Deconstructing The Jesus Prayer

The Jesus Prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me,

A sinner.

This prayer is said to be the summary of the Gospels in one simple prayer,

In one sentence,

And it is often given to people looking to delve deep into the practice of Christian prayer and Christianity and those who want to open up their hearts to the love of Jesus.

It was given to me with such an offering,

Along with the book The Way of the Pilgrim.

This is a quite an old book now,

But it chronicles the journey of a monk who basically uses the Jesus Prayer to connect and resonate and find peace.

That's sort of the context of the Jesus Prayer and how it was given to me,

But I'm not a Christian,

Or at least I'm not exclusively a Christian.

I am eclectic with my practices,

And a little look through the different tracks and courses and things that I've got on offer here will show you just how diverse that practice is.

So I'm approaching the Jesus Prayer from that perspective,

And what I want to do with this talk is discuss how I use the Jesus Prayer,

How it makes me feel,

And also deconstruct a little bit of the language within the prayer.

I find that I sort of adhere to the idea that prayer is speaking to God,

Speaking to the universe,

And meditation is listening to the reply.

And I spend a lot of time in meditation just observing what is arising,

Checking into the present moment,

But I also spend time giving thanks and also,

Well,

Asking for guidance.

An earlier version of me was envious of people who were religious,

Who just simply knew that God existed,

And that they had a connection with this God,

And that they would be saved by that God,

No matter what happened in this world,

That they were safe,

And that they were held,

And that they had a moral and ethical and spiritual guidelines to follow.

I was envious because at the time I couldn't feel that,

I didn't feel it,

And I felt like they had something I didn't have,

And I even felt a little bit resentful because,

Well,

If such a God existed,

Why didn't I feel or have the ability to connect,

And to resonate,

And to have what they had?

But over time,

And with contemplation,

And with practice,

And with the application of prayers,

Like the Jesus Prayer,

I was able to tap into a deeper,

More resonant space within me.

I was able to connect to my heart space.

I was able to find some guidance.

Now,

Like I said,

I don't categorize myself as a Christian.

I'm agnostic as to the overarching truth.

I don't know,

And I don't claim to know anything other than my own experience.

So with all those caveats in mind,

What about the Jesus Prayer?

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me,

A sinner.

This prayer was offered to me,

But the last little bit was excluded.

I was told to connect with,

To resonate,

And to say the first part,

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me.

Because the person offering me this prayer didn't like the idea of inherent,

Innate sin,

The idea that we're all born sinful,

That we have something to be forgiven for.

And at the time,

That resonated with me,

Because you know,

When you look at a little baby,

When you look at a lot of people,

In fact,

You see just this wealth of love,

And connection,

And resonance,

And joy.

And you start to wonder,

Well,

How is this person inherently stained?

So that sort of resonated,

The idea of offering myself,

Or asking mercy of something beyond me.

Looking at Jesus rather than as a person,

But as an analogy to creation,

To God,

To things that I didn't quite understand,

The beginnings of everything.

Not to the man,

But to the idea,

To the concept,

To this idea of someone that is pure,

You're a saint.

We try to be saintly,

But we can't quite get there,

And this person has that promise.

This person taps into,

Or is connected to,

The origin of everything.

There's something appealing about that,

Asking that place for guidance.

And ever so gradually,

That place would respond,

Respond like the voice of intuition,

The soft,

Subtle,

Small voice,

That when I listened to,

Good things happened.

And when I didn't,

Things went a bit astray.

And over time,

I came back to the prayer,

And then I started playing with the idea of adding,

Have mercy on me,

A sinner.

But I remember distinctly a time where I reframed the word sinner to mean not against,

You know,

These sort of rules written down in a book,

Handed down by God.

But rather,

I reframed the concept of sinning as being against the self,

Against the nature of the self,

Stepping away from the inner light,

Our inner resonance,

Our inner sort of Jesus,

So to speak.

Doing what we shouldn't do because we know it's against us.

Now,

Yes,

We could extrapolate that to be,

You know,

The traditional definition of sin.

But it feels more resonant this way,

This idea of stepping away from the self.

And indeed,

If you look into the transliterations and other things from the original texts,

It's not exactly clear as to what was meant by the term sin.

Sin can mean against God,

But it can also mean through different interpretations against the self.

Language changes.

The classic example of this,

To use the Christian analogy at least,

Was to look at some sculptures of Moses.

There are some sculptures of Moses in which Moses has horns.

Because the word that was offered in his description of coming down,

You know,

Off the mountain and doing the whole thing that he supposedly did,

Was that he had horns.

Now,

That word horns,

It wasn't the word that was used then,

But the word that was used could be translated to being described in our day as,

Or our language as horns.

It could also be described as the equivalent of shining,

Or radiance,

Or sort of like a glow.

And indeed,

There are other sculptures and paintings and where the author chooses to use that interpretation.

The point is that you wouldn't consider the concept of Moses and horns being together.

And yet,

The artist took the literal transliteration of the word into their language and produced a sculpture in which Moses has horns.

But when you think about it and pause for half a second,

You might think,

Well,

Was it horns or is there something else going on there?

Maybe that sort of glow or resonance was more what the original text meant.

As an aside aside,

All language is a code for true meaning.

I think of something in my mind with thoughts,

Feelings,

Emotions,

Memories,

Visions,

All of that sort of stuff.

I put it into the code of words.

You pick up that code and you reintegrate it back into thoughts,

Feelings,

Moods,

Emotions,

Memories,

Visualizations.

The words that I speak are not picked up in the same way by everyone.

So even if you take that the Bible or the Quran or any other holy text is the true literal word of God,

The fallible human reading those words will take it differently.

Thus,

I tend to look at all of these texts,

All of these prayers a little bit more liberally,

And I look for the meaning behind it.

So when we say,

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me a sinner,

I tend to,

Or at least I found some resonance in the idea of looking at the concept of sin,

Not as capital S sin,

But more as moving away from the sense of self,

Moving away from the sense of purpose,

Moving away from the sense of what I was put here to do,

Resonance,

The chills that arise when you're stepping into your power,

Into your strength.

So now when I use the Jesus prayer,

I'm starting to look at it from that perspective,

Because I do often step away from the self.

I do often do things that aren't quite right.

And indeed I have literally sinned,

You know,

I have said and done and been a not so great person to people close and people not so class.

I've done things that I regret.

So I am in fact a sinner.

And if we looked at that idea,

Sometimes it's necessary to go,

Okay,

I'm going to boost myself up.

I'm going to think myself to be,

You know,

Self agency and empowerment,

All of those good things that is necessary.

But that has to come with a balance of the acknowledgement of the truth of our own existence.

There are things that you have said and done that are less than ideal.

And maybe we need to use this prayer as a little bit of a cleaning of the wound,

A little sort of a little,

If we take the visualization of a wound inside that needs to be cleaned,

This is like a gentle,

A gentle scalpel,

Just lightly just cleaning out some of the dirt and the debris of the soul.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me a sinner,

Because we are all just human.

We are all just making our way,

We're all just doing our best,

Or at least we can strive to be our best.

The book that I mentioned at the start,

The Way of the Pilgrim,

Talks about the idea of using this practice daily.

You start by repeating,

You know,

With a set of prayer beads,

And then with yourself,

The Jesus prayer,

100 repetitions a day.

And then you internalize this,

And then it becomes this internal narrative that just sort of takes over and effectively guides you.

It's a mantra practice.

I've got a course about mantras in which,

You know,

We explore the different aspects and different mantras from different traditions,

But the practice is the same.

The idea that you integrate with and you work with this mantra to heal and guide and sort of offer you a way forward into the future.

There's something very powerful,

And if the concept of the Jesus prayer,

Either in the way that I've suggested,

The interpretation of it here,

Or your own interpretation is given to you by someone else,

Resonates,

I encourage you to sit with it and practice it every day,

Until it integrates with your soul,

With your purpose,

With your resonance,

And it guides you into the future.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God,

Have mercy on me,

A sinner.