What Difference Can 20 Minutes Make?
When I practice listening to sacred stillness I follow the guidelines of centering prayer. Centering prayer is a way of praying which is beyond thoughts, words, and feelings. We practice giving our consent to the presence and action of spiritual life within us.
One of the standard suggestions about centering prayer is to practice twice a day for 20 minutes each time. Pausing in the morning and the evening for 20 minutes to practice being open.
People often ask me practical questions about centering prayer. They may want to know what the goal is or how their breathing affects their practice. Some people ask what to do if they make mistakes or get confused.
A question I hear pretty often is about what difference can 20 minutes make. Some people are skeptical a relatively minimal period of time can be important.
Now 20 minutes, even twice a day, does not sound like much of a commitment. We spend more time than that each day getting ready for work or reading email. A lot of us spend more than 20 minutes twice a day drinking coffee.
I cannot give you scientific information or even good statistics about the difference it makes. Each of us has our own lives and responds in our own unique ways. The best I can offer is to tell you about the difference it has made for me.
My experience is, I suppose, a case study of the difference a practice of 20 minutes can make. I do not believe only the practice of listening to sacred stillness makes these differences. In fact, I am convinced our lives consist of what we practice, whether we intend it or not.
Each behavior, each discipline we practice fits together to create the life we live.
The Difference 20 Minutes Makes For Me
Days seem to fly past in the blink of an eye. It feels like we spend the week trying to catch up starting the moment we open our eyes in the morning. At the end of the day we close our eyes wondering where the time has gone.
It is already the second half of April! Could New Year’s Day have been more than two weeks ago?
We may think spending 20 minutes twice a day listening to sacred stillness is a waste of time. It would be wiser for us to use that time to get something done, right?
When I spend 20 minutes twice a day listening to sacred stillness, I remember. My mind is free to pay attention.
Those 20 minutes each day remind me the days are not whizzing past. As we take time to sit and listen we become able to hear deeper, sacred truth in the stillness.
My practice of listening to sacred stillness is not the solution to all my problems. It is not that I never become frustrated and distracted. I still experience challenges and things still make me angry.
A practice of listening for 20 minutes helps me learn how to live in the present moment. Each moment is full of eternal potential. Listening is how I build the spiritual muscle to do life’s heavy lifting.
It is not that I hear profound truths or secret messages in the stillness. Listening to sacred stillness helps me learn to hear whispers in the quiet.
Practicing listening each day does not make me an especially spiritual person. If anything, my practice reminds me I am not as special or as spiritual as I might want to think I am.
Listening to sacred stillness does not make me a superhero. It reminds me I am human.
Why is Practicing for 20 Minutes Important?
I do not believe there is anything magical about practicing for 20 minutes. There are certainly days when I need to spend more time listening.
My practice is not about maintaining a certain level of listening for 20 minutes. It takes me time to stop paying attention to distractions. There are days when I feel like I have achieved something by listening well. Then I realize I am not listening, I am evaluating how well I am practicing.
In my experience, practicing for 20 minutes gives me enough time to get settled. My practice is not about finding or sustaining a “perfect” level of listening. I practice listening to sacred stillness long enough to not be assessing my performance.
In some ways, I think practicing for 20 minutes is important because of how I do not spend that time. My practice makes my choices and priorities clear to me. I learn about myself when I give up something else I would like to do so I can practice listening.
In some ways, practicing listening to sacred stillness for 20 minutes twice a day is like other practices. As we practice playing a musical instrument we become a guitarist or a drummer. We practice basketball and we become shooters. When we practice law or medicine we slowly become lawyers or doctors.
Through our daily practice of listening to sacred stillness we become listeners.
How 20 Minutes Can Change Our Lives
I do not practice listening to sacred stillness to transform myself into a different person. We are not trying to make ourselves better or stronger or improve ourselves.
My practice of listening is about opening myself to what the stillness has for me.
Practicing listening is not about learning to be more effective listeners. We listen so we can hear what is there. As we spend time listening each day we become more accustomed to and comfortable in stillness.
Our experience of stillness helps us recognize how sacred it can be.
As we listen to sacred stillness we begin to hear how valuable life can be.
The truths we are most hungry to hear are waiting for us in sacred stillness.
What we hear when we listen for 20 minutes can change how we live our lives.
When will we spend 20 minutes making a difference today?
How will spending 20 minutes twice a day change our week this week?
[Image by Lorenzo Bl]
Greg Richardson is a spiritual life mentor and leadership coach in Southern California. He is a recovering attorney and university professor, and a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is StrategicMonk.com, and his email address is StrategicMonk@gmail.com.
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