Becoming Empty of Self to be Filled with God
Out of fear we can miss out on some of the most wonder-full things God wants to give us. Contemplation is a spirituality of people encouraged by God to accept his loving, joyful invitation to “come up higher,” and not to be afraid of delving into the deeper things of the Word.
In Christian circles, people are often told that if they empty or turn off their minds, they could get demon-possessed. The idea is presented as a defense against Eastern religions and New-Age practices. It is fully Biblical, however, to “cast down imaginings and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10: 5). That “imaginings and high things” part is a good description of much of what goes on in our minds when they are still under the influence of the ego/false self. The Bible also speaks in many places about the vital need to be still before God (for example, Psalm 37:7, 46:10, 62:5, 131:2, Lam. 3:25-6, 1 Peter 3:4). This emptying of self to be filled with God is a way of emulating Christ (Philippians 2:5-9); it’s called kenosis in Greek, meaning self-emptying: Jesus emptied himself (Philippians 2:7). That’s exactly what centering prayer is: the way of self-emptying. Contemplatives find that emptying the mind is the way to empty the ego/false self, to let go of one’s agenda, to check that desire to force life to be on one’s own terms, and to fully surrender to God.
Can you get demon possessed by doing centering prayer? Well, it’s a form of worship of God, sometimes called “pure prayer” because there’s nothing about self in it—no false agendas, no hidden motives, just “God, I want to be with you. I want more of you. I love you”—but from the heart, without words. Jesus said, if a child asks his father for a fish or an egg to eat, will he give him a snake or a scorpion instead? Of course not. “How much more will your Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-12). The idea that God would allow one seeking him to get Satan instead is as foolish now as then.
So, in centering prayer, we yield to God all our thoughts as they come, as a form of worship—silently, wordlessly surrendering each thought to God with this attitude: “no, Lord, this thought is not as important as you, so I lay it on the altar. I give it up. And this thought. And this memory. And this feeling. This desire. Even this brilliant idea. All of them. All I need is you. All I want is you.” By surrendering every thought to God like this, to the point of letting our prayer go beyond words, face to face with God in awestruck speechless wonder, we can come to the point of actually being fully aware of God’s power in such a way that the only way to honor God is by our silence. (Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, spent several months involuntarily exploring the reality of being silent before God [Luke 1:5-25, 2:59-79]; many others in the Bible and throughout Church history had similar experiences.)
Book excerpt from Contemplation: Only the Crucified are Truly Alive
Gary Michael Hassig
From Chapter Two: Facing Objections to Contemplative Spirituality, pp. 49-50
