The best learning is through listening and experiencing, not reading in itself!

[Robert_Sock]

This is the key to Contemplative Prayer! You can read until you’re blue in the face, and you gain very little. Learn to listen with all your heart. This is not to say that reading is always unimportant, but reading out of a lust for knowledge will not get you too far. For example, you can memorize the bible word for word and remain a pitiful sinner in the eyes of God. In fact, the bible, in and of itself, saves nobody.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

This is the key to Contemplative Prayer! You can read until you’re blue in the face, and you gain very little. Learn to listen with all your heart. This is not to say that reading is always unimportant, but reading out of a lust for knowledge will not get you too far. For example, you can memorize the bible word for word and remain a pitiful sinner in the eyes of God. In fact, the bible, in and of itself, saves nobody.

Amen!

Jim

 

[meltzerboy]

This is the key to Contemplative Prayer! You can read until you’re blue in the face, and you gain very little. Learn to listen with all your heart. This is not to say that reading is always unimportant, but reading out of a lust for knowledge will not get you too far. For example, you can memorize the bible word for word and remain a pitiful sinner in the eyes of God. In fact, the bible, in and of itself, saves nobody.

The Talmud puts it another way, namely, that studying is not the ultimate but the doing. However, the Talmud also states that studying is most important since it leads us not only to action but through action. Thus the studying can teach us how to act in every situation and that our behavior is ultimately what matters the most. In this case, it is not a matter of reading and memorizing but rather of understanding the importance of what we are reading and how it translates to behavior.

 

[Robert_Sock]

The Talmud puts it another way, namely, that studying is not the ultimate but the doing. However, the Talmud also states that studying is most important since it leads us not only to action but through action. Thus the studying can teach us how to act in every situation and that our behavior is ultimately what matters the most. In this case, it is not a matter of reading and memorizing but rather of understanding the importance of what we are reading and how it translates to behavior.

Thanks for that insight!

With the death of the last three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit ceased to manifest itself in Israel; but the Bat Ḳol was still available.
jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7833-holy-spirit

I’m not an expert here, but I have read in several Jewish books that the Holy Spirit, the giver of Christian religious experiences, left Israel (see the above quote). I’m sure that the modern day Jews have religious experiences through the Bat Kol, for example, but it’s probably quite different from what many of the Catholic saints experienced through Contemplative Prayer.

Also, Israel is tiny compared to the rest of the world, so it may be that social cohesion is of paramount importance, and thus it cannot afford too many of its members to seek the silence and solitude that many Catholics Contemplatives seek in order to experience the Holy Spirit speak to them.

 

[meltzerboy]

Thanks for that insight!

I’m not an expert here, but I have read in several Jewish books that the Holy Spirit, the giver of Christian religious experiences, left Israel (see the above quote). I’m sure that the modern day Jews have religious experiences through the Bat Kol, for example, but it’s probably quite different from what many of the Catholic saints experienced through Contemplative Prayer.

Also, Israel is tiny compared to the rest of the world, so it may be that social cohesion is of paramount importance, and thus it cannot afford too many of its members to seek the silence and solitude that many Catholics Contemplatives seek in order to experience the Holy Spirit speak to them.

Silence and solitude are really not permitted in Judaism. It is essential to be engaged with the world, not in the sense of living according to secular values, but for the purpose of making the world a better place.

 

[GEddie]

Silence and solitude are really not permitted in Judaism. It is essential to be engaged with the world, not in the sense of living according to secular values, but for the purpose of making the world a better place.

Maybe I should have been a Jew (J/K, as G-d knows what He is doing), because I have absolutely no interest in anticipating the silence of death, by contemplation or otherwise.

Silence is for the dead; life is always to an extent, nonsilent.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Silence and solitude are really not permitted in Judaism. It is essential to be engaged with the world, not in the sense of living according to secular values, but for the purpose of making the world a better place.

Maybe I should have been a Jew (J/K, as G-d knows what He is doing), because I have absolutely no interest in anticipating the silence of death, by contemplation or otherwise.

Silence is for the dead; life is always to an extent, nonsilent.

ICXC NIKA.

I’m just the opposite: I hate being around people, but I feel a great love for people when in silence and solitude.

 

[puzzledtoo]

“I’m just the opposite:…” I’ve heard it said that anyone can reach enlightenment (sainthood if you like) living in a cave, but it takes much more effort and more time to reach it by living in the world. Think of family gatherings. I value my solitude, silence, alone time very much, but also believe we are social beings and need to be here for one another physically as well as spiritually. I’ve also heard it said that if there is something we don’t like to do, maybe that is exactly what we need to do at that particular moment or words to that effect.

 

[Eichelbaum]

I’ve heard it said that anyone can reach enlightenment (sainthood if you like) living in a cave, but it takes much more effort and more time to reach it by living in the world.

I think that being away from the world means that we have less of an occasion of sin, and may very well sin less as a result.

But the key really is that becoming a Saint is a work of God, and being holy isn’t something “anyone” can do, cave or no cave, since most of us are far too lukewarm to really love God anywhere near what we ought to.

 

[GEddie]

“I’m just the opposite:…” I’ve heard it said that anyone can reach enlightenment (sainthood if you like) living in a cave, but it takes much more effort and more time to reach it by living in the world. Think of family gatherings. I value my solitude, silence, alone time very much, but also believe we are social beings and need to be here for one another physically as well as spiritually. I’ve also heard it said that if there is something we don’t like to do, maybe that is exactly what we need to do at that particular moment or words to that effect.

Well, a priest once told me that “maybe God calls us to things we find aversive so that He can show more grace.”

I don’t find that particularly useful because it would then follow that we should actively seek out those aversive situations in order to experience more grace. That seems to me a waste of our human capacities, as we would make better use of ourself in non-aversive settings.

I also don’t equate “alone time” with silence, as my mind is anything but silent, and as long as I can breathe and don’t get knocked on the head, will remain that way.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Robert_Sock]

The one thing about genuine spiritual experience is that we never know what the other person experiences. This is also the case for temptation, and so we are commanded not to judge.

I used to know a girl who was into long distance running. I also learned that intense exercise can release endorphins, which produce a morphine-like high. My curiosity got the best of me and so I had to ask her if she was getting high when long distance running. She looked at me as if I was quite naive and said, “Of course I get high from it. Why else would I do it?” I felt a little dumb, but her running then made perfect sense to me!

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Silence and solitude are really not permitted in Judaism. It is essential to be engaged with the world, not in the sense of living according to secular values, but for the purpose of making the world a better place.

You misunderstand what “silence and solitude,” mean in the spiritual sense which is what is being expressed here.

And it is part of Judaism. The prophet Elijah, the father of the Carmelite Order, went and lived in solitude in the caves of Mt Carmel.

But the spiritual aspect was not to avoid engaging in the world and people, but to engage with wisdom and compassion.

Its not getting away from other humans because we can’t stand being around them.

Its a detachment from the ego drive false self which serves to distort for its own sake, rather than accepting of the true self which is whom God had in mind when he created us.

Going to prayer in silence and solitude is what Jesus taught us, and Jesus was a Jew.

Jim

 

[puzzledtoo]

Eichelbaum,
“I think that being away from the world means that we have less occasion of sin, and may very well sin less as a result.” I too believe this to be the case and with less distractions from the world we are able to find that which we’re seeking with less effort once we get used to being away in the desert so to speak.

GEddie,
“…because it would follow then that we should actively seek out those aversive situations…” No real need to actively go looking for any kind of situations I feel averse to. Sometimes it seems I can’t pay someone a compliment without them taking offense-I’m not a star when it comes to communicative talent. Simply interacting with others on a day to day basis is enough for me.
“I also don’t equate ‘alone time’ with silence…” I agree and didn’t mean to imply they were the same. My time practicing silencing the mind in meditation is helpful though in not getting so stressed with the day to day internal distractions. Alone time is helping me to feel more comfortable with being alone-not many of us are in my view.

 

[Joy2day]

“I’m just the opposite:…” I’ve heard it said that anyone can reach enlightenment (sainthood if you like) living in a cave, but it takes much more effort and more time to reach it by living in the world. Think of family gatherings. I value my solitude, silence, alone time very much, but also believe we are social beings and need to be here for one another physically as well as spiritually. I’ve also heard it said that if there is something we don’t like to do, maybe that is exactly what we need to do at that particular moment or words to that effect.

There was a saint who was a hermit!

 

[Joy2day]

Listening & experiencing are far above reading for knowledge? … Well I suppose there are plenty who simply parrot what they’ve heard/read. But one can’t really judge unless they’ve done all.
Honestly I think this assertion is extremely debatable…