What does it mean to listen and hear God’s voice? This was the question my pastor pondered over this morning (Jan 14, 2024) in his sermon as he explored the story of little boy Samuel hearing the voice of God for the first time. Hearing his sermon caused me to consider what is happening within our psyche when we pray. I wondered why is it so hard for us to pray, for us to experience the dynamics of God’s spirit in our life. I ask this question for most people I have met don’t have these divine encounters. They struggle more with the question, “where is God, or does God even exist?” I also wondered, “when we do have these types of divine meetings, what is happening within our human soul?" Finally, I wondered, “how do we know that what we hearing or sensing or experiencing is coming from the Spirit of God within our soul, and not from one of the fallen parts that are often clamoring for our attention?” In this blog, I plan to explore these questions, drawing upon teachings from the Bible but also insights from the Diamond Approach and Internal Family Systems, both modern day psychospiritual psychologies that I use regularly in my counselling and teaching. In doing so, I will be playing with the Christian mystic idea of the "inner room." Why is the Word of the Lord Rare Today? This notion that God speaks to humans is a common teaching within the Bible. We have stories of God speaking many times to Moses, like the time when God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. We learn about how God began speaking to Samuel as a young boy, and then later in history when God spoke through the Hebrew prophets. In the life of Jesus, the scriptures allow us to see how Jesus had a close and intimate relationship with God through many alone times of prayer but also as he experienced God's spirit through interacting with people with teachings and healings. As we move into the years of the emerging Christian Church in the Bible involving Jesus’s first disciples and Apostle Paul, we see God speaking to many people through what became known as the God’s Holy Spirit. From these stories, it seems that God wants to speak to people, and that in the days of the early church, God spoke often and that many Christian people heard these insights. During the early church times, it is almost like a spiritual awakening happened with many early Jesus followers. Yet, I have found in my spiritual care work that most people don’t consciously pray often, and if they do pray, they would claim that they rarely experience God speaking to them. When I heard my pastor highlight the words that began Samuel’s story, “the word of the Lord was rare in those days”, (1 Sam 3), I said to myself, “this is also true now. The word of the Lord is rare today too.” Why is that? To answer that question, I want to turn to some words that Jesus taught in his famous Sermon on the Mount. He taught, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. ” (Matt 6:22-23). The common interpretation of the eye in these verses is the human eye, our biological eye that gives us vision to see the outside world. But this is not how Christian mystics understood this eye. Rather, Christian mystics understood this eye as our internal eye, or inner witness/observer, that part of our soul that makes it possible for us to be self aware and see the dynamics happening within our soul. Our biological eyes allow us to see in the outside world. Our psychic eye allows us to have inner vision, to see what is happening within our mind, heart, gut, and body, to see within our soul. When our inner eye is healthy, this allows us to be self aware. When this happens, there is internal space between our internal observer and what we are perceiving. There is interior space between our sense of “I” and our feelings and sensations in body. There is space between our sense of “I” and our beliefs and thoughts. There is space between our sense of “I” and that part of us that acts with compulsive behaviors. When our inner eye is healthy, there is a spaciousness that makes it possible for us to perceive our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, our longings and motivations, our compulsions and impulsions, to perceive all the inner dynamics within our soul. When this spaciousness is present, our internal eye helps us notice how people’s words and behaviors affect us. If people’s words are kind, we will notice our soul and body relaxing and responding in kind ways. We will have kind thoughts, feelings, and utter good things to people. If people’s words are angry or dismissive, we will notice our soul and body becoming unsettled and agitated, even contracted, a sign of us becoming triggered and wanting to respond in angry or anxious ways and seek to protect ourselves. However, if our eye is healthy, we will see or sense this triggering process within us and possibly chose a response that will help us disengage from it and respond in a more helpful way. This experience echoes of what Jesus taught, “if our eye is healthy, our body/soul will be full of light.” To be full of light in our body/soul is to be fully self aware. You may not be familiar with this Diamond Approach term “inner spaciousness” that comes with having an inner observer. You may be more familiar with the experience of inner freedom that comes with that inner spaciousness. When we are able to be self aware and perceive these dynamics within our soul and body, we also have more freedom to choose whether or not we join with these dynamics. We now have more choice around how we engage our thoughts, feelings, and behavior, and often people find that quite freeing. When that happens, we are experiencing inner freedom. This is the gift of a healthy eye, a healthy internal observer. When we have a healthy eye, we now have the interior awareness to notice any dynamics that may have their roots in God. It is now possible for us to be prayerful. A clear and open inner eye allows us to notice the dynamics of God’s spirit arising within our soul. However, Jesus teaches, when our eye is unhealthy, our whole body/soul will be full of darkness. What does this mean? Our Christian mystic tradition has not done a good job of explaining this darkness except to teach that internal darkness means that we have little to no self-awareness, and that this darkness is caused by sin. But sin is often a loaded term full of much judgement. Furthermore, sin does not explain how an unhealthy eye causes our body/soul to lose self awareness and become filled with internal darkness. Here, I have found the Internal Family System teaching of blending so helpful. When we are triggered by someone's behavior, words, or appearance, our internal eye becomes blended or merged with a part within us that is being triggered. Lets say someone says critical words to us. When we hear those judgemental words, certain parts within us become triggered, depending upon what coping mechanism we have developed from our past. Some of us will become defensive and angry at that person. When our inner witness merges with that angry part, we become a different person, not the calm person we were a minute ago. All inner spaciousness and inner freedom disappears. We become an angry person full of angry thoughts and feelings toward that person, and that causes us to think, say, or do mean things to that person. When that merge happens, our inner eye becomes filled with darkness. We often lose all sense of self awareness for we are often oblivious to what we are feeling or saying until afterwards. Instead of anger, some of us become very anxious when we hear angry words. When our inner observer merges with that anxious part, we also become a very different person, not the relaxed person we were a minute ago. We become a very anxious person full of scary thoughts, feelings of panic, and we seek to find ways to escape this difficult experience through emotional numbing, soothing our anxiety through eating or drinking, or simply leaving the situation with the goal of possibly never returning. This person or place is no longer a safe place. When we are in a triggered state, like I have just described, all self-awareness disappears. It is like when we put on a pair of dark sunglasses that make it impossible for us to see. Our body/soul is full of darkness. We are often oblivious to our thinking processes, emotions, or behaviors in the moment and only become aware of them after the fact, when we are no longer in that triggered state. During our current times, it seems that many people are triggered most of the time due to the stressful dynamics within our world, our work settings, and our home and family life. This is especially evident in the polarizations we see around us in our world right now. When we are triggered by these polarizations, our sense of “I” has merged with a part within us that takes away our ability to see the goodness in the people of the other side. We tend to divide people into good or bad categories. We are good and they are bad. All we see is their darkness and we are often totally blind to the darkness present within us that is evident in our thoughts, feelings and words we say about the other side. Other people see and experience our darkness but we don't. When our inner observer is full of darkness and not able to be self aware, it is not possible for us to notice or hear the “word of God”. It is not possible to pray, to enter into a state of prayerfulness. If most people in our current culture struggle with interior darkness, it makes sense that the “word of the Lord” would be seldom heard today. Let us turn to my second questions, what are we noticing when we hear God’s voice or experience God’s Spirit? Perceiving God’s Voice and God’s Spirit To answer this question, I want to turn to another teaching of Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount. Here, Jesus stresses that prayer is less about what we do externally through spoken words and behaviors, and more about what happens to us internally. Jesus taught the following: “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your private room and shut the door and pray to your God who is in secret, and your God who sees in secret will reward you “ (Matt 6: 5-6). The common way this scripture is interpreted is that we are to withdraw from the outside world and go to a private place, and in that private place, we pray with God. Prayer is often seen as disconnecting from the external world through retreats, or attending church worship on the Sabbath, or by going to a private place to pray, like Jesus did when he went to the mountain or wilderness to pray. However, some Bible versions translate the Greek word behind “private room” as “inner room.” I think this “inner room” translation actually captures better what actually happens when we experience God interacting with our prayers. There is no doubt that the silence and disengagement that go with being in a private space help to facilitate prayer. However, when we realize that there is an inner room within our soul that we can create and nurture, that helps us begin to understand what prayer looks like. Part of the process of creating this inner room involves what we have already talked about. When our inner eye is blended with a structured part in our soul like anger, anxiety, or a compulsive behavior, there is no inner room present within our soul. There is no place to go internally to spend time with God in secret for there is no internal spaciousness. However, as we learn how to unblend from our triggered parts, this inner room opens up. An inner spaciousness opens up and we become aware of the inner dynamics that are happening within us…thoughts in our mind, feelings in our heart, urges and motivations in our gut, and other sensations in our bodies. When this inner room emerges, we find ourselves often relaxing and settling into this calmer and spacious place within our body. It is here in this inner room within our soul that we discover, to our surprise at first, that God’s spirit actually lives here within us. This inner room is not just located in our heads, which is often where we sense our internal observer. Rather, it is situated more in our heart and gut areas of our body. And when we learn to spend more and more time in our inner room, we discovered that we can share with God in secret our most intimate longings of our heart. One scripture that describes this inner room is the text in John 15 where the gospel writer describes God as the vinegrower, Christ as the vine, and we are the branches. This text teaches that when we are aware of being connected to the spiritual vine of Christ, we will notice that Christ abides in us, and we abide with Christ. This experience of Christ abiding with us and we with Christ occurs in this inner room. This inner room is where we discover that Christ’s spirit lives within us. Sometimes, these personal prayers are more feelings then thoughts shared in silence with God. As we sit in silence with these prayers, we often notice that a response emerges to our prayers within this inner room. Sometimes these responses are words or thoughts that come to us….”you are not alone. I am with you” or “you are my beloved child.” Sometimes this response is the experience of Divine Compassion arises in us that causes us to say caring words to people struggling with pain or negative experiences. If we are personally wrestling with a burden, we may experience a sadness or compassion that actually arises and soothes our own pain. Sometimes, this response is one of an anger-like strength that emerges in response to wrongs we see happening in the world or to times when people dismiss a truth that we are trying to share. As we spend more and more time in our inner room, we eventually discover that all the gifts and fruits of God’s spirit flow through our inner room into our mind, heart, body, soul and life. These spiritual fruits include the ones that Apostle Paul writes about like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5: 22-23). And there are many more. Discernment of Spirits: Which Ones come from God? Let me now turn to the final question: how do we know that what we are experiencing is coming from God and not from other fallen parts within our soul that are begging for our attention? This is a very good question. One of my key learnings from both the Diamond Approach and Internal Family System about this inner room is that God’s voice is always gracious and loving. There is no judgmental attitude or feeling within God’s voice. I have discovered that some Christians confused God’s voice with their inner critic voice, a voice that many people have that compares them often to an ideal standard and critiques them every time they fail or might possibly fail to meet this standard. Often, within our Christian songs, Jesus is portrayed as the Gentle Shepherd. When we become aware of this Christ voice in our inner room, it does have a gentle caring gracious tone to it that wants the best for us and sees the best within us. Any thought or internal voice that is judgmental or critical is not a God-voice. Rather, this critical voice points to a part within us that was formed from trauma and attachment wounds from our past. Within my Internal Family Systems training, an evidence-based psychological counselling model, it has been interesting to learn how it separates out our internal experiences into two categories. One category are the experiences of our parts in our soul that I have described already, those parts that blend with our inner eye and cause our soul to become dark filled with many unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of these parts. These unhelpful parts are often quite structured, persistent, compulsive, often very judgmental, and cause us to lose our self-awareness. It is important to realize that these parts at one time in life were necessary for our survival, and maybe still are. In fact, I have come to realize that when these parts formed in our psyche, they were the best survival strategy available at the time, regardless of how bad or demonic they may appear now. One could say that these survival strategies were God's way of caring for and protecting the person as they were going through original painful experience. It maybe unhelpful at times now, but in the beginning, it was created with a life-surviving intent. This is why Internal Family Systems teaches that there is no such thing as a bad part. The second category of experience are what Internal Family System (IFS) calls the experiences of the Self…what we Christians call the experiences of God’s Spirit or Christ’s spirit. Included in these experiences of Self are what IFS call the 8 C’s and the 5 P’s. The 8 C’s include compassion, curiosity, courage, creativity, connectiveness, clarity, calmness, and confidence. The 5 P’s include playfulness, patience, presence, perspective, and persistence. And this list is not exhaustive. There are many other experiences of Self. I believe that all of these experiences of Self arise from our Inner Room. Now, these experiences of God’s spirit are different than the experiences of our parts. They have a very different type of character to them. This difference in character helps us in discerning whether a dynamic is coming from God through our inner room or if it is coming from outside our inner room through a structured part within our soul. Instead of being structured and often fixed, the Spirit is always open, vulnerable and sensitive. Instead of being judgmental, the Spirit is gracious and loving, seeing us always as one of God’s beloved children. Instead of being concerned with right or wrong, the Spirit is focused on what brings us life, on what brings freedom to our soul. As the Scriptures teach, the truth of God always sets us free (John 8:31). Truth set us free; judgements of right and wrong do not (Rom 8: 3ff). Instead of being reactive to our painful experience, the Spirit is always unfolding, responding in the best way possible to what we are experiencing now. Instead of us just reliving history, the spirit helps us live in the Present Moment. If painful memories from our past emerges in the Present Moment, if we are open to God's spirit, we will notice dynamics interacting with these painful memories with the hope of healing them. These differences between what is Spirit-guided and what is a structured egoic part in our soul help us in discerning which experiences are from God.
Throughout this blog, I have explored different questions around the dynamics of prayer, and in doing so, a key concept has been the inner room. This inner room is key to our experience of prayer. I invite you to see if you can discover your inner room for yourself, and notice how it interacts with your life, both the good times but also difficult times. Don't take my word on it. Discover for yourself whether what I say is true. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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