After the large Centering bead, the four small Entering Beads, the medium-size Naming bead, and the recitation of your breath prayer with each of the next five small beads, you come to the second medium-size beads. This is the Knowing bead. "Knowing" is one of the four primary types of prayer that I have found to be common among all of the great spiritual traditions we humans have discovered/developed. Just as "Naming" corresponds in some ways to the Christian practices of "praise" and "thanksgiving," Naming the things in our lives for which we are grateful and which give us joy and an experience of the holy, "Knowing" is somewhat analogous to "confession," in that we take the time to Know ourselves in our totality, good and bad alike. It is like the practice in 12 Step spirituality of taking "a fearless moral inventory" of ourselves.
So at this medium-size bead we are invited to stop, and to contemplate those parts of ourselves we would rather keep hidden away ... from others, if not also from ourselves. This isn't a time for self-flagellation, for who we are is who we are, and pretending that this isn't true doesn't make it any less so. My sins, faults, failures, weak and wounded places -- these are all a part of me, and if I claim to be engaged in a spiritual practice, if I claim to seek a spiritual life, yet do so without making the whole of me present ... I am deluding myself.
As with the first medium-size bead, the Naming bead, you can do this Knowing in all sorts of way -- speak aloud, think about it, or just allow the feelings to come to the surface and be recognized and acknowledged. Some people have a list of things which they recite when they come to this Knowing bead; others allow their minds to go blank and see what arises on its own. Remember -- there is no wrong way to pray!
Following the Knowing bead there are, again, five small Breath Prayer beads. As you touch each of these you would recite the same breath prayer you used with the previous five.
You come next to another medium-size bead, which is the Listening bead. Here you are encouraged to try to quiet your mind, to let go of any thoughts -- however important or random they may seem. In the Hebrew scriptures the character of God is called "the still small voice within," although I've also heard this phrase translated as, "the voice of quiet stillness." This Listening bead offers an opportunity to try to step out of the cacophony that defines so much of our lives, and in that space to listen for that quiet voice. Following the Listening bead there are another five small beads with which you again recite your breath prayer -- one line per breath, one whole prayer per bead.
That will bring you to the last of the medium-size beads, the Loving bead. This is where you move the focus of your praying from within you to beyond yourself. Many spiritual traditions have practices designed to help you pray for someone else, and with this Loving bead you have the chance to do that, too. Some people recite a list of people they know who are going through a hard time and who could use some good thoughts and "positive vibrations" sent their way. Others simply go through a list of people in their lives, often starting with family, then close friends, co-workers, acquaintances, moving outward in expanding circles of care. At the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, where I did my training in spiritual guidance, they teach a practice in which you empty your mind and, first, allow the thought of someone close to you to come into focus, and to then see what comes up as the needed prayer for that person. Next, let the thought of someone who is not so close come into your mind and heart, and see what prayer arises for them. Finally, you open yourself to the thought of someone you don't particularly like, or with whom you are currently struggling, and see what prayer arises for them. [This practice grows out of their understanding that we don't pray but, rather, that God is always praying within us. What we do during our prayer time, then, is work to quiet our own inner monologues enough to hear what God's prayer in us is.]
As with the other medium-size beads, there really is no "wrong" way of doing this: speak aloud, see the images of people in your mind's eye, allow the feeling of love to bubble up in you and flow out into the world. And unlike with the small Breath Prayer beads, you do not have to do the Naming, Knowing, Listening, and Loving in exactly the same way each time you engage this practice.
On Monday I'll write a bit more about how to put all of this together, but there are still four beads left before we've completed our circuit. After the medium-size Listening bead there are four small beads between it and the large Centering bead where we began. Do you remember the first four beads we used to "enter" into the practice? I said that they're kind of like the stretching and warm-up before a period of exercise. These four, then, are the cool down, and whatever you did with the first four, as a way of Entering, you do again with these four as a way of Departing.
And there you have it ... the nuts and bolts of this prayer bead practice.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
