“Silence is the language of God. Listen.” Marsha Linehan
I started seeing a new therapist for those that are new to The Possible Path. She specializes in dialectical behavioral therapy, a type of therapy that is great for trauma recovery. My therapist has a dry-erase board she uses to teach the concepts of DBT. I am learning new skills to regulate my emotions. I will pass them on here as I learn them.
This week, I learned about wise mind. In DBT, there are three states of mind: reasonable mind, emotion mind, and wise mind. Wise mind is the bridge between the other two states of mind. It incorporates both reason and emotion. Being in a wise mind state means having a balanced mind.
I learned a few tricks for getting into wise mind:
Focus on your breathing. Pay attention to your breathing. Feel the sensations as your breath enters the nose and leaves the nose. Notice how your abdomen rises and falls with each breath. If you are a regular meditator, you are already familiar with this one.
Breathe in and out wise mind. As you breathe in think, “wise,” and as you breathe out think, “mind.” I have practiced a variation of this for over two years. Instead of wise mind, I used the phrase, “Jesus help.”
Ask yourself, “Is (thought, action, etc.) wise mind?
My therapist asked me what I thought of the concepts she taught me. I told her what comes to mind is the Bible verse that instructs us to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) It is a verse I have never understood as it is seemed impossible to always pray. Applying the third trick listed above sounds to me like what Paul, the author of 1 Thessalonians, meant. I looked up the Greek word that is translated as “without ceasing.” It is adialeiptos and means “constantly recurring.” We can turn the third trick into prayer and trust that our Creator will show us the answer in due time.
Contemplative prayer: praying silently
“Contemplative prayer is the world in which God can do anything. Our private, self-made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us.” Thomas Keating
Prayer without words. That concept used to sound so foreign to me. Like most Christians, I am steeped in verbal prayer, whether spontaneous prayers or slowly and meditatively reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Four or five years ago, I discovered centering prayer, a form of contemplative prayer. The practice is simple. You sit in silence with the intention of surrendering yourself to God. You pick a sacred word as a symbol of your intention and silently repeat it when thoughts come. You observe your thoughts but don’t get caught up in them.
When I practice centering prayer lately, I find myself sitting with sadness. I lost two people I cared about in January. I am mourning their loss, and sadness is a part of grief. Being willing to sit with the sadness during prayer helps me embrace my emotions but not let them overwhelm me. I became emotionally dysregulated as a child because of trauma. Contemplative prayer is one of the tools that rewires my brain, and it helps me access wise mind. I reach for balance and listen to the wisdom within. I encourage anyone reading this to try centering prayer.
Have you practiced centering prayer? If so, what do you think of it? How has it helped you? Leave a comment and let us all know.
Resources
Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating
Vue Family Therapy, Inc. I highly recommend my therapist to anyone in the Fresno, California area.
Help me expand The Possible Path by referring it to friends and family and sharing it on social media. I will send you a gift if you refer at least three people.
You can support me on my Ko-Fi page with a donation.
If you need encouragement, email me at thepossiblepath@gmail.com.