Contemplation...
...is ,above all, awareness of the reality of (the) Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes both beyond reason and beyond simple faith...can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said, and denies what it has affirmed...is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real...is not just the affair of a passive and quiet temperament, is not mere inertia, a tendency to inactivity, to psychic peace, is not merely a man who likes to sit and think......is not prayerfulness...can never be the object of calculated ambition, is not something we plan to obtain with our practical reason, but the living water of the Spirit that we thirst for, like a hunted deer thirsting after a river in the wilderness...is incompatible with complacency...is no pain-killer...is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded be left empty...Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish, or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.
I must learn therefore to let go of the familiar and the usual and consent to what is new and unknown to me.
Thomas Merton- New Seeds of Contemplation
No comments:
Post a Comment