A 6 Step Guide: Praying With The Mind in the Heart
Trying to find language for what takes place when we pray, or what it’s like to experience God’s presence in our bodies feels a bit like grasping at steam. So close, within reach even, and yet still so untamable.
I feel the same about languaging praying with the mind in the heart. Because like many things in life - falling in love, writing that song, experiencing nature - you know when you’re there and that comes to be the standard for knowing when you’re not.
So, maybe it’s helpful to start there. With what it’s not.
Praying with the mind in the heart is not about straining to keep our thoughts focused. It’s not a mental exercise. In fact, if you’re feeling frustrated, disappointed or impatient, that’s a helpful sign that you’re all head and little heart. To bring yourself down into your heart in that moment simply let go, accept that your mind is where it is, and imagine God down in your body.
That doesn’t mean it’s all emotion though, either. God loves emotions and often speaks through them, but prayer isn’t primarily an emotional experience. It’s a relational one. Praying in the heart means praying with our whole selves, whether our emotions are engaged in a specific way or not.
No close and healthy relationship can survive the dictatorship of emotions, and neither can prayer.
In saying that, I’ve come to see the spiritual fruits described in Galatians 5:22-23 - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and gentleness etc - as the renewed senses we receive at baptism. Something we had already but is made richer in the community of God. A kind of spiritual emotional set to themselves and something we learn to access more freely over time as we grow in prayer.
All of those fruits can be emotional of course, but they’re also deeper. Love is as much a lived and acted commitment as it is an emotional ecstasy and joy and hope can dwell deep in us even in our times of greatest grief when we feel lost and numb.
That’s because they’re more powerful than our emotions, they’re movements of the Spirit.
Those are the kind of emotions we can expect in prayer, those of a spiritual kind, of God’s language, and they’re found here with our minds down in our hearts.
In fact, the early church understood the heart not only as a place for the emotions but as the seat of the interior self. It’s the place our life force springs out from, holding our deepest parts, being all of, but also so much more than, our natural feelings. It was only later in history that we began to associate the heart with emotions alone.
So, bringing the mind down into the heart engages our minds as they open themselves to God helping us become attentive to his presence, and it does so through the window of the soul.
When we bring our mind down here we’re no longer trying to make sense of God, rationalise his presence or even keep an agenda with him. We’re simply being present. We’re beholding him.
We know these kinds of experiences instinctively if we’ve ever held a baby (ours or anyone else’s), appreciated a piece of art or been deeply moved by a song. Those are the same feelings because those little transcendent “wow’s” don’t come through intellectual addition. They come through a mind-body experience that captures us.
Beholding God in prayer - bringing our minds down - is exactly the same. Except in prayer we’re practicing entering that place intentionally with God.
So, being careful not to prescribe something that should feel natural and not mechanical (and I stress, this is only a guide not a “how-to”!), here’s a place to start if you’re still unsure or would appreciate a little guidance.
6 Steps For Praying With The Mind Down In The Heart.
Sit comfortably in a place you feel calm and undistracted. This could be a reading chair, a couch or a seat in your car if it’s the only quiet place away from family.
Close your eyes. You can sit with your hands open side up on your knees or facedown if it’s more comfortable.
As you sit there, notice your surroundings. Feel yourself touching the seat, notice how your body feels. Does it feel heavy, light, anxious, calm? What sounds can you hear around you? Be present to them, feel your body and be. As you pay attention to all this you’re helping bring your mind into your body, something our hyper-culture often alienates us from. You’re reentering the present and stilling yourself.
As you feel yourself landing in your “now”, imagine that there’s a window where your chest is. The window to your deepest self. Imagine it has bifolds that open outwards that only you can open. Imagine bringing your whole self to that space, centering on it as the meeting place between your soul and God.
Then, as you sit in that window, begin opening it up to God, giving him full access to all of you from this very centre, making yourself available. As you do, allow all of who you are to be seen by God as, from this centre, you see him with all of yourself.
As you sit there aware of all that you are and that’s around you don’t strain yourself to think of God, imagine your being more like a river flowing toward him as he does you. The goal is not to empty your thoughts and reach some kind of mindless nirvana either. God made our whole selves and it’s all of that stuff he loves to commune with. Just imagine yourself open to God from there. When your mind wanders from him (which it will!) simply bring the image of your open window to your soul back to the forefront of your mind before God.
It’s important not to expect anything in particular - an emotional response, a vision or anything else you feel might make the time a “success”. Those things may come which is amazing, but the point is to be with God, not what he offers.
Just be there together.
Beholding God this way, bringing the mind down into the heart, is about being attentive to God. Not “making ground” in our prayer life.
This image of having a window to the soul in my chest has helped me for years. After practicing it during quiet prayer times I can then bring it to my life as I’m walking, talking with others, working or whatever. In all those moments it’s come to instantly transport me to vulnerable attentiveness to God.
It gives him the floor of my being.
If you’re beginning your journey in this kind of prayer, know that it takes time to learn to enter that space. Like many things in life - retraining our thoughts, muscle memory for sport or music, learning a language - it’s repetition and practice that creates the spiritual grooves for our mind and soul to enter when we come to pray.
It’s not a sprint remember, it’s a pilgrimage. So allow yourself space to breathe.
This is a timely read, thankyou. Ive currently been processing the idea of connecting with Jesus within as a born again believer, rather than Jesus 'way off' in the heavens. Its a beautiful thing, so relational and freeing - and you have expanded it in a way i could not explain. I appreciate you putting the time into this work - thankyou.
Thank you so much for this!!! This reminds me again just how much freedom there is in communion with our wonderful Father. The moment we feel this pressure to follow a formula or strive to make prayer or any part of our intimacy have a specific outcome or provoked emotion to feel it was a “success” we focus on the outcome not the One we’ve come to be with. This is what Jesus longed for people to move away from to fully embrace the freedom of relationship that He also had with Abba. It’s a powerful reminder when the enemy tries to force us back into the constraints of religious behaviour that weigh heavy on our hearts as we feel like we’re trudging through mud rather than resting in the movement of a stream (A great analogy you previously wrote about on instagram - prayer is entering an eternal conversation like a river not a lake where we ourselves create momentum to carry us through).