Taking Care of Ourselves

Most of us know the experience of coming home after a long day and realising how tired we are – not just physically, but inwardly. We feel depleted. We’ve been pulled in many directions, responded to many voices and many demands.

Imagine returning home on a hot summer afternoon and discovering that the doors, windows and curtains have been left wide open while you were out. The heat has been pouring in. The house feels stifling. The first thing you naturally do is close the doors and windows, draw the curtains, and allow the house to gradually cool.

‘Enter your inner room’

These simple, natural acts take us very close to the heart of Jesus’ teaching on meditation, on the inner prayer of the heart. ‘When you pray,’ he says, ‘enter your inner room and close the door’ (Matthew 6:6). This is an invitation to step away from the demands and heat of our life. To be gathered within an inner space where life can settle again. To come home to the inner room of the heart. To rest in God.

Much of our exhaustion comes not from what we have done, but from what we have allowed to pass through us. Our senses are like windows through which the world enters — its beauty, its noise, its anxiety, its urgency. And if we live with the door permanently open, everything rushes straight through us.

Our culture of distraction

We live in a culture that rarely encourages us to notice this. In fact, we are often encouraged to do the opposite: to keep ourselves constantly stimulated, constantly occupied, constantly distracted. Because of our conditioning, learning to still our busy mind can take a little getting used to. We might be apprehensive of silence. Many of us would rather endure agitation than face the unease we fear might arise if we were left alone with ourselves.

You might recognise this in something very ordinary — watching something on television or social media you do not even enjoy, scrolling through news that leaves you tense or heavy, yet feeling unable to stop. Part of us knows it is unsettling us, and yet another part feels unable, or afraid, to turn it off – perhaps afraid of what we might meet when the door finally closes and things become quiet. This is not a failure on our part. But it is a pattern, a habit that deserves our attention, because what we take in can have an enormous impact on us, on our minds, our bodies, and our relationships.

Taking time to rest

This is why meditation places such importance on the cultivation of attention, which quite naturally helps us become increasingly aware of how we react to what life is offering us at any given moment. The simple work of focusing our whole attention on saying our prayer word and following our breath, allows us to see how easily we are pulled away from ourselves. How quickly we lose contact with the body, the breath, the present moment. We discover that much of what disturbs us does not come from outside events themselves, but from the unguarded way we allow those events to pass through us and react to them. The practice of meditation is, in this sense, a practice of ‘entering the inner room and closing the door.’ Not shutting out the world, but learning that we can decide when and how to open ourselves. Recognising when we need to take care of ourselves, and taking time to rest in a more protected, gathered space.

Withdrawing to a solitary place

The practice Jesus teaches is the practice he lived. The most emphasised aspect of Jesus’ prayer life in the Gospels is his habit of frequently withdrawing to a solitary place to pray. Jesus knew how to take care of himself, so that he could take care of others. And yet this wisdom practice of our teacher is largely overlooked today. When we sit in meditation, we are not trying to escape life. We are learning how to remain present without being overwhelmed. Sitting still, stabilised by our prayer word and our breath, we allow thoughts, sounds, sensations to come and go without following them. We allow ourselves to settle. We come home to the inner room. We close the door. We discover that beneath the surface agitation there is a place of stability. A cool, quiet refuge of peace. This is not something we manufacture, but something we remember, something we come home to.

Cultivating a new relationship with life

Needless to say, life will not allow us to remain there. Most of us live in busy environments. We cannot simply remove ourselves from noise, responsibility, or complexity. The invitation of meditation is not about running away from life or bringing about some sort of permanent withdrawal, but to learn how to remain inwardly grounded wherever we are. We are cultivating a new relationship with life and those around us characterised by greater awareness, greater wisdom and compassion, greater peace.

We grow in discernment. Not everything that presents itself to our senses deserves our attention. Not every voice needs to be listened to. Not every stimulus is nourishing. Part of spiritual maturity is learning to choose what we expose ourselves to, not from fear or rigidity, but from care. We find it easier to ask ourselves simple, honest questions as we navigate our way through the day. Does this leave me more present, or more scattered? More open, or more contracted? More compassionate, or more reactive?

The path of meditation is certainly not about shutting ourselves away from life’s beauty. There are moments when the door opens naturally, and we will want it to remain open. To let the sound of birdsong flow through us. To notice the movement of trees in the wind. To let ourselves be touched by a piece of music that carries depth and tenderness. To enjoy a film or a book that reveals something true about the human condition. To enjoy the presence of someone. When awareness is rooted, we can open ourselves without being lost. We can enjoy what is beautiful and nourishing. We can remain present and take care of ourselves as we are touched by the world.

Living with an undivided heart

In the Christian contemplative tradition, this is sometimes described as living with an undivided heart. Not pulled apart by competing demands, but inwardly gathered, even in activity. Meditation trains us in this gathering. Each time we notice we have been carried away and gently return to the prayer word, we are practising a form of inner care. Over time, this inner care increasingly expresses itself in outer care, in our care of each other, in all the small activities of daily life. We notice sooner when we are becoming scattered. We recover more quickly. We learn when to step back, when to turn something off, when to seek silence.

‘Enter your inner room and close the door,’ says Christ. ‘Come away by yourselves to a solitary place, and rest a little’ (Mark 6:31). If the idea of solitude was once worrying for us, we soon discover that the place of solitude is not an emptiness, but a fullness of presence. We discover that when the door is gently closed, and the lamp of awareness is allowed to shine, we are not left alone in a barren room, but met. There is a quiet but all-encompassing communion at the heart of our being.

Jesus knew how to take care of himself, so he could take of others.

‘Come away by yourselves to a solitary place, and rest a little’ says Christ. After resting, we can re-enter the world with greater peace. After taking care of ourselves, we are better able to take care of others.

More able to see. More able to listen. More able to love.