Jewish Contemplatives: Contemplative Practice: Praying For Others

In Parshah Va-etchanan we read: ‘I pleaded with G-d at that time.” (Devarim 3:23) Moshe Rabeinu begs G-d to allow him to cross over to the Promised Land. The response he hears is “No, You have enough. Speak to me no more of this matter” (Devarim 3:26). This rather distressing moment may teach us many things: that though we may plead with G-d-we may receive negative replies; that we may not expect our prayers to be answered in the affirmative if they do not fit in with whatever plan G-d may be said to have for creation; that negative replies may actually be there to encourage us to see a positive somewhere else. It is also the expression of an instinctive and natural urge to acknowledge our dependence on G-d and our genuine belief in his omnipotence. Our formal liturgy defines an optimum number of requests (principally in the later blessings of the Shemoneh Esre) and communal worship presents us with many opportunities for expressing both our needs and our trust that G-d is listening and responding to them. But our contemplative prayer and meditation, and indeed our very contemplative lifestyles are also potential ways to express and practice compassionate concern and action for others.

As Jews, we accept that our petitionary prayer is always conditional upon the will of G-d. We are not spiritual wizards or cosmic manipulators. When we plead for the welfare of others we accept that our idea of the best outcome may be mistaken. Sometimes, though it grates on our soft-heartedness, we have the naivety smashed out of us by the realisation that G-d also created pain and the things we call ‘evil’ to do His will, even though the paradoxical balancing of opposites is surely way beyond our merely human comprehension. Sometimes, out of impudence and sheer stubbornness, we employ our prayers with the very best of intentions to attempt to manipulate and force the Hand of a G-d who will not be so manipulated. Prayer is not magic. If we are sensitive and spiritual people, we are sure to feel compassionate empathy and sometimes emotional distress on behalf of those we care about or who request our prayers. But the danger present in that emotional empathy is that we might become swamped in the pain of others to the point that we become a negative force ourselves.

This can happen in several ways.

We may become so sad that we forget that, often, the prayers of the joyful are truly the most acceptable as they reflect both equanimity and faith.

Or we may think our emotions are a sort of badge to prove our love of G-d, when in fact we are just revelling in being important or simply emotionally alive at all.

Or we may develop a messiah complex in which we grow to overestimate the significance of our personal effectiveness in prayer.

There are simple remedies:

We should remember that we do not need to punish ourselves or weep tears of blood to get G-d's attention—a simple one line prayer such as that of Moshe Rabeinu for Miryam is what He asks of us. Doing penance for others is not a feature of Judaism and even in religions which stress redemptive self sacrifice, there are those who came to realise that mortifications and self deprecation can sometimes actually be a perverted form of ego building.

Nevertheless, as caring and spiritually active humans we hope that we are motivated by compassion, by what we believe to be the greater good, and by the noble desire to help our suffering friends in an imperfect world in any way that we can. Moshe Rabbeinu praying for the healing of his sister Miryam, Avraham Avinu for the citizens of S’dom, and Hannah begging for a Nazirite son are models of Jewish prayer which we should not be ashamed to emulate.

Our petitionary prayers are requests to an all-seeing, ever-present G-d. All that happens is, as it were, known to Him already. But if we contemplative Jews are to consider ourselves as being, in some way, a conscious expression and part of G-d’s mind in the world: our prayers are, in some sense, causal. If that is so we have a duty to pray for G-d’s intentions above all else. We may not often be able to identify them, but one thing we can be sure of: Compassion is imitatio Deo and His Thirteen Divine Attributres are revealed to us as a model for petitionary prayer and all forms of acts of kindness. Nor is it coincidental that contemplatives and mystics of all persuasions have identified Compassion as a prime motivator of common human spirituality.

If we are attempting to live a life of intimacy and nearness to G-d for its own sake, we will not be expressing a transient mawkish sympathy or empathy with others in their misfortune only to forget them and move on to some other diversion, some other page on the internet, some other hobby awaiting our rapt attention. We will seek to hold them close to The One who is our central focus in sustained compassion. The Quakers sometimes call this “holding someone in the Light”, and I have heard no better description of what we are attempting to do when we “pray for” others, and especially when we are doing that within the general context of our contemplative worship.

If we do this we can perhaps identify with the Psalmist who declares: “But as for me, I am all prayer” (Tehilim 109:4) and hold that by cleaving to G-d we are praying for the needs of others and quietly but determinedly doing our bit to increase compassion in our world.

oooOooo

Shortly after writing that commentary, I came across a passage from the Zohar which sparked off the following little postscript. The text is a commentary on the verse “And Abraham went down to Egypt” (Bereshit 12:10) and reads:

“The verse hints at wisdom and the levels down below, to the depths of which Abraham descended. He knew them but he did not become attached. He returned to face His Lord. He was not seduced by them like Adam nor like Noah. He went up and did not come down. He returned to his domain, the high rung he had grasped before."

The text speaks of descent into “lower worlds” and though it is referring primarily to “lesser” states of awareness and practice (wisdom), it might also apply to the descent into the sad and distressing world of “empathy and sympathy for those in pain or profound distress” which we often make during our petitionary prayers. It seems that the Zohar too is suggesting a way that this can be something borne on the shoulders of one cleaving to G-d and not something at the centre or forefront of our consciousness.

There is a sort of feel-good effect to praying for others. This can actually be “seductive” and distracting. On the other hand it can be a way of proving that the “reward of a mitzvah is another mitzvah” as it can represent an overflowing of compassion and a stimulus to further compassion. But the place of a contemplative is standing before G-d with attention on the Divine Presence.... and the way to balance both activities (the contemplative and the redemptive) continues to present me with a knotty problem: We want to serve G-d and be useful to Him, butwe may feel more useful if we flap about and jump up and down making a fuss - But it is perhaps humbler to stand in His Presence and let Him make use of that in any way which suits Him. This idea finds a paralel in the idea of praying “for the needs of the Shechinah”, often without specifying any particularly request of our own. That we may rarely (or never) see or feel the results of our prayer ourselves may actually be to our advantage in becoming truly generous servants.

And yet, in seeking to "draw near" to G-d, we are human keruvim not angelic ones so perhaps I am being a little too demanding in suggesting we make our requests less emotionally charged and specific? As contemplatives we are vocationally predisposed to suffer crises of faith both in our own abilities or mission and also in our very belief in G-d. Could it not also be argued that we ourselves might need the accompanying and consoling “seduction” of feeling useful and feeling that we are sharing our light with others even if this might make us feel self-satisfied. Perhaps. To a certain degree. An image comes to mind: During the baking hot summer I climb up the steep hill which leads from the supermarket to my house with many kilos of shopping in both hands and in the rucksack which is strapped to my back. The ascent takes about thirty minutes. I walk deep in prayer. I never think of the destination— for that would only make the climb seem endless. I never focus on the difficulty of the weight on my back for that would cause me to stop moving altogether while I caught my breath and rested my bones. The days on which the climb passes most rapidly and with least stress are those when I am most deeply focussed in my prayer. Of course, the awareness of the weight is always there, but it does not debilitate or weigh me down.

By deepening our focus on G-d we carry the burdens of others more efficiently. We help those we are praying for best if we lift their pain and grief and distress from out of our minds and into the realm of Light Itself. Perhaps the “light” which is then reflected back to them and in which they are "held" is not ours but G-d’s.