Within the Christian tradition, praying is an important spiritual practice, but how does one practice prayer? How does one know when we are praying? Since the act of prayer affects our experience, you would think that psychology and psychotherapy would have lots to teach us about prayer, but these scientific fields rarely discuss prayer. A year ago I discovered Internal Family Systems (IFS), an evidence-based approach to psychotherapy that has become popular in the last decade. Within it, there are the concepts of blending and unblending which I believe help us understand how prayer works. In this blog, I plan to explore the connections between prayer and the IFS practice of unblending. Blending and Unblending Within Internal Family System (IFS), the concept blending refers to those experiences when our sense of “I”, what IFS calls our Self, blends with our experience. Within IFS, this Self resembles the Christian concept of God. For Christians and other religious people, this sense of “I” can sometimes be experienced as a sense of God speaking to them, depending on their theology and their spiritual development. As a result, throughout this blog, I will be holding this sense of “I” and sense of God together. When we become lost in our anger or sadness or depression or fear, our sense of “I”/God has become blended with that part of us that holds these feelings. When this happens, there is no space between our “I”/God and what we are experiencing. Our “I”/God and our feelings are merged as together as one experience. This merge not only happens with feelings, but also with thoughts. When we lose the spaciousness between our “I”/God and our thoughts, we are not aware that most thoughts come to us, that we are more the receiver of thoughts than the thinker or controller of our thoughts. When we believe we are our thinking, we are blended with our thoughts for our sense of “I”/God has become reduced and attached to our mind. For me who values my thinking mind a lot, it took me years to discover this space between my thoughts and sense of “I”/God. That same blending can happen between our body and our sense of “I”/God. Rather than there being awareness that our “I”/God and body are separated, when our body is in pain, we feel we are our body. Pain and us are one. I remember this happening to me when I had a kidney stone attack. My sense of “I”/God had identified with my physical pain and my body. When we are in this place of spaciousness, we are aware of our thinking, emotions, and body sensations and our sense of “I”/God. Both are present. But this division of our experience into a thinking part, an emotional part, and a physical sensation part is too simplistic. In reality, each part within our soul is some combination of feeling, thinking, and body sensation. For example, if we have a depression structure within our soul, that depression part may have related feelings like self anger or self hatred or helplessness. That depression part may also have beliefs and thoughts that support these depressive feelings like “I hate myself”, “I am worthless”, or “I am a helpless person” or the “the world is dangerous”. That depression part may also include physical sensations like numbness or heaviness or tiredness in our body. Each part within the soul often has all three of these dimensions, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. IFS teaches that every person has many parts within their soul. Each of these parts have aspects of thinking, feeling, and body sensations within the soul. Some of these parts are called Exiles, young parts that contain traumatic memories and feelings that our culture, caregivers and ourselves often reject like pain, shame, guilt, worthlessness, fear, anxiety, anger, and hatred. Other parts are call Protectors whose goal is to keep us from feeling the experiences of our Exiles. Some of our Protectors are proactive managers who do everything possible to manage our experience so that our Exiles are not triggered. When these manager-type Protectors fail, other Protectors jump in and react through behaviors and actions that are extreme like addiction, violence, cutting, purging, gorging, suicide ideation, etc. which distract us from feeling the pain of our Exiles. As one learns to provide counselling through the Internal Family Systems model, you soon realize that blending is the common human condition. People are constantly blending with their parts, moving from one part to another without being aware of it. They may be angry one minute. Then the next minute they are guilty for feeling anger. Then they get distracted and find themselves talking about something they heard on the news. On and on clients will go unless a counsellor helps them slow down and helps them unblend from their flow of life experience. When that unblending happens, suddenly the client’s sense of “I”/God emerges and now a relationship can be developed between our sense of “I”/God and our many parts. Blending and the Christian Tradition Within the Bible, you will not find the word blending. However, you do find teachings that capture this dynamic of merging with our parts. Let me share five common biblical metaphors that capture the dynamic of blending. One such blending metaphor is spiritual blindness that Jesus taught (John 9:35). Jesus critiqued the religious leaders for their spiritual blindness. When we are merged with a part of us, we only see and experience life through the lens or belief framework of that part. We are totally blind to seeing the world in any other way. Our parts are structured and legalistic, often very black and white. Another image of blending in the Bible are the teachings around staying awake and falling asleep (Rom 13:1; Matt. 25: 13). When we merge with a part, we lose self awareness, fall asleep one could say. This is why Jesus says to stay awake otherwise we will miss “the Lord’s coming”, that is, miss noticing when the spirit of God emerges within our lives. A third teaching that captures blending is found within the Ten Commandments. These Commandments begin with the instruction to worship only God and to worship no other gods or make idols for ourselves (Ex. 20:1-3). Normally, when we think of other gods or idols, we think of gods or idols in the outside world like wealth or power or sex or people we lift up and follow, or oppressive systems like slavery. But these gods and idols can be located within us as well. In many ways, when our sense of “I”/God merges with a part of us, that part has now become a god to us. It is easy to see how reactive parts like rage or addictions or bulimia function like gods in our lives. However, the managing protectors are just as powerful, even more so, for they are often hypervigilant and shape how we see the world, who we believe is safe, what situations are dangerous, and control our speech and behavior to make sure we stay safe. A fourth blending metaphor is that of lostness like we see in the parable of two lost sons (Luke 15:11-32). The prodigal son spends all his inheritance for there is a part of him that believes the outside world contains everything he needs to be happy in life. In the end, he becomes penniless losing everything, including his sense of dignity and sense of self. His elder brother also becomes lost for a part of him believes that the blessings of life happen by following the religious laws obediently. When his younger brother full of shame (merged with a shame part) comes home hoping to be accepted by his parents who symbolize God in this story, the elder brother becomes lost in his rage at his parents who embrace his younger brother with grace for he has been religiously obedient all of his life and never experienced any of these blessings. When we become merged with parts of our self, we lose touch with the essence of who we are and who God is, and, as a result, become spiritually lost. Finally, the Biblical theme of slavery is another blending metaphor. The Bible often talks about becoming a slave to sin or a slave to our fallen nature or a slave to the law (Luke 16:14; John 8:34, Rom 7:14). Whenever we become a slave to sin/law, we have merged with that part of us that causes us to think, say, or do things that no longer bring fuller life to us. These experiences of blindness, falling asleep (losing awareness), idolatry, lostness, and slavery are very common human experiences. In fact, if you were to track your experience in a typical day from when you arise from bed to when you head to bed, you will discover that you spend most of your day blended with different parts of yourself. Yes, you may remember moments when you are awake, that is, unblended from any of your parts, but those moments for most of us are the exception, not the rule. This is often why they stand out for us. Prayer and Unblending Now we are finally getting to one of the purposes of prayer and spiritual practices, from an IFS perspective. When we are truly praying, the practice of prayer causes us to unblend from our many parts. When that happens, internal space opens up between our sense of “I”/God and all our various parts. Our sense of ”I”/God becomes our “witnessing I” that is able to witness the various dynamics found within the different parts of our soul. This is the benefit that comes from mindfulness, meditation, and centering prayer practices found within both the Eastern and Western religious and psychological traditions. However, this spaciousness between our “witnessing I” and our parts is very hard to maintain. It does not take much stimulation or triggering before our sense of ”I”/God blends with one or more of parts. And when that happens, we find ourselves again under the influence of one of our parts. The fact that blending happens so easily tells us that prayer and maintaining a prayerful state are hard practices to do. Bible Teachings on Prayer and the Challenges of Blending When I look at the teachings of prayer in the New Testament, it is interesting how it portrays prayer in this same way. I remember Jesus teaching his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane how difficult prayer is. He taught, “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How true this is. When our parts are triggered or activated thus compromising or weakening our human will, we find ourselves unable to stay awake and pray. We merged instead with our parts. Jesus also shares examples of people who think they are praying but they are not (Matt 6:5 ff). He calls certain religious people hypocrites for they are not praying from their quiet spiritual centre, their sense of “I”/God. Instead, one of their religious protector parts is doing the praying for they are praying for the purpose of being noticed in public and using lots of words. Such a critique should make us wonder who is praying when we pray? Is our prayer coming from our sense of “I”/God, what Jesus calls our “secret room of prayer”, where prayer often has fewer words, or is it coming from one of our protector parts that prays for many other reasons? This idea that structured parts within our soul can do the praying rather than our deeper spiritual centre may be a new idea to many of you. But I think we can all think of examples when we were praying from an angry place demanding God to destroy our enemies or praying from an unhappy place asking God to give us what we want. Are not these types of prayers coming from activated parts within us who are really not interested in truly praying? This distinction I am making between “parts within us” praying and our spiritual centre or sense of “I”/God praying helps us understand one of the puzzling teachings of Jesus. Jesus teaches the following, “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive” (Matt 21:22; Mark 11:24) What does it mean to pray with faith and to pray without faith? From an IFS perspective, this difference becomes clear. When are we praying without faith, our sense of “I”/God has blended with a structured part within our soul. Remember, these structured parts often formed during times in our lives when we were traumatized and our sense of God’s protection was missing. Many of the coping patterns connected with our Protector parts are compensating for the historical times when we felt abandoned by God. As a result, many of our Protectors have little trust or faith in God for if God’s spirit was absent in our past, these parts assume God’s spirit will be absent now. When these Protectors are doing the praying, that is, our sense of “I”/God has merged with these Protectors, we are “praying without faith.” However, when our sense of “I”/God is not merged with any part within our soul, we are in a place where we are “praying with faith.” And when we pray from this unblended place, Jesus teaches that we will receive what we pray for. So what does it mean for us to pray from this unblended place? Praying styles like meditation, mindfulness, and centering prayer work at this process of unblending through focusing our attention on our breath, a word (eg. chanting), an image like a lit candle, or a focal point within our body (just below our belly button). A similar unblending process can happen during worship through singing, reading scripture, times of prayer, contemplating a sermon as it is preached, rituals of communion, baptism, anointing, etc. When we unmerge from our various parts, we move into a place where our sense of “I”/God is aware of our experience, and as that awareness deepens, we not only feel present to our experience, we also notice Presence arises, that feeling where we our sense of “I”/God is part of something larger. For Christians, this Presence emerging is called the Presence of God. How to Unblend from an IFS Perspective Internal Family Systems has done a ton of research into what helps people unblend from their many parts. This suggests that the unblending process within IFS is some form of prayer. IFS has broken down the unblending process into two stages. A: Developing Space between Our Sense of “I”/God and Our Part. The first stage involves developing space between our sense of “I”/God and the part that we are merged with. This stage follows 3 steps:
The “find the part” step involves choosing one part that we want to unblend from. For example, one part that I have struggled with is “intense self rage”. I am rushing out the door to a work appointment, but my keys or wallet are not where I thought. I get irritated but as I look around in all the spots they might be found with no success, I realize that I am going to be late again. My irritation soon becomes a self rage that says to me, “how can you be so stupid?” and “you did it, again.” Step 2, “focus on it” invites us to focus our attention on this part, in my case, this “self-rage” part, and to stay focused on this part without becoming distracted. Once we have chosen a part to focus on, we need to flesh this part out. For example, with my self-rage part, I can ask my part some of the following questions:
It is important that we listen to our self-anger part for its answers...and wait for its answers. The temptation is for our mind to jump into a thinking mode and guess what our part may be saying rather than actually listen to it. Our parts do reveal their answers slowly to us if we are listening to them. The purpose of all of these questions is to flesh out this part so that our sense of “I”/God begins to separate from a chosen part. As you begin to distinguish your sense of “I”/God from this part, you begin to realize that this chosen part is only a part of you, not all of you, and that it has its own unique personality, beliefs, emotions, body sensations, and memories. B. Developing an Interactive Relationship between Our Sense of “I”/God and Our Part. When this unblending begins to happen, you can enter stage 2 of the IFS unblending process. Rather than our sense of “I”/God being a passive witness to the activities of our part, the goal of stage 2 is to encourage our sense of “I”/God to form a relationship with this part, that is, an interactive, back and forth relationship. When this interactive relationship happens, this dynamic is similar to what happens for people in personal prayer with God. Again, IFS has developed 3 steps to help people accomplish this interactive stage of unblending. They include the following: 1. How do you feel toward it? 2. Befriend it. 3. Validate and negotiate all our fears. In stage 1, the goal is to understand how our part works, how it, if it is a Protector part, protects us from feeling the pain of our exile parts or, if it is an Exile part, how it carries the pain of our traumatic memories of our past. Once you have unblended from this part, your sense of “I”/God can now form a relationship with this part. The question “how do you feel toward your part?” is a question that IFS practitioners often use to help clients form a relationship with their part. For some Christians and religious people, they may respond better to the question, “what do you sense God feels toward your part?” The answer to this question reveals in the present moment whether we are blended or not with our part. If we are unblended, our sense of “I”/God will feel a curiosity or compassion toward our part. If we feel frustration/anger or fear or guilt/shame toward the part in question, that tells us that another part has blended with our sense of “I”/God, and thus more unblending needs to happen. When our sense of “I”/God feels curiosity toward our part, we can begin to befriend it with the goal of appreciating why this part exists. In stage 1 of the unblending process, we develop an understanding of why this part functions the way it does. In stage 2, we begin to appreciate the necessity of this part, and how it is working to protects us . As a result, our sense of "I"/God begins to form a friendship with this part with a goal of helping it. Every part exists for a reason, either as a coping strategy and thus it is a Protector, or as the holder of pain from tramatic events that have happened in our lives, an Exile. As we befriend it and discover its positive role in our life, our sense of “I”/God will begin to feel compassion and care for it. Once we have befriended our part, we want to explore what it fears will happen if it stops doing its coping strategy. Every part has a very good reason for doing what it is doing even though it may appear destructive on the surface. Once we able to validate our part’s fears, our sense of “I”/God are then in a position to minister to and care for our part, and help our part move to a better place.
This two-stage process forms the essence of the IFS unblending process. The goal of stage 1 is to create a spacious separation between our sense of “I”/God and our parts, similar to what we find in mindfulness, centering prayer, and meditation. In stage 2, the goal is to develop a caring interactive relationship between our sense of “I”/God and our parts, a relationship that echoes of the prayerful relationship we see being taught in many theistic religions like Christianity. Conclusion: Throughout this blog, I have explored the unblending process within IFS and how it provides a helpful framework in understanding the dynamics of prayer. We have explored how the dynamics of unblending can be seen within the Christian images of spiritual blindness, awakeness, idolatry, lostness, and slavery. We also investigated the two stages of unblending and how the IFS practice of unblending could be seen as a form of prayer, a combining of centering prayer with interactive personal prayer taught within theistic religions like Christianity. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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