Campolo's Prayer Advice - Not a Good Thing

Today as I was searching for a really good testimony I had watched last month on 100 Huntley Street’s website, I noticed that they had a link promoting Tony Campolo. So I clicked on it and found a series of clips on Prayer, some of which I listened to. I was not at all shocked to discover that he was (very subtly) teaching contemplative prayer. While listening, I typed out a few partial transcripts, because sometimes it’s easy to not catch what a person is really saying unless you write it down and read it over, slowly…

In "Praying the Scriptures", Tony Campolo describes centering prayer and Lectio Divina:

“It takes me, I gotta tell you, about 10-15 minutes to become inwardly still totally focused on Jesus, driving everything else out of my mind, I say His name over and over cuz I don’t want anything to interfere with His presence.
That’s one kind of prayer, centering prayer, but there’s another kind of praying, um, it’s a strange thing, but I…do it often. I take a passage of scripture and I recite the scripture, I read it, and then I say it, and then I start meditating upon it. And then…and this is prayer… I say alright Lord, I’ve read these verses, I’ve recited them several times now, these three verses, two or three verses of scripture, now, teach me. What do you want me to learn from these verses…”

In "Patience in Prayer", he explains how to be still in prayer, and quotes Blaise Pascal who writes fire, fire, fire, after his prayer awakening experience. Then - I hoped I was imagining it, but after listening again I realized my first impression was accurate - Campolo mocked the prayer method of bringing our requests to God, comparing it to the prayers of the Pharisees! He then says that…

“we need quietly to get ourselves into that state of stillness
…it takes me 10-15 minutes to become still
…still is more than quiet…
…stillness is an inner condition of the mind and the heart and the soul in which everything else goes away…”

This is not about biblical prayer - rather, he has just described how to empty your mind and go into the inner stillness where your mind reaches an altered state of consciousness. (See
The Altered State of Silence - Promoted by Both New Agers and Christian Leaders.)

It appears that Blaise Pascal (17th century mathematician) whom Campolo quotes knew this stillness very well, and said:

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
-Blaise Pascal

Was Pascal’s fire in the frightening silence (that Campolo raves about) the same fire that so many mystics from the past have experienced? If so, this is not a good thing. In fact, this interior fire is none other than the fire of kundalini awakening...

“The Polish Catholic nun, Sister Maria Faustina also wrote of her own kundalini experiences, saying, "I was all afire, but without burning up ? I felt some kind of fire in my heart ? I was so enveloped in the great interior fire of God's love ? I feel I am all aflame. ? Today, a living flame of divine love entered my soul." These, too, she also associated with the wordlessness of silence…Fire, warmth and heat - often interpreted as mystical love, divine warmth, or incendium amoris - was also reported by Macarius, Symeon the New Theologian, Theophan the Recluse, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, John Tauler, Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Genoa, Francisco de Osuna, Margery Kempe, Marie of the Incarnation, Madame Guyon, George Fox, William Law, and even Blaise Pascal. It's such a rudimentary stage of the path that its common occurrence often goes without mention.”

-Kundalini and Samadhi Cultivation in Christianity is Accomplished Through Prayer and Practice That Achieves a State of No-Thought
http://www.meditationexpert.com/comparative-religion/
c_kundalini_experiences_of_christian_mystics.htm

We read more about Pascal’s experience of fire here:

“But Pascal was not just a mathematical genius; he was a Catholic whose faith grew in fits and starts before finally emerging in full maturity on November 23, 1654. It was on that evening that he had a "definite conversion," the result of a mystical vision that lasted two hours and which he called a "night of fire." In this powerful event, known as the "Memorial," Pascal experienced "Fire. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, The God of Jacob. Not of the philosophers and intellectuals.… The God of Jesus Christ." Not long after this mysterious encounter with God, Pascal began writing notes for what he planned to be a thorough apologetic for Christianity. However, he started to experience serious physical ailments and was often unable to sleep for long periods of time or consume much food or drink. He died at the age of thirty-nine, his body ravaged by illness.”

-Blaise Pascal
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/catholic_stories/cs0011.html

[Note: these physical ailments are symptoms of the Kundalini effect.]

Here are some more Pascal quotes:

Oh God, if there is a God, fill my soul, if I have a soul (Blaise Pascal in 1650)

Fire. God of Abraham, not of philosophers. Certainty, heartfelt joy, peace.
(Blaise Pascal in 1654, text found sewn inside his clothing after his death)

-Meditation Tips
http://www.worthabbey.net/bbc/meditate.htm

What Campolo is teaching here is not true prayer, but finding the 'stillness' where he says everything else goes away.

The last 100 Huntely Street Prayer series clip I listened to was “Positive Prayers”, where at the very end, Campolo makes this statement:

“Prayer should be a time where you come away feeling good about yourself”

Prayer is about us feeling good? Really? Isn't prayer about bringing ourselves into allignment with God's will? That doesn't always make us feel good about ourselves, but it does make us feel content to trust that God's ways are higher than ours when we pray in His will according to His Word.

Once again it's sad to see 100 Huntley Street promoting this kind of thing amidst all their other guests and testimonies. Last month it was Rob Bell they interviewed...kind of makes you wonder whose false teaching they are going to be giving air time to next.

~ ~ ~

*Further reading on true prayer:

GEMS ON PRAYER
by C H Spurgeon