De Mello: Out of the Head
“The head is not the best place for prayer. It is not a bad place for starting your prayer. But if your prayer stays there too long and doesn’t move into the heart, it will gradually dry up and prove tiresome and frustrating.”—Anthony de Mello in Sadhana: A Way to God (Liguori, 1998).
Anthony de Mello’s Sadhana: A Way to God, Christian Exercises in Eastern Form, is an amazing book—a collection of “one-of-a-kind, practical spiritual exercises” blending Eastern and Western spiritual practice for contemplative prayer. De Mello describes contemplative prayer as communicating with God with minimal words. He lists forty-seven exercises, all of which can be learned through practicing each weekly at a time.
In his first section, de Mello repeatedly teaches how contemplative prayer comes after achieving an awareness of the body, not just the mind, leading to an awareness of God’s presence.
The second section discusses using our imagination in prayer, like keeping an imaginary scrapbook of times we were loved and felt God’s presence. The last section describes devotional contemplative prayers, such as the Jesus Prayer.
The awareness exercises help us get out of our heads and into our bodies—where de Mello says we must return to our senses. He describes the head as a place to begin to pray, but becoming aware of the feelings in our entire body, paying attention to our breath, and returning to our senses keeps us in the present presence.
It is in the present moment that God meets us—not where we anticipate or dread the future, or resent or take pride over the past, but in the now. Our head lives in the past or future. Our body, our heart, grounds us to the present moment.
