Dr. Troy Caldwell, MD (Building 4th Community)
Audio:
Opening
Doug opened with a prayer invoking the One Infinite Creator, noting that grace and gratitude flow outward from the Creator’s very nature — and that our response is the Creator in us completing the circuit. He offered a particular blessing for Troy, whose presentation carries the weight of a thousand years of deep seeking, and asked that the conversation bless all who hear it, including future podcast listeners.
Presentation Overview
Troy framed the evening as “easy listening” compared to the group’s more metaphysical presentations — a practical, accessible teaching he had prepared for a spiritual formation class at his church, a fully affirming, non-traditional congregation. Building 4th served as his second audience. The central question: what does it mean to actually pray, and is there more available to us than petition?
Limiting Assumptions About Prayer
Troy opened by naming a common limitation: in much of Christian tradition, prayer is understood almost entirely as petition — crying out to God in distress. For some, it is the only form of prayer they have ever encountered. Contemplative prayer, by contrast, is less about making requests and more about being with God and allowing that presence to transform us. It addresses the soul’s deepest longing — what the Westminster Catechism articulates as the chief end of humankind: “to know God and enjoy God forever.”
The Still Point
Troy introduced the still point via T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, in which the still point is imaged as the axis of a spinning world — the place where the dance is, where past and future are gathered, where there is neither ascent nor decline. It is the inner axis around which all outer activity rotates, yet which itself remains undisturbed.
In Christian spirituality, this is the center of the soul — the place where God dwells within, accessible beneath the noise of ego-striving and outer compulsion. C.S. Lewis described encountering the still point as “being surprised by joy.”
The scriptural framing came from Isaiah 55 — the invitation to “come to the waters” and to “delight in the richest fare” — and Psalm 40’s image of waiting patiently on the Lord, who draws the seeker up from the pit and sets their feet on a rock. Troy noted the neurological correlate: moving from the sympathetic (striving) to the parasympathetic (resting) nervous system.
Recollection: The Path to the Still Point
The process of arriving at the still point is called recollection — calling all scattered thoughts and interests back into the heart’s center. Teresa of Avila defines it as “a gathered inward turning to the God who dwells within,” involving both human effort and God’s own drawing of the soul. It is “a simple, loving awareness of Christ, rather than many words.”
Troy distinguished two forms:
- Active recollection — deliberate techniques such as the Jesus Prayer, Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, the Cloud of Unknowing, dream work, and meditation on the Beatitudes.
- Passive recollection (infused contemplation) — a state where God infuses divine energies by holy initiative, a kind of wooing that grows within the practitioner over time.
The Jesus Prayer
The Jesus Prayer — Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner — is the ancient heartbeat of Eastern Christian spirituality, practiced in Greek, Russian, Syrian, and other Orthodox traditions for over 1,500 years. Troy called it the most widely practiced form of active recollection.
Technique: The prayer is repeated with each exhalation of breath. When distractions arise, the practitioner gently returns to the phrase. It can be used for 3–5 minutes to center at the start of a quiet time, for 15–20 minutes as a complete practice (comparable to clinical relaxation training), or continuously throughout the day. The classic text The Way of a Pilgrim describes a disabled Russian pilgrim who eventually prays without ceasing by synchronizing the prayer with walking.
Biblical roots: The prayer draws on the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Mark 10), who cried out “Son of David, have mercy on me!” until Jesus stopped and called him — giving rise to the tradition that when one prays this prayer, Jesus stops what he is doing and listens. It also echoes the parable of the tax collector, who would not even lift his eyes to heaven but beat his breast saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” — and went home justified.
Defining the terms:
Sinner — From the Latin sine (“without”), to sin is to be without an appropriate good; to have missed the mark. When Biblical figures call themselves sinners, they are not confessing themselves as bad people. They are naming a felt need, an incompleteness.
Mercy — From the Hebrew chesed, a rich term combining steadfast love, kindness, loyal faithfulness, and covenant fidelity. To ask for mercy is to cry out for God’s enduring, relational love to be made manifest on your behalf.
Jesus — In metaphysical understanding, certain names carry power in heavenly places. The name most closely associated with love is, for Christian practitioners, the name of greatest power.
The promise: When the prayer is practiced with consistency, it can crack open the heart, lead the soul into realms beyond words, and open the door to theosis — becoming like Christ. Divine insights and inspirations arise spontaneously once the still point is found.
Practice: Three Minutes of the Jesus Prayer
The group paused for three minutes of silent practice, during which members used the prayer phrase — or their own adapted versions — to enter stillness.
Member Reflections
Troy shared that he first encountered the Jesus Prayer not through spiritual direction but through a cardiology lecture by Dr. Herbert Benson (The Relaxation Response) at a hospital in the 1980s. Benson had researched the relaxation response and found the Jesus Prayer as effective as any Eastern technique. What Troy experienced: a quieting of the soul and a settling of the parasympathetic nervous system. Over decades it has become his primary tool for living from the still point.
One member noted that while the theological language carries baggage, the name Jesus itself remained a source of comfort — particularly in a more humanist frame. He found the most stillness at the very beginning of the practice, before thoughts resumed their momentum. Another member, who began in Catholic tradition and has since integrated Asian spirituality, found himself emotionally processing the “sinner” framing — not disagreeing with it in principle, but aware of how it has been weaponized. Troy acknowledged that the prayer has indeed been used that way, and invited adaptation.
A longtime member of the community shared that Troy had introduced her to the prayer some time ago and it has been a steady companion. She typically omits “a sinner” and finds the prayer reliably carries her to the still point, often accompanied by a gentle, beautiful energy and sometimes yielding guidance. During tonight’s practice, after reaching stillness, she found herself pouring out extended gratitude — a fresh experience that felt unexpectedly beautiful.
Another member shared that the Jesus Prayer effectively shaped her entire spiritual trajectory. She adapted it to: Jesus the Christ, have mercy on me. Open my eyes and show me the light. She no longer uses mantras in her meditation, having arrived at a wordless still point as her natural home — a drop from the head to the heart where God moves through without effort. She described seeing the effects in daily life: catching herself before an unkind word, choosing differently.
A Law of One Reframe
One member of the group offered a metaphysical translation of the Jesus Prayer that has also appeared in a blog post on cosmicchrist.net. For those whose relationship to Christian terminology is complicated, the prayer can be understood through a different lens:
- Yehoshua (Jesus) — from the Hebrew/Aramaic, carries the meaning of “the Whole incarnates as a particular, as one of you.” The infinite becomes specific — resonant with the Law of One understanding of Logos descending into individuated form.
- Christos (Christ) — “the anointed.” Combined with Yehoshua: the wholeness of the One Infinite Creator, anointed into particularity.
- Son of God — that which emanates from the One Infinite Creator; the wholeness itself.
- Have mercy on me — reframed as: allow my eyes to open to the wholeness that is present right now, that I cannot yet see. Ra’s teaching in Session 10.14 is directly relevant here: “The moment contains love. That is the lesson/goal of this illusion or density. The exercise is to consciously seek that love in awareness.” The mercy being asked for is precisely this — the capacity to perceive the love already present in the moment.
- A sinner — “I have missed the capacity to enjoy wholeness.” Not moral condemnation, but humble admission of limited perception. Ra describes the crystallized, polarized entity as the humblest of all, because it is not the entity’s will operating but the Creator’s will flowing through.
The prayer has been used for approximately 1,500 years. The accumulated spiritual energy — billions of imprints into the logos of mercy and love — means that anyone who takes it up is tapping into a vast field already opened. The personal experience offered: the prayer brings one immediately into the present moment, where one feels not condemned but “beloved and blessed inside some sort of force field of divine protection and wholeness.”
Troy’s response: “Or you can feel free to change the words to ones that work for you, but use the principles.”
Discussion: Sin, Separation, and the Paradox of Return
A member proposed a future session exploring karma, sin, guilt, and divine law — particularly how these relate to catalyst and how self-punishment becomes operative when guilt is held as real. The group embraced the idea.
Richard Rohr’s formulation was offered as a useful corrective: We are not punished for our sins — we are punished by our sins. God is not Zeus throwing lightning bolts. (Etymologically, Zeus → Deus → Dios traces a thread through which the thunder-god image has persisted in popular theology.)
Sin was reframed this way: anytime I further the ethos of the illusion of separation. Given that the underlying reality is unity and union, sin is the active reinforcement of the illusion that we are separate.
The paradox was immediately named: we have to separate in order to have the experience of God. The very veil that permits the experience of distinction also permits the experience of return — and Julian of Norwich articulated this as the mercy of God: the fall, and then the recovery of the fall, are both expressions of mercy. As one member put it: the opportunity for wholeness is always available. We can respond to any catalyst through greater separation or through greater wholeness. Both moves belong to the universe’s larger circulation.
The thread concluded simply: “You have to separate to come back.”
Ra Material Connections
Ra, Session 10.14 — “The moment contains love. That is the lesson/goal of this illusion or density. The exercise is to consciously seek that love in awareness and understanding-distortions.” This is the direct Ra corollary to the Jesus Prayer’s “have mercy on me” — both are practices of opening perception to the love and wholeness already present.
Ra, Session 49.8 — Ra describes passive meditation, contemplation, and the faculty of will called praying as distinct but complementary forms, each valuable for different purposes. The Jesus Prayer spans all three simultaneously: active recollection technique, meditative clearing, and prayer.
Ra, Session 17.20 — The forgiveness offered from the cross — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” — is specifically noted as karmically absolutive. This is the deep mechanism behind the observation that mercy always means the opportunity for wholeness remains available: in forgiveness lies the stoppage of the wheel of action.
Closing
A member closed with a prayer rooted in the Unitarian opening — “God of many names, mystery beyond all our naming” — giving thanks for the community’s gathering and the strength drawn from meeting together.
“The moment contains love. That is the lesson/goal of this illusion.” — Ra, Session 10.14
“Feel free to change the words to ones that work for you, but use the principles.” — Troy Caldwell
Building 4th Cosmic Christ 