Monkey brains

I've learned two new words and a description of what's wrong with me. It's been quite a day.
What's wrong with me is something that I believe Buddhists refer to as `monkey brains'. It's the inability
to focus and think on one thing to the exclusion of all else. I learned this from the author T.M Luhrmann whose excellent book `When God talks back' is what prompted me to start this blog in the first place in the hopes that it could be a path of focus. Monkey brains is me alright. I think I'm going to clear my head and concentrate on having a conversation with God but all this buzzy interference shoots through my mind like images you see if you constantly change the channels on your TV.I feel like I have mental case of Tourette's. And if I don consciously try and clear a space in my noodle, as soon as I do I fall asleep.And the words I learned were `apophatic' and `katophatic'. Apophatic is from the Greek apophasis which means denial.It's used for a technique or rather a number of techniques for shifting attention from internal sensations to external.You detach yourself from all thought -deny it.By rejecting what's human we hope to connect with the divine. Kataphatic is from the Greek kataphasis which means to affirm positively and it's used for a series of techniques to shift attention from what's going on externally to what's happening internally.It's a method for empowering our imagination.
The two techniques share the same objective to center our attention.And it's hard. They're both hard.
Me with my monkey brains. I used to think praying was easy.A quick our father and amen and it was done. But  what apophasis and kataphasis ask me to takes much more discipline.Prayer in the past was something I could do without engaging my brain.It was literally lip service. This is like some zen exercise of staring at a candle flame to clear everything away or imagining a new kind of reality.
It's hard hard hard. But this monkey is going to give it a try and see where it goes.

With what language do I speak to God?

When I was a child I didn't really speak like a child -sorry Paul or Saul or whatever your name is.
I was precocious. I couldn't always correctly pronounce the words I knew but  they were not childish words by any stretch of the imagination. A diet of classical literature from the library and superhero comics picked up at a junk store filled me with multi-syllables a-plenty. I read the Odyssey and knew that Odysseus's wife was Penelope but in my head it was pronounced Penny-lope. I read Marvel's Thor comics so I knew about Asgard and Odin as well as I knew about the effects of kryptonite on Superman. The point is I wasn't a dumb kid. But prayer left me feeling I was. In my early youth I went to Catholic church and the mass was in Latin. I had read the Aenid and even had a bash at some of Bocaccio but the lord's prayer got me.I said `Pater noster,qui est in caelis,sanctificetur nomen tuum.'
but I might as well have said 'Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo' for all the meaning I could attach to it. And even as the language of worship became English I felt that the rhythm and 
metre of the words were more important than the content. I was just speaking them. Talking at God.
So the rite had more in common with the spells of the Druids or the chants of the Voodoo doctor and cemented in my mind the mystique of communicating with the supernatural. It is only recently that I am discovering the freedom of talking to God as a real entity.It feels awkward at time because there was a certain safety in talking from behind the formality of prayers that had been composed hundreds of years ago. But that formality is just a barrier I feel. It makes me feel like I'm pontificating -now there's a word with a host of meanings.The story of the Tower of Babel always seemed like a cruel God-prank to me.
Here were people using their God-given talents to show how they could get the humanity show off the ground and in comes the deity to spoil it all. What would have happened if they had been allowed to build their tower? That's a question for God. But does conversation with God have to be a formal show consisting of someone babbling in latin or english for the masses to follow? I don't think so. I think its about opening my mind and letting God in. And I want to recognize it as God's voice not some subconscious babbling of my own. I understand that hearing voices is the swiftest way to the asylum.We've all got them buried away inside us. I want to distinguish between those and the voice of God. And maybe to do that I have to think with the innocence of a child and admit my invisible friend to come sit with me. Which would turn Paul's philosophy on its head. When I was a child I spoke like
an adult but now I am a man I must put that aside and think like a child. I'll let you know how I get on.

What tribe am I?

The blogger,seer and all-round brain box has a thing about what he calls `Tribes'.
Tribes are like-minded people who link up because they share a common interest. I read a book of his
about tribes and he includes religious denominations as examples of tribes. It set me to thinking about religion. What is it? What's your religion? Catholic? Protestant? Muslim? Oak tree worshipper?
What country are your from? What race? What color? What politics do you support?
I've begun to become uncomfortable with the the label that religion sticks on me.It's the tribe thing.
Are you into the Beatles or the Stones? Liverpool F.C. or Man U? Boys or Girls? Is our spiritual journey to enrichment and enlightenment dictated by which team we're on? Which badge we wear?
Crusader or Saracen? And what do these tribe definitions do to bring us closer to the God we seek?
Does the Hindu have the inside advantage or the Jew? Is the Buddhist further along than the Sun worshiper? Or have we been thinking about it all wrong? This is the thinking that led to my lightbulb moment. I had always thought of these tribes,these religions,as various ways in which humankind has
tried to talk to God. Think of them as languages. The incense and formality of Catholicism is a language by which we may speak to God. The Papua New Guinea tribes who worship the Duke of Edinburgh is a language to get connected with the almighty power. I had always thought of them this way and it made the journey from one to another make sense as a person could find the language that
they feel most comfortable talking in. The 50 minutes and done cosiness of the Episcopal ceremony or the hours of snake holding and speaking in tongues of the more colorful evangelical sects are just ways of talking. But then I thought No! It's not about talking.There's too much talking.So much talking AT God. Is anybody talking WITH God and more way more importantly is anybody listening when God talks to us.I am on a path to explore this for myself.I'm writing it down to capture the record of my path.
I'm on a mission to listen to what God has to say and I want to be careful that I'm not just listening to some random thoughts in my head or that I'm giving myself permission to be schizophrenic. I want to know how to listen to God and not the interference and static buzz of an overactive imagination.
I'll keep you posted how it goes.