Contemplativeprayer.net

[JimR-OCDS]

Yes, it seems to me that Brother Lawrence is the key to finding common ground here . . . in fact, I was going to bring him up myself If this is how one “centers” then I’m in absolute agreement with it.

Brother Lawrence’s way was essentially “active” – the continual turning our minds to the Lord in silent, wordless, interior adoration throughout all our daily activities. This is a way of “active” recollection ALL should strive for. And I can see how some might see the way of Brother Lawrence practiced throughout the day as a natural feeder to CP practiced in the context of mental prayer. Afterall, he did say the less distracted from God we are throughout the day, the less distracted we’ll likely be during our mental prayer.

But is this way of Br. Lawrence really what Fr. Keating teaches? I just don’t know . . . maybe, Jim, you have an opinion on that.

I have not read Br Lawrence, but what you are saying about, is what Fr Keating teaches.

Brother Lawrence saw no difference between his daily activity and mental prayer . . . it was all one and the same: continual interior adoration whether one is active (i.e. doing things) or passive (in contemplative prayer). He is, to me, the epitome of what St. Teresa had in mind of the soul who has been brought to the 7th dwelling — a total transformation in Christ as St. Paul says, “Not I, but Christ who lives in me.”

This is the result of infused contemplation. Even the dirt in the earth contains the pulse of God, for those who reach it.

However, the whole concept of “Sit down for 20 minutes, close one’s eyes, gently repeating the sacred word hoping for interior stillness” just seems to imply a seperation of prayer from activity un-natural to Brother Lawrence’s way of thinking. Perhaps others might think differently.

The repitition of the sacred prayer word does nothing other than quiet our physical and mental state in order to be more open to prayer. The prayer word will gently end as Christ draws us to himself. The only importance the prayer word has from that moment is when we become aware that we’ve begun to think of thoughts outside of prayer.
BTW, 20 minutes is really more of a guideline. Father Keating even says that some people are drawn into quiet with in the first couple minutes. If they only end up praying for 15 minutes, they’ve gotten more than some one who may have spent 45 minutes and only had 2 minutes of quiet. My self, between 15 and 20 minutes seems to be about how long the Lord keeps me.

Jim and Joysong, I think this topic could become very fruitful. I look forward to your thoughts.

I agree, praise God!

Jim

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Yes, it seems to me that Brother Lawrence is the key to finding common ground here . . . in fact, I was going to bring him up myself If this is how one “centers” then I’m in absolute agreement with it.

Brother Lawrence’s way was essentially “active” – the continual turning our minds to the Lord in silent, wordless, interior adoration throughout all our daily activities. This is a way of “active” recollection ALL should strive for. And I can see how some might see the way of Brother Lawrence practiced throughout the day as a natural feeder to CP practiced in the context of mental prayer. Afterall, he did say the less distracted from God we are throughout the day, the less distracted we’ll likely be during our mental prayer.

But is this way of Br. Lawrence really what Fr. Keating teaches? I just don’t know . . . maybe, Jim, you have an opinion on that.

I have not read Br Lawrence, but what you are saying about, is what Fr Keating teaches.

Brother Lawrence saw no difference between his daily activity and mental prayer . . . it was all one and the same: continual interior adoration whether one is active (i.e. doing things) or passive (in contemplative prayer). He is, to me, the epitome of what St. Teresa had in mind of the soul who has been brought to the 7th dwelling — a total transformation in Christ as St. Paul says, “Not I, but Christ who lives in me.”

This is the result of infused contemplation. Even the dirt in the earth contains the pulse of God, for those who reach it.

However, the whole concept of “Sit down for 20 minutes, close one’s eyes, gently repeating the sacred word hoping for interior stillness” just seems to imply a seperation of prayer from activity un-natural to Brother Lawrence’s way of thinking. Perhaps others might think differently.

The repitition of the sacred prayer word does nothing other than quiet our physical and mental state in order to be more open to prayer. The prayer word will gently end as Christ draws us to himself. The only importance the prayer word has from that moment is when we become aware that we’ve begun to think of thoughts outside of prayer.
BTW, 20 minutes is really more of a guideline. Father Keating even says that some people are drawn into quiet with in the first couple minutes. If they only end up praying for 15 minutes, they’ve gotten more than some one who may have spent 45 minutes and only had 2 minutes of quiet. My self, between 15 and 20 minutes seems to be about how long the Lord keeps me.

Jim and Joysong, I think this topic could become very fruitful. I look forward to your thoughts.

I agree, praise God!

Jim

 

[blessedstar]

All of this is wonderful intellectual thinking and there is nothing wrong with that, but I find it is all much simpler than humans try and make it.

It isn’t necessary to know a great deal, but for prayer to develop it is necessary to love much as St Teresa has said.

God doesn’t ask us to make great intellectual analysis of prayer and St Teresa didn’t do that, she merely recorded what she experienced of the transforming union of the Love of God. She could not have arrived at these writings by her own doing nor could she have invented methods to arrive here.

God does not ask for us to use methods, it is indeed contrary to the trusting child He asks us to be. When the Lord Jesus was asked how we should pray, He gave us the Lord’s Prayer which starts with ‘Our Father’ that indicates the attitude of soul we are to have and confirms we are indeed children. This short prayer of Jesus’ reminds us to pray for everything we need physically and spiritually. There is nothing to indicate we need make great plans to achieve what the Father already desires to give us, we need simply ask and remain obedient to the Gospel, submissive and persevering in love.

Jesus also states we are to go ‘into our private room’. Is this a method? No. He calls us to solitude and silence and here we have a willing heart to conduct that ‘conversation between friends’.

No-one can enter into the centre of the soul unless the Lord invite them to do so because as I have previously said , this is the Lord’s abode. If the Lord invites them He does so by His creating and so renders all methods useless not to mention pointless. What I am saying is, no method is needed because prayer as we often forget is the Lord’s work and He merely asks for consent of our will. It is only the Lord Who can suspend thought, the intellect and the imagination to grant this contemplation. No amount of effort on the human part will bring this into effect, it is akin to shovelling snow uphill in an avalanche!

What I have often found is that until a soul experiences what St Teresa and St John have written about it is essentially difficult to apply it effectively to their prayer life or to anyone else’s. Their writings can easily become distorted and difficult to assess accurately. In hindsight of her prayer life St Teresa could see perfectly the work of the Lord in her soul, this was a grace of God that she even perfectly understood it. She saw every nuance of His Divine work and touches that shaped her soul for her Spouse and saw sometimes by her own error and by observing others where souls could deviate from the path the Lord was leading them on and included in her writings warnings against these. It is good to understand our prayer lives, but it is not good to attempt to direct it by that I mean intend to usurp the Creative force of God by leading the prayer instead of being led like a little child.

There is a great difference between the prayer life led by the Lord and the prayer life that desires to take the Kingdom of Heaven by force.

Simplicity of heart is the greatest thing upon the earth because this simplicity leads to humility.

 

[blessedstar]

Dave.

Sorry, blessedstar . . . I didn’t mean to jump in on a question directed to you!!

That’s prefectly alright DBT no apology needed. You have answered for me on more than one occassion better than I could have answered for myself. It brings new meaning to the words of our Lord, ‘Do not prepare your own defence’

I am O’Carm and we did have a period of time where formation was conducted from books mailed to us from the USA and as I said they made heavy use of Merton and Pennington. They mysteriously vanished without any real explanation. Now there is no mention of CP and it’s practise is no longer promoted in our communities here. It doesn’t take a genius to work out it was due to CP they were dropped. We now use our own material for formation that is produced at Aylesford.

 

[DBT]

However, the whole concept of “Sit down for 20 minutes, close one’s eyes, gently repeating the sacred word hoping for interior stillness” just seems to imply a seperation of prayer from activity un-natural to Brother Lawrence’s way of thinking.

Ok, here’s a lesson in humility . . . quoting oneself

While I can perhaps “see” Brother Lawrence praying this way while in mental prayer, it is, I believe, the fruit of the constant attention he paid the Lord at all other times.

It’s the “all other times” I don’t see in Fr. Keatings writings and what I mean by “seperation” from Br. Lawrence’s point of view.

If one just goes about one’s business each day without continually turning to the Lord in the midst of one’s activity, then I think centering in the context of Fr. Keating would be a pretty “harsh” transition from activity to prayer.

Jim, does this make sense??

Dave

 

[Joysong]

Dear Blessed Star,

I get the feeling we just went two steps forward, and three steps back after reading your post.

St. Teresa was first a prioress, and then a Founder who formed other prioresses. Many asked her to write these instructions on prayer so they could teach her spiritual daughters. It is not a good idea to dismiss her teachings and just advise others to say the Our Father in one’s private room. Her lessons are extremely profitable for one wanting to grow in prayer. I often wish I could impart her teaching on recollection to many who rattle off vocal prayers, when it is obvious they are not speaking to His Majesty, but doing it by memorization.

And in case you missed my post above, her teaching on recollection is called a “method” that one can acquire with practice. You are a Carmelite and are unaware of this?

 

[blessedstar]

Dear Blessed Star,

I get the feeling we just went two steps forward, and three steps back after reading your post.

St. Teresa was first a prioress, and then a Founder who formed other prioresses. Many asked her to write these instructions on prayer so they could teach her spiritual daughters. It is not a good idea to dismiss her teachings and just advise others to say the Our Father in one’s private room. Her lessons are extremely profitable for one wanting to grow in prayer. I often wish I could impart her teaching on recollection to many who rattle off vocal prayers, when it is obvious they are not speaking to His Majesty, but doing it by memorization.

And in case you missed my post above, her teaching on recollection is called a “method” that one can acquire with practice. You are a Carmelite and are unaware of this?

I am sure I didn’t advise to dismiss St Teresa’s writings! I said many intepret them wrongly which is easily done if someone has not experienced what she has written about.

I spoke of the Lord’s Prayer to try and describe the ‘attitude of heart’ we as mere children should strive to possess.

If a soul never practises to think of Jesus then of course it will be that they never think of Him. If they practise to think of Him regularly He will of course help them to think of Him continually. Does this require method? No, it is a simple as thinking of a loved one. I need no method nor words to think of my loved ones, my friends, family and community, my heart remembers them with love and love is what helps the heart to remember the Lord until they by His grace recollect Him often and then continually.

Joysong please think of my last post with these in mind.

 

[InLight247]

Dear Blessed Star,

I get the feeling we just went two steps forward, and three steps back after reading your post.

St. Teresa was first a prioress, and then a Founder who formed other prioresses. Many asked her to write these instructions on prayer so they could teach her spiritual daughters. It is not a good idea to dismiss her teachings and just advise others to say the Our Father in one’s private room. Her lessons are extremely profitable for one wanting to grow in prayer. I often wish I could impart her teaching on recollection to many who rattle off vocal prayers, when it is obvious they are not speaking to His Majesty, but doing it by memorization.

And in case you missed my post above, her teaching on recollection is called a “method” that one can acquire with practice. You are a Carmelite and are unaware of this?

I have to say I share the same above feelings with Joysong!
Could we focus on the discussions that just start to get somewhere for now?

Peace!

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Sorry about the double post a few post back. It looked like the system was hung up and I hit submit twice…

Jim

 

[DBT]

Sorry about the double post a few post back. It looked like the system was hung up and I hit submit twice…

Jim

That’s what I do when I REALLY want to make a point!

 

[blessedstar]

Why do people have to be so rude about it when they make their comments?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Dave and Joysong have mentioned Br Lawrence in their post.
My wife is a big fan of Br. Lawrence and has two of his books, which I asked to borrow. Unfortunately, my wife is one of those creatures who loves to write notes in her books.

Anyway, I’m going to see if I can get into reading his books, somewhere between finishing my other three books.

Jim

 

[DBT]

Dave and Joysong have mentioned Br Lawrence in their post.
My wife is a big fan of Br. Lawrence and has two of his books, which I asked to borrow. Unfortunately, my wife is one of those creatures who loves to write notes in her books.

Anyway, I’m going to see if I can get into reading his books, somewhere between finishing my other three books.

Fantastic!

Brother Lawrence’s letters are very short. In fact, I read him prayerfully, ala lectio, just as I imagine some might do with the “Imitation of Christ.” I think he’s best read that way . . . a little bit each day so that, over a period of time, he just becomes ingrained into one’s way of thinking, praying and acting.

Perpetual “centering” if you will.

Dave.

 

[Joysong]

BlessedStar:

God doesn’t ask us to make great intellectual analysis of prayer and St Teresa didn’t do that, she merely recorded what she experienced of the transforming union of the Love of God. She could not have arrived at these writings by her own doing nor could she have invented methods to arrive here.

Of course not – she admitted her need of help from learned men, and advised her followers to consult with many of them in order to grow in love of God. I have the impression you are new to O’Carm, so maybe you folks don’t discuss the works of our saints, as the OCDS’s do. If you read the Life, you would find that Teresa studied intently the Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna, which her uncle tricked her into reading to him, specifically to have her absorb the teachings on recollection.

That’s when her prayer life changed, for she adopted his “methods” and eventually made them her own. I have spent the last couple of weeks in this very work, and that is where my signature quotes below came from, incidentally … from Osuna.

When I read this book, I could correlate much of what St. Teresa wrote, and realized that is where she obtained her own teachings, using almost the same terminology as Osuna. We are all beginners at one time or another, and in need of a guide. Not all of us are simple like Therese of the Child Jesus who did not require much teaching. However, I note that Therese’s entire reading material consisted of the scriptures, the Imitation of Christ, and St. John of the Cross. It seems she, too, needed some formation to enter the higher stages of prayer.

Methods are not all bad, you know?

 

[InLight247]

blessedstar:

I was too eager for seeing the main discussion being focused here. I didn’t mean to be rude to you. My sincere apology.

Somehow from several of your posts, I cannot help sense a different spirit. I don’t really know how to describe it. Just a feeling, nothing else, it could be the same thing Joysong was talking about above.

InLight

 

[DBT]

Just a brief point of clarification because in these last few posts I’ve been using different terminolgy than Joysong to describe the same thing. Perhaps this will also serve as a bit of elaboration to the very good comments she made about “acquired” contemplation and the recent shift this thread has taken:

Infused contemplation/Passive contemplation - This, of course, is the supernatural prayer - the gift from God - we’ve been discussing in the context of St. Teresa. St. Teresa is the benchmark, for she is the Master (i.e. Doctor) the Church has given us on the subject. Also, this is the “type” of contemplation Fr. Keating has in mind that, God willing, can proceed from the practice of CP. No need to belabor all the previous discussions of “before & after” - enough has probably already been said on that.

My personal opinion is that much of the discomfort many have with the concept of CP is the tendency of Fr. Keating et. al. to so closely link their ideas to the gift of infused contemplation. I agree completely with Jim that this probably isn’t their intent; nevertheless this is how they present themselves in their writing so it is natural to respond in a like manner.

Acquired contemplation/Active contemplation - This is the “type” of contemplation that can be achieved through our own continual, dedicated effort. Essentially this is what Scripture teaches as “praying without ceasing.” The specific application of this discussed in recent posts is the “holy habit” of Brother Lawrence. If one thinks of this as centering . . . then this is centering all of us should do — bringing our wandering thoughts back to God in the midst of all our daily activities.

Again, my personal opinion, but if Fr. Keating et. al. spent more time positioning CP in the context of this type of contemplation - rather than the infused type - there would be far less controversy associated with his teachings.

Dave.

 

[Joysong]

This was a good idea, Dave, to post the definitions circulating throughout literature that treats of prayer and its varying forms. I’m not sure Keating et al are promising “infused” contemplation … well, maybe Keating, since I have not read his books. But Pennington just says that when we are focused on God, we open to whatever God wishes to do within the attentive soul at that time. If He takes it to the mountain, excellent – but if He does not, some good will be done that may not be apparent until after the prayer is over and one is busied with life.

I ask, is this the attraction that people strive for? A nebulous promise of “some good” that they need to trust happened, even if nothing was apparent? Granted, St. John speaks similarly when he invites the soul to leave off meditation * and trust that these dry periods of “active” contemplation are really fruitful, though not apparent to the senses.

It puzzled me why these books do not mention any spiritual necessities outside of the prayer time? I noted that Jim made mention of it here, saying: “Jesus fills our hearts, but our hearts must be detached from anything that draws us from him. We empty our hearts of desires that impediments to union with Christ. St. John of the Cross explains that the appetites must be purged, before spiritual union can take place.” I honor that, Jim.

If this is the teaching in the workshops, (although in one that I attended, the only emphasis was on the prayer exercise) then I can agree these teachings are very similar as our saintly Doctors. Maybe the thrust of their ministry is solely upon CP without attending to the purification of mind and heart outside of CP, for after all, we remember that Keating initiallly wrote for monks who already knew about asceticism, and were assumed to be practicing it.

However, can we see how erroneous this could be for an innocent layperson who thinks all they have to do is the exercise alone, without any other orientation into total spiritual formation? I’m thinking that this could be where they go off the deep end, if it is not properly understood to couple both aspects … prayer and asceticism, keeping the mind and heart recollected and extraneous thoughts at bay, while earnestly avoiding occasions of sin.

If these folks do not experience the promised “infused” contemplation, it would be no wonder! They failed to do their groundwork. But if “something” is experienced, I can grasp they might think the peace and psychological benefits achieved in centering was the gift of the Holy Spirit, especially if they had not known His presence prior to espousing CP. In that respect, they become enthused advocates. Pennington teaches in a separate chapter that this must be taken out and shared with all who will listen, or else our “seed” will die without being fruitful. But it is only sharing the “prayer” itself that is supposed to go forth, not the whole mentioned above.

I’m so grateful we are understanding one another in this thread, and I pray that God will continue to bring us His Truth, for we are striving to live in accordance with His will regarding true prayer.*

 

[DBT]

I’m not sure Keating et al are promising “infused” contemplation … well, maybe Keating, since I have not read his books.

Good points throughout your post!

“Promising” is the key word here . . . and I think all of us can agree Fr. Keating et. al. do no such thing . . . as Jim has clearly said throughout this thread. I just want to clarify that in case I’ve given anybody the wrong impression.

However, what I’ve seen Fr. Keating describe in “Intimacy with God” is clearly, imho, the experience of infused contemplation. He uses terms like:

• letting our thoughts drift by like boats floating down a river
• unloading the sub-conciousness ala the night of St. John
• no longer becoming aware of thoughts or mental images
• the spiral staircase of deepening prayer leading to our true inner-self
• the inner core where only God dwells - where actual union with God is to be found

These, to me, are un-mistakable illusions to the very same prayer St. Teresa describes as the progression from recollection, quiet, union . . . perhaps even rapture. Fr. Keating even cites the 4th dwelling and beyond to help explain this. In addition, his descriptions in this book about turning from distractions in prayer couldn’t be further from what Br. Lawrence has to say on the same subject. Fr. Keating is describing how distractions are to be dealt with in the midst of the absorbtion/suspension of the faculties (infused) - while in Br. Lawrence’s descriptions none of this is going on (acquired).

Perhaps my focus on this aspect is due to the fact that this book is my only exposure to Fr. Keating. Maybe he doesn’t emphasize the infused aspects so much in his other works . . . and maybe Fr. Pennington as well.

Very good points though!

Dave.

 

[DBT]

I also should have mentioned he gives rather detailed descriptions of St. John’s night of sense and spirit in the context of the illustrations just provided . . . not just St. Teresa’s mansions.

In this book, at least, he tends to use pop psychology lingo to help make John and Teresa more “relevant” to the modern reader.

Dave

 

[InLight247]

I run into this link and there are different opinions there.
It appears that CP was promoted in a Carmelite Conference in San Antonio in July 2001.

What bothers me is the “kundalini-like” experience Richard Parker was talking about in the later part of this site.
Does anyone know what “kundalini” is?
Sounds so foreign to me, something needs to be kept distance from.

innerexplorations.com/chmystext/ques2.htm