Hello August
Thank you for the question. Contemplative prayer is not a feeling, emotion or anything all that “sensual” to be honest. It can and usually is associated with feelings of inner peace and joy, although in the highest phases St. John of the Cross states that is more like “nada”, or “nothing”.
This is a special form of prayer which is non-discursive and consists of a “simple” gaze upon God without images, ideas or representations distracting one from the focus.
As Dom Cuthbert Butler explained in 1922, "
The preliminary condition for contemplation is that the mind has been through a process of spiritual training, whereby it is able to empty itself of images and sense perceptions".
If we’re going to be technical (and contemplation would be slightly different for every person based upon temperament and the will of God) contemplation is broadly divided up into acquired contemplation and infused contemplation and subdivided again within these broad categories into: (1) vocal prayer, (2) meditation, (3) affective prayer, (4) prayer of simplicity, (5) infused contemplation, (6) prayer of quiet, (7) prayer of union, (8) prayer of conforming union, and (9) prayer of transforming union.
Acquired contemplation begins with “affective prayer” and ends at the “infused” stage (5).
Acquired contemplation is the first “part” of the prayer, which one would naturally enter into following meditation (which in Catholicism refers to discursive prayer). It can be attained through human effort aided by grace. Infused contemplation, is the most perfect and it cannot be attained by human effort, rather only God when He finds us ready (normally through meditation and acquired contemplation). He then divests our reasoning faculties of their ability to function for a period of time and gives us an awareness of His being which reason and intellect could never fathom, and so we come into the “imageless Nudity” of the divine being by our will and love alone. Though we cannot attain it through effort, only those who have first attained acquired contemplation can usually ascend to this pure state of prayer, like the wise virgins who kept their lamps lit in the Gospel parable.
Acquired contemplation was described by Dom Cuthbert Butler:
One sets oneself to pray, say for the regulation half-hour; empties the mind of all images, ideas, concepts this is commonly done without much difficulty; fixes the soul In loving attention on God, without express or distinct idea of Him, beyond the vague incomprehensible idea of His Godhead; makes no particular acts, but a general actuation of love, without sensible devotion or emotional feeling: a sort of blind and dumb act
of the "will or of the soul itself. This lasts a few minutes, then fades away, and either a blank or distractions supervene: when recognized, the will again fixes the mind in loving attention’ for a time. The period of prayer is thus passed in such alternations, a few minutes each, the bouts of loving attention being, in favourable conditions, more prolonged than the bouts of distraction.
An excellent way to open oneself up to contemplative prayer, if one feels called too it, is through
Lectio Divina. It is an ancient monastic contemplative practice (which the church encourages laity to utilize as well) leading to the fullness of the mystical life.
The early medieval monk Guigo II describes the various level of prayer involved in
Lectio Divina as follows:
“…Reading, meditation, prayer, [and] contemplation: lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio. Reading is careful study of [Sacred] Scripture, with the soul’s [whole] attention: Meditation is the studious action of the mind to investigate hidden truth, led by one’s own reason. Prayer is the heart’s devoted attending to God, so that evil may be removed and good may be obtained. Contemplation is the mind suspended -somehow elevated above itself - in God so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness. Reading accords with exercise of the outward [senses]; meditation accords with interior understanding; prayer accords with desire; contemplation is above all senses…”
***- Guigo II (1140-1193), The Ladder of Monks ***
Bishop Hedley of Newport provides us with a very precise description of contemplation, writing in 1876 in the Dublin Review:
"…1. It dispenses, to a very great extent, with the use of sensible
images or pictures in the mind. Instead of "pictures’, the soul seems
overshadowed by a spreading, silent sense as of something near at
hand, vague in outline, colourless and dim; such a sense as might
fall upon one who watches intently some dark curtain which hides
an awful presence.
- It dispenses with reasoning, or what is called ‘discourse’. In
the state of prayer which is called contemplation, the mind remains
steadfast and fixed in one simple gaze.
- This intuition is accompanied by ardent love. An intuition
by which we gaze upon our last end and only good, not in any
abstract way,’ but as, here and now, our complete joy and perfect
bliss, means an intuition of love.
- Whilst contemplation lasts, the soul does not perceive what
she is doing. She is so engaged with God that she does not turn in
reflection upon herself. She does not need to invent motives; she
has attained, for a time, the object and end of all motive. Hence
the dictum of the desert, that he who was conscious he was praying,
was not yet arrived at perfect prayer. Contemplation is ‘perfect’ prayer,
comparatively with the states that precede it; but in itself it is merely the
first resting-place of a mountain region in which height reaches beyond
height until human thought refuses to follow…"
- Bishop Hedley of Newport, Dublin Review, 1876
