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Spirituality
The Power of Mindfulness and Contemplation
An interview with Phileena Heuertz on her book, 'Mindful Silence.'
Posted June 15, 2020
Contemplative spirituality and practices of silence can not only help you re-center amidst stress like many are facing due to COVID-19, but they also help you see your deep convictions, motivations, and hopes.
Author, spiritual director, yoga instructor, public speaker, and retreat guide Phileena Heuertz is passionate about spirituality and making the world a better place. Drawing on 40 years of collective experience fighting global poverty and injustice with Word Made Flesh, in 2012 she and her husband Chris co-founded Gravity to support the development of consciousness in an ongoing effort to respond to the challenging social justice perils of our time. Phileena’s work includes public speaking, teaching, and writing on contemplative spirituality, facilitation of contemplative retreats, and spiritual direction.
JA: Why did you set out to write your book?
PH: After publishing my first book, Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life, I realized that my readers needed a deeper dive into contemplative spirituality. While they resonated with spiritual and psychological themes like awakening, darkness, and transformation found in Pilgrimage, they wanted to know more about contemplative spirituality and what sets it apart from other approaches to a life of faith and meaning. They desired to know more about the history, methodology, and benefits of contemplative spirituality from within the Christian tradition. Mindful Silence: The Heart of Christian Contemplation uncovers a centuries-old spiritual path that is as relevant today as ever. In a society now inundated by the mindfulness movement, Mindful Silence offers the reader insight into a tried, tested, and proven tradition of spiritual practice that leads to the transformation of soul and psyche.
JA: What is the primary takeaway you hope readers will learn from reading your book?
PH: I hope readers will walk away from reading Mindful Silence with a vision for the importance of contemplative practice like meditation. If the reader can see the value, then my hope is that they will adopt a regular practice and thereby experience the personal freedom and joy that it unlocks.
JA: What are some lessons from your book that can help people live more resiliently?
PH: Resiliency is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; it has an elastic quality to it. To be resilient is to be able to be stretched and bounce back. Lacking resiliency creates and prolongs suffering.
Mindful Silence emphasizes that our suffering originates from our over-attachment to things we cannot control. Drawing from my beloved teacher Thomas Keating’s (O.C.S.O.) work, I share that our human condition seeks happiness through three primary programs: esteem, security, and power. This is our fundamental problem because life will inevitably come up short on delivering us these resources we desire. Essentially, if our happiness is dependent on having enough affection, power, or security from the outside world, we will discover we never have enough. Living with such dependency leads only where all dependencies lead—disappointment and resentment. It’s this kind of internal deficit that makes it so difficult to bounce back from life’s blows.
However, contemplative spirituality helps us uncover the realization that we are eternally and forever and always loved, safe, and have no need to fear—no matter what. Regardless of what our external circumstances claim. Waking up to resources within like love, security, and courage enables us to not only resiliently overcome difficulties but find meaning in those very challenges.
JA: What are some insights from your book that help readers support a friend or loved one?
PH: Contemplative spirituality awakens us to the unconscious motivations that drive how we relate to our world. Spiritual practice helps us see our otherwise unconscious compulsions for esteem, security, and power. Unknowingly, we often attempt to give support to our loved ones out of these hidden motivations to get reassurance that we are loved, safe, and don’t need to be afraid. While somewhat innocent, when motivated by these secret self-interested desires, we are unable to be a channel of the fullness of support we’re actually desiring to give and that which our beloved needs. Waking up with the help of mindful spiritual practice frees us to be of genuine, selfless, effective service to one another.
JA: What are you currently working on these days?
PH: These days I’m working on healing from a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). “Mild” and “traumatic” don’t really seem to go together, but alas, this is the diagnosis. This kind of “work” is not what I set out to do this season prior to falling on the winter ice and landing on the back of my head. And yet, it may prove to be some of the most important work of my life. I am forced to be a willing or unwilling servant to my body’s and brain’s very real limitations. It’s easy to grow frustrated with my inabilities, but when I remember how very hard my brain is working to repair and heal, I find myself in awe of this … of this moment … and this miracle of life at work. Then, it becomes a little more inviting to discern how to cooperate with this flow of life—free of judging whether this injury is bad or a tragedy or my current abilities are “limited” or “not enough.” In this forced humiliation, I am being schooled on how to flow with rather than against what is. And here, right here, right now, discover so many miraculous moments of progress in healing, kindness of strangers, and generosity of friends. Underneath it all, I’m discovering more love at work in the universe and in me, and I find the ground beneath me to be holy and trustworthy once again.
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