The Thinking Trap

joynow23

February 4

Just a quick question: Is there anyone reading this who hasn't, at some time or another, been tormented by their thoughts?

If that's you, you are an exceedingly fortunate person! Because for most of us, learning to work with our thoughts is a life-long effort. When we are having a really bad day, chances are that our thoughts are fueling it. When we're in the middle of a conflict with someone, we will notice—if we're honest with ourselves—that our inner monologue has that person's flaws or wrongdoings on an endless loop. When things go wrong at work or school or church, our thoughts—knowingly or not—are in some way keeping things churned up. Our inward thoughts may be full of criticism, for ourselves and others; they may catastrophize our daily events, always seeing the worst that can happen; they may point out all that's wrong with our world, which keeps us in a perpetual state of upset, never giving us a chance to feel secure, at ease, as though all is well.

Most of us, I think, yearn for peace; we long for calm; we hope for a time—which we're certainly not experiencing in our society right now—when life feels balanced, harmonious, and whole. We want to let our guard down and trust people. Enjoy the day. Feel safe. Believe in the prevalence of goodness and the overcoming and sustaining promise of love.

In a single, clear sentence, Isaiah (26: 3) tells us how to find what we seek:

"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you."

I had an interesting experience yesterday as I was thinking about what this might mean. In the morning, I woke up feeling rested, looking forward to having a whole day to do things around the house and write this message for today. During my prayer and meditation time, I lifted up that feeling of thankfulness:

Thank you for a good night's sleep; thanks for a fun evening with family; thank you that things are going so well at work; thank you for so many answered prayers…

But then the idea entered my thought that all the things I was praying about were things that pointed back toward me; even though I was thanking God, I was thanking God for things I was experiencing as a result of God's goodness. And that's okay, right? We want to be grateful people, don't we? Well, certainly. But what I saw so clearly was that there was something missing as I prayed: my prayer didn't have enough God in it. Instead, I heard how many times, I used the words "I am" in my prayer. My thanks were being offered through the lens of me. But my heart suggested something more was possible. What about the lens of God?

What might holding God at the center of my prayer look and feel like instead? In the past I have asked God—especially when I'm having some kind of misunderstanding with someone—to help me "see her as you see her." When I do that, I'm asking to see with Christ's vision so I can recognize "that of God" in another and see beyond the board in my own eye, caused by my own upset and wounded ego. That prayer asks for help in understanding the bigger picture, so I can see what's present in the way that God sees it. That kind of prayer seems to be a step in the right direction.

But really staying our minds on God may be a step or two further down that path. How can we align our minds with God's goodness and keep them there so that our thoughts aren't always pointing back toward ourselves? Can we get beyond the basic prayer of asking that our wants and desires and the outcomes we hope for are met? What might be beyond that? Isaiah suggests it's the peace of God.

As I thought about this, an old Jewish prayer I wrote in my journal long ago came to mind:

Blessed art thou, O God our Lord, king of the universe, giver of all good things.

That works, I thought. There's nothing self-referential about it. I'm not asking God for anything; I'm not petitioning for help or suggesting that I lack anything I need. Instead, the prayer is all about God. Be blessed, O God, source of all goodness and all life. I let that idea resonate for a few moments and felt a quieting in my mind and heart. It felt like a place to rest. A gentle peace. The prayer didn't point back toward me; it was simply about God. That felt like such a relief!

You keep her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because she trusts in you.

I think Isaiah would agree that our problem isn't that we're thinking, because our brains are just wired that way and we're going to keeping doing it. The problem is what we're thinking about. What we dwell on we give energy to. What becomes more and more real in our minds, the longer we think about it, forms our beliefs about the world and each other. How can we set all that down for a while so that we can glimpse the peace beyond it?

Remember the 1991 movie, What About Bob?, when the psychotherapist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) writes a prescription for his very dependent patient Bob (played by Bill Murray)? The note from his prescription pad says, "Take a vacation from your problems!" In that funny scene, Bob has an Aha! moment when he realizes he has a choice about what he is thinking. He can simply set all his worries down, leaving his problems behind for a while and letting his mind discover something new. Maybe something creative or fun or lovely and sacred. Maybe a glimpse of peace. Or a whiff of joy. When we discover we can take a vacation from our own thoughts—even for just a moment—new possibilities emerge. We're not caught in the complications of that daily dilemma anymore. We don't have to sort everything out in our minds before we can find peace. Peace is already here. The question becomes, Where are we looking for it?

This was something George Fox discovered early and taught often. In the introduction to the 1953 edition of The Journal of George Fox, British scholar Geoffrey Nuttall wrote,

"…the light was there, shining steadily and welcomingly, the light of Christ; and it was to this that Fox pointed unwearyingly. 'Mind that which is pure in you to guide you to God', he would say.

Even in childhood, he tells us, he had been taught how to walk to be kept pure; and he had kept his childhood's vow not to be wanton when he grew to manhood. Here again he universalized his own experience. If he could be kept pure, so could others. He claimed no special grace for himself, no gift that was not for all to receive who would. Nor did he pretend that it was possible to live in purity without watchfulness, in utter dependence on the power of God. That which was pure had to be minded.

'Friend,' he wrote to Oliver Cromwell's favorite daughter, Lady Claypole, 'Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive his strength and power from whence life comes to allay all tempests, blusterings, and storms."

To be still and cool…from thy own thoughts is what we're talking about here. To be free of the thinking trap, where we are stuck in our own heads, locked in a narrow, personal perspective, and not seeing the bigger picture God's view always brings. When our tempers are flaring, our minds are racing, and our hearts are pounding in our chests, chances are good we are not calm enough, quiet enough, receptive enough, to hear God's thoughts. Thankfully, with a little practice, we can learn to be still and cool. The way to peace is a path illumined by that idea.

I have mentioned before that as part of my hospice work, I lead groups and workshops on mindfulness, and at its essence mindfulness is just this: Having a mind full of now. Observing what's going on inside us and noticing what our minds and hearts and bodies are carrying. This gentle awareness—a kind of befriending, really—brings calm, and as we begin to relax, we see things more clearly. We see that instead of pushing against our circumstances and reacting with upset and alarm, we have a choice. We can take a vacation from these thoughts for a moment and choose to be still and cool instead. That tiny realization, as small as a breath, can change everything. We feel more free. Our hearts lift. We remember God.

In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he is writing to help inspire the spiritual formation of this young church. He wants them to understand the most important things of this new life they are undertaking. He writes with passion about the person and presence of Christ, the wisdom of God, and how a beloved community can form around ideals of goodness, trust, honesty, and peace. In the passage we heard this morning, Paul wants to make sure his hearers recognize what true wisdom is. He makes a distinction between worldly wisdom and spiritual wisdom, saying,

"No one can know a person's thoughts except God's own Spirit. And we have received God's Spirit (not the world's spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit's words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren't spiritual can't receive these truths from God's Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can't understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others. For,

'Who can know the Lord's thoughts?
Who knows enough to teach him?'

But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ."

In this passage, Paul is mirroring Isaiah's point: God keeps in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on God. That is the mind of Christ; free of the bonds of this world, filled with love and truth and light. The peace comes because when we align our thoughts with God's thoughts, we understand, see, and know differently. We grasp in our hearts the larger meaning of events. We don't take other's actions so personally because we know God is at work in the entire situation. We are mindful of what we're thinking and doing, sensitive to the leadings of Spirit within us—because we know that's how we come to recognize the wisdom we're being offered. We'll see God's peace, order, and lovingkindness emerging, even in upsetting situations, if we watch with eyes of Spirit.

In contrast, if we see through the eyes of personality alone, we get caught up in the problems and emotions and struggles of the moment. We lose touch with the larger spiritual reality all around us. This is what Paul meant by "people who aren't spiritual"—not that they never will be, but that in a given situation, they react from the ego and forget that God is with them, within them, and unfolding all good around them, right in that very moment.

When we are stuck in our own heads, ideas of God seem far away and out of reach. We may doubt that our problems are fixable, that God will bring answers, that life can get good again. The discouragement spreads and grows and we may or may not realize that we are truly caught in a trap of thought. Until we see it—and thankfully Spirit helps us with this--we'll be miserable, helpless, hopeless, caught in beliefs that keeps us separated from the goodness and light we so deeply need.

Luckily, each new moment offers a doorway out of that thinking trap. When we're feeling low, discouraged, downhearted, or upset, we can recognize those feelings as evidence that we're feeling separate from God. And then we can make another choice and reach out—in thought, in prayer, in our hearts—to possibility, to hope, to the God the giver of all good things. When our minds are open to goodness, when we remember the boundless power of love, we begin to feel more peaceful, and clarity and wisdom—spiritual wisdom, transcendent wisdom--follows.

I'd like to close with a quote from Noah Baker Merrill, a member of Putney Friends Meeting in Vermont. This clear and lovely idea is from a keynote he offered in 2012 at the World Conference of Friends:

"The Religious Society of Friends – the Friends Church – is about nothing if it's not about transformation. Helping each other open to the Living Christ among us, allowing ourselves to be searched by the Light at work within us, humbling ourselves to be taught by the Inward Teacher, trusting that surrendering to the Refiner's Fire, we can be given new hearts. And it is and always has been through these new hearts that we are made channels for the Motion of Universal Love."

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