In the past few weeks I've been trying to come to terms with, and consequently reject, what I believe has been disclosed to me as a "false praying voice". It's an interior voice - and we have many adopted voices within us - that clicks into gear whenever the effort is made to pray. It is dislocated from my true self; it is the voice of automata. It is carry-over from Lord knows what and how many different influences; it is listless, lethargic and heavy as a bag of rocks.
But its disclosure is far, far from a cause of misery. It is a great relief and joy. My small discoveries in the realm of prayer could be tantamount to this, which is nothing new: that true prayer is grace and simplicity itself. Grace is everywhere; and simplicity is the continual state of the real - in spite of ourselves.
The intimacy with which our converse with Christ takes place is in the realm of what is real and what is everywhere. Grace is not just some kind of useful laser beam with which we get struck; it is a realm.
Sometimes before the Blessed Sacrament I get the notion that Jesus is letting me, with great patience, burn out or exhaust this voice, before lighting His instantaneous simplicity on me, and sort of saying, "Look, I'm right here".
Oh.
And now we can begin really talking - for real. In that reality, if one tries to grasp it, or exert effort, it disappears.
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