Welcome to the Contemplative Corner! 

Each month CC will offer a short meditation for you to contemplate. In a fast moving world where we are bombarded with information from all sides, CC invites you to slow down and be present with the wisdom teachings of the Christian tradition and those in solidarity with these teachings from other traditions. CC also has resources for you to further your interest should you want to deepen your understanding of contemplative practices.

            You are on this web page for a reason — curiosity, intellectual interest, Divine guidance.  Now, as you read slowly, let your heart and mind be open and consent to the presence of the indwelling of the Divine, and be transformed.

 

How Do We Describe Contemplation?

To describe the experience of contemplation is, to say the least, difficult. Thomas Merton, one of the best known Christian contemplative mystics of the 20th century wrote, “Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life… contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and faith aspire. It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, or in words… It can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said… for in contemplation we know by unknowing. Or, better, we know beyond all knowing or unknowing.”

            I hope this makes things clear. But maybe not. Keep reading.

To come at an understanding of contemplation from a different direction, we can consider what contemplation is not.  This month’s CC meditation below is taken from New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.  In this book, Merton tells us that in the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that we can not know God on our own terms. This is a gift granted by Grace as we participate in a contemplative practice.  “God is the I AM before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo ‘I am.’”

[divider]This Month’s Reading[/divider]

 

What Contemplation Is Not

by Thomas Merton

            The only way to get rid of misconceptions about contemplation is to experience it. One who does not actually know, in his own life, the nature of this breakthrough and this awakening to a new level of reality cannot help being misled by most of the things that are said about it. For contemplation cannot be taught. It cannot even be clearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to symbolized.  The more objectively and scientifically one tries to analyze it, the more he empties it of its real content, for this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization. Nothing is more repellent than a pseudo-scientific definition of the contemplative experience. One reason for this is that he who attempts such a definition is temped to proceed psychologically, and this is really no adequate psychology of contemplation.  To describe “reactions” and “feelings” is to situate contemplation where it is not to be found, in the superficial consciousness where it can be observed by reflection.  But this reflection and this consciousness are precisely part of that external self which ”dies” and is cast aside like a solid garment in the genuine awakening of the contemplative.

            Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of the external self.  There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. We must remember that his superficial “I” is not our real self.  It is our “individuality” and our “empirical self” but it is not truly the hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes of God.  The “I” that works in the world, thinks about itself, observes its own reactions and talks about itself is not the true “I” that has been united to God in Christ. It is at best the vesture, the mask, the disguise of that mysterious and unknown “self” whom most of us never discover until we are dead.¹  Our external, superficial self is not eternal, not spiritual. Far from it.  This self is doomed to disappear as completely as smoke from a chimney.  It is utterly frail and evanescent. Contemplation is precisely the awareness that this “I” is really “not I” and the awakening of the unknown “I” that is beyond observation and reflection and is incapable of commenting upon itself.  It cannot even say “I” with the assurance and the impertinence of the other one, for its very nature is to be hidden, unnamed, unidentified in the society where men talk about themselves and about one another. In such a world the true “I” remains both inarticulate and invisible, because it has altogether too much to say — not one word of which is about itself.

            Nothing could be more alien to contemplation than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes.  “I think, therefore I am.”  This is the declaration of alienated beings, in exile from their own spiritual depths, compelled to seek some comfort in a proof for their own existence(!) based on the observation that they “think.”  If their thought is necessary as a medium through which they arrive at the concept of their existence, then they are in fact only moving further away from their true being.  They are reducing themselves to a concept. They are making it impossible for themselves to experience, directly and immediately the mystery of their own being.  At the same time, by also reducing God to a concept, they make it impossible for themselves to have any intuition of the divine reality which is inexpressible.  They arrive at their own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say they strive to become aware of themselves as they would of some “thing” alien to themselves.  And they prove that the “thing” exists. They convince themselves: “I am therefore some thing.”  And then they go on to convince themselves that God, the infinite, the transcendent, is also a “thing,” an “object,” like other finite and limited objects of our thought!

             Contemplation, on the contrary, is the experiential grasp of reality as subjective, not so much “mine” (which would signify “belonging to the external self”) but “myself” in existential mystery.  Contemplation does not arrive at reality after a process of deduction, but by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out into the mystery of God.

             For the contemplative there is no cogito (“I think”) and no ergo (“therefore”) but only SUM, I  Am.  Not in the sense of a futile assertion of our individuality as ultimately real, but in the humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells, with infinite sweetness and inalienable power.

            Obviously contemplation is not just the affair of a passive and quiet temperament.  It is not mere inertia, a tendency to inactivity, to psychic peace. The contemplative is not merely a person who likes to sit and think, still less one who sits around with a vacant stare.  Contemplation is much more than a thoughtful and reflective disposition. Certainly, a thoughtful and reflective disposition is nothing to be despised in our world of inanity and automatism — and it can very well dispose a man for contemplation.

            Contemplation is not prayerfulness, or a tendency to find peace and satisfaction in liturgical rites. These, too, are a great good, and they are almost necessary preparations for contemplative experience.  Contemplative intuition has nothing to do with temperament.  Though it sometimes happens that a man of quiet temperament becomes a contemplative, it may also happen that the very passivity of his character keeps him from suffering the inner struggle and the crisis through which one generally comes to a deeper spiritual awakening.

            On the other hand, it can happen that an active and passionate person awakens to contemplation, and perhaps suddenly, without too much struggle.  But it must be said, as a rule, that certain active types are not disposed to contemplation and never come to it except with great difficulty. Indeed, they ought perhaps not even to think about it or seek it, because in doing so they will tend to strain themselves and injure themselves by absurd efforts that cannot possibly make any sense or have any useful purpose.  Such people, being given to imagination, passion and active conquest, exhaust themselves in trying to attain contemplation as if it were some kind of an object, like a material fortune, or a political office, or a professorship, or a prelacy.  But contemplation can never be the object with our practical reason, but the living water of the spirit that we thirst for, like a hunted deer thirsting after a river in the wilderness.

It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God Who chooses to awaken us.

            Contemplation is not trance or ecstasy, nor the hearing of sudden unutterable words, nor the imagination of lights.  It is not the emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation.  It is not enthusiasm, the sense of being “seized” by an elemental force and swept into liberation by mystical frenzy.  These things may seem to be in some way like a contemplative awakening in so far as they spend the ordinary awareness and control exercised by our empirical self.  But they are not the word of the “deep self,” only of the emotions, of the somatic unconscious  They are a folding up of the Dionysian forces of the “id.”  Such manifestations can of course accompany a deep and genuine religious experience, but they are not what I am talking about here as contemplation.

            Nor is contemplation the gift of prophecy, nor does it imply the ability to read the secrets of persons’ hearts.  These things can sometimes go along with contemplation but they are not essential to it, and it would be erroneous to confuse them with it.

            There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation.  For instance,  the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm, in a totalitarian parade:  the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect.  The danger and the attraction of these false mystiques of Nation and of Class is precisely that they seduce and pretend to satisfy those who are no longer aware of any deep or genuine spiritual need.  The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates people who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience.  Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are “opium” for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable persons into passive instruments of the power politician.

            Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt.  On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.  For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial “doubt.”  This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious “faith” of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.  This false “faith” which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our “religion” is subjected to inexorable questioning.  This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.  Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions.  It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe — for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia.  Contemplation is no pain-killer.  What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations!  The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest.  It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply “is.”

            In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that they no longer know what God is. They may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because “God is not a what,” not a “thing.”  That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience.  It sees that there is no “what” that can be called God.  There is “no such thing” as God because God is neither a “what “ nor a “thing” but a pure “Who.”²  God is the “Thou” before whom our inmost “I” springs into awareness. God is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice echo “I am.”

FOOTNOTES

1.	“Hell” can be described as a perpetual alienation from our true being, our true self, which is in God.
2.	This should not be taken to mean that man has no valid concepts of the divine nature. Yet in contemplation abstract notions of the divine essence no longer play an important part since they are replaced by a concrete intuition, based on love, of God as a Person, an object of love, not a “nature” or a “thing” which would be the object of study or of possessive desire.

[toggler title=”Putting it Into Practice”]

Putting it Into Practice

Commit to cultivating a contemplative practice. A commitment to a practice of sitting in silence for a period of 20 minutes, once or twice a day, is good. If you need to start with 10 minutes, do that till you are able to sit in silence for 20 minutes.  It is best to learn traditional techniques of contemplation under the guidance of a teacher or experienced practitioner. Here at ASC we have a weekly meeting of Centering Prayer every Tuesday, in the Chapel from 6:45pm to 8:00pm, where we practice contemplative prayer in a group setting, followed by 10 minutes of walking in silence, ending with a short reading and discussion. No experience with meditation is necessary to participate. Yet, even just ten to twenty minutes of following the arc of your inhale and exhale while in a seated posture, with eyes closed or gazing downward, can be transformative. Click “Contemplative Practices” below to see other forms of contemplative practice here at ASC.

[/toggler] [toggler title=”Contemplative Practices” ]

What is Contemplation?

Contemplative practices facilitate and deepen our relationship with God. The more we practice and allow the transformation process to happen, the more we are able to experience the Indwelling Presence in everything we do. Contemplative practices give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear God calling us to the banquet that is our lives, as they are.

Contemplative Practices at All Saints Church

Centering Prayer

Centering prayer is a form of contemplative prayer that is rooted in the Christian tradition and the wisdom saying of Jesus, “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door and pray to God in secret. And God, who sees in secret, will repay you” (Mtt 6:6). It is a discipline of intentional silence, where the individual in trusting faith, empties their self to become entirely receptive to God’s divine love. This is a prayer of surrendering life as lived on our terms to receive the indwelling love of God given to us.  Each person chooses a word to help them keep focus and as a reminder of their intention to remain open to God’s love. This practice can be done alone or in a group. Over time, it is best to do CP for two twenty-minute periods per day.  At All Saints Church we meet Tuesday evenings in the chapel.

Meditation

Here we allow ourselves to settle in silence, to come home to the refuge of who we really are as God’s own.  We sit in fellowship in our All Saints chapel, resting in the stillness of the Spirit. We listen. We keep watch. We let the healing, transformative presence work its mystery in us.

Taizé

This form of worship includes simple songs and chants in different languages, readings, silences and prayers.  At All Saints Church we have monthly and weekly gatherings.

Labyrinth

The labyrinth is like a maze you walk through, except there is only one path from start to finish. A form of movement meditation, this is an ancient spiritual tool, steeped in spiritual mystery and practiced all over the world. Our labyrinth at All Saints Church is a replica of the medieval labyrinth of France’s Chartres Cathedral.

[/toggler] [toggler title=”Upcoming Events” ]

Mark your calendars!

November 24, at 10:00 am: Centering prayer will be an Adult Option at All Saints. 

Come and learn about this Christian meditative practice and hear testimony from people who have done this practice — you will be inspired.

November 12, at 6:45 pm: The Centering Prayer Group will be starting a new book by Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe.  We think the book will deepen and broaden the way you think of Christ and how you look at your entire life. Come and be a part of our prayer community.

[/toggler] [toggler title=”Contact Us”]

	Carol Hekman	carol@centeringprayer.org
	Richard Redman	richard@centeringprayer.org

[/toggler]

☞  See Our Archive

Union with God is not something any of us needs to acquire. It only needs to be realized. By way of intentional silence and self-surrender into the practice of contemplation the illusion of separation from God is dispelled.

Martin Laird, OSD