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Inner Work

by Sr. Mary Margaret Funk

Question: Where does one get this kind of training? Would it not be a good investment for Ireland, both it’s Church and State leaders to initiate an Institute to do this kind of training for all who want to root out the causes of the present situation?

As far as I know, there is no place on the planet to go for this inner work. Even our monastic houses are busy about many things but lack the teachers to do this restructuring of consciousness.

We, the monastics, are doing a good work with our apostolic zeal and also much training in historical and even Scripture and Theological studies, but we lack actual training in moral concepts, behaviors and contemplative practices.

Let me repeat the main theory and then I will continue with a vision of how this can become a contemporary school for inner asceticism.

The training is well documented in the tradition of the Desert Elders:

1. To know oneself: to keep vigilant over one’s thoughts, those first inclinations that when accompanied with more emotional energy move into action. This awareness is the first step in preventing unconscious behaviors from becoming habits.

2. To prevent those habits from becoming occasions of sin by refraining from people, places and things that prompt those inclinations. Guard the Heart and watch the thoughts require discipline of knowing when, where and with whom to associate and become under the influence of the “culture of sin.”

3. To refrain from going up the chain of thought, desire, passion when the outcome is clearly harmful to self or others. Replace the thought with another thought by either returning to one’s duty, as in work, or to consciously replace the thought with a prayer.

4. To concentrate on one’s actions with the motivation of self-less service: to be for others and to lift up one’s own needs to God with humble request for grace to do God’s will with joy.

5. To quickly petition to God for mercy when failures impede the above.

6. To be grateful for life and all the opportunities for living in the midst of others who are also striving to do their best under some difficult circumstances.

To judge no one,

Love one’s enemies, and

To be willing to bear one another’s burdens whether of body, mind or soul.

While this list seems lofty it is quite possible to implement. This training is the original impetus of being a monk or a nun, but these inner practices are required of all conscious human beings and are not limited to monastic cloisters.

The theory is compelling, but the training is strenuous. We have few teachers today prepared to provide the curriculum most necessary to shift from self to sacrifice. We now know that the mind can be trained to shift out of destructive emotions and restructure consciousness that is compassionate and altruistic.

It seems to me that instead of exacting more property, prudently reserving funds, garnishing wages, indebting religious institutions that are implicated in the sexual abuse caused by negligence on their watch, we could call on them to take responsibility to root out the cause.

A School:

As educational and health care institutions they would be aptly competent to set up long term and quality courses of study/practice for training in moral consciousness.

What would an institution of this look like?

First let me say what it is not like: a university, a clinic, a monastery (long term residents), a hotel, a resort, a cottage industry, a family residence, a tourist destination, a research think–tank, a business, an organization’s headquarters, an office, etc.

We simply need a residential facility totally dedicated to training the mind for moral and contemplative living. It is unabashedly Catholic, but open to all willing participants.

Staff:

Competent staff would be selected for training in this themselves. To teach others one must practice themselves what they expect others to do: They must be proficient at watching their thoughts (observer rather than free–fall thinking) and guard their hearts. They would be sourced in the best of our Catholic Tradition of a Christ–centered spirituality.

They must have training in how the mind functions and how destructive emotions can be changed with practice of both thoughts and patterns of behavior.

They must have a trained eye as to when some one has chemically sourced conditions that require well–supervised medications (e.g. bi-polar diagnosis).

They must be a practitioner of the contemplative Christian traditions: ceaseless prayer, Jesus Prayer, Little Way, Recollection, Practice of the Presence. The afflictive thoughts are rooted out and replaced by the habitual practice of prayer.

They must be at peace and be able to enjoy stillness of body, mind and soul.

Environment:

The facilities must be actual, not virtual. This kind of training cannot be done on line, but in a setting that is quiet, explicitly religious in symbols and architectural structures. The place must image and constitute the content of centrality of moral and right awareness of God’s presence.

The place would need cells for individual solitude, group space for lectures and practice, liturgical space for worship and celebration of the Sacraments. The facilities need not be a clinic, as in medical, nor cold and academic as in the university, nor designed for comfort like a hotel.

The monastic setting would be ideal providing it was not engaged in intense social outreach or hospitality that would confuse the mission and charge the atmosphere with too much conversation.

The Courses:

Each course would be limited in time and number of students. The concept is to train each person to return to their residence of origin and to live their life in ordinary circumstances with new skills and tools for living in our very complex culture.

Some courses would be weekends, either in a series or free standing. Other courses would be one to three months in duration. The focus is not on the pathology, but on tools to move forward. The culture of the school would be to attract the healthy rather than the persons with disabilities.

The promise of the vision is to train persons before full–blown addictions and patterns of dysfunctional behavior bloom into problems and situations that would require intervention and remedial measures.

This is not a place for residential treatment and does not replace other institutions that specialize in mental and emotional illnesses that require a clinically trained staff.

This is more like a monastic school for training in the inner life, but it is not the intention to promote or produce monks and nuns for the world. It simply is a training in the traditional monastic practices that has even been lost in our contemporary monasteries today.

The Curriculum:

A student in this school could expect training in these areas:

Learning to eat and drink with discretion of the middle way, not too much, nor too little and to eat at the appropriate times. Using the mind to determine right action.

Training in discernment to use for ones own needs of the body

Training in dealing with thoughts of sex

Training in determining sexual orientation and lifelong choices of marriage

Training in guarding ones heart

Training in watching one’s thoughts

Training in manifesting one’s inner thoughts to a wise elder

Training in wise use of things

Training in gratitude for beautiful things

Training in discretion of having enough things

Training in refraining from acting out in anger rather than compassion

Training in detecting one’s source of depression

Training in preventing and taking appropriate steps to reduce depression

Training in staying active on the spiritual journey even when the culture rewards other values

Training in doing the right thing for the right reason (motivation’s examined)

Training in refraining from ego centered actions

Training in detecting the indicators of the Evil One

The training will use methods sourced in the early monastic tradition of personal responsibility, but not out of guilt, shame or doctrine, but out of inner practices that require much effort, time and repetition. It would also use methods from current research on training away from destructive emotions.
The school would be the environment to know one’s thoughts, learn to shift them toward God and to make a habit of virtue.

The training is the ascetical work, but not in and for itself (as the moral life), but for the inner experience of God. The purpose of the School is God. Each person will learn ways of praying that are the new consciousness rather than the former way of life that is either mindless or into the afflictions.

Is there any precedence for this?

Yes, St. Enda had a school on the Aran Island of Inishmore. His school was to form monks to start other monasteries, but the training was free standing and was not done in order for them to join his little monastery, even though many did, but to train monks to start their own places of monastic practice.

St. Patrick brought the Ecclesial Church system that specializes in the ways to live in the world. St. Enda brought the monastic system which specializes in the ways to live the interior life.

It is time for a new School of St. Enda if Ireland is to root out its present condition of generations of adults that have lost their inner compass. If the School of St. Enda is implemented Ireland will not only have remedied its sad history, but become a leader for all of us who desire God and want to imitate Christ.

Would not funds be better spent to root out the cause than to continue the rigors of justice while ignoring the inner needs of those under our care right now?