Anam Cara

In Prayer We Learn to See with the Eyes of the Soul

Through prayer, we learn to see with the eyes of the soul. Your normal vision is always conditioned by the needs of the ego. Prayer helps you to clearer vision. It opens you up to experiences you would never otherwise entertain. It refines your eyes for the unknown narrative that is quietly working itself through your words, actions, and thoughts. In this way, prayer issues from and increases humility. The normal understanding of humility involves a passive self-deprecation in which any sense of self-worth or value is diminished. Humility has a more profound meaning. “Humility” is a derivative of the Latin word “humus,” meaning “of the earth.” In this sense humility is the art of being open and receptive to the inner wisdom of your clay. This is the secret of all natural growth: “Unless the seed dies it remains but a single seed.” Meister Eckhart in speaking of the original Creation says, “The earth fled to the lowest place.” Clay is not interested in any form of hierarchy; it is immune to the temptation and competition of the vertical line. Under the convenient guise of not being noticed and being lowest ground, it operates a vast sacramentality of growth which nourishes and sustains all of life. In our misguided passion for hierarchy, we put first things first and other things nowhere.

The earth welcomes difficulty as invitation to novelty and freshness; the earth is full of all kinds of individualities. Yet no individuality ever becomes isolated. Each remains porous, somehow receiving and returning growth. The humility that prayer brings educates your spirit in the art of inner hospitality. You slowly learn to lose your defensiveness. You enter more deeply into the wisdom of your clay, your humus nature. You learn not to be uneasy or afraid. When your deeper nature awakens and is allowed to work, you discover a new flexibility. You do not need to define yourself negatively in terms of avoidance. Humility brings a new creativity. You begin to glimpse possibilities in situations and experiences which up to now you had considered closed.

Humility also brings you a new self-possession. You no longer feel the need to vocalize in the current jargon, at every moment, what is going on inside you. Language itself is wedded to silence. Now, like the silent earth, the cradle of all growth, you, too, can watch the stirrings of a new springtime in the clay of your heart. You gain more courage. You become surer about who you are, and you no longer need to force either image or identity. When you come into rhythm with your nature, things happen of themselves.