“…The contemplative is [not] the [person] who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply [he/she] who has risked [their] mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a clamp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist…”
Thomas Merton, in a letter to Dom Francis Decroix, 21st August 1967. Published in Dancing in the Water of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, edited by Robert E. Daggy.
The contemplative must explore the uncharted desert area of the human heart, what Merton describes as the “arid, rocky, dark land of the soul.” Ultimately this desert-way is what Nouwen calls “the way of the heart”. It is a profoundly difficult path, one which takes us on a healing and transformative journey into our dark interior; a journey to the source and centre of who we most truly are, and out of which – by means of the Spirit – we will become freer, more fully alive, and more authentically human in our imaging of God. It’s a journey through which we reconnect with what is most true about each of us: we are created to image God. In this journey the projections and the veneer of our lives are done away with and there is a reconnection between who we most truly are and how we are. Our disordered desires and longings are ordered. We find what we are looking for. We have all created a “false-self” from the sense of “lack”, woundedness and inadequacy that we all feel and from which we need to be set free (for more on this “false self”, I’d recommend the enneagram as a helpful tool, and especially those enneagram books / resources that highlight the pathological, unhealthy, wounded or shadow characteristics of each type.
One the contemplative path we move from unconsciousness to consciousness.
‘Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self… My false and private self is the one who wants [to hide from God; too dwell in the darkness] to exist outside the radius of God’s will and love – outside of reality and life [a reality that more often than not lies at the heart of our feelings of “lostness” or being a “lost thing”]. And such a self cannot help being an illusion… For most people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin [the life of self inversion and self-gratification] … Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in [re]discovering God. If I find God, I will find myself; and if I find my true self, I will find God…” Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (London: Burns and Oats, 1960), p. 9.
In order to reconnect with our deepest and truest self, we must unblock and find healing for all the hidden and largely unconscious (i.e. we’re not aware of them) emotional, spiritual and psychological wounds we have accumulated throughout our lives and out of which we act. This unconsciousness profoundly affects our relation to ourselves, to others, and our behaviour. In this sense we are all prodigal’s and "older brothers" in equal measure.
Thomas Keating reflecting on the human condition (the universal “lack” or “flaw” common to all of us), oftentimes in Christian circles named as “original sin” says, “The term original sin is a way of describing the universal experience of coming to full reflective self-consciousness without the certitude of personal union with God. This gives rise to our intimate sense of incompletion, [lostness], dividedness, isolation, and guilt… this is because I am born in selfishness. I am born self-centered. And this is original sin…”
But, “… The conscious resolution to change our values and behaviour is not enough to alter the unconscious value systems of the false self and the behaviour they engender. Only the passive purification of contemplative prayer can effect this profound healing…” Anna A. Terruwe MD & Conrad Baars MD, Psychic Wholeness and Healing, p.191).
The human person is a complex entity and therefore, change, healing and growth take time. It takes time to uncover the emotional and psychological woundedness and all the things that are driving us to find fulfilment in all the wrong places.
Contemplative prayer and through it, the healing of the unconscious, is an important means to our becoming more fully human, more alive, and more fully and authentically who God created us to be.
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