Contemplative Prayer

The Concept

“For God alone my soul waits in silence.” (Ps. 52:1)  

 

Contemplative Prayer is silence before God, a respite from our addiction to words. Foster comments that our modern society is one that has more active communication but says less than any other society in history. With Contemplative Prayer, our own voice recedes, and we can enter an experience of the heart not the head, a focused and devoted attentiveness to being with God.

The experience and revelation of the Father gained through this prayer is far beyond the scope of human words. Thomas Merton describes, “God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons.”

Comfortable silence with God, as in any relationship, grows intimacy. Without words to cloak the interaction, the experience is pure and unadorned.

Yet Foster cautions that this is an “advanced” prayer, one that shouldn't be undertaken before maturity in prayer life is reached. He says it should only be exercised by those with “flexed spiritual muscles” who “know something about the spiritual landscape” because not all spiritual guidance is divine guidance. Though I appreciate the advice to pray for protection, to pray for divine guidance, before entering an attitude of contemplation, I don't think there is any need for “advanced” prayer techniques here. I think it calls for a pure heart, a heart solely seeking God, no matter the size of the spiritual muscles. Sometimes big muscles accompany big egos, and ego is the most dangerous thing on the spiritual landscape.

The steps given for this kind of prayer are :

1. recollection: releasing (not suppressing) all competing distractions until you are truly present where you are. This is difficult, but take encouragement: “If at first we achieve no more than the understanding of how much we lack in inner unity, something will have been gained, for in some way we will have made contact with that center which knows no distraction.” (Romano Guardini)
2. inner attentiveness: an expectant silence, utterly responsive to the Lord. The long-term goal is to bring this posture of listening naturally into the course of everyday experience.
3. spiritual ecstasy: this is the devastatingly beautiful revelation of God that transforms our hearts. It's nothing we can do, but a work God does upon us. Juliana of Norwich writes, “The whole reason why we pray is to be united into the vision and contemplation of him to whom we pray.” Madame Guyon explains, “This cannot be brought about merely by your own experience. Meditation will not bring divine union; neither will love, nor worship, nor your devotion, nor your sacrifice. … Eventually it will take an act of God to make union a reality.”

The Experience
This is not a prayer that you step into and master immediately. I quickly discovered in myself the pitfalls of pride and selfish aspiration, (“How cool it will be for my blog if I have a major contemplative success!”)

I also became aware of the weakness of the flesh, so bored by the absence of thought and language that it tends to put itself into sleep mode. I found it helpful to abandon the eastern meditation techniques of “emptying the mind” and focus instead upon release: acknowledge the thought then turn it loose because it's value is nothing compared with the desire to experience the Father. After several assessments of value like this, no thought stands for long. Still, it will take many attempts to silence this inner voice constantly playing to my mind's desire for entertainment.

I know from my meager attempts, that the key to this is “more of you and less of me.” In the words of John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). I can think of nothing greater than scraping away all my outer layers – my words, my thoughts, my aspirations – and finding at the center only Christ. I know he is there now, but it may take stilling those outer layers to fully experience the truth of it in this lifetime.

As a huge fan of Martin Buber, this exercise made me want to re-read I and Thou because I think the genuine experience of the Thou is ultimately what Contemplative Prayer is about.