Ok, so how do we know that this form of meditation which I described in the original post is the same thing as contemplative prayer though?
Because what you described is not, the way I understand the CCC, a form of meditation. When you empty your mind and dismiss thoughts, that’s an invitation to contemplation.
Meditation, including in eastern forms, involves a “mantra” or otherwise involves active use of thoughts and words. If we transcend words and our human thoughts, we have crossed over from meditation into contemplation.
That’s how I understand it, anyway.
I’ll disclose a testimony that I’ve been trying to keep increasingly quiet about, but can’t. I was very ill, beyond hopes of doctors for improvement, and through spiritual direction and many other efforts, including contemplative prayer, the Lord has seen fit to remove my affliction thoroughly and convincingly. In 2001 I lost my job and 20 year career as an electrical engineer, due to the onset of a severe case of bipolar disorder. I was locked up against my will, and based on false statement that a clerk made about me. Note that I didn’t have the same rights as criminal suspects, in that they would not tell me nor were they required to, why they locked me up and who signed the order. It was three days after I was locked up that I met the woman who had me locked up based on hearsay of a non-professional. So anyway, I digress. A couple years ago, a federal judge found that I am completely and permanently disabled. My own psychiatrist, who is much more optimistic than many psychiatrist jerks, told me straight up that I can depend on having trouble with my illness, for the rest of my life.
Let me tell you, I was on a spiritual, mental, and emotional roller coaster the likes of which I cannot do justice with words. I said, thought, and did things that I could not describe to the strongest of posters without their being repulsed. And I did it all believing that I was being guided by the Holy Spirit.
The different between a worldly psychiatrist and the Divine Therapist, is that God heals you and reverses the damage, whereas psychiatrists only can treat the observable symptoms, and hope the mind fixes itself somehow. My doc said psychiatric medicine is like a cast on a leg; the cast doesn’t heal the leg, but it holds things in place and protects against further damage while the leg heals itself.
Why do I mention this? Because contemplative prayer was at the cornerstone of the spiritual guidance that I received, and it was clearly a major part of my healing. If you have never experienced mental illness first hand, then I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be sane.
So taking a round trip from sanity and high performance, working in technical position in Bell Labs, to raving lunacy, and then through the work of the Lord, I have been brought back. If it hadn’t been for contemplative prayer, I would likely be locked up right now.
Another thing is to consider: if you want to be reborn, that is let God renew your mind and spirit, then you have to get beyond everything that is already in your mind, including your imagination. If a person refuses to hear anything that doesn’t make sense according to their own belief system, they aren’t going to hear it. In essence, they are restricting God’s capability to that of their own capacity to understand His work.
http://bestsmileys.com/notlistening/2.gif
Well, Jesus didn’t make sense. He said things that were true beyond any way that “normal” people could imagine. So since they couldn’t figure it out, they rejected it. So consider when you say, “why would you listen to a person who is officially insane,” is to say you wish to cling to your mind the way it is, and not open for healing or improvement.
You can say that I am mistaken in my conviction (I’ll skip a lengthy explanation for now) that contemplative prayer was a necessary element of my healing – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, then think what you want. Anyone who fears using a prayer form that the CCC endorses and encourages, should probably stay away from that prayer form, because it isn’t likely to do them any good anyway.
Mentally and emotionally is obvious, and doctors and other people can confirm it. For the spiritual part, I relay the observation that even amid worldly circumstances that are “worse” then any I’d ever thought I’d deal with, I am more at peace and with more joy than ever before, even when I was a little overachieving nerd kid. :extrahappy:
So in summary, I shout from the proverbial rooftops what the Lord has done for me, that the world was not able to do. I believe the Lord will show you just as much love, I would expect, as He showed me. Maybe you don’t have a mental illness; imagine where God could take you from this starting point.
“God loves me. That doesn’t make me special; that just mean God has poor taste.” – Rich Mullins
“Think outside the box. It will help you find the way back into the box, if that’s what you want.” – I just made that up.
Peace and
,
Alan
BTW, by “outside the box” I mean you must have faith and trust in the Lord, to allow Him to take you on a trip to the Cloud of the Unknowing, for it is at and beyond that boundary that we learn things and meet God.
Another quote from Rich Mullins from his song Screen Door: “You have to take a leap off of a ship before you claim to walk on water.”
