Praying to an Empty Chair: Your Imagination Does Not Belong to You

MOTHER'S EMPTY CHAIR

A dying woman's daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her mother. When the minister arrived, he found the woman lying in bed with her head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat ready beside her bed. The chair made the minister think that the woman had been informed of the visit as he said, "I see you were expecting me."

"No, who are you?" said the mother.

The minister told her his name and then remarked, "I saw the empty chair and I figured you knew I was coming."

"Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden woman. "Would you mind closing the door?"

Puzzled, the clergyman shut the door and sat down.

The woman spoke, "I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter. All of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor preach about prayer, but it went right over my head. It sounded so complicated that I never tried it much, until one day four years ago."

"What happened?" asked the minister.

She continued, "My best friend said to me, 'Betty, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here is what I suggest. Sit down in a chair; place an empty chair in front of you, and imagine Jesus sitting in the chair. Then just speak to him in the same way you're doing with me right now."

"And did you try that?" asked the minister.

"Yes I did," she said, "and I've liked it so much that I started doing it a couple of hours every day. I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she'd have me in asylum for lunatics. She's college educated."

The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the woman to continue talking to Jesus in the chair. Then he prayed with her, anointed her with oil, and returned to the church. Two nights later the daughter called to tell the minister that her mother had died that afternoon. "Did she die in peace?" he asked.

"Yes," the daughter answered, "when I left the house about two o'clock, she called me over to her bedside, told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found her. But there was something very odd about her death. Apparently, just before Mother died, she leaned over and rested her head on the chair beside the bed. What do you make of that?"

The minister's eyes welled with tears and he said, "Mysterious, isn't it?"

THE IMAGINAL REALM VERSUS HUMAN imagination

Many moderns might find this story quaint. Condescendingly, they may grant that such tales can be quite soothing to the uneducated, usually from the Red states. They will tell you that the human brain has evolved in order to conjure up all sorts of illusory fantasies to help the dying. I personally find that theory odd since the less evolved animals, which seem to have evolved no sense of immortality, have a much easier time accepting death and dying. That theory seems to be another example of unquestioned faith in 'science'.

Nevertheless, we moderns assume an anthropocentric point of view of the imagination. We are told that the human brain creates all thoughts and images from neural connections. We are the sole thinkers and our brains are the solitary image factories. That poor deluded, hallucinating and dying woman in the above story saw nothing more than a humanly fabricated image made of nothing substantial or 'real'. It was all in her imagination.

WHAT IS 'THE IMAGINATION?'

Yes, it was in the imagination, but what is 'the imagination?' Let's not just accept the assumed modern dogma that imagination originates in the human brain. Perhaps the human imagination arises from the pre-human Imaginal Realm. The Imaginal Realm precedes and fuels all images which we assume that the human brain originates. It seems more accurate to theorize that the human brain badly mimics the Imaginal Realm. Human beings may mentally construct unicorns, tooth fairies and fire breathing dragons through imagination, but such images are created from bits and pieces that exist in the Imaginal Realm.

Santa Claus, Hobbits and Mermaids are not just invented by the human brain, but rather they are also discovered, or formed because they are made of 'stuff' from the Imaginal Realm that is very Real. One might as well say that Mozart invented musical notes, or that Einstein originated mathematics. The human imagination did not invent or originate the Imaginal any more than Mozart invented D minor or Einstein created E=MC2. These were discovered, not invented. The reason literary images from Gilgamesh to Homer and from Genesis to The Sopranos always and everywhere contain the same basic stories or 'notes' is that they were discovered, not just invented. Authors and artists may arrange the pieces, but they did not create them from scratch. These three areas, math, music and myth arise from a Realm that precedes and will outlast human brains and bodies. The basic elements of each of these three (numbers, notes and stories) preceded human form and will continue after this planet becomes a sunless lump of rock and dust.

SOME IMAGES ARE MORE REAL

And of course some imaginary humanly discovered creations will be closer than others to the Original Images from the Imaginal Realm. Let's suppose a random group of people was placed in a room with a Rembrandt painting and asked to copy it to the best of their individual abilities. The results might range from comedic to some of the facsimiles being quite good. That is the relationship of the Imaginal Realm to the human imagination Some humanly discovered and concocted images are quite accurate representations - we call these Laws or Classics - but none is the Real Archetype or Original Pattern.

WHY RELIGION WORKS AND ALWAYS WILL

Many have attempted to declare religion dead or dying. But all around us we see religion not only alive and well, but thriving and morphing into new forms. They might as well try to eliminate math and music, which some despotic regimes have actually tried to accomplish. Mythologies, prayer and rituals show up in every human culture because the Imaginal Realm bubbles up from within and below the surface of human consciousness. We moderns call it 'the arts,' as though we invented it, even pontificating on why the Egyptians and other primitives did what they did. My sense is that those primitives knew more about 'art' than we will even begin to know.

In the Imaginal Realm, Jesus actually sits in chairs and carries on conversations - perceived by an organ little known, yet intuited, by many modern westerners. This Realm is neither literal nor hallucinatory, it transcends liberal skepticism and conservative dogma; it is a third Realm between fact and fiction. One fellow has called it 'faction.'

In this Realm, people saw and still see the resurrected Christ. In this Realm, the dying woman of our story placed her head in the lap of Jesus. Pull up a chair, try it, you might be surprised. Just don't tell your daughter.

Prayer for My Damn Enemies?

One of the most difficult obstacles to peace is learning how to deal with difficult people, also known as enemies. This is especially true when they are family members. Someone recently asked me for advice about how to deal with family members who are abusive and inconsiderate. I am able to share only what I have experienced in this arena. I never claim to have solutions for anyone but myself. If they help another, I am glad.

I once spent years telling horror stories about my members of my family, and I actually believed them all; I had facts to prove my accounts were true. I had the evidence. However, as my personal pain and misery escalated, I eventually learned through various teachers and hard lessons to release the anger, sadness and justified resentments toward these people. This was not easy, until carrying them around year after year became more difficult than letting them go. These incidents, when held in mind, will destory our bodies and souls.

PRAY FOR THEM?

My suggestion, which will initially sound ludicrous, is to pray for them. Even typing it looks like such a religious platitude that I want to erase the suggestion and find a more profound response. But returning to my personal agonizing experience, this has been the key solution. When Jesus, and Ghandi were assailed by enemies, they prayed. We are familiar with Jesus telling us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute or abuse us; and we recall his words from the cross to those who were executing him, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

Ghandi said:

"I had attended the Christian service in South Africa, but it had failed to grip me. I could not join them in prayer. They supplicated God, but I could not do so, I failed egregiously. I started with disbelief in God and prayer, and, until at a late stage in life, I did not feel anything like a void in life. But at that stage I felt that, as food was indispensable for the body, so was prayer indispensable for the soul. In fact, food for the body is not so necessary as prayer for the soul. For starvation is often necessary in order to keep the body in health, but there is no such thing as prayer-starvation.... "

"In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. In fact, I have found people who envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Every one is a law unto himself in that respect. But there are some well-marked roads, and it is safe to walk along the beaten tracks, trod by the ancient teachers."

"Prayer has been the saving of my life. Without it I should have been a lunatic long ago. My autobiography will tell you that I have had my fair share of the bitterest public and private experiences. They threw me into temporary despair, but if I was able to get rid of it, it was because of prayer."

"Now I may tell you that prayer has not been part of my life in the sense that truth has been. It came out of sheer necessity, as I found myself in a plight when I could not possibly be happy without it. And the more my faith in God increased, the more irresistible became the yearning for prayer. Life seemed to be dull and vacant without it."

PRAYER IS NOT EXCUSING BAD BEHAVIOR

There is much more to dealing with abusers, but praying for them is a good beginning. That does not mean excusing them or pretending they did not hurt us or do wrong. It does mean that we begin to see how sick, miserable and terribly wounded they are, and we begin to express compassion for them in their chaotic and miserable lives. They may seem happy at times, but they are soul-sick and on the verge of despair. We pray for their recovery, for their eventual happiness, for their peace of mind, for their addictions, for their wounded childhoods and dysfunctional adulthoods, for their antisocial behaviors, etc.

THREE RESULTS OF CONSISTENT PRAYER

The irony is that if we consistently pray like this, three things will happen: First, what we request for them, we gradually begin to experience for ourselves. Second, we may actually see changes in their lives, suddenly or over the years. Thirdly, if we faithfully do these prayers every day, after a month or so the resentments melt away and peace reigns. This is the power and necessity of the kind of prayer that Ghandi learned through trial and error.

Lastly, keep seeking. This essay is not a band aid or quick fix. Soul-making requires time, many failures, openness, willingness to try new approaches and humility. Ghandi and Jesus both loved and served people who treated them like crap - however, they didn't keep a list of the sins and failures, and they were able to love them as they were. In other words, they held no resentments for being taken advantage of. Most of us are not there yet. In my opinion, it is best to avoid such abusive people and simply pray for them. As our hearts soften and bodies heal, then we may expand to be of more service to those who are ungrateful and very seriously ill.