Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

Gardening and sailing involve skills of receptivity. The skills are necessary but by themselves insufficient. And so it is with contemplative practice and the spiritual life generally.

we are going to speak of what a human being is, we have not said enough until we speak of God.

We should always be wary of applying linear notions of progress to our prayer life and asking ourselves: “What stage am I in?” “How far have I progressed?” Whatever “progress” in prayer is supposed to mean, it certainly doesn’t work like that.

Maximus the Confessor puts it quite simply, “God is breath.”

A large part of the struggle with fear is actually an inability to experience fear directly.

Paul looks within and sees not Paul but Christ. Are Paul and Christ two separate things? They are two separate things from the perspective of creation, yes, but from the perspective of the transformation of awareness, no.

He says there are two types of humility, perfect and imperfect, and the awareness of all our faults and failings is what he calls “imperfect humility.”

From this depth God is seen to be the ground of both peace and chaos, one with ourselves and one with all the world, the ground “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This depth of silence is more than the mere absence of sound and is the key.

When the mind is brought to stillness we see that we are the mountain and not the changing patterns of weather appearing on the mountain.

Certainly there is deep conversion, healing, and unspeakable wholeness to be discovered along the contemplative path. The paradox, however, is that this healing is revealed when we discover that our wound and the wound of God are one wound.