St. John of the Cross and Emptying the Mind

[Mystical_Seeker]

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
― R.D. Laing

This was written by a deceased psychiatrist. Although I do not like worldly science and theories, I do think research psychiatrists and psychologists make some great observations. This is one such observation that I think Saint John of the Cross would agree with wholeheartedly. It’s deep.

LOVE!

For several reasons, I do not claim that anything I understand is “absolute” truth. Even my own existence is something I could not prove to you. I could punch someone in the face and they may draw the conclusion that “I’m real” or you may deny it. Either way your may end up with some swelling.

Except certain things that don’t make sense. Like quantum physics shows us stuff that tells us even the universal speed limit of “c” does not explain how information gets around. No honest quantum physicist could say we have enough information and knowledge to even speak about whether there is a spiritual world intimately tied to our own. Based on what I know, being of analytical thinking and I think relatively resistant to believing the unproven, the odds of their being an organized system in a real we haven’t discovered yet, which somehow involves spiritual effects we call “mysteries” are astronomical. The more we learn, the less scientists can honestly say they know enough about “reality” to make any claims beyond what they can demonstrate.

Even Einstein was weirded out by “spooky action at a distance,” like we get with quantum entangled particles. If what we can observe is this weird, how much more mysterious the actions of what we cannot?

John 3:7-8
"Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

 

[hazcompat]

Can anyone say where there is a relationship between the dark night of the soul and contemplation.

Does one exclude the other? Or is one a necessary part of the other. Or may one have contemplation without going thru a spiritual journey that St John of the Cross talks about? Or is contemplation necessary to any part of the spiritual journey?

I guess I’m asking, who is a candidate for contemplation…anyone, or there certain spiritual qualities required?

Contemplation is received. Consider Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. From the abyss to the Presence of God in the twinkling of an eye. He gives as He wills. Glory to God.

Peace

 

[DBT]

Can anyone say where there is a relationship between the dark night of the soul and contemplation.

Does one exclude the other? Or is one a necessary part of the other. Or may one have contemplation without going thru a spiritual journey that St John of the Cross talks about? Or is contemplation necessary to any part of the spiritual journey?

I guess I’m asking, who is a candidate for contemplation…anyone, or there certain spiritual qualities required?

All are called to contemplation … but not all accept that call. But of those who do; all will taste at least some aspects of the dark night. Why? Because contemplation and the dark night in St. John’s teaching is one and the same. One begets the other.

To illustrate, our contemplation may be acquired or infused. And the night has distinct stages as we see here:

Active night of sense (Book 1 of Ascent of Mount Carmel)
Active night of spirit (Book 2 and 3 of Ascent of Mount Carmel)
Passive night of sense (Book 1 of Dark Night)
Passive night of spirit (Book 2 of Dark Night)

As the Saint teaches, “many” will enter the active night of sense where we first learn detachment and self-denial from our passions and appetites. So too “many” will be led to ways of simplified prayer and the emptying of the mind (the topic of this thread) that marks the acquired contemplation learned as part of the active night of spirit. From here, “some” will be led to actual infused contemplation … the purpose of the passive night of sense. Fewer still will be brought to the passive night of spirit where God’s purifying hand purges all our remaining imperfections … where we are led to transforming union.

Nevertheless, all of this is contemplation … all too is a dark night.

Dave

 

[DBT]

Some random thoughts on the interplay between contemplation and the dark night …

1. Yes the passive nights are rare but we shouldn’t think the experience is limited to the canonized. There are people in our very midst … in our parishes, our workplaces, these forums … who taste, at least in some measure, the very words of our Saints. On the other hand, we should not (as is often the case in these threads) chalk up every little bump in the road as sure sign of a dark night.
2. People enduring the night don’t face it with a woe is me attitude. Loving acceptance … even joy is more the norm: think Mother Teresa’s perpetual smile masking tremendous inner torment. The night doesn’t debilitate the individual … they are highly functioning. Unless one is highly trained to detect the signs (or graced with special intuition) it’s likely you’d never recognize someone is in the night. These souls are generally loathed to talk about it. Perhaps they don’t even know how to put it into words or they are so other focused they think their trials of no particular importance.
3. There are levels to this night as St. John describes in Dark Night Book 2, chapter one. Perhaps the night comes across as so foreign is because the saints tend to speak of it from their personal experience … one of full immersion. The more typical way (perhaps) is the “little night” of alternating periods of light and darkness where we are slowly weaned over years or even a lifetime … rather than the intense spiritual crucifixion we often see in the saints. We think them different and therefore conclude what we read doesn’t apply to us. But the experience truly is the same … the perspectives are just different. The two ways are like opposite sides of the same coin.
4. The night of spirit is confined to the spiritually mature. From a prayer perspective, these individuals don’t limit themselves to pious devotions and find no satisfaction in meditation. Rather their way of prayer is one of friendship with Christ that is nearly continuous. It is interior dialogue marked by simplicity and affection. As such it can be described as acquired contemplation punctuated, perhaps, by intermittent moments of infused contemplation.
5. The experience of the night is strictly interior and “felt” (which isn’t the right word) in our spiritual faculties: intellect, will and memory. In short, what is tested is our capacity to love and what we allow to occupy our minds and hearts. And much of this takes place at the “first movements” of our soul. Think of this as the moment of awareness (or even pre-awareness) of our thoughts, words and actions. The work of this night is to bring purity to these first movements. So in this light we can see this as entirely God’s work, occurring in the depths of our being … a place we have no capacity to influence or control. All we can do is cooperate with His guiding hand.
6. First movements are like spark plugs in a car … they’re constantly firing: three fires followed by a misfire and so on and so on. Why the misfire? In a word, our imperfections. Not sin … rather the ingrained defects in our make-up that unbeknown to us subtly influence (to the worse) so many aspects of our life. It is the spiritual ramifications of these imperfections that the dark night cures. For example, the talkative person that remains spiritually stunted because they can’t attain to the silence necessary for more profound prayer. Or the individual very adept at carving out moments of solitude in the midst of a hectic life but does not see that his holy desire is tinged with escapism. Or the one who enjoys the comforts of life and thus approaches God from that same point of view by seeking consolation. Or the very organized and methodical individual diligent in his affairs who thinks sanctity can be attained through application of these traits, thereby trying to become a saint through sheer force of will.
7. The “experience” of night is not so much at the time of prayer but, rather, at all our other times. We are continually brought face to face with our imperfections. So much so that it seems like God, through circumstances of life, is conspiring against us. But, because we are generally unaware of our imperfections and pay no heed to our first movements we are clueless as to what is going on. Thus, lack of understanding is our darkness. And the spiritual anguish it brings is too our darkness.
8. Lastly, we need to recognize that it is God who brings us into this night and only He can bring us out. He does this through the gift of self-knowledge … Light. Take, for example, the individual who is highly determined and perseveres through all things yet, at the same time is unknowingly disordered because he thinks the key to growth is his own effort. Perhaps in a moment of epiphany it dawns on him that all the ways he is stymied in his holy efforts is really God’s way of saying he needs to let go the need to control. Finally, after years and years, he gets it! And in a flash all the trials associated with this imperfection cease. The soul understands and darkness is lifted. Now all he has to do is cooperate … and a deeper level of union is brought to the soul.
9. And then God moves on to the next imperfection and the whole cycle of night begins anew!

Dave

 

[DBT]

One last thought on the interplay between contemplation and the dark night …

Think of contemplation as a way of prayer (I look at Him and He looks at me) and the dark night is the effect the contemplation produces in our soul (purgative, illuminative or unitive transformation).

If there is no “effect” … our contemplation isn’t authentic. That’s why spiritual writers so stress growth in virtue as the only sure sign of authenticity in contemplative prayer.

Please note this growth, more often than not, is gradual over time and not something that is immediate. The way we should look at it is this: am I a different person today than I was a year ago … 5 years ago … 10 years ago … and so on.

Dave

 

[fred_conty]

Dorothy, Michael Mayo, JimR-OCDS, Hazcompat, and DBT, thank you so much for your answers. They were indeed helpful.

I have been following all the discussions on this site with much interest in contemplation as well as the Ascent. It has helped quite a bit although I still struggle with the understanding of both. It just seems when one aspect seems clearer, then some other consideration of it brings confusion. But then that just a part of the learning process.

Thanks again one and all and may Jesus Christ be praised.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

I just reqd this las nght form Stanza 4, how The Beloved dwells in all souls though we do not always know it because of our distractions.

Stanza 4
14. The soul says he dwells in its heart in secret because this sweet embrace is wrought in the depths of its
substance.
It should be known that God dwells secretly in all souls and is hidden in their substance, for otherwise they
would not last. Yet there is a difference, a great difference, in his dwelling in them. In some souls he dwells
alone, and in others he does not dwell alone. Abiding in some he is pleased; and in others, he is displeased.
He lives in some as though in his own house, commanding and ruling everything; and in others as though a
stranger in a strange house, where they do not permit him to give orders or do anything.
It is in the soul in which less of its own appetites and pleasures dwell where he dwells more alone, more
pleased, and more as though in his own house, ruling and governing it. And he dwells more in secret, the more
he dwells alone. Thus in this soul in which neither any appetite nor other images or forms nor any affections for
created things dwell, the Beloved dwells secretly with an embrace so much closer, more intimate and interior,
the purer and more alone the soul is to everything other than God. His dwelling is in secret, then, because the
devil cannot reach the area of this embrace, nor can the human intellect understand how it occurs.
Yet it is not secret to the soul itself that has attained this perfection, for within itself it has the experience of
this intimate embrace. It does not, however, always experience these awakenings; for when the Beloved
produces them, it seems to the soul that he is awakening in its heart, where before he remained as though
asleep. Although it was experiencing and enjoying him, this took place as with a loved one who is asleep, for
knowledge and love are not communicated mutually while one is still asleep.

 

[Robert_Sock]

2They journeyed through the uninhabited desert,
and in lonely places they pitched their tents;
3they withstood enemies and warded off their foes.
-Wisdom 11

This to me the above passage is the dark night

Fight or drown in misery! By engaging in a spiritual fight, that includes complete self-annihilation, extinguishment of worldly desires and the abandonment of my own will, I may enter the land flowing with milk and honey!

The above is what I wrote about my own “dark night.” Similarly, the Exodus can be viewed in contemplative terms where Egypt is enslavement to sin and worldly desires, the desert once again to to the dark night and the Promised Land as infused contemplation.

LOVE!

 

[hazcompat]

The Interior Castle St. Teresa of Avila

THE SEVENTH MANSIONS

CHAPTER I.

1. When our Lord is pleased to take pity on the sufferings, both past and present, endured
   through her longing for Him by this soul which He has spiritually taken for His bride, He, before consummating the celestial marriage, brings her into this His mansion or presence chamber. This is the seventh Mansion, for as He has a dwelling-place in heaven, so has He in the soul, where none but He may abide and which may be termed a second heaven.

Peace

 

[JimR-OCDS]

This was in the 2nd Reading in the Office of the Readings for today in the Liturgy of the Hours. This thread immediately came to mind.

From St Anselm Bishop.

Enter into your mind’s inner chamber. Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek him; and when you have shut the door, look for him. Speak now to God and say with your whole heart: I seek your face; your face, Lord, I desire.

Jim

 

[Robert_Sock]

This was in the 2nd Reading in the Office of the Readings for today in the Liturgy of the Hours. This thread immediately came to mind.

Jim

The Imitation of Christ still speaks to me the most, but I have gotten so much out of keeping up on this thread. A special thanks to everybody who contributed!

LOVE!

 

[DBT]

So guess what I did this weekend?

We had our annual Carmelite retreat. The theme: “Memory” in the writings of St. Teresa and St. John.

Many of the themes in this thread were discussed … and confirmed. However with a bit of a different emphasis.

Very, very early on in this thread it was discussed that memory has two purposes: to help us remember … and to help us forget.

Much of this thread focuses on the “forgetting” part. Father’s talks (a Discalced Carmelite retreat master) emphasized the “remembering” aspect.

Both, of course, go hand in hand.

Dave

 

[Michael_Mayo]

The Lord is here now in the present moment and so often we are in the past with memory and hurts or happy thoughts or in the future with planning and worry or anticipation. What is we could spend even a few seconds with our minds not in the past or the future but fully attentive to where God is?

It seems to me that is what John is talking about.

 

[soma]

I like the post about being in the present. What a great mental vacation to sit in the soul and listen to God speak.

 

[Dorothy]

I like the post about being in the present. What a great mental vacation to sit in the soul and listen to God speak.

Amen!

 

[Robert_Sock]

Is there a stage of contemplative prayer where Satan can no longer tempt us, accordingly to St. John of the Cross?

 

[DBT]

Is there a stage of contemplative prayer where Satan can no longer tempt us, accordingly to St. John of the Cross?

This is an interesting question as it points to perhaps the only area where St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila disagreed.

When addressing the question of whether an individual brought through the purgative and illuminative ways to the unitive way (aka spiritual marriage, transforming union), could such an individual regress and turn away from God … St. John said no and St. Teresa said yes.

So there you go … yes and no.

Dave

 

[Michael_Mayo]

Is there a stage of contemplative prayer where Satan can no longer tempt us, accordingly to St. John of the Cross?

It seems there are moments but we always must return to the world of temptations.

Book 3 Chapter 4 Paragraph 1 p 260
“For the devil has no power over the soul unless it be through the operations of its faculties, principally by means of knowledge, whereupon depend almost all the other operations of the other faculties. Wherefore, if the memory be annihilated with respect to them, the devil can do naught; for he finds no foothold, and without a foothold he is powerless.”

He can’t be talking about a total annihilation of memory. That would be like Alzheimer’s. But times in prayer when we let the memory rest. And I think that also means the inner monologue we all have going most of the time.

 

[DBT]

It seems there are moments but we always must return to the world of temptations.

Book 3 Chapter 4 Paragraph 1 p 260
“For the devil has no power over the soul unless it be through the operations of its faculties, principally by means of knowledge, whereupon depend almost all the other operations of the other faculties. Wherefore, if the memory be annihilated with respect to them, the devil can do naught; for he finds no foothold, and without a foothold he is powerless.”

He can’t be talking about a total annihilation of memory. That would be like Alzheimer’s. But times in prayer when we let the memory rest. And I think that also means the inner monologue we all have going most of the time.

This can be a really confusing subject when reading the Carmelites …

The answer to the role of the intrusion of the devil in John and Teresa’s writings depend on whether they’re speaking of prayer states or prayer stages. Oftentimes it just isn’t very clear since they switch back and forth so often.

A prayer state refers to a specific time or act of prayer and the “level” associated with it. For example, vocal prayer leading to meditation leading to the simple gaze of acquired contemplation leading to the infused prayer of quiet and ultimately union. The more passive our prayer is, the less the devil can intrude because our interior senses (intellect, will and memory) have been suspended in full or part. It should be noted these suspensions are typically brief. St. Teresa, in Interior Castle, specifically mentions a time frame of 15 - 30 minutes as the norm. To confuse matters further, the two saints used different terms to describe the same experience. Teresa was partial to suspension, absorption and spiritual sleep whereas John used expressions like annihilation.

Prayer stages go by the names we’ve been using throughout this thread … for example the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways. These stages encompass everything about us … much more than prayer, let alone a specific time of prayer like the states described above. And we may remain in a particular stage for years … perhaps our entire life. Certainly we can be tempted throughout the purgative and illuminative ways … the previous post indicates John and Teresa disagree as to the unitive.

Dave

 

[DBT]

Sorry if I’m harping on such an esoteric subject …

The reason St. John says an individual brought to the unitive way (spiritual marriage, transforming union) can’t be separated from Christ even momentarily through temptation, sin or regression has to do with his understanding of a theological concept called “first movements.”

It works something like this: A thought just pops into your head. That’s a first movement. Then you say to yourself “Hey, I shouldn’t be thinking that” so you change the subject. That’s a second movement. When you get right down to it, managing these second movements (or third or fourth etc) is a very, very big part of our spiritual life. It’s one way we learn to conform our will the His.

The soul in the unitive way, however, needs no such on-going effort … for all their first movements have been purified in the Dark Night. There is no thought that needs correcting, whether it’s consciously considered or if comes from “out of the blue” from our sub-conscious. God and soul are truly one … in every way possible. What God wants the soul wants … what the soul wants God wants.

These first movements were also discussed at some length in post #203 should anyone be interested in reading more.

Dave