Contemplative Prayer

An extract of this essay was recently published in To Live From The Heart, Sr. Stan's latest book.

St. Mary's Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn

The Contemplative tradition echoes back through many centuries of spiritual wisdom from the early Christian saints such as the Desert Fathers and Mothers, St Bernard, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart. It has been brought to us more recently by the writings of Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Richard Rohr, James Finley, Fr. Daniel O'Leary, Fr. James Martin, and the rich heritage of modern writers and living "saints".

According to Thomas Merton, Contemplation is “awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life.” While we associate the contemplative life more typically with cloistered monks and nuns, more and more lay people are seeking balance through a gentler, contemplative context for their ordinary lives, whether they are parents, children, teachers, students, bread-makers or quantum physics professors. Such people are seeking their truest life in the busy-ness of this modern world. Prayer itself, by creating an anchor in the Heart transforms our interior landscape to create a true and meaningful life, as exemplified by the contemplative sisters at St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey in Glencairn.

Monastic life at St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey moves each day with the rhythm of the Divine Office, where the community gathers for prayer in the Abbey Church 7 times daily, in addition to the morning celebration of Mass. The Divine Office begins with Vigils at 4.10am, and the day completes with the community’s evening gathering at Compline at around 7.55pm, closing the day once again in prayer. The Office itself consists of the prayerful singing of Psalms and hymns as well as readings from the Bible, and moments of Silence. The Office of Vigils is followed by a period of silent prayer, reading and Lectio Divina, the sacred reading of the Bible. Two periods of work take place daily except on Sundays, to allow the Abbey to run in a self-sufficient manner, including their Eucharistic Bread and Greeting Card businesses. In addition, the myriad domestic and farm maintenance activities take place each day in a spirit of devotion to God and in a context of prayer and surrender to the divine.

Throughout this rhythm, apart from the praying of the Divine Office and mass, the movement from rising in the early hours of the morning to the setting of the day after the final Office of Compline, the community remains largely silent, bringing their attention, time and time again, interiorly to God. This devotion to interiority, contemplation and prayer leads the Sisters to a deeper experience of Presence, and to being internally “united to all”, as highlighted by the Desert Father, Evagrius of Pontus. The early Office of Vigils takes place at a time when people often wake from sleep with troubles and worries. We can only too easily forget that these concerns are held daily in prayer by the Sisters and in the prayer lives of all Monastic traditions.

In speaking with one of the Sisters at St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey, it was her initial unexpected encounter with God’s Presence and Love at the age of 18 that so ingrained in her being a lifelong recognition of Presence and a unquenchable desire to remain there continually:

“I had a wonderful sense of His Presence. He showed Himself in His incredible beauty and love and I understood without a shadow of doubt that He was Love and that I was loved unconditionally and lifted up into that self-same love.”

Sr. Michele, St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn

This initial encounter confirmed a deep knowing that the meaning of her life was to devote herself to this Love, and soon thereafter she joined a religious missionary congregation. While her younger years as a nun saw her serving as a missionary nurse overseas, she eventually followed the deeper call within her to a life of contemplation, and joined the contemplative monastic life at St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn some 28 years ago.

Fr. Thomas Keating, the Cistercian monk who rekindled meditation and brought us Centering Prayer said, “the Spirit prays in us and we consent.” It is not just through the formal prayers, or the praying of the Divine Office, or even Lectio Divina that prayer happens - prayer is a way of being, it is an offering of yourself to be prayed. It was the French Cistercian Abbot, André Louf, who said that the objective of the monastic life was to awaken the heart and “make it aware of that prayer which is always going on within it. Prayer is there. It abides there.” Prayerfulness is the landscape that is continuously present in the background behind us all, monastics and lay people alike. The Heart is prayed into Being.

There is a place in every man where God touches him and where he himself is constantly in contact with God. This is simply because at every instant God holds us in being. The place where this creative contact with God takes place is deep within me. If I can reach it I can touch God.

André Louf

Following the Rule of St. Benedict, which is adopted for monastic life in most monasteries and abbeys, the working day in this School of Love flows out of its prayer life, forming a continuous flow from more meditative prayer into the active daily chores. The vast majority of work time is spent in silence, when the sisters continue to rest in Presence during their activities, and to Pray Continually (1 Thess 5:17). All the ordinary events and encounters of the day become devoted to this relationship with God, with Love. It is also a discipline of seeing every moment as a gift from God, surrendering one’s own self into the greater Self of God.

“The call and grace of monastic life is to move from the superficial self to the deeper self and to live from the heart. The call is to listen to the voice of the Lord, moment by moment, and to make choices that are motivated by a surrender to God and his will.” 

Sr. Marie, Abbess, St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn

Contemplative Prayer is also a disposition of heart, by yielding, receiving and responding to God. At times there is a felt awareness of the Presence of divine energy, and at others it is simply a patient knowing that God is present. Contemplation strengthens this awareness, and the certainty that God is everywhere, is in everyone and in everything. God is in every human activity. Presence envelops our atmosphere, our surroundings, our personalities, our work, our life experiences. Our response is borne out by following our heart-felt desires, planted there by God. By being and becoming fully ourselves, we respond.

The singing of the Psalms at the Divine Office, as well as the periods of quiet prayer and Lectio Divina, holds the sisters in touch with God and the concerns of others. Many people contact the Abbey and report answers and resolutions to their prayers, often in unexpected yet welcome ways. Through Prayer, the sisters hold the certainty that even in the midst of our experiences of difficulty, suffering, confusion and even joys and breakthroughs, we can rest assured that we are contained in the Love of God.

Inspired by the lives of the many saints and Cistercian brotherhood throughout the centuries, one sister felt her calling was deeply influenced by the example and influence of St. Joseph, in particular his qualities of unassuming protection, strength and hidden Presence. Having spent 32 years as a missionary nun, she then chose to follow the deeper yearning within for the Cistercian life.

“The Cistercian Way in its simplicity of lifestyle, in humble manual labour and highly organised life, opens my heart to discover and receive the ever loving Presence of God in the ordinary; in the obscure minute moments.”

Sr. Denise, St. Mary’s Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn

In day to day life in Glencairn, Prayer is lived out in the relationships within the Abbey community and with the wider community outside the Abbey. Harmony in the Sisters’ prayer life extends outwards to create and nourish harmonious relationships, which then feed and nourish the prayer life further into deeper contemplation. Community living fosters the development of deep compassion, forgiveness, tolerance and understanding for their own perceived weaknesses and failings, and those of others. This is humility. St. Bernard described the journey of the steps of humility as arriving at a “no-self”, which for him, was union with God in Love. His continuous advice to “return to your own heart” was to bring people home to the Heart where God dwells. A natural selflessness arises out of this place of humility, and the generosity to perform little hidden acts of kindness and help for others. Prayer transforms the heart into ever-increasing contentment, and humble generosity arises.

As a lay person I have felt very drawn to the Contemplative Way, especially by this sense of an interior prayer which is constantly going on within me, even before I do anything - I am being prayed into Being. In our busy modern lives of constant external stimulation and demands, more and more people are feeling anxious, powerless, uncertain and disillusioned with their lives. Mahatma Gandhi said that prayer is not asking, but is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. "It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."

I have always felt that the deepest aches and joys of the heart are always heard, especially those that defy words. They are utterances longing for rest. Sometimes just being heard is enough. At others, the allowing of the interior ache to exist brings untold relief. At still other times, we have to practice a kind of patient Unknowing until some sense of resolution eventually comes.

Over time, through surrender and trust, I have gained more patience and tolerance for this vulnerability and this Unknowing, and a wonder at the harmony with which each new situation becomes resolved, too often in spite of me. Such contemplative experiences have confirmed to the degree of unshakeable certainty that Life, that Love, that God is present in them.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life itself solves them for you.

Thomas Merton.

With heartfelt thanks to Sr. Marie, Sr. Michele and Sr. Denise, contributors and inspirations to this essay, and the entire community of St. Mary's Cistercian Abbey, Glencairn.

What Lies Beyond

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 

and rightdoing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

Rumi

Beyond Acceptance and Rejection,

Beyond Closeness and Distance,

Beyond Welcome and Indifference,

Beyond Openness and Reticence,

Beyond being Included and Excluded,

Beyond others being With you and Against you,

Beyond Safety and Danger,

Beyond Confidence and Insecurity,

Beyond Friendliness and Shyness,

Beyond Engaging and Withdrawal,

Beyond Self-Assuredness and Self-Consciousness,
Beyond Praise and Criticism,

Beyond Forthrightness and Caution,

Beyond Determination and Reluctance,

Beyond being Believed and being Condemned,

Beyond Belonging and being an Outsider,

Beyond Conflict and Reconciliation,

Beyond Leading and Following
Beyond being Known and being Misunderstood,

Beyond Excellence and Errors,

Beyond Success and Failure,

Beyond Clarity and Lethargy,

Beyond Progression and Regression,
Beyond Remembering and Forgetting,
Beyond Wisdom and Ignorance,
Beyond Intuition and Intellectual certainty,
Beyond Faith and Cynicism
Beyond Heart and Mind,

Beyond It All ...

I AM

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It "consents" so to speak, to His creative love.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Practice

I watch people in the world 

Throw away their lives lusting after things, 

Never able to satisfy their desires, 

Falling into deeper despair 

And torturing themselves. 

Even if they get what they want 

How long will they be able to enjoy it? 

For one heavenly pleasure 

They suffer ten torments of hell, 

Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone. 

Such people are like monkeys 

Frantically grasping for the moon in the water 

And then falling into a whirlpool. 

How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer. 

Despite myself, I fret over them all night 

And cannot staunch my flow of tears. 

Ryokan

Like one of Ryokan's monkeys, I can catch myself engaged in confused frantic actions, with the mind fixed tightly in some automatic or repetitive thinking mode. It is rarely restful, sometimes creative and excited, but all too often it returns to an ingrained habit of anxiety and restlessness. It is also the strongest reminder that I am making restlessness my practice - Oops, there I go again, worrying about whether the oven is off.... Did I manage to send that email? ... I wish my colleague and I got on better.... Is that a flu coming on?

We can find a tremendous process for transformation using a Contemplative Practice. We find a practice which brings us home. We might even come to accept that it may never be possible to prevent these momentary states of mind from arising. We are human, after all. That's nature being natural. However, we also come to know that these are passing states of mind, alluding to passing triggers and circumstances, in a world which is forever changing. The moon is not in the water. Planting ourselves here will not make us happy, safe or content.

You must rise above

the gloomy clouds

covering the mountaintop

otherwise, how will you

ever see the brightness?

Ryokan

It is in the practice of relying on our deepest Knowing, of being comfortable with Unknowing, that we come home to ourselves. We come to know we were always home all along, we just didn't recognise the house or the neighbours' cat.

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls...

Thomas Merton

When our own words fail us, when our understanding falls short, we lean on those who can remind us of Silence, Beingness, Presence, of our true nature in the depths of each moment. The continuous sinking back into Silence needs to be our primary practice.

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

Rumi

Pause For A Moment

A quiet day's pause 

Time slows to an easy pace

Nature is basking

Hurry finds no hit today

Contentedness arises

How lovely to find a long quiet day stretching out ahead, with no appointments, no deadlines, and nothing at all to be achieved. It is with a grateful heart that I find one, today.

Everyone needs a moment to immerse themselves in their own natural way. It is my constant prayer that my outside world becomes a more natural rhythm for me. In other words, it is my prayer that those internal disharmonies soften even more so that the external world then reflects this ease and harmony. Much energy is pulled from within when we find ourselves in an unnatural rhythm. It is not possible to sustain it for very long, without feeling exhausted and strained. The prayer is that we can adapt and move seamlessly from one role to the next, whatever the context, all the while following an internal natural dial. I don't think we were even meant to be anything other than this.

Our natural rhythm may be a quiet one for some, or filled with company for others. Either way, it's best to find our own balance. Some need a burst of spontaneity, of fun and laughter. Some need that elusive alone-time, others want to read, to write, to go for that long walk, to play music, to watch a movie. A nap, anyone? Do we even know how tired we actually are? Whether we have just a few precious hours, or the whole day, or joy of joys, a few days, make it a retreat for your heart, for the deep aches of the inmost self. Get re-attuned to your natural rhythm.

Enjoy these accidental mini holidays, whenever they come along. Don't fill them with emails, phone calls, TV, chores, or social media. Everything can wait. This is an outstanding opportunity to spend the day listening and seeing, rather than planning and doing. This is a chance to receive the day as it unfolds.

Intuition tells us when to move on, where to go, and what to do or say next. By anchoring our attention on what surrounds us - listening to the sounds, seeing the activity in nature, following our intuition - we are in prayer. By being present to the Presence, we strengthen our ability to lead a contented blessed life, within the natural rhythm of Life, whatever our role.

This is a sacred discipline.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was born on 31 January 1915. Worldwide seminars and gatherings are planned on this date and throughout this year to commemorate his centenary and honour his spiritual legacy.

Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France. His father was an artist from New Zealand, and his mother, also an artist and diarist, was American. He suffered much bereavement and isolation in his younger years, losing his mother to illness at age 6, and his father at age 15. His only sibling, a younger brother, died serving in the second world war when Thomas Merton was 28, shortly after joining the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky as a Trappist monk. He also had health troubles from time to time, and was once gravely ill with sepsis.

He had grown up with very little faith or religious training, though his father possessed a deep faith from his Church of England upbringing in New Zealand. Thomas Merton had always admired the ruins of the many monasteries surrounding him in rural France, and at the age of 18 was suddenly engrossed by a visit to the many churches and basilicas in Rome, and even remarked during his visit to a Trappist monastery there, that he would like to become a Trappist monk. Around this time also, he began a lifelong resonance with the poetry of William Blake.

He moved numerous times with his father in his early years - from France to New York, Bermuda, back to France, and then settled for a period in London. His writing endeavours began as a young teenager in a French boarding school where he wrote two novels, and continued once in London by becoming one of the editors of the school magazine. After his father died, he went through a wreckless phase partying and socialising, adjusting to his independent life, and travelling around Europe.

He attended Cambridge University under the support of his guardian, a friend of his father. He had very little sense of faith at this time, and even held the Catholic Church and institutional Church structures generally, in disdain. His guardian elected to send him back to New York in an effort to curb his excessive ways, and after he had finished his exams, he duly relocated back near his maternal grandparents and enrolled at Columbia University in New York.

 He became quite dedicated to his studies there, and had some prominent and inspiring lecturers, including Mark van Doren and Dan Walsh, who became lifelong friends. This was also a time when he began studying the philosophies and theologies of the world in great depth. He also began to truly explore Catholicism and mysticism in earnest during this time, and began to pray again. He was greatly impacted by the writings of Étienne Gilson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, CS Lewis, the lives of the saints, and meeting with lecturers and philosophers such as Jacques Maritain.

During this period, he followed a strong internal pull to join the Catholic Church, and in 1938 he was baptised and received Communion in Corpus Christi Church in New York, followed by his Confirmation there the following year. This strengthened his vocation and he began to speak to religious advisers about the prospect of joining an order and becoming a priest. Partly due to his wreckless phase in England, he was initially rejected by the Franciscans, causing him much grief. However, his faith and prayer life continued to deepen and with it the certainty that he wanted to become a priest.

Having completed his MA in English from Columbia University, he began teaching at St. Bonaventure University in New York. The University still holds a volume of Thomas Merton's materials. He also became briefly involved as a volunteer with Friendship House in Harlem, working with its founder, Catherine de Hueck, and was greatly affected by the poverty and conditions there. He was very impressed with the impact Friendship House was having, especially on the children.

In 1941 Thomas Merton went on an Easter retreat at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, a Trappist Cistercian Abbey, which impacted him profoundly. He felt drawn to the Silence of the contemplative order there, in spite of the severe Trappist traditions, and finally, on 10th December that year, he arrived at the Abbey and applied to join the order. After three days in the guesthouse, Thomas Merton was accepted, and so began his monastic journey and his development as one of the world's most profound thinkers and communicators of Contemplation and spiritual wisdom. He was ordained Fr. M Louie in 1949.

It is a great thing when Christ, hidden in souls ... manifests Himself unexpectedly by an unplanned expression of His presence. Then souls light up on all sides with recognition of Him and discover Him in themselves when they did not even imagine He could be anywhere.

From The Sign of Jonas

He was a prolific writer, and has written over 60 books as well as hundreds of poems, essays, journals and letters. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, became a bestseller, and inspired many others to seek out their own vocation. Other popular works include New Seeds of Contemplation, No Man is an Island, The Secular Journal, Mystics and Zen Masters, and The Way of Chuang Tzu. There have been numerous posthumous publications and it is believed there is still an enormous body of work as yet unexamined, which will hopefully be published in the future. His topics ranged from Contemplation to monastic spirituality, interdenominational faith, peace, non-violence and civil rights. I have found his most inspiring material to be his own self-reflections in his body of personal journals, and books such as The Sign of Jonas and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. He is one of the most influential Catholic writers, and his relevance and inspiration in today's world is exemplified by the publication of over 40 books about him in the past two years.

A year before he died suddenly from accidental electrocution in Bangkok where he spoke at an inter-faith conference, he set up the Merton Legacy Trust, naming Bellarmine College (now University) in Louisville, Kentucky as the repository of his material. A Thomas Merton Centre was set up there in 1969 and is now located in the Library at Bellarmine University, and houses over 50,000 items in a vast collection of his written works and memorabilia. He died on 10th December 1968, exactly 27 years to the day since he entered the Abbey at Gethsemani. At that time, he was in a profound place of good health, expansion, clarity of mind, with a tremendous contemplative heart.

... the greater grace for each individual is the one God wills for him. If God wills you to die suddenly, that is a greater grace for you than any other death, because it is the one He has chosen, by His love, with all the circumstances of your life and His glory in view.

From The Sign of Jonas

He was a true academic, with the patience and determination to write to experts in all fields across the US and the world, to get the deepest possible understanding of matters philosophical, theological, psychological, religious, and linguistic. He also had skills in photography, poetry, calligraphy, drawing, and languages, and translated many manuscripts from Latin, and French.

He corresponded, researched and examined the mystical dimensions of the other world religions, including Buddhism, Zen philosophy, Sufism and Hinduism. He wrote books on Buddhism and Taoism, and many Buddhist monks were invited to visit him at the Abbey. He corresponded in writing and became friends with DT Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. In 1968, having received permission from his Abbot, he embarked on an extensive Asian tour, including a visit to Dharamsala in India to meet the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama felt he had found in Merton what it meant to be a true Christian, and concluded that there were very few Christians to have as deep an understanding of Buddhism and Zen as Thomas Merton. He was fascinated to recognise the depth of spiritual experience present in these Eastern traditions, and equated it with his own. He could recognise and saw examples of the contemplative life in these traditions.

What characterised him most in his latter years was tenderness and holiness. He taught the novice monks, and strengthened a bond of brotherhood. He championed the saints - St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, The Cloud of Unknowing. He had been transformed internally from a wreckless youth to a contemplative, prayerful monk. He was quick to admit his failures. He felt tremendous pain for his failings, but through it showed his humanness and humility to re-affirm his faith, time and time again. He was very restless for many years, and battled with an internal pull to leave the Cistercians and join the Carthusians. He struggled constantly with the call to write, eventually realising his very Being, his very Peace depended on continuing to write. He understood that sanctity for him was precisely through the challenges and difficulties he faced with writing. He had many arguments with his early Abbot regarding a desire for his own Hermitage on the grounds of the Abbey. This was finally granted in his final years, and is now preserved for visitors to the Abbey. I think it is his failings and struggles which most inspire and help me, knowing that he too struggled with his weaknesses, knowing God's emptying process was taking place in him.

He warned against spiritual self-indulgence, quietism, and retreating from life. That is not contemplation. It is the bearing with life, the surrender to life as it is, day by day, and the courage to go through the challenges and joys, which allow ourselves to be utterly emptied out of our superficial exterior selves, and to finally rest in God, in Being, in Truth.

No life requires a more active or more intense formation, a more ruthless separation from dependence on exterior support, than the life of contemplation. 

From The Inner Experience

His was a fully questioned life. His experiential awareness brought him from a place of no faith, to a place of surrender, tenderness, clarity and ultimately to a place of deep love.

Photograph by John Howard Griffin

Withdraw yourself from all care

Withdraw Yourself

Presence speaks in many wordless ways. The events of our life as they unfold are the clearest words. Life is endlessly speaking wisdom into our hearts. Life is challenging us to allow even greater ease, even greater freedom, disguised as hardship and limitation. Once allowing is allowed, it presents our deepest places yet longing for freedom, longing to be allowed. Present all to the Presence that breathes wisdom and clarity into our being. We will know what to say when the time is right.

Withdraw yourself from all care; trust not in yourself but in Him; do not be anxious or solicitous to perform great works for Him until He leads you Himself, by obedience and love and the events which His providence directs, to undertake the works He has planned for you and by which He will use you to communicate the fire of His love to other men.

Thomas Merton

A Contemplative Practice

Contemplation is a form of prayer and inner knowing. Thomas Merton calls it the intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. Contemplation isn't something we do, but rather an explanation or description of how we are transformed from within. St. John of the Cross wrote about this inner transformation in The Dark Night of the Soul. We become emptied and purified by life's trials and experiences. It is in the daily, often unsure, living of our lives when we consent to this process of being transformed, that we can ultimately rest back into our true nature. Here, Wisdom grows, and we recognise ourselves. A daily Contemplative practice helps us surrender moment by moment to this process, and brings us back to Resting in God (St. Gregory The Great).

In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.

St. John of the Cross.

Here are some contemplative practices which help to stay anchored in the Heart:

1. Exercise every day, even if it is a short 15 minute walk. The body needs it.
2. Get out into nature, or at least let your eyes visit it. Nature knows balance.
3. Have a moment of prolonged silence. Practice meditation or meditative movement. Plan a retreat to immerse deeper into Silence.
4. Develop the ability to hear intuitively. Practice listening and receiving. Surrendering is allowing situations to be as they are. Active times move seamlessly into times of retreat and then forward again into action. Move and respond to this rhythm.
5. Let music feed your Spirit.
6. There is a season for everything. Allow things and people to ebb and flow.
7. Know yourself. Forgive your flaws and habitual reactions - they'll probably always be with you. Contemplation brings them to rest. Allow others to have their flaws.
8. Laugh, a lot.
9. Love. Someone at rest with themselves can love easily.
10. Be willing to grieve how little you know, how little power you have, how misunderstood you can be, how painful your circumstances can become. This is purification - the dark night of the soul. Grief transforms into a deep peace and inner knowing.
11. Know what anchors you and brings you inner Rest. Consent to it.
12. Read sacred enlightened texts daily. Remember and recognise Truth.
13. Consent to Spirit/God/Presence within. This is Contemplative Prayer. You are being prayed into Being.

Start thinking about a practice you can manage. Contemplation invites you to make anchoring your practice, and then do it continually. There is no success, no failure. By allowing the current moment to be as it is, Rest is welcomed. You are home.

Beyond Resilience

Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind's light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.

John O'Donohue

What we can miss most at times of turmoil is Rest, the ability to move through our daily activities with the often unappreciated comforts of familiarity and knowingness. Turmoil introduces change, doubts, insecurities, frustrations, and an unknowingness of what new direction will unfold.

At times we overreact. We grade the level of turmoil as being higher than it actually is. Even a small trigger can catch us believing for a time something hugely significant is happening. At other times, we are shocked how wide the ripples and how deep the implications of change which are thrust upon us.

I always felt resilience was one of the most enviable of human qualities, found more in some people than others. Resilience and adaptability help shorten the adjustment time in periods of change. This bounce-back-ability is often seen to be at its peak in children. They may cry in pain after a fall or a falling-out with a sibling or friend, and then quickly recover and begin a new game together. The compulsion for fun and the enjoyment of the moment or the game, or the company of their buddy, by far overrides any pain they can now hardly even remember. It seems at some point, the felt pains stack up, even for children, and a subtle strategy to avoid pain begins, and can last a lifetime if left unchallenged.

Even for those lucky adults who have a high level of resilience, there are many times when they too find themselves at a loss and struggle to adjust to what life is presenting. Grief, illness, relationships, home life, work, finances, and funnily enough, even the weather can severely affect our equilibrium. We need time to come back to Resting. (See Be Yourself Post)

I knew I was hearing Truth when I realised Contemplation concerned not so much a quick-fix solution or a dogma, as a re-directing inwards of my attention and focus. It invites the fullness and impossibility of a situation to exist, and with it, the full vulnerability of Unknowing. In time, we gain tolerance for this vulnerability and this Unknowing, and a wonder at the harmony with which each new situation becomes resolved, too often in spite of us. This takes us beyond resilience.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life itself solves them for you. Usually the solution consists in a discovery that they only existed insofar as they were inseparably connected with your own illusory exterior self. The solution of most such problems comes with the dissolution of this false self.

 Thomas Merton

Contemplation - A Definition



Nature as Contemplation

The word Contemplation holds a number of definitions in everyday usage:

• The action of looking thoughtfully at something for a long time. Synonyms: regarding, examination, inspection, observation, scrutiny.
• Deep reflective thought. Synonyms: thought, meditation, consideration, pondering, reflection.
• Religious meditation.

From a spiritual perspective, here is a helpful definition for Contemplation:

• A state of mystical awareness of God’s being (Merriam - Webster). A form of prayer or meditation in which a person seeks to pass beyond mental images and concepts to a direct experience of the divine.

It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life....It is the experience of "I Am."

 From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Today is the anniversary of Thomas Merton who died accidentally in 1968. He remains one of the foremost modern writers on Contemplation, and is considered by many to have beautifully and accurately captured in his writings the nature of Contemplation and the Contemplative Spirit of the ancient saints and mystics. He was primarily experiential in his writing, and it proves timeless in its essence:


Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of the external self.

Contemplation is not prayerfulness.
It is not the contemplation of abstract ideas.
It is not something to which we can attain alone, by intellectual effort, by performing our natural powers. It is not the fruit of our own efforts.
It is not a kind of self-hypnosis, resulting from concentration on our own inner spiritual being.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Contemplation seems to involve a continual inner "consent" whereby we offer to yield internally to the call to be transformed, to allow and trust the process of life. This inner "Yes" does not happen easily, and often goes against our instinctual nature to do it ourselves, to put into action all that we wish to exist for ourselves, to initiate change, to try and find happiness.

Most people find they reach some form of spiritual crisis or opening when they experience deep pain, or indeed deep love. Life presents us with Illness, Grief, War, Poverty, Famine, Relationships, Stress, Depression, Fatigue, the Joy in the much longed-for birth of a child, a Wedding Day, the deep companionship of a friend/partner who accompanies you through a season of change. All of these experiences can trigger deep Contemplation. Somehow, it is possible to emerge from these sometimes overwhelming seasons, utterly changed within, knowing we have been shown kindness, love, understanding, patience. Love itself accompanied us during these seasons, and we consented, albeit reluctantly initially.

Contemplative experiences, to me, are not designed to support a superficial external world, but instead pull us inside, they insist on stripping us of our self-reliance and independence, our external self, and lead us into our deepest places of weakness and vulnerability. We can even realise that we didn't volunteer for this. Yes, we may have prayed for happiness and ease in our lives, for protection for ourselves and our loved ones, for good health, for meaningful relationships, for purpose and meaning, for fulfilment, but we never imagined these might come through defeat, through utter helplessness, through despair, and even through joy, or miraculous breakthroughs.


... 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...This torment is a kind of trial by fire 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.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Intuition, and finally certainty of what is not true paves the way for the certainty of what is. In letting go, wisdom grows. The experience of the impact of divinity grows. Such contemplative experiences have confirmed to the degree of unshakeable certainty that Life, that Love, that God is present in them. These experiences build certainty that whatever comes our way each day is an external happening. We steadily become more planted inside.

For the contemplative and spiritual self, the dormant, mysterious, and hidden self that is always effaced by the activity of our exterior self does not seek fulfilment. It is content to be, and in its being it is fulfilled, because its being is rooted in God.

From: The Inner Experience

The inner self, humble and content, speaks an inner word-less language. We realise that the inner self is expanding outwards into our external experiences. It is not contrived. It is a becoming of our true nature. We realise also that those seasons are moulding and shaping us, and we know this is ultimately a good thing. What is inside, is now becoming reflected outside. Transparency and alignment build. It is not our doing. Our inner consent is a response to an inner call.

We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation

The Contemplative Way - Introduction

  

The Contemplative Way echoes back through many centuries of spiritual wisdom from the early Christian saints such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Bernard, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart and the Desert Fathers. It has been brought to us more recently by the writings of Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Richard Rohr, James Finley, Fr. Daniel O'Leary, Fr. James Martin, and the rich heritage of modern writers and living "saints".

"Contemplation is an immediate and in some sense passive intuition of the inmost reality, of our spiritual self and of God present within us," 

Thomas Merton 

Without quite knowing how to describe or put my finger on it, I have felt drawn to the Contemplative Way from my earliest memories, feeling a strong internal pull to understand my own essential nature, the nature of others and the nature of Life itself.  I am finding that it continues to dissolve all definitions and descriptions of opposites or absolutes within me. I am certain of nothing, and am softening in everything. 

While we associate the Contemplative Life more typically with cloistered monks and nuns (View the wonderful School of Love documentary on the lives of the Cistercian nuns at St. Mary's Cistercian Abbey in Glencairn), more and more people are seeking a gentler, contemplative context for their ordinary lives, whether they are parents, children, employees, or company managers. Such "Hidden Contemplatives" are finding their truest life in the thick of the busy-ness of this modern world, in the transforming of their sorrows and joys, and in their ability to come to a place of allowing and surrender within their many daily actions and activities.

We are now blessed with significant teachings, commentaries and descriptions of contemplative experiences, from the ancient mystics to our own personal experiences. I will explore the teachings and wisdom of the Christian saints and scholars, the writers and mystics, even the music and art clearly inspired by Contemplation. I will also explore the teachings of the Eastern mystics from Rumi to Lao Tzu, as deeply understood and appreciated by Thomas Merton:

"Everywhere in the East, whether in Hinduism or Buddhism, we find that deep, unutterable thirst for the rivers of Paradise. Whatever may be the philosophies and theologies behind these forms of contemplative existence, the striving is always the same: the quest for unity, a return to the inmost self united with the Absolute."

When Absolute Truth is uttered, it is received and heard by the place of Truth within us, if we are able to listen and receive from that place. I encourage all to find and anchor themselves in this place. This is the Contemplative Way.