An
article a week for spiritual growth
by Fr. Thomas Keating
Dimensions of Contemplative Prayer
Contemplative prayer is the world in which
God can do anything. To move into that realm is the greatest adventure. It is to
be open to the Infinite and hence to infinite possibilities. Our private, self
made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us and the
impossible becomes an everyday experience. Yet the world that prayer reveals is
barely noticeable in the ordinary course of events.
Christian life and growth are founded on
faith in our own basic goodness, in the being that God has given us with its
transcendent potential. This gift of being is our true Self. Through our consent
by faith, Christ is born in us and He and our true Self become one. Our
awakening to the presence and action of the Spirit is the unfolding of Christ's
resurrection in us.
All true prayer is based on the conviction
of the presence of the Spirit in us and of his unfailing and continual
inspiration. Every prayer in this sense is prayer in the Spirit. Still,
it seems more accurate to reserve the term prayer in the Spirit, for that prayer
in which the inspiration of the Spirit is given directly to our spirit without
the intermediary of our own reflections or acts of will. In other words, the
Spirit prays in us and we consent. The traditional term for this kind of prayer
is contemplation.
We should distinguish contemplative
prayer from contemplative life. The former is an experience or series of
experiences leading to the abiding state of union with God. The term contemplative
life should be reserved for the abiding state of divine union itself, in
which one is moved both in prayer and in action by the Spirit.
The root of prayer is interior silence. We may think of prayer
as thoughts or feelings expressed in words, but this is only one of its forms.
"Prayer," according to Evagrius, "is the laying aside of
thoughts".1 This
definition presupposes that there are thoughts. Contemplative prayer is not so
much the absence of thoughts as detachment from them. It is the opening of mind
and heart, body and emotions--our whole being--to God, the Ultimate Mystery,
beyond words, thoughts and emotions-- beyond, in other words, the psychological
content of the present moment. We do not deny or repress what is in our
consciousness. We simply accept the fact of whatever is there and go beyond it,
not by effort, but by letting go of whatever is there.
According to the Baltimore catechism,
"Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God." In using this
ancient formula it is important to keep in mind that it is not we who do
the lifting. In every kind of prayer the raising of the mind and heart to God
can be the work only of the Spirit. In prayer inspired by the Spirit we let
ourselves flow with the lifting movement and drop all reflection. Reflection is
an important preliminary to prayer, but it is not prayer. Prayer is not only the
offering of interior acts to God: it is the offering of ourselves, of who and
what we are.
The action of the Spirit might be compared
to a skillful nurse teaching the adopted children of a wealthy household how to
behave in their new home. Like waifs pulled in off the street and seated at the
banquet table in the elegant dining hall, we require a lot of time to learn and
practice the proper table manners. Because of our earthy background, we tend to
put our muddy feet on the table, break the chinaware and spill the soup in our
laps. To assimilate the values of our new home, profound changes in our
attitudes and behavioral patterns are required. For this reason we may
experience our nurse as constraining in the beginning and heavy on the
"don'ts." And yet she always seems to be encouraging in the midst of
correction; never condemnatory, never judgmental, always inviting us to
amendment of life. The practice of contemplative prayer is an education imparted
by the Spirit.
Our participation in this educational
process is what Christian tradition calls self-denial. Jesus said, "Unless
you deny your inmost self and take up the cross, you cannot be my
disciple." (Mark 8:34) Denial of our inmost self includes detachment
from the habitual functioning of our intellect and will, which are our inmost
faculties. This may require letting go not only of ordinary thoughts during
prayer, but also of our most devout reflections and aspirations insofar as we
treat them as indispensable means of going to God.
The nature of the human mind is to simplify
what it thinks about. Thus a single thought can sum up an immense wealth of
reflection. The thought itself becomes a presence, an act of attention
rather than of understanding. If we apply this principle to the person of Jesus,
we can see that this kind of attention does not in any way exclude his humanity
Our attention is simply given to the presence of Jesus, the divine-human
being, without adverting to any particular detail of his person.
Contemplative prayer is part of a dynamic
process that evolves through personal relationship rather than by strategy. At
the same time a reasonable amount of organization in one's prayer and lifestyle
advances the process, just as wholesome food and exercise help youngsters grow
to physical maturity.
One of the first effects of contemplative
prayer is the release of the energies of the unconscious. This process gives
rise to two different psychological states: the experience of personal
development in the form of spiritual consolation, charismatic gifts or psychic
powers; and the experience of human weakness through humiliating self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge is the traditional term for the coming to consciousness of the
dark side of one's personality. The release of these two kinds of unconscious
energies needs to be safeguarded by well-established habits of dedication to God
and concern for others. Otherwise, if one enjoys some form of spiritual
consolation or development one may inflate with pride; or if one feels crushed
by the realization of one's spiritual impoverishment, one may collapse into
discouragement or even despair. The cultivation of habits of dedication to God
and of service to others is the indispensable means of stabilizing the mind in
the face of emotionally charged thoughts, whether of self exaltation or of
self-depreciation.
Dedication to God is developed by
commitment to one's spiritual practices for God's sake. Service to others is the
outgoing movement of the heart prompted by compassion. It neutralizes the
deep-rooted tendency to become preoccupied with our own spiritual journey and
how we are doing. The habit of service to others is developed by trying to
please God in what we do and by exercising compassion for others, beginning with
those with whom we live. To accept everyone unconditionally is to fulfill the
commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself : (Mark 12:31) It is a
practical way of bearing one another's burdens. (Galatians 6:2) Refusing to
judge even in the face of persecution is to fulfill the commandment to love one
another "as I have loved you" (John 13:34) and to lay down one s life
for one's friends. (John 15:13)
Habits of dedication to God and service to
others form the two sides of a channel through which the energies of the
unconscious can be released without submerging the psyche in the floodwaters of
chaotic emotions. On the contrary, when these energies flow in orderly fashion
between the banks of dedication and service, they will raise us to higher levels
of spiritual perception, understanding, and selfless love.
These two stabilizing dispositions prepare
the nervous system and body to receive the purifying and sanctifying light of
the Spirit. They enable us to discern thoughts and emotions as they arise before
they reach the stage of attachment or quasi-compulsion. As independence from the
thralldom of habitual thoughts and desires grows, we are able to enter into
contemplative prayer with a quiet mind.
Detachment is the goal of self-denial. It
is the nonpossessive attitude toward all of reality, the disposition that
strikes at the root of the false self system. The false self is a monumental
illusion, a load of habitual thinking patterns and emotional routines that are
stored in the brain and nervous system. Like programs in a computer, they tend
to reactivate every time a particular life situation pushes the appropriate
button. The false self even insinuates that its subtle purposes are religiously
motivated. Genuine religious attitudes come from God, not from the false self.
By means of contemplative prayer the Spirit heals the roots of self-centeredness
and becomes the source of our conscious activity. To act spontaneously under the
Spirit's influence rather than under the influence of the false self, the
emotional programming of the past has to be erased and replaced. The practice
of virtue is the traditional term for erasing the old programs and writing
new programs based on the values of the Gospel.
Jesus in His divinity is the source of
contemplation. When the presence of the Divine is experienced as overwhelming,
we are inwardly compelled to contemplate. Such was the situation of the apostles
on Mount Tabor when they witnessed the glory of God shining through the humanity
of Jesus. They fell on their faces. Our experiences of God, however, are not God
as He is in Himself. God as He is in Himself cannot be experienced empirically,
conceptually or spiritually. He is beyond experiences of any kind. This does not
mean that He is not in sacred experiences, but that He transcends
them. To put this insight in another way, He leads us by means of sacred
experiences to the experience of emptiness. Anything that we perceive of God can
only be a radiance of His presence and not God as He is Himself. When the divine
light strikes the human mind, it breaks down into many aspects just as a ray of
ordinary light, when it strikes a prism, breaks down into the varied colors of
the spectrum. There is nothing wrong with distinguishing different aspects of
the Ultimate Mystery, but it would be a mistake to identify them with the
inaccessible Light. The attraction to let go of spiritual consolation in order
to let God act with complete freedom is the persistent attraction of the Spirit.
The more one lets go, the stronger the presence of the Spirit becomes. The
Ultimate Mystery becomes the Ultimate Presence.
The Spirit speaks to our conscience through
scripture and through the events of daily life. Reflection on these two sources
of personal encounter and the dismantling of the emotional programming of the
past prepare the psyche to listen at more refined levels of attention. The
Spirit then begins to address our conscience from that deep source within us
which is our true Self. This is contemplation properly so-called.
This pattern is exemplified in the
Transfiguration. Jesus took with him the three disciples who were best prepared
to receive the grace of contemplation; that is, the ones who had made the most
headway in changing their hearts. God approached them through their senses by
means of the vision on the mountain. At first they were overawed and delighted.
Peter wanted to remain there forever. Suddenly a cloud covered them, hiding the
vision and leaving their senses empty and quiet, yet attentive and alert. The
gesture of falling on their faces accurately expressed their state of mind. It
was a posture of adoration, gratitude, and love all rolled into one. The voice
from heaven awakened their consciousness to the presence of the Spirit, who had
always been speaking within them, but whom until then they had never been able
to hear. Their interior emptiness was filled with the luminous presence of the
divine. At Jesus' touch they returned to their ordinary perceptions and saw him
as he was before but with the transformed consciousness of faith. They no longer
saw him as a mere human being. Their receptive and active faculties had been
unified by the Spirit; the interior and exterior word of God had become one. For
those who have attained this consciousness, daily life is a continual and
increasing revelation of God. The words they hear in scripture and in the
liturgy confirm what they have learned through the prayer that is contemplation.
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1. Evagrius, De Oratione 70
(PG 70, 1181C).
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An excerpt from the book Open Mind, Open Heart by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is
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