Help with Contemplative Prayer!

[DBT]

I’ve been told- mental prayer: the intellect is engaged, contemplative prayer: the intellect is not engaged.

Yes this is true but it’s a matter of degree.

In discursive prayer (meditation) we are actively thinking and reasoning. In mental prayer we are speaking lovingly from the heart … more will than intellect. As we move toward contemplation, first via acquired methods and lastly to the infused, our activity (be it intellect or will) is greatly reduced and simplified. Our prayer might be nothing more than the “I look at Him and He looks at me” of the Cure of Ars.

Dave

 

[InLight247]

Hi!

Contemplation means “looking at God” right? But how can I look at God if my eyes are closed? And how can I look at God if He is in heaven & I am here?

Thanks!
B

Have you ever fallen in love? You can easily have an internal gaze in your heart at your lover even you are not physically together or with your eyes closed. That is how.

 

[DBT]

Have you ever fallen in love? You can easily have an internal gaze in your heart at your lover even you are not physically together or with your eyes closed. That is how.

So true!

As an interesting digression, St. Teresa specifically advises her readers to close their eyes when entering into recollection as this can help aid the passage of our prayer, God willing, to its infused forms. This is one example of what she means by the Interior Castle.

Dave

 

[InLight247]

So true!

As an interesting digression, St. Teresa specifically advises her readers to close their eyes when entering into recollection as this can help aid the passage of our prayer, God willing, to its infused forms. This is one example of what she means by the Interior Castle.

Dave

Hi, Dave, long time no see. Good to see you. I hope all is well.

St. Teresa was right. Closing our physical eyes may help our spiritual eyes focus better and the interior eyesight sharper.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Hi, Dave, long time no see. Good to see you. I hope all is well.

St. Teresa was right. Closing our physical eyes may help our spiritual eyes focus better and the interior eyesight sharper.

Some of my strongest meditations resulted from my rolling my eyes upward and staring at the church ceiling.

 

[coalcracker]

Contemplative prayer is a wordless resting in God. Rather than doing something, we STOP doing something. Specifically, we stop the inner dialogue of thoughts and feelings that typically bombard us. We sit in God’s Presence and let go of our ego-centric mental ramblings. When we embrace the silence and create space within, we experience God in a way that surpasses our understanding. Our finite minds cannot grasp the Infinite God by way of knowledge, but our hearts can experience God by way of love.

You will feel a peace, a wonderful peace, but that’s not the objective.

The objective is to humbly seek intimacy with the One who loves us and to consent to that One’s presence and work within our hearts. God initiates. God decides. We receive.

Trappist monk, Father Thomas Keating has a book called “Open Mind, Open Heart.” It is a good accessible introduction to this form of prayer.