A conversation with a friend of mine highlighted the fact that Christian teaching on introspection in prayer is pretty clear: don’t go there – stay away. My friend pointed out that many people seemed to (about this I don’t know) relish their prayer so much, asking, “Am I praying? Oh, this act of praying is good.” But it’s like staring at a kettle to get it to boil, not noticing that the fire it going out.

This way of looking at things made me think of the Gospel: “Should we take out the weeds?”

“No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” (Mt 13:29–30)

Not exactly the direct meaning of the Gospel passage. But not too far off, either. In us, there are both wheat and weeds and asking how well I’m praying it like going to check on the weeds. No, that’s no optional. Let it grow. Let them both grow. Do God’s work; set our eyes there; it is the viriditas (something like “green vigour”), in terms like Saint Hildegard’s, that really matters in the end. The virtue and the good will grow, for it has divine vitality; God will sort out the weeds. Only when they really become noticeable do we need to do anything about it. Don’t go seeking, desperately and anxiously introspecting, for trouble.

It is largely the same with the good: “Isn’t this a good prayer?” No, don’t go there! You’ll uproot the whole growing thing; and it’s only in this vital growing that the good is to be found.

In fact, this is precisely the advice of Francis de Sales, Doctor of Love. He describes people whose attention goes the wrong way,

so that instead of sweetly occupying their will in tasting the sweets of the divine presence, they employ their understanding in reasoning upon the feelings they have, like a bride who keeps her attention fixed on her wedding-ring instead of on the bridegroom who gave it to her. There is a great difference… between being occupied with God who gives us contentment and being busied with the contentment which God gives us.

People do that; what they do is far from the best:

The soul, then, to whom God gives holy, loving quiet in prayer must abstain as far as she is able from looking upon herself or her repose, which to be preserved must not be curiously observed; for he who loves it too much loses it, and the rule of loving properly is not to love anxiously.

Indeed, we’re in no danger of losing this repose by actions of mind or body. Only if these actions lack the discretion and proportion suitable to contemplation will contemplation be lost. The anxiety, which is a lack of the virtue of patience, is detrimental; it really hurts. Quiet prayer grows when not watched, for it is the fire we want to see, not to measure and delight in how hot the water has become.