Last week I talked with my friend Scott about prayer. Three months ago he began a contemplative prayer practice and it’s changed his life.

It reminded me of an awakening I experienced over a decade ago when I began practicing centering prayer. In my journal I wrote: “My experience of myself is more clear, consistent, settled, than ever before. I remember my brief sojourn on Zoloft in the late 1990’s, feeling a similar shift in my experience initially, gradually dissipating over time…I wonder if immersion in meditation and community practice is altering my brain chemistry. I wonder what neural pathways in my brain are shifting to affect this new level of consciousness and presence with myself, this sense of well being, of mental quiet, of emotional stability and unity?”

The longer I practice contemplative forms of prayer (yoga, centering prayer, mindfulness of various expressions) the less interested I am in what I’ve begun to call “ego supportive prayer.”

Ego supportive prayer is about the circumstances of life. We give thanks for the blessings and praise God for them. We ask for help with those things that burden, worry, trouble us. It’s a way of engaging with the Divine that anchors our present realities in the Reality of all reality. We pour out our hearts to the Creator in hope that the Creator will meet us in these things and bolster us with strength and courage to face them. And we thank God for helping us, even in advance for the help that will come.

Ego focused prayer uses words to strengthen our relationship with God, to secure our sense of self through our attachment to God. In my experience, it’s mostly about talking to God about my life–either silently or out loud. I talk to God as Father/Mother/Creator, to God as Jesus, the son, my brother, my friend and companion who walks with me through the days of my life. Unless it’s informed by a more contemplatively informed expression of ego supportive prayer, like the Ignatian stream of Christian devotion, there’s little emphasis on listening.

For those of us with insecure attachment patterns, myself included, ego supportive prayer can be a powerful healing and stabilizing force for a fragile ego. Knowing Jesus as friend and companion saved me during chaotic years of my life. My daily quiet times, reading the Bible, praying aloud, keeping lists of my prayer requests and answers to prayer were essential elements of healing the wounds of my childhood. It helped integrate and stabilize my ego. Like a therapeutic relationship, the empathetic, loving presence of another is the key to integration of the brain. When we’ve not had that steady support in early development, a Loving God can become a therapeutic presence that does for us what wasn’t done in our childhoods.

In recent years I’ve engaged both ego supportive and contemplative forms of prayer. I’ve found them both necessary and helpful. In seasons where I focused exclusively on centering prayer and let go of verbal, conversational forms, I missed the companioning aspects of ego supportive prayer.

Last year I spent nine months with Ignatius’ spiritual exercises–a compilation of readings, prayers and practices Ignatius developed to help people deepen our connection to God. It was powerful ego supportive medicine that grounded my ego realities in my Center in God’s Love that I’d discovered through centering prayer.

For me, the Center is the wordless place of contemplation. It’s the place within my inner awareness where I am still and silent and know God beyond words.

In recent conversational community prayer times, I’ve found myself bored with myself. I’m bored with hearing myself say the same things each week about my needs: Dave needs a job, I need more clients, we need clear guidance about helping his parent’s navigate the challenges of their senior years.

It’s all important, but what is the value of telling God, over and over and over again what I need?

If God is God, does God need to be reminded of what I need?

Or is that more about me and my ego’s need to reinforce that God is God and I am not God? 

I remember the parable Jesus taught that is commonly called the persistent widow. It’s introduced with the commentary: “Then Jesus told them a parable about how they should always pray and not give up.” This parable is often used as a rationale for repetitive prayer practices. The unjust judge says “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come back and attack me.” I still don’t get the parable. And suppose I could spend some time with it.

Does “always pray and not give up” have to be about verbally asking God, like the widow asking the unjust judge, to intervene?

Are words required?

For me, the non-verbal anchoring in my Belovedness, in the Center of knowing God is God and I am not, is the foundation for the efficacy of my verbalized prayers. The talking and verbalizing of ego supportive prayer pulls me out of my Center. When I’m resting in the surrendered state of the Center, I’m not worried or anxious about the things I’d normally need to tell God about in order to soothe my ego.

So my prayer work these days is Centering.

I need less talking and more Anchoring.

I need less words and more Presence.

When my ego is Centered in my Belovedness, Anchored in the Reality of all realities, Present to the Creator who holds all things together even when they seem to be falling apart around me, my peaceful presence becomes a prayer and words are not necessary.