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

Human contact unties the strait jacket of inner isolation.

“A second type of watchfulness consists in freeing the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still, and in praying. A third type consists in continually and humbly calling upon the Lord Jesus Christ for help.”

Human contact unties the strait jacket of inner isolation.

A mountain does not determine what sort of weather is happening but witnesses all the weather that comes and goes. The weather is our thoughts, changing moods, feelings, impressions, reactions, our character plotted out for us by the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. All of these have their place. But they are only patterns of weather. There is a deeper c

this ineffable reality that the word “silence” points to is not something that we need to acquire, like a piece of software we can install in the computer of our spiritual lives. It is pointing to something that is already within us, grounding all mental processes, whether precise, disciplined thinking or chaotic mental obsession.

Before the First Doorway, the prayer word functioned much as shield or place of refuge. We could see that a thought had stolen our attention and then we returned to the prayer word. As we approach the Second Doorway, the prayer word is steadying our gaze on something more subtle: the obsessive mental patterns that are shaping and driving the though

while we are aware of spiritual longing, we perceive ourselves to be cut off from the deeper ground of our being, where the Silence of the Word is forever emptying itself out in being-as-creation,

we see that judging others really is not about our perceptions and assessments of others, but the way in which the jaws of our convictions lock so tightly around people that we actually think we know what life is like for them,

learned to distinguish the fear itself from the object of fear (that woman). Gradually she learned to see that there was a difference between fear as a simple emotion and the mind’s lightning-quick commentary on fear.