The Meaning of Contemplation

Voltaire once said that God created man in his own image and likeness and man has returned the compliment. Although first fervour or first enthusiasm has the distinctive benefit of surcharging the desire for God with powerful waves of energy that I have likened to the boosters on a spaceship, they do have a distinctive downside as well. The trouble is the receiver is filled with delusions of spiritual grandeur, feeling as I did, that I had arrived at the heights of the spiritual life. We can believe that we not only see and experience God as he is in himself, but his plan for humanity too and our part in bringing it to the world, beginning with the world around us. In brief, as Voltaire so rightly observed, we can create God in our own image and likeness, and then fall in love with him!  Travellers beware, lest it is not by Christ that you are being led, but by a Narcissus instead.

Fortunately for those who were unlucky enough to share the noviciate with me when I was going through my first fervour, my dyslexia saved them from suffering from the vicissitudes of my new-found ‘wisdom’. After all, who would listen to the religious rhapsodies of an imbecile who stammered and stuttered his way through the Latin of the Divine Office.  However, in the wider world and from time immemorial, nominal Christians and even those well advanced in the spiritual life have had to suffer from the emotional and adolescent spiritual pronouncements of those convinced that they have recently been transported into the Transforming Union. Thanks to the sweet vapours of first fervour they are blind to the sinfulness that rules from what Freud called, the ‘Id’, their deep unconscious mind where powerful and evil drives and impulses determine their behaviour without them even realizing it.

The Purification of the Id

That is why in the next stage of the great spiritual adventure upon which they have embarked, they will if they persevere, be led into what St John of the Cross calls ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’. It is here, whether they like it or not, that they will be forced to see what their unpurified passions have been doing for years to prevent them from becoming their true selves that love alone can make of them. Further to this, they will be made to realize that unless their power is destroyed at source, by a power beyond their own, they will continue on the road to spiritual decline. This is precisely what happens in true contemplative prayer in which a person is purified for union with God. There is no other way forward than the way of purification at the hands of the Holy Spirit who led us into the Night for this purpose. Only then can he draw us fully into the life and loving of the glorified Christ to share in the mystery of the Three in One. Spiritual adolescents and you can be a spiritual adolescent at any age, either perseveres to be purified or runs away to be continually ruled for the rest of their lives by the unpurified impulses from within.

The Contemplation of Light and Darkness

In the true Catholic mystical contemplation that follows meditation for those who persevere, despite the temptations to make a run for it, God does but one thing. He presents himself to the believer not as they would make him in their minds or depict him in their imaginations, but as he is in himself. In short and in the words of St John, as ‘love’ or perhaps more precisely as ‘Loving’. That is who he is, and what he does all the time. Contemplation can be described as the Contemplation of Light or the Contemplation of Darkness in so far as it is experienced by the receiver. At the beginning of the Mystic Way Contemplation is always experienced and therefore described, as the ‘Contemplation of Darkness’. That is because God‘s love initially highlights all the sinfulness, all the evils that are present in us that prevent the union with himself, which has been his plan for humanity from the outset. That is why in the first nine or so chapters of his book ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, St John of the Cross details the sinfulness that rules from within the nether regions of our personalities and the sins that they induce us to fall into. Once a person has been sufficiently purified then we begin to experience, in some comparatively small measure, what we will experience without measure in the next life. These experiences are best detailed in St Teresa of Avila’s masterpiece, ‘Interior Castle’.

A Colourful Metaphor

The ‘Contemplation of Darkness’ and the ‘Contemplation of light’ can be best imagined by likening them to colour. At first, the contemplation of Darkness begins as hardly more than a shade of grey, so subtle that it is hardly detectable, but it gradually deepens to pitch black with every shade of grey in between, but of course only for those who persevere in this purification. Exactly the same happens with the ‘Contemplation of Light’ until what appears at first to be a subtle shade of yellow finally becomes true gold, shining with glory. Confusion often muddles students as different mystics often give different names to different shades of black or yellow. Although it may seem logical for the ‘Contemplation of Light’ to follow when once the ‘Contemplation of Darkness’ has been completed, both come and go throughout the Mystic Way as inseparable and indispensable experiences that characterize mystical purification in this life. That is, at least, until a person arrives at the Mystical Marriage when the contemplation of light finds its continual consummation, that not only involves the mind, or what some mystics call the ‘apex mentis’ but the body too, that has been transformed and transfigured in the mystical purification.

The Example of Christ Himself

Throughout his life on earth right up to his death on the Cross, Christ experienced at all times the Mystical Marriage with his Father. There was no evil in him that could prevent him from what prevents us from sharing this mystical oneness with his Father. However, he did have to suffer the evil that was in others when it was directed against him, but this did not destroy the continual mutual loving that bonded him to his Father. After his Ascension into heaven his new physical, now also his mystical body, continued to contemplate his Father. After meditation, we begin the purification that gradually enables us to share in this, his mutual loving of his Father. We are in effect beginning to share in his mutual loving of his Father because we are in him, the New Temple, and therefore able to ‘con-template’ with him in his loving contemplation of his Father. Now we can see where the word ‘con–templation’ comes from, for it means to gaze upon the glory of God, in, with, and through the new Temple which is Christ.  Unlike Christ’s contemplation, however, we are at all times distracted from our purpose by a hundred and one distractions and temptations that arise from our fallen nature.

Into the Mystical Marriage

Whereas distractions never disturbed Christ, they will continue to disturb us in our ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ until we are so purified that we can enter in, with, and through him into the Mystical Marriage.  This can only be brought about after very many years or rather decades in which the arrogance that once possessed the spiritual adolescent is replaced by humility. It is this humility that can alone enable us to contemplate the Father without any let or hinderance, in, with, and through the New Temple which is Christ. Only then will we be able to ‘see God’ not as Voltaire says, as we have created him in our own image and likeness, but as he is in himself.

It is now possible to pre-order David’s latest book, The Primacy of Loving:  https://www.davidtorkington.com/the-primacy-of-loving/

His blogs, books, lectures and podcasts can be found at https://www.davidtorkington.com/