Contemplative Prayer

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Contemplative Prayer Class

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so let me explain of handouts for
one of 'em the one on top completes our continuous does that monsters of quotes from argument you have noticed that there's this is a new page twelve plus a page thirteen so the your own pledged work can be replaced or used for
personal
okay that's the first two seconds we're gonna be using today that seem that handle on restricts and aged six contemplative experience and a new testament so we'll get to that today so keep that on hand and then the third one is a bonus that stuff
a wonderful season of practice that was written by martin for as the japanese translation of searching solitary so such solitude much older that came out when early fifties some time but he was very interested in getting his work introduced to japan particularly the eastern cultures and so is
very careful about writing his preface so what he tries to do is take his earlier book on contemplation and after dessert from an asian perspective and especially something like a zen perspective
so the first line is worth the price for their book know writing on the solitary meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind and the find
as martin that is best
it goes along with what we've been saying a non dual experience a more or less poetic but not only poetic
treatment about experience
okay
i'm going to be a next week so our next class will be in two weeks either tuesday or wednesday of that we kept her june twice twenty first or twenty second i was thinking we go ahead to section four pro would be find to read martin's section for the anterior experience however as
i look at this new testament material i think we probably will want to spend that hour actually of class time further on christian contemplation which after others the heart of our subject is very important for us to focus on like to have a sense of how these two things come together the gospel and the contemplative
experience or contemplative tradition so we'll probably spend the hour are continuing on christian contemplation and especially the relationship of contemplation to that prison
there's a lot in that section three of merton on christian contemplation and but will have some other things to add to it
okay to reveal our last session of them we talked about the context of contemplation and tried to fill out a picture because contemplation is it is a focus which a kind of a a point and so
a narrowing down in order to talk about something but we find that life is bigger than contemplation and yet if we conceive it world contemplation
wells up and fills our life in other words contemplation somehow returns to fill life but to dog about the concept of contemplation is to narrow down to focus the tip champion can typically a western and nowhere masculine perspective
and then we talked about christian contemplation and we started reading merton section three
if remember the first section the second really fit it together great beautifully this this section the first park is on the original unity of humanity and notice how the hammers and returned to that notion of the human person being a one and he's not talking specifically hear about
all of humanity being a one although he could do that and he will do that at times and if you're talking about adam and implicitly you're saying and all of humanity's with just one enough but he's talking about the individual human person really because it goes on me of the often to the individual experience
and man as he puts it being originally a unity and that in the for somehow being ejected into multiplicity and then this is a classical patristic a picture and of course we predicted that the criticized it because it's not quite adequate to us
and yet it's beautiful and we can't renounce it but we have to fill it out we have to complete a balance and and somewhere and then in the next section he talks about because it i think theology and contemplation the titles i don't think these titles were put another martin that a phone put in by got a perfect card
so they don't necessarily coincide and exactly the point of martin is getting at an intersection but there which he he beautifully builds upon the notion of a loss of the original unity and i remember for him unity is practically equivalent account
completion and there was a contemplative experiences and experience of the unity of your being and hitch see true self those those you can put equation marks between those three expressions contemplation unity of the person of the being and to self or in our show
now in this next section merton makes another equal sign there as it were and
he would say that these are all equivalent for us to the new person in the new man or the christ itself and then he explains how this works and section labeled theology and contemplation of works by the incarnation and deification which are like two perspectives of the same reality as the for
others said that god became man so that men might become god can still limping on are sexist language but the the downward movement if we projected geometrically and the upward movement which are really somebody the same thing and yet first comes the downward movement and then our response is an attempt to
realize the upward movement afterwards but only because the downward movement has come deification is only possible because of incarnation and your deification is already in i mean incarnations already deification and jesus and virtually in some way in us but that's realized them through through baptism
then and martin doesn't talk much about baptism he'll return to it but for him baptism has not opened up as a fullness but only a first step he speaks about the siege of this contemplative you to experience being it and baptism they don't talk about the baptismal experience itself and that was a very big issue in early
return to the
yes
but that was just a physical phenomena
okay then he gets to that other section which is labeled a gospels and contemplation or something like that contemplation of us now that title isn't isn't perfect attack
the relationship between the second part we've called the second part which is a contemplation and theology and contemplation and the gospels is nearly the relationship between word and spirit in other words there's nearly a trinitarian progression of huge first sections and the first one martin just talking about the way were made and than the way we fell
from it and that's as it were analogous to the father that created and to being and father as being god is being okay and god as the great one of the energy and the second section theology and it's a question of the son of the second person or the second person comes to restore the original humanity but of course when we stay we see
door we never been really just that do it because the deification goes far beyond the original unity the human person imagine it was made for this deification which is a further step but the fall in some way if if you look at it work for scottish perspective complicated and necessitates to cross but in any case it's first
the first person and first movement as it were first reality that the unity of reality and the restoration and the second person but in that third section which is called contemplation and the gospels is really moving onto the work of the holy spirit and father joseph just at the end of the just a question or holy spirit and contemplation which i didn't respond to well
i've thought a lot about sanction it opens up so many things and i hadn't really read merton section are carefully enough before replying either i didn't do justice to it cause he very nicely shows how the holy spirit is somehow the agent of contemplation almost been some way
a reality the substance of contemplation so on one side you gotta kind of the equation between we have to be careful with our equations we can get that are you could overpass room but there's almost an equation between contemplation on the holy spirit notice as you move from the second section theology
to the next section
the gotten what he calls the gospels there the title you're really moving from the theological reality with the objective reality to the actualization of that reality in ourselves and that's the conservative experience so that's equivalent to the movement from might say the second-order second of truth to the third odor of the holy spirit
which is very difficult to talk about
because our words tend to melt on him and because simply it goes beyond language goes beyond theology it's the difference between theology as we know's theology in the modern western church and the theology of as i agree is say area which was actually the condemned to experience it was experiencing the holy spirit so it's a movement from theology to theology
from the as it were flat objective conceptual theology which has tended to prevail in modern times in a church and the original meaning of theology for the father's which was the fire of of the experience of fullness and the holy spirit
so as we move into this new section of run he quotes a number of things from the gospels which tend to be largely on this reality has third order as of a of the holy spirit which is actualization

so the logical progression here is from theology as a vision of incarnation and deification to this other order in which is actualization in the individual person in the individual letters and you and me and us that's the work and experience with the holy spirit
so there are two such to what martin saying here on one side the expansion the holy spirit is practically identical that comes space
i'm a couple of quotes from her deserve pages are page numbers are thirty
thirty four about the middle of thirty full retard start talking about the gift of the divine spirit
which is the deify experience we are difficult it is to to separate is thanks to talk about pets the the gift of the holy spirit is exactly what deified before pentecost before the gift of the holy spirit there can be no deification
there can be no call it multiplication of the incarnation and other people and us
and that gift of a divine spirit his baptismal to as he says i'm learning that on thirty three
okay he goes from air goes to thirty eight to the end of that section this treatment of the holy spirit and contemplation
a couple of quotes this testimony of the spirit this is at the bottom of thirty four to r in last of he's just quoted romans are on spirit is a very broad sense what we call contemplation and a christian context so they're the experience of the holy spirit of testimony of the holy spirit is progress
and omens and contemplation of practically identical
and that later on thirty seven after the top he says the life of contemplation as then not simply a life of common technique and discipline it is the life of the holy spirit and oregano salt
there's a continuity between the two and a continuity is what i think it's that non dual or your interior unit of experience that for merton is both contemplation and
the experience of the holy spirit the deeper than that is the reality of the no shelf of the new unit tip so
which is the the basis of the core of the substance of contemplation which has given in the holy spirit so the very deep bond between contemplation and holy spirit from murder on the other hand there's obviously a difference between contemplation on the holy spirit market and era to question probably a vocabulary and where these expressions come from kind of patients a great notion
that those are kind of kind of or that and we're going to greek background is state area of college which has its whole cultural context and merton has already come come at it on and a little slightly ironic sarcastic remember at the end of the previous section
where we kind of an elitist them
i got a few points on a difference let me just shoot them out first of all the experience of the holy spirit can be considered for a man's perspective a christian translation of the word contemplation as long as we're talking about contemplation you've got to translate into christian trends because you don't fine
the word contemplation new testament so talk about the experience of the holy spirit but when you do that it's more than a translation because you're moving to a larger reality
contemplation is something like an abstract slice of the experience of the holy spirit or diminished version
it's kind of place actually is a little bit parallel to the idea of experience at contemplation is a little parallel to the prophecies and types that you have any old testament okay with coming this time out from the jewish but from the greek or universal side of human wisdom those things in some way foreshadow the fullness of the of the gif
to the holy spirit
but they're not equal to the holy spirit moves from the second order cognitive and dualistic language in which the language of contemplation as at home and that's a greek language you know to a third order which is first of all non dualistic not objective holistic and a much further away than contemplation is
secondly it's effective it's inseparable from blood
thirdly it's personal and transpersonal at the same time
the holy spirit is a personal gift it's a gift a personal gift of the personal jobs through the person of jesus christ at the heart of our own person which brings our own person alive and sort of almost over just say not inflated but but now brings it to its full dimensions in some way
and yet at the same time as transpersonal you could almost say at some point impersonal the contemplative experiences merton often talks about his an experience in emptiness it's a kind of a a metaphysical experience and experience of being
so it moves between the personal and a metre person on a transpersonal in some way the cosmic is one aspect of that the present of the holy spirit in all things
but yeah i the internodes
no no idea what you haven't been night and put it in again
unfortunately it's related immediately to a communal reality and this is emphatically not true of the antique notion of of contemplation okay posts and a greek tradition and also in the for instance the desert fathers are the the early contemplative writers in christianity years they taught me about a an interior experience of the individual
person quite abstracting from a communal reality and this is true also on st john and across right there's hardly a breath about community and send you out in the crows and the church does not enter community and interested in different way and janet the group fifty it's related immediately to the historical context in movement or to a historical
context in movement the holy spirit is is a breast not only in the individual person in the core of the heart of the individual but is a abreast in the whole world a wind blowing in the whole world it it gives the whole of history of push it gets inside history and somehow
three and moves it
and six thing and this has been in a couple of the ones above it's essentially a dynamic paternity of contemplation often that notion has to be considered a static and and purely trans temporal okay gonna moving out of of the immutability of things that the neoplatonic tradition christianity especially that would retain augusta
for instance
whereas the holy spirit is is essentially some and dynamism it's essentially a flame and moose things
and it is at the heart somehow of history of sacred history but even of the world history
so those two expressions of
that's the end of that list but those two expressions of
contemplation first and then holy spirit or just at home and two completely different worlds cultural world
a greek or universal set the actual world if you like if you include lotus a the asian traditions for instance a zen tradition
which would accept i think the the deepest christian or the deepest western ocean of contemplation as as being very closely related if not identical with chalk experience take for instance a cart and january suzuki writing about our current engine and a biblical world of the new intro
vision of god's word and spirit into this world so there's simply a whole dynamic a whole context of act of movement of recreation or whatever you want to call it transformation to intentionally dynamic the holy spirit is dynamism and my
the new testament is conveying to us an event which embraces all of reality of creation and somehow
takes it into the divine action being but in so moves it pushes it directional a and somewhere
cosmos and history
here's a few
perspectives on this relation of holy spirit competitive experience just a few angles to say that chief how artists to talk about it in one way or following on track to put it into one picture on vision first of all holy spirit as the agent or the energy of contemplation
and none of these words do justice to it the holy spirit is the very subtle medium of contemplation so that he somehow the gift of the holy spirit or the awakening of the village food or the emergence of the holy spirit within you is identical with his nanda will experience which were talking about his contemplation but the the place the roof
role of the holy spirit in this is so subtle and so pervasive because the holy spirit is not a part now that we were so used to talking about parts it's not a park it's it's somehow influences the whole and there we go beyond our language we don't have a language we're talking about that holes about totality
secondly you can look at it the holy spirit as the unity of core of the gospels and in that way as the substance of contemplation so when you get through the letter of the word the outside of the word you get to the heart of it that's the holy spirit you've got to that you've got to this unit of reality of god which is communicable which is what
the word is trying to say the word that has spoken to us contains within it something which in a way it goes beyond word think of the word as something which is spoken which is heard which has seen which is red which has a surface which has a kernel which is perceived and
contains within it something which is not perceived in the same way not perceived with senses but which moves to your interior speaks to your interior which implants itself in your interior and lives there
think of the holy spirit in that way that's just one image of these are all images which are which are inadequate and if you think of it that way then you can also think of it does the divine feminine if you think of the the external part the word as we know word and words as being masculine think of the interior the core as being the feminine pure
early unity of divine reality which has no outside which has only pure pure union periodic pure non dual reality
and therefore which has to have a container which has in some way to be hidden which has to be mystery and sunlight in this world
now one more way of sneaking of the holy spirit is not as the center of the core or the filling as it was of the word but as the aura or the field of the word around a word
member that
particle wave alternative we talked about before you can think of say body as particle and soul or spirit as as wave or better as field so if you think of the words the letter of the scriptures the the physicality the particular
clarity of the word as particle now think of the holy spirit as field
the spirit of the word something like that but the with the expression field is very useful there
because also the notion of freedom in a field even and to feel like they talk about a what a quantum field as being a field of possibility you know as a marvelous analogy to to the holy spirit a field of creative possibility a field of as
as yet on particular eyes creativity
there's just one more because there are a lot of different ways you can make about the holy spirit obviously and relationship too
two contemplation and to the word it can think of it for instance in relationship to the moment as a point that penetrating point of of the divine reality for of our own and are most reality yet the across as that thing about of them when conduct i should really
becomes a flame in it's experience we use language of mom this is that is the student's cs this is no trifling cetera that's quite an equation can bring out and you can spousal yeah businesses it's a unity of love for him at that moment to that is that that it goes
beyond language and essential the being the very flame of oneness whereas if the to flange be were to become one the flame of our own spirit and the form of the divine spirit that's the point where a strange language the most hikers reason that the next day on lot member also he's got a trinitarian series of of images that that the for
father is i remember is the touch and is kind of very deep and subtle interior direct experiences with a three person to the chosen the father is that touch the sun i believe is the whisper and the spirit is the flame
i don't remember which of his works doesn't it

thanks to child process of at
a spiritual to read yes exactly the are him up the words that breeds exact it's him yeah exactly
i wrote a bunch of notify the joseph on the subject of your interests in
but i'll try to distill the whole thing in this way that you can three three perspective on this relationship kind of contemplation i always put first of all the holy spirit let to say as identical as contemplation that is kind of version as being simply the experience of the holy spirit as a starting point
but then the holy spirit being a breath being a respiration as it were as to movements one movement is the inhalation one movement is the drawing and inward movement of interiority anterior resection okay and that's typical of the monastic tradition and that moves towards the center and other which it's drawn towards the father
the or towards the center of our own being and it's as if you've got two axes that come from that center and one as the anxious to say of of the word or of understanding of knowledge of light and the other as the axis of the spirit or of effectivity of love of feeling
the the image there might be flame instead of life but as you move towards the center the to become one somehow the to tend to call or what you get as a kind of a of wisdom which is loving knowledge or knowing love remember that code current more hip say is not teach him
where love itself as knowledge and knowledge it offers luck because the the love the knowledge which is wisdom is
is a unit of knowledge which is not only love and our sense of between you know but love a simple delight love as simple resting in some kind of unity relationship with their beloved and then we were slipping all the time like into subject object knowledge which not that tissue it's beyond that
now let's see inward movement and actually typically monastic on the inhalation and let us say
and that's the experience of identity that murkiness talking about the experience of the core which i call a baptismal experience but there's another direction and the holy spirit tourism isn't and the this respiration of the holy spirit and then there's just maybe really actually where would get you get something a little different now
you get an explosion of energy moving outward and look as very geographically about moving out for word from a center from jerusalem this explosion of the holy spirit moving out from jerusalem to the edge of the earth which drives not inward outward and looks interest in act is to document
outward movement that explosion expansion of the holy spirit so it's moving towards something else and once it moving towards it's moving towards a global fullness somehow a global transformation of
and once again pardon if i call this eucharistic but i think that's where it's going the outward movement which is the inward movement is like light it's like the light of the century it's like the morning light in some way the a pure light of non dual experience to center which is typical in a sense of the asian traditions as well
okay of the east it's the eastern experience but this other room and this movement average which is like flame is
flame fire transforming energy which is gradually changing the world turning the world into something okay and it does it through human beings of course but it also works even and otherwise i mean even even science and technology or in some way products that can be wild
strange a defective product distorted products sometimes but that's products to abolition of this transforming energy and which moves outward in the world until this change the whole thing and that would go up baptism of a eucharistic and as typical not of the monastic tradition at all
but of other parts of the church i'm reminded of especially today the charismatic movement not because the charismatic movement is always a very good analogy here but neither some monastic tradition of network but it does impose itself quite to say diametrically on a sense to the monastic thing because
there you have two different experiences of the holy spirit one towards interiority and the other tending to move outwards also even and they and the visible think you got a bunch of people in a roman they started singing in tongues and all that wild stuff all that an external expressions by which it tends to move in that outward direction
the actually impossible to even the phenomenon or the phenomenon the outward phenomena of the new testament okay but as i say i don't want to stretch that conversion too far because we want to talk about the transforming dimension or this outward movement there is a peter that romberg school spirit goes into solid to wish not
it was busting out and wants to go away from little that's right that's right our early traditional seems to have something also the celtic traditions have a over the games to evangelize and and remaining plunk the media organisation has always been there now don't think the opposition yeah you're right at the money
classic tradition itself when it's really on fire when it's really alive tends to move in both of those directions and i think whatever christianity is experienced or re-emerges and it's full intensity and are whether it be within monasticism it'll push the boundaries of monasticism how it until it includes the or the movements and as a dozen prominent and effect of martyrdom is
very important because i think that's very much a part of this outward movement okay the outward movement drives towards a kind of consuming of the individual into the whole so when they were eager to go to coalinga or pressure wherever it was to be martin they're just like ignatius who wanted to be ground by the teeth of the beast remember
to become the bread of christ but i'd read of ghost was for the others that rid of christ it is for humanity for the world that's why i call a eucharistic
but that's the other dimension and when the the spirit doesn't allow us to stay in one in one pocket that we've got a conception of of contemplation and the spirit really comes alive and it's it's going to break down that construction and it's really gonna cross also institutional foundation that is oh among shouldn't do that with a monk is to do it is
certain point if the spirit is alive and
so the origins of these things are often very much bigger than the institutionalized versions afterwards know down to the centuries institution tend to specialize
and it reached in the roman catholic tradition and specializes in such things and concrete for my spirit really comes alive it moves across those boundaries and breaks down the country of work

yeah so on a thing like that i it the monastic tradition identifies with one dimension and then at certain times flames out on the other dimension and this is true else on the apostolic but you read the lives are forever
we don't like st paul and st paul is like an embodiment of this outward movement i just start with flame of of dynamism of the holy spirit and yet meet him talking about his interior experience when he says in first corinthians and the light of god we've seen one the says that the gotta have that light shine out of guard position in our our
ouch the glory of god an efficient great is the central experiences baptismal expansion when he when he relates that it goes all the way to that to that end and he says it like nobody has ever says it just because of the intensity of the spirit dragon both directions but his vocation drives an outward
this mission management
so there's a mutuality between those two directions
okay
any questions during the that was yes did it and i kept you sane
the connotation is only one abstracts last of the experiences that was an employee there was a yeah it's an imperfect statement okay that's a kind of that's an abstract statement to account for what i mean as the word contemplation is an abstraction it comes out of an abstract vocabulary okay
and it refers to a certain experience which in itself may be incomplete in comparison with the experience of the spirit that we're talking about
for anyone but the word itself is even more incomplete because it suggests that kind of subject object thing she patient suggest words word just looking at something is there also the panel set up thinking of contemplation fullness the gifts
the in the experience and then
when like you said god is busts out from get no fear it all flows from electric experience
in moving in one direction of the fullness of the experience but moving and the direction in which martin is particularly concerned with here it's the fullness of the experience with the spirit because it's been allowed to develop anteriorly to it's fully unity of reality okay it's expansion it's it's deepest unitary yeah
click so which you know doesn't seem to happen as nearly as much as it should from another point of view it's
the word contemplation is only expressing a part of what is happening
now at that moment it may express nearly the whole thing how to shape it at another moment it's only expression part of what is happening first of all because of reality spreads everywhere beneath the surface of life is unitary reality and this is experiencing all kinds of different ways but secondly because it tends to give preference to this thing and
short changed the outward dynamism okay
the more eucharistic dimension in which the holy spirit is
equally experienced
so it shouldn't say it's a it's a human word it's a cultural term which necessarily is limited
but that is a man's perspective that if you were to experienced us
to experience of contemplation and all those piece of advice favorite would grow that of their own i just because the nature of the experience yes but it seems to be largely though he might be skeptical about a statement like that in his later years
mean that later i mean cosmetic industry and contemplation as yes and then isn't the if i turn around that if you you to really experience has a complication it might just lead you into an active life again yeah i think so i try
the beauty of the negative contemplation is that it's so clear and focused okay and we in a sense we quite right choice will be wanna talk about as very useful for that reason for for renewing the focus and monasticism okay that word kind of place which is so much embattled in our time is an essential worker
unless we don't have another one like it for getting monasticism back on its original track check on the right track and and towards its central florida's court
and yet at the same time yet itself just because they're a limitation of a word leaves out a lot and can lead a person into a kind of reduced form of christian life
and another way to an obsession with contemplation of the contemplative experience can make a person deaf to the holy spirit

okay so we had a
like to talk about contemplation and the new testament a little more we had a paradox than that contemplation is not used explicitly that that term and the new testament but yet shows the new testament full of contemplation and i blueberries right so we had this further thesis that the core of the biblical world in particular the new testament is the editor
divine reality the one i repeated i just a few minutes ago so that this yeah tim is communicable and word and spirit and it's the very substance
contemplative experience
so that the new testament is like a vehicle or a container for
the additive experience with container for the unit of reality is just an image but
and so when a delivers it it's message and delivers it's it's packages that were what is delivering is this unit to reality
no it's not just a contemplative experience it's a unit of transformation whereby you'll become a new i know being but there's no being contrast with the old being by its unity of character the fact that it brings us about the to this one is one in the one which is god and it's one somehow with everything else as well it's like a new into
density of oneness in the world which is able to somehow together other things into unity around it

so
this communicable united reality of god
which we call the holy spirit and it's in it's communicable form of communication
and as martin says that a question and issue for us of identity
the this is the source this gift is a source in the event of our new being a no identity it's important to put it in the context of old and new i think sometimes written will be talking in that context of true self and for self but we found when we used at that
it didn't quite do it that we need to translate sooner or later and to the language of old and new
as he's doing here is also going to called the new man in which he and gives a lot of attention to them we have to get it sooner or later back into a biblical perspective and then that communication of the divine unity of being as an a direct line was that remember that all those i am expressions in john's gospel and that fundamental revelation of the divine
name to moses back at the burning bush and exodus three wreckage name is read the others i am now the biblical color commentators will translate that an all different ways but you can get away from it to at the heart of it is this kind of ram and would you call it this bolas i
direction right to earn the hard core of our own being part of our own identity
oh and bark has got a marvellous presage on that we're talking about
the participation human participation in nature and everything being all systematically eliminated and the old testament until the only participation there is is through the recitation of the divine name through the speaking of the divine name i am which you cannot say without a participation and
a to say the divine name somehow i managed to identify yourself with the divine being
that's the way put your which i think it may be overstated their it's marvelous marvelous marvelous time
and i think about it in connection with an image of them of the burning bush from which the name is spoken
now this is the contemplation identity relation which merton proposed to us at the beginning of of his book the our experience
and why is kind of budget not discussed in the new testament but sometimes it is well my under another term like the knowledge of god or to see in john's gospel to see jesus and often your own between face and contemplation there and often their you can't distinguish on a certain point faces like dark on a
asian and gonna patient or knowledge is like light faith there there are one continue on one thing
the opening of the eyes of the heart and efficient or i think martin coach them on
knowledge of the mystery and poor or he says the knowledge that mystery has been given to us noticed that often the this is not simply the non door knowledge we're talking about how to extract with there's usually a kind of objective content you knowledge of history and shot and yet that's all soaked with this unit of knowledge and they're almost indistinct
wish of a certain point because the mystery that paul is talking about this mystery of christ when you read ephesians and conversions is precisely the mystery of unity and so he comes just so just permeated with this unit of experience itself which were calling contemplation non dual experience jesus on the cross
this is the very core of that the very event very realization of that non door reality as it comes into the world and and note and put yourself into the world and historical and transforming way so
the content and the when should we say the content of the experience it is the mystery and other producer me and the gentiles are both safe together that's identical somehow with the stuff with that fabric with that whatever it is of substance of the unity of reality and editor experience which were speaking of as contemplation
the basic way of religious knowing and a new testament is a participative knowing if not a unity of knowing if not a contemplative night
so the new testament
the the very knowledge that very understanding the very meeting with jesus frenchman's and the new testament is a contemplative encounter
it has a hobby scholar smoked the world simply of yeah
damascus experience was called there as he was only this event somehow in that light hundred this is the price should be crucified and still separate a premature to the risen christ and so i can see how christ on the cross and then some up together that risk experiences is several this unit
he have experience in it's it's christ form and i think that's all the way through three through john so much i were in that light and the recent crime that try peniche all the unity of vitamin implicit and olive it is this knowledge that everything has pulled together in christ and they say that his lord you know there's also implicitly the and
i was at this particular this particular rulers the one who reaches to the bottom and reaches out to the site and somehow brings it all together in himself and for one to one photos are in christ in our to encouraged in christ and christ in him that language that repetition say it's the same sense it's instinctive with close with his every word with this brass practically
then john many for be as emergency he says that he experienced of contemplation is moving into christ's experiences christ praise eternally as to father so you can do all kinds a trinitarian being so that experience who can patients experiencing a risk and sometimes i find this very of just to move it
to the contemplative christ i tried shrimp
yeah
merton cause very close to it and that ejection that we read that was was the theology and contemplation section where our contemplation is simply illogical at an emanation of are being encouraged him which then can be consider also inferior to the father or you may simply withdraw since the interior beating itself
which is essentially unity to and therefore essentially condemned to that is your identity itself even if you're not praying about matter what you're doing even if you're doing nothing or identity itself is full of that has been has been as it were permeated with a baptized with her
think our shoulders
did you see them confrontation uses the individual were work and asset yes we are you can buy got worse i tried and contemplation is the get your ass as a the advices that what itself becomes the ass is less up in effect that need you
it's cubans a jamie to job words can also tap water i flashed not try and not address the as actually become something that was this act
the words have falling as yes it's quite subtle what he does the she says that use it as
those seats giving them yes yeah
so faces the basis and a beginner you gonna inflation and whatever knowledge they use the terms gnosis or at businesses and the new testament develops from phase is a contemplative knowledge the knowledge that comes from faces a contemplative knowledge
we have a tendency to think of it as things that were told things that we learn but when those things count they really have become your own experience that is there they're somehow now that coming india they're coming out of you in some sense they're coming out is like everybody who who teaches in christianity is a mr garg was simply initiate the person to what he's already received an initial
creation was already inside a number where john the first letter john says you have received this annoying from the holding one and you all know it on united to trick all the teacher can do a study on chip god and that's what follows is doing old time name are insane remember what you received and a wake up you know you forgot what you wish yoga forgot which been done
to you which happened to you who you are
james has the same thing when he says you know on the words like a marriage of liberty and you walk away from him you forget your heart is pure
so the notion of kind of patient as a greek philosophical biased it's somewhat abstract or and the circumscribed it's intellectual list and maybe duelist anti material that so intrinsic to the great tradition to polar ice spirit work your intellect
nossa against matter i say that when a holy spirit comes just shoot it's like elijah fiery and i just sweeps all the matter hold the whole body right up into into it so there's no more dualism
so gonna question can be a dualistic conception of a tentative experience
and i remember merton either sarcasm average like credit for the slivered upper class
where's the biblical tradition as much more holistic under the comprehensive synthetic non analytical and it's incarnational at as embodying it's sacramento and wide sense
and so we tried contemplation continually within something larger and less t materialized and itself the notion of contemplation even a experience of contemplation outside christiania thing but of experience inside themselves into a larger be a larger thing
the word kind of patients already on the way to non participative consciousness to non-participation because it has has this suggestion of subject object experiencing where's the essence of new testament contemplative experiences participation she led expression of pool and cristo in christ
which is almost obsessive with him
and the notion of the one body else
so this leads us into the middle of the great big epistemological question on how do we know this is the problem with contemporary a biblical exegesis that it's of it's got an unconscious presupposition that we know in a certain way and that's the only way to know and that knowing is basically a scientific
way of knowing basic rate an analytical way of knowing and so very often it it just doesn't get onto the frequency of the of the scripture of a new testament that prepares the ground it does a lot of the preliminary work the homework very often it stops the strangely
but
the question of contemplation of new testament writers to what we might go on intellectual conversion that is what we it turns over our consciousness just as it does for the people who come to jesus you know like nigga damaged israel
so you've gotta be born again it requires a kind of
reverse of consciousness
which is a contemplative conversion
a re centering of our consciousness if we start from today's mentality especially now face has already doing advantage but it doesn't largely in the darkness
but if we want to talk about contemplation and the new testaments or forces to do it in the daylight that brings up the issue of into the open where we have to talk about the seeking these giants like origin greatly miss survive this is a profoundly typical and very open was
your agree sooner wrestling that's right the opposition's and differences that term of participation and from timeless uses it in a it can be used in an neoplatonic and then in a very different we do test attractive but we have these giants the earlier a greek christian creating home
once you are young and the the russian it's the perennial problem comes up especially in our time and a whole inculturated ration thing and the meeting with the asian tradition discretion
the word participation is extremely useful here and the best writer i found out and is barfield one worker who talks about are passing through a kind of needles i have not participated non-participating knowledge and then and the scientific age and then a new participation emerging from that time which would be a no wisdom you know
also within christianity
so our understanding of terms like contemplation have to as to change really and the process of this conversion from something distinct an experience in a distinct moment
to something more varied multi level pervasive participate i guess so martin is wrestling with it
and you want to keep the focus because they say it's extremely important for monasticism to have a focus of the pure contemplation them as a kind of the direction gives a whole perspective
and yet to realize it as a participated permeating kind of reality and in the christian context part of something much bigger
we can get all down a contemplation of something that's for sure martin would agree with it
i noticed that if contemplation sort of loses itself into the wholeness of our unit himself on one side to side towards us if you look at the new testament it loses itself into the whole of the new testament experience okay it happens at both ends
kind of patients are in the middle this abstract were kind of contemplation if we bring it into our own life and disappears and then it's everywhere underneath and manifesting into a more or less clearly an a different knowledge if you try to find it a new testament and disappears on and to and then
you'll find a chevy work but as something larger than itself a abstract term contemplation still doesn't fill ago
it's as if whatever jesus touches continues to burn with a contemplative fire that was diameter for it no matter where he isn't the gospel no matter what he touches nevada where he appears or what he says it's got that fire in that the united
presence in farmers
contemplation itself as a goal is is like the pearly and on and us for is the most desirable objective of war but at the same time obviously to kind of a siren charm and kind of ego trip kind of as martin points out frequently especially as been no seeds of gonna quit
sometimes it's useful to move around to the opposite side of for when you're talking about contemplation the underside of the question members dot on nicole her and i think was in another paper is not to want to be intellectually that he gave us the question it's tolstoy's question but what is it by which a person lives
but what is it by what is it from what is it that somebody lives there nobody except the exact words and is talking of course about about the poor what why
what does it it makes life possible that's the underside okay i'll just leave it with you and then and then how does that relate to contemplation and of in the matter of faith is going to get in there somewhere with the relationship between the two sides of things that that is that the dark side of face as it were in a light shade of fate what is it what is it did you live by
now if it's gonna be patient
the it we can a little bit of are few years ago it's got to be something that the bridge itself in the ground
we've already just about consumed at times so maybe i can ask you for next time which than the next time finishing the same subject to revision and i'm going to with
true
take those notes which a handout number six that

yeah
that's true was four pages of notes
and see what you can do with an okay
first you gotta kind of introduction
in which you'll find some repetition of such things we've been saying today
that's contemplative reality of experience in a new testament does david
first of kind of a general introduction then a suggestion of some places to look for this unity or contemplative reality and under new from some angles to look for those who were in our mark class will recognize some of the angles here the time difference
and then these third-party see story on page three is
just a list of exemplary places where you find these different forms different manifestations of unity or contemplative experience
some of them had a distinctly in the knowledge of god some of them and their baptismal experience some of them it's something like the anointing that john talks about some of them need new indwelling of the last supper and job
and sometimes
more distinct experiences like vision
and then we can work with resist stuff next time
looking for park that they performed not not and forgot about it
nothing from the synoptics doesn't matter of fact you're not opportunity to kind of snobbery
set two hundred passengers the master and was yeah that's right matthew eleven twenty five to thirty and our father i thank you for your that should be here the area cases exalted in the holy spirit and said father i thank you because you've hidden these things from the great and and reveals into the little ones
marvelous matthew eleven twenty five to three and then the equivalent and look which is a little different because dairy dairy exults in knowledge prevent and be doesn't that
and a couple of others at but just see it on it's implicit originally and this and objects it's harder to grasp distress a muslim or more explicit more obvious from some way it's more subtle strangely it's more subtle and is now
you know in the orthodox interpretation of that
but they didn't see with their eyes they saw through their eyes but they show through their eyes from center to center is a from a the core of themselves to the core of that unit of being and jesus had uncreated light jason
okay