Leading Our Lives from Chaos to Order

"But as for my temporal life everything was uncertain..."  Augustine (Outler).



Life is not a linear path.  Sometimes it can be downright convoluted.  We are not alone in this.  This is not something that is unique to this century or time period.  Augustine felt this hundreds of years ago in North Africa.  This is not a struggle that began with the advent of the Industrial Age or once technology became all-consuming.  The struggle of being overwhelmed by our temporal lives has existed since the dawn of man.

It is not the circumstances of our lives that most affect our spirits and leave us unable to cope.  It is our thought-life about such circumstances.  Our minds sees the situations present in our lives and runs so far down the path of “what if” that the circumstance become suffocating and our decisions become paralyzed.  At that point we have lost the ability to cope with life.  When this happens humans do a variety of things all of which are aimed at replacing the feelings with something more pleasant but none of which are a healing, preventative measure that kills this destructive cycle.

We begin to use drugs to numb the pain, or alcohol because we want to feel good.  We date obsessively; convinced that if another person loves us we will stop feeling so much hurt.  We eat or don't eat because the sugar helps us forget or the control over what we're putting in our bodies makes us feel like we have power over something.  We immerse ourselves in our children, or fiction novels, or crafting projects, or football, or in mastering the art of brewing beer.  WE DISTRACT OURSELVES.  Many of these become addictions.  What we have is not a drug problem; it is a life problem.  We have lost the ability to cope.  We just can't let ourselves feel the pain.

This is not maintainable because the pain comes for us in the night.   In the stillness of the dark, quiet hours, sleep eludes us and we cannot escape the reality of our circumstances.  Our problems have not changed.  Your spouse has still left.  Your child is still wrecking their life with heroin.  Your job is still gone.  You're still fat and filled with self-loathing.  Your family is still disapproving of your life choices.  What we don't realize is that by engaging in the mind game of distraction we are prolonging and increasing our pain.  We are not solving anything.  We are delaying the inevitable.  The pain returns, the problems are magnified by our avoidance of them and we still feel powerless.   In this moment we have a choice to make.  We either wallow in our perceived sense of powerlessness, remaining on the destructive cycle or we choose to step outside of the cycle and move toward reclaiming our personal power.

Our personhood exists apart from our mind.  This is a difficult concept to grasp but we can actually observe our own thought-lives.  We exist outside of them.  We are not mastered by them.  The reason Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (NIV) is because it is possible to exercise control over our own thoughts.  So when our mind turns our problems into an excuse to obsess or avoid we have the ability to observe that choice and choose differently.

To move our lives from chaos to order we must begin to master our minds.  Consider what Brother Lawrence says regarding unceasing prayer “it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times. That we are as strictly obliged to adhere to GOD by action in the time of action, as by prayer in its season. That his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of GOD, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine love: and that when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with GOD, praising and blessing Him with all his might, so that he passed his life in continual joy” (Lawrence).  It may seem like a stretch to have a life of continual joy, but certainly the possibility that we might not be enslaved by our minds’ relentless pursuit of “what if” is worth exploring.  Prayer is an antidote to that enslavement.  

Is it really possible to continually turn one’s mind to God?  If it was possible what effect would that have on your personal thought-life?  Could you both pray consistently throughout your day and be a control-freak?  Could prayer and unhealthy compulsions occur simultaneously?  Or is it possible that if you were praying perhaps not unceasingly but continually that your compulsions would be lessened?  Perhaps by even attempting unceasing prayer we begin the process of disciplining our minds.  

There is a prayer that has been said for centuries by all matter of believing people.  “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  More information can be found here http://www.svots.edu/saying-jesus-prayer  It is called a Breath Prayer because of the iambic pentameter it is easy to say as you breathe in and out.  It can be shortened and changed in any way that is suited well for the believer.  

Ponder the path from chaos to order.  Could unceasing prayer be a step toward that journey?  Consider trying it and reflecting on what, if any, changes you experience in your thought-life. 

Photo Credit: Mark Larsen