The Role of Virtue:
With
consistency and
focus we
have built the vehicle that we
need for deep prayer, and
virtue is
the fuel that powers it. When
Jesus was engaged in His public
ministry, He practically made it a
habit of testing the person's
faith before He helped them. After
the person was healed, He would
say something like, "Go in peace
for your Faith has saved you." In
deep prayer, we are dealing with
the same God who tests our Faith
before we our led to
contemplation. From
our perspective, we are constantly
practicing virtue in deep prayer
and practice makes perfect.
Consistency introduces us to the
possibility; focus takes us to
spiritual poverty; and
virtue disposes us towards
contemplation.
Virtue is the key that unlocks the
treasure of deep prayer. Prayer
times will not be consistently
rewarding until virtue has been
properly developed.
Virtue is our identity as
demonstrated in these examples.
"The Chosen People are a people of
hope." "We are a faith community."
"They will know that we our
Christians by our love for each
other." Virtue is what sets holy
people apart from atheists. It is
our defining attribute.
Faith, hope, and charity are three
components of a higher hiearchical
intelligence. We can not agape
someone unless we also believe and
hope in them. If we have hope for
someone, we are extending charity
to them. We could not hope in
someone without also having faith
in them, and vice-versa we can not
have faith in someone without
hoping in them. If we believe or
hope in someone, then we also have
some love for them. In other
words, the practice of any one
virtue, implies the presence of
the other two because they are all
part of the same higher
intelligence.
Since virtue is our highest
intelligence (Note - rational
thought is normally called our
highest intelligence, but more is
accomplished through virtue than
any other trait that we might
have), it is necessarily our least
understood ability. For our
highest part is not understood by
the lower parts, but the lower
parts can be understood by the
higher parts. In other words,
reason can understand sight, but
the eyes can not see thought. In
deep prayer, we only use senses or
reasoning to promote virtue which
is our highest ability.
When we neglect virtue, we don't
award it with the attention that
it deserves. With the common
phrase, "I won't believe it unless
I see it," we are trusting only
the dumbest part of ourselves,
whereas Jesus challenges us to use
the highest part or ourselves. In
other words, we are more likely to
get everything exactly backwards
than to rely on our strongest
capability, virtue.
Virtue is not just our stongest
ability, it makes us infallible.
For Saint Paul in his letter to
the Romans says, "God causes all
things to work together for good
to those who love God." We will
never know a virtuous person whose
efforts come to naught. We will
find no faith in the New Testament
that does not produce a result. If
this sort of failure occurred, it
would be intellectually dishonest
for the writers to omit it. In
fact, they wrote the opposite by
saying that He did all things
well. It is not possible for
virtue to fail.
All of our other abilities are
completely dependent on virtue.
With our modern emphasis on
education, we might be led to
think that knowledge is our
highest facility, but we all know
very knowledgeable people who are
highly ineffective and therefore
unintelligent. As Aristotle
proved, all effectivity comes from
God. We have already shown that
God demands virtue before
fulfilling a request. While it can
seem that we have ability without
virtue, that ability comes from
our belief or love in ourselves
even if the virtue is not
consciously expressed. We can
therefore conclude that our
ability is dependent upon our
virtue.
We can not answer God's call by
merely showing up and going
through the motions. As Saint Paul
so eloquently demonstrated (1
Corinthians 13:1), God demands
virtue. Our prayer time, earthly
vocation, and eternal life all
hinge on whether we develop the
practice of virtue. When God calls
us, we don't answer with "here" or
"present" but with "I believe" or
"Amen!"
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How To Develop Virtue During Deep Prayer:
Virtue sets apart Christian
meditation from all other forms of
meditation. To paraphrase Jesus
and Paul from the New Testament, if
the meditation doesn't develop
virtue, of what use is it? To be
sure, neither Jesus nor Paul spoke
of meditation, but both emphasized
that our relationship with Jesus
requires that we believe in Jesus.
In other words, to have a
relationship with God, we need to
believe that Jesus is God. The
goal of Christian meditation is to
improve our relationship with God,
and therefore we need to improve
our virtue. If the meditation does
not attempt to increase our
virtue towards God, it is not a
Christian meditation.
To make our virtue stronger, we
must use it. We get stronger, when
we use our muscles. To become more
intelligent, we need to use our
intelligence. As Jesus put it in
the parable of the talents, if we
don't use our virtue, we will lose
what little we have. In deep
prayer, we want to use or virtue.
Our virtue should always be
increasing. When we practice
something, we expect to get better
at it. Our virtue is not tied to
our health. Our health will fail,
but our virtue should always be
getting stronger. For virtue,
carries us into the next life.
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Faith:
We practice our faith during our
prayer time by believing we will
find the objective that we seek.
For example, one of our objectives
is to feel the presence of either
Jesus or Mary. Without using much
Faith, we can look at pictures,
imagine the feelings, or carry out
any number of other mental
exercises, and these things might
sort of work for a while. The only
long term solution is to believe
that Jesus or Mary will show up.
If we are having a hard time
believing they will, even an
attempt to believe will strengthen
our belief. After we felt the
presence very strongly, we should
believe that it will keep getting
better. God doesn't have any
limits.
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Hope:
To have hope, we need to long for
something and attempt to get it.
We can increase our hope by
creating a better idea or vision
of what we want. In deep prayer, a
part of our meditation should be
directed toward some goal of what
we are trying to achieve during
that prayer time. For example, we
might form a mental image of the
Nativity scene as we are
meditating on the Nativity, but we
would also hope to feel the
presence of baby Jesus. In other
words, we hope for the feeling,
love, or experience, because we
hope for the goal rather than the
meditation. When we are attracted
to another person, we naturally
think about the person. This
builds our hope and longing for
the person, and a similar process
occurs in deep prayer.
We only have hope if we carry out
our plan. In other words, hope is
not only a plan, it is a plan that
we are actively working toward. In
our prayer time, our hope is not
only a desire to experience God,
it is working towards feeling God.
It is not only the goal, it is the
walk towards the goal.
While we might remember the
experience from a previous
meditation, we can hope for either
a new or different experience.
We may be able to feel the
familiar
commemoration and
associated experience, yet we can
hope to add, change, or refresh
the familiar experience. The
commemoration of the specific
meditation would not change, but
our hope can change. If we are
hoping for something different, we
should have some notion that might
be pretty vague about where we
want to go. We would want to hope
for an experience that is within
the context of the divine
relationship. As Saint John of the
Cross points out, love is the only
valid goal. When we hope, we are
not required to always hope for
the same experience.
Our hope should always be
increasing. As we progress in
prayer, we should expect better
experiences. With each successive
prayer time, our goals should be
greater. We should carry out the
plan with more focus, and with God
as our helper, we will ultimately
master the interplay between the
commemorative focus and virtuous
goals. After all, each experience
makes our habits deeper, truer,
and more focused. It wouldn't make
any sense that we would keep
getting better at execution and at
the same time have worse actual
experiences.
The concept of increased hope runs
contrary to what is often
associated with, "The Dark Night
of the Soul" which was coined by
Saint John of the Cross (John).
John's system actually contains 2
dark nights which are
differentiated as little and big.
The little dark night comes as we
gain self control and give up our
habitual sins, and John
specifically mentions that God
gives many consolations during the
little dark night. At some point
after the little dark night, we
will run into the big dark night,
if we progress far enough. The big
dark night is associated with the
breaking of the false self, and
all the vain joys of our self made
world seem to evaporate. The
prayer experience will need to be
stronger to compensate for the
lack of joy which used to come
from our self made world, or we
will likely fall into a
depression. In neither the little
nor big dark night of the soul,
does the prayer experience lessen.
On the contrary, our prayer
experience should always be
growing.
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Love:
Love has many meanings, but within
the context of deep prayer, love
is a supernatural power that is
given to bring us to a
supernatural end which is a divine
relationship. Since God is more
intelligent than us, we can not
know God without some supernatural
power that reveals to us the
divine relationship. In other
words, we only know supernatural
love through divine revelation.
Our response to the divine
revelation is always changing and
hopefully growing. It usually
starts with the an attempt to keep
God's commandments. We might not
have the best reasons for being
obedient. For example, we might be
keeping the commandments under
duress, because we will be
punished if we step out of line.
As our love for God grows, our
response to the divine revelation
becomes stronger and purer.
Besides keeping the commandments,
we might become more sympathetic
or polite, and rather than being
forced into something, we become
more giving because of the good
that is in our heart. We also
begin to understand more about
God, others, and ourselves. For
example, we might know that we are
nicer because God is making us
more loving. This process
strengthens and accelerates in
deep prayer.
If we our persistent in our good
intent, it will become a habit
which usually forms somewhat
gradually. The habit is rooted in
our will, but it is a part of the
divine revelation. In other words,
the habit of good intent does not
occur without sanctifying grace
infusing us with the ability to
become more like ourselves. By
this, we mean that the grace
allows us to love God more than
ourselves which could not
logically occur without God's
initiative.
While the divine revelation is
obviously outside of our control,
we can cooperate with it by being
consistent with our commemoration.
In other words, the pupose of the
commemoration is to strengthen the
good habits that came from the
divine revelation. The same
commemoration is repeated and
built to assist the habit. Within
our feelings, the habit triggers
the commemoration and vice versa.
The more we practice the habit the
greater the divine revelation. As
we can see, we are beginning to
form loving and feeling
relationship with God which is our
only possession that will last
forever. By keeping the
commemoration consistent, we
provide fertile soil for the
divine revelation. Nothing grows
in soil that is being constantly
turned.
Since the commemoration is
repeated so many times over such a
long period of time, it becomes a
part of us. The commemoration
helps us initially to long for
God, but as gain experience, we
will find that the commemoration
helps us to get past ourselves
into a purer intent of increasing
our love for God. To put this
another way, the enthusiasm
contained in the greatest
commandment may seem rather
abstract to us initially because
we are torn in so many different
directions, but as our whole body
recites the commemoration together
we open the only appetite which is
common to every part of us (i.e.,
love of God). When the feelings
start flowing through this
appetite we will feel delight
which without the commemoration
would cause us to be distracted.
As John of the Cross puts it, we
are running through the flowers to
Jesus, but then we stop to smell
the flowers. After we have some
experience with the commemoration,
we will be able to stick with it
through all sorts of feelings
which allows us to pursue God even
when the divine revelation is
propagating through our body as
waves of ecstatic delight. The
commemoration is so natural to us,
that we live it through these
peaks which allows us to pursue
the divine revelation rather than
mere human delight.
Besides the commemoration, we want
to use faith and hope to empower
the habits that became possible
through the divine revelation.
We can have faith and hope and
still be in serious sin that might
bring about our ruin, but love is
incompatible with sin. While, as
we have shown, faith, hope, and
love are all part of the same
thing, love is more of the
completion of faith and hope. In
other words, faith and hope are
meant to uncover the divine
revelation.
If we love God, we go to Heaven.
It is that simple. For example,
Saint John Vianney was consoling a
woman about the loss of her
husband who did not go to church.
John told her that her husband was
saved because he once was
attracted to the Blessed Virgin
during one of her Marian
adorations, but according to John,
the husband was "way down" in
purgatory and needed a lot of
prayers. Yes, Mary is not God, but
in her sinless state, she
accurately portrays the feminimine
side of God. We hope that faith
will lead us to salvation, but we
know that God will save those He
loves.
Love is more than salvation; love
is meant to be the fulfillment of
life, or as Jesus put it (John
15:11), "so that My joy may be in
you, and that your joy may be made
full." Within the context of
prayer, love means we must
identify with or conform to God.
In other words, we no longer
identify with ourselves; for we
now identify with Christ. It is
the sanctifying grace of the
divine revelation that causes us
to give up on our life to live for
God. As Saint Paul said (Galatians
2:20), "I no longer live, but
Christ lives in me." Without the
divine revelation, life is usually
dreary, boring, and unfulfilling.
On the other hand, love creates
heaven on earth, or as Catherine
of Siena put it, "The road to
heaven is heaven."
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Putting It All Together:
By now, we have covered so much
material that it would seem
impossible to implement it; so
let's make it easy by breaking it
into a 10 step program.
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Before Starting:
We need to pick a meditation or
reading. Any number of good
meditations have been created. Two
good examples are the
Holy Rosary and
Lectio Divina. When
picking a meditation, we should
keep in mind that we are looking
for one that will expand with our
growth, is conducive to our
commemoration, and can change with
the church calendar.
If we have trouble staying awake
through the meditation, we should
take the measures we need to be
alert. This might be coffee,
exercise, or some
mechanical device.
We will take this step by step.
When we go up a step, we are still
practicing everything in the steps
below it. After we are familiar
with the levels, we will feel
comfortable with moving up a level
during the prayer time. Since we
need to move between steps during
the prayer time, we would profit
from committing the steps to
memory. If that is too hard, we
might have them printed out and in
front of us. After we have used
them for a while, we would
remember them without trying.
Before we start, we should have a
clear notion of what we are going
to do. We need to know what our
meditation is going to be, and we
need to know what step we are
going to start with. In most
cases, we would want to start a
couple of steps lower than we
finished the last time. Within our
mind, we need to know when to move
to another level. We could use the
following guide.
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a. |
Overwhelmed:
Drop down a level.
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b. |
Inspired:
Stay at the same level, unless we
feel we can move up a level.
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c. |
Bored:
Move up a level.
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During Prayer:
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Beginning Level:
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1. |
Establish Focus:
We should establish the focus
which has two parts.
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a. |
Audio:
We should silently vocalize the
meditation.
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b. |
Visual:
We should visualize the
meditation. In other words, we
should shut our eyes and imagine
that we see it.
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2. |
Feel Presence:
We should try to feel the presence
of the
personality that is the
focus of meditation.
[
more]
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3. |
Check Results
:
Every few seconds we should ask
ourselves if we are still thinking
about the
commemoration.
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4. |
Practice Virtue
:
We begin to practice virtue.
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a. |
Hope:
We hope to feel the personality of
the meditation. If we already feel
the presence of the personality,
we hope for it to grow stronger.
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b. |
Faith:
We believe we will feel the
personality of the meditation. If
we already feel the presence of
the personality, we believe it
will grow stronger.
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Intermediate Level:
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5. |
Meditate Within
:
In this step, we will start moving
the meditation around within our
body. We will start with three
locations.
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more]
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a. |
Abdomen:
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b. |
Heart:
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c. |
Mind:
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6. |
Breathe Prayer
:
The commemoration and virtue are
practiced with each breath. The area
that we meditate within (e.g.,
abdomen, heart, or mind) is moved to
the next area with each breath.
[
more]
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7. |
Validate Breath
:
At each breath, we check whether the
commemoration and virtue were
practiced. If we are more
experienced, we should get 3 of the
four parts with every breath. In
other words, the next breath is not
started until we have 3 of the
following four parts.
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a. |
Audio:
We should silently say the words of
the commemoration (e.g., Hail Mary
full of grace - 1st Joyful Mystery)
from within the part of the body that
we are targeting.
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b. |
Visual:
With our eyes shut, we should imagine
seeing the commemoration (e.g., Mary
- 1st Joyful Mystery) inside the
targeted body area.
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c. |
Faith:
The target area (e.g., heart, mind,
or abdomen) should believe that it
will feel the personality of the
commemoration (e.g., Mary - 1st
Joyful Mystery) during the current
breath. If we already feel the
presence of the personality, our
targeted area should believe that it
will feel it stronger during the
current breath.
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d. |
Hope:
Our targeted area should hope to feel the central
personality of the commemoration. If we already feel the
divine presence, we should hope for a stronger feeling.
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8. |
Reach Goals
:
The intermediate level should have
quality goals that we consciously
reach each day. The two counts are
centered around the number of valid
breaths.
[
more]
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a. |
Between Distractions:
We should count the number of valid
breaths between distractions.
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more]
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b. |
Total Count:
We should keep an overall count for
the entire session, and we should
have some goal that we are shooting
for.
[
more]
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Advanced Level:
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9. |
Pray Unceasingly
:
As in the seventh step, we move the
commemoration and virtue from each
region (e.g., abdomen, heart, mind),
and we continue prayer, albeit
without the goals, in the untargeted
regions. In other words, the targeted
areas must still reach the goal to
validate the count, but the
untargeted areas should continue to
pray without the goals.
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10. |
Nurture Flow
:
At this point, we have continuous
prayer in three regions of our body,
and in this step, we connect these
regions with a flow that moves from
the abdomen to the heart, and then to
the mind. The flow is created and
maintained in two ways.
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a. |
Target Rotation:
We continue the target rotation that
we started in the seventh step.
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b. |
Holistic Virtue:
For most of us, it is hard to create
the flow through some mental process
or meditation, but the flow will
occur naturally if we long for it and
believe that it will occur.
[
more]
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Addendum to the 10 Steps:
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Presence:
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Prayer is relationship. Would we
say that we love someone, if we
did not have any feelings for
them? In deep prayer, we try to
build a relationship with God by
feeling the divine presence as it
is potrayed by the
personality in
the meditation. We have to pray
with our feelings if we are going
to build a relationship.
Our concentration is governed by
our emotions. In the meditation,
we should try to feel the subject
of the meditation. For example, if
we are meditating on the first
"Joyful Mystery" of the Rosary, we
would try to feel the presence of
Mary or at least wonder what it
might feel like.
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Virtue:
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After some amount of time which
might be a few minutes or several
weeks, we may find that we can not
emotionally connect to the
meditation. We would be unable or
unwilling to feel the presence of
personality. If we are unwilling,
we need to practice hope which is
to want to feel the divine
presence. If we are unable, we
should practice faith by believing
that we will feel the presence of
personality.
For most of us, our minds simply
wander off the meditation. The
solution to this problem is
practicing both the focus and
virtue simultaneously. With
persistence, we will eventually
become focused at these beginning
stages by using focus and virtue
together.
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Commemoration:
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At this level, we should have been
consistent for long enough to
build some level of commemoration.
We may need to put in some slight
adjustments, but we should have
audio and visual commemorations
that repeat at effective intervals
and stay within the correct
season of the Church. The
commemoration may not be paying
much in dividends, but it is still
a good investment. As we move
forward, it will become vital.
Each part of the body should
practice the commemoration. The
body has many parts, so to begin
with we will keep things simple by
beginning with only three parts:
the heart, mind, and abdomen.
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Breathing:
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Intermediation:
By mixing breathing into our
protocol, we actually make it easier
to keep track of the individual
meditations in our heart, mind, and
abdomen. With each breath, we move
the meditation to the next area.
Counting:
After we are comfortable with the
breathing (which might be days,
weeks, or years), we want to start
counting the breaths to gain some
control over the quality of our
meditation.
Breathing out is one count, and
breathing in is another. It is easier
to maintain the count, if we know
that every exhale is an even count.
If we have progressed to where
counting is mostly automatic, we want
to have a firm quality goal in our
mind when we begin the meditation. The
quality goal should include the
number of counts during the prayer
time, the number of the counts
between distractions, and what
constitutes a valid count in terms of
focus and virtue.
Distractions:
At some points, we will take invalid
breaths. We want to know how many
valid breaths we took until we lost
our concentration. It is more
important to meet the goal than to be
overly ambitious, so we should
initially set the bar low. For
example, if we are new to all of
this, number of counts between
distractions might be 5. As we become
more proficient, we will want to
increase the number. If we are
distracted before we reach the number
of breaths between distractions, then
we would start the count over.
Total:
We should maintain a count that only
moves forward at the successful
completion of the number of counts
between distractions. For example, if
the count from distraction to
distraction is 10, the overall count
would count by 10s each time we
completed 10 counts without a
distraction. In other words, if we
counted to 3 and had a distraction,
we would start the distraction count
over because the goal was 10. If we
made it to 10, the distraction count
would start over, and the total
count would move forward by 10. The
easiest way to do this is to go back
to the mulitple of 10 when we have a
distraction. For example, if the
count was 13, then we would go back
to 10 if there was a distraction.
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Contemplation:
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After we have established the flow,
it won't take us long to reach
spiritual poverty. In
fact, an adequate flow is
approximately the same thing as
spiritual poverty. If we have more
experience at reaching spiritual
poverty, we will return to it faster.
Spiritual poverty is the final thing
that we can do to reach
contemplation, but after we reach
contemplation, we need to keep driving
all of the things (e.g.,
commemoration, virture, etc.) that
brought us to contemplation. For
example, when we are in
contemplation, we wouldn't leave our
focus to listen to or record a
message from God. We are interested
in the relationship with God (not the
gifts). God is the ultimate
communicator, and we will know and
understand anything we are supposed
to. By focusing on the relationship,
we will receive the gifts in a purer
way. We maintain our discipline
during our contemplation, lest we are
immediately distracted from our
communion with God.
While contemplation is not
guaranteed, it usually occurs shortly
after spritual poverty. It occurs
faster with more experience. If it
takes more than 50 breaths of
spiritual poverty to get to
contemplation, we need to be become
more aggressive with our virtue. For
the most part, virtue takes us from
spiritual poverty to contemplation.
In contemplation, the presence of the
personality seems to come alive. Of
course, it was always alive, but as
contemplation begins, we realize it.
There is a popular misconception that
it is okay to talk to God. It is when
God talks back that we know we are
crazy. If we use that erroneous
concept, contemplation and insanity
are the same thing. With that said,
God doesn't do a lot of talking, and
we should follow the divine example.
As Padre Pio put it, when we are
before God, we should not make a
nuisance of ourselves.
There is no guarantee that the
animated personality is God, but as
Jesus put it, we will know them by
their fruits. For example, in a
typical Marian contemplation, Mary
will simply smile, and somehow that
smile makes the whole day utterly
sublime. It is something that we will
never forget, and it often contains
thousands of bits of wisdom though
nothing was said. On our own accord,
it would be hard for us to
manufacture such an experience, and
an evil spirit leaves a bad after
taste though it might seem heady at
first. God is love and has no sin,
and any communication from God would
have the same characteristics.
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