We come to the final and ultimate stage of prayer in this life: contemplation. You are ready for contemplative prayer when your heart seeks to commune with God directly, when nothing and no one but God alone will satisfy you. Psalm 73:24-26 well expresses this life-changing realization: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Contemplative prayer is a heart to heart communion, which begins when you seek God for God. You will likely not be aware of the depth of your desire for God at first. It’s like drinking water when you do not know how thirsty you are until you swallow that first drink. Then you discover the full extent of your deeper thirst, right along with the joy of the water. The Psalmist poignantly realizes this in Psalm 63:1: “O God . . . I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
The singular aim of contemplative prayer is direct connection with God, with the mysterious “who” of God. It is built on desire and is always heart-led, since only the heart knows the way. Prayer becomes mystical when God enters into your private prayer-space. God then turns your thirsting aloneness into overflowing mutuality. God does so in a wordless embrace of being by being, like a transforming hug beyond language.
Contemplation is a sheer gift of God. It is God’s work in and with you, which can be taught only by God. God will do so in God’s timing and way, when God determines you are ready to enter into God. As the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “You can only experience God in God’s own space.”
Contemplation is the love-making which occurs in the marital union between God and humanity. St. Theresa of Avila called such intimate prayer “spiritual sex.” It is spiritual, not physical—though the “unio mystica” or mystical union of your soul to God, will generate profound effects upon your body. Here is an attempt to describe the indescribable, the mystical union with God, the Supreme “Thou” of all life, from my own prayer experience:
“You and I have been one, Beloved. We have met and merged, where and how I know not, for in the realm between us, there are no fixed markers or buoys, no stable stars or shores by which to determine our whereabouts.
“We met in heaven, we met on earth, we met in me, we met in You, all of these all at once. More than that I cannot say. Our where is as great a mystery as Your who.
“I cannot say how long we were one, for though there was a filled duration, the time of our meeting was as indeterminable as its space. It does not matter how long You and I were one, but that we were one. What matters is that You happened to me, that the shutter snapped, the imprint took, my soul expanded to receive You.
“I cannot say by what means I knew You, but it was You, only You, ever You that I knew. You alone were the content; nothing could be taken from the wholeness of Your holiness.
“I did not know myself, I knew only You, as if Your consciousness absorbed mine, as if my consciousness had become a fiery fragment of Yours, as if I were no longer a separate soul, but a common cup for sharing You, the one God.
“The miracle of knowing You, of merging with You, was succeeded by the miracle of coming back to myself, of becoming again a singular dwelling, once the flood of You receded.
“Instead of becoming You, which will never happen, I shared You, which will ever be my fondest joy and greatest hope.”
Words cannot describe the event of the unio mystica. The anonymous medieval writer of one of the most important works on mystical union, said that meeting and merging with God could only happen in the “Cloud of Unknowing,” which is also the title of the book. In that indescribable cloud, you both know and yet do not and cannot know in the sense of gaining a describable knowledge of an object or event in the world. It is rather like trying to describe light to someone born totally blind.
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