves – Centering Prayer is a personal practice for communal healing. In the building of our capacity to be disillusioned, we are strengthening the intensity in which we can love fiercely in our communities.
Rather than being what Thomas Keating referred to as a “high-class tranquilizer,” Centering Prayer is a radical act of openness and curiosity, made over and over again. It is a practice – engaged within in private so that it might be done in public – of saying “yes” to that which is true, even when confronted with that which is comfortable.
Andrew Lang is an educator in the Pacific Northwest, an alumnus of Richard Rohr’s Living School for Action and Contemplation, and author of the forthcoming book, Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life. Along with blogging regularly, he facilitates workshops helping people to navigate their inner lives and explore their sense of identity and spirituality. You can find more of his writings and offerings at www.AndrewGLang.com.
