Paths to Contemplation - Post 10

What is contemplative prayer?

Contemplative prayer is a quiet resting in God.  It might, therefore, be considered practice for heaven when we will experience God directly.

Contemplative prayer is “quiet” because in this prayer we do not try to talk to God or otherwise communicate our thoughts or desires to God.  Contemplative prayer is a prayer of silence.

Contemplative prayer is “resting” because in this prayer we seek to avoid action rather than foster it.  We are not only silent, but we do not engage in bodily motion, such as dance, to express ourselves to God, nor do we deliberately engage in any activity, even thought.  Contemplative prayer is a prayer of “being,” rather than doing.

And, although any prayer, by definition, is directed toward God,  in contemplative prayer we are silent and relaxed so we are trying to be more in God and with God than simply pointed toward God or directing our activity to God.  In contemplative prayer we are simply there for God.

And how will God respond to an effort to quietly rest in God?  We cannot say.  Perhaps it will seem that God is not responding in any way whatsoever.  Our minds may be flooded with distracting thoughts, such as work we have to get done by the end of the day, or the noise of children playing outside.  As we will see later, there are ways to try to minimize such distractions.  Nevertheless, contemplative prayer is not necessarily for everyone, or even for any particular individual at all times.  

In contemplative prayer we are trying, in essence, to create a opening within our minds and souls through which God can enter; or, we might think of this prayer as emptying part of ourselves so that God can fill the space created.  Through contemplative prayer, we are attempting to experience God in a special way.

But God transcends natural human experience; that is, we can experience God only through God’s freely granting us this experience.  We cannot know God directly through our own efforts no matter what spiritual or ascetic practices we engage in.  Only God can bring us to know God.  Thus, in some sense, the attempts at contemplative prayer that we ourselves undertake are petitions to God to grant us the knowledge of God, the foretaste of heaven we referred to earlier.  Thus, there are actually two forms of contemplative prayer: active contemplation that we initiate, and passive contemplation that comes from God alone.

Because God cannot be known through our natural mental capabilities, we must conclude that if we do have an authentic experience of God, we cannot communicate that experience to anyone else through mental images, such as verbal descriptions or drawings or music.   But we do think about God, and we do talk about God with others, and we do read about God in books.  Consequently, we form images of what God is like, or what characteristics God must have, even though we have to admit that God lies altogether beyond such limited concepts.

In worship, art, poetry and music we may be more successful in overcoming the limits of our natural inability to know God.  But although poetry and art can often convey deeper truths than can a more “realistic” account, they are still limited because our minds, however stretched, cannot reach all the way to God.  Tradition and experience indicate that as we seek a deeper and deeper understanding of God, a God who surpasses all understanding, we will find ourselves on one of two paths.