Contemplative Prayer is not introspection. It is not a scrupulous inward-looking analysis of our own thoughts and feelings but it is an attentiveness to the Presence of Love personified inviting us into an encounter. Our Companion on the journey is God who knows our minds and hearts. Although it is important and even indispensible for our spiritual lives to set apart time for God and God alone, our prayer can only become unceasing communion when all our thoughts- beautiful and ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful- can be thought in the Presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds us. By trying to do this, our unceasing thinking is converted into unceasing prayer moving us from self-centered monologue to God-centered dialogue. To pray unceasingly means to think and live in the presence of Love.
Unceasing prayer is deeply nourished by the discipline of committed time for solitude and prayer. Setting aside a certain place and time each day to do nothing else but pray creates the context for unceasing thought to become unceasing prayer. By dedicating ourselves to a specific time and place for nothing but our openness to God’s presence, we focus and wait in hope to welcome God’s Spirit as our partner in a dialogue of life and love. It is of primary importance that we enter our daily solitude with an understanding of its potential and with hope and expectation of being with God. The practice, or the discipline, of contemplative prayer is particularly precious and life-giving precisely for busy people like us who are so busy and fragmented. Contemplative prayer can be a discipline that puts us in a position for radical transformation. Contemplative prayer is truly quite simple and wonderful. It is about looking and waiting for God.
Contemplative prayer can best be described as an imagining of God’s Son Jesus, a letting him enter fully into our consciousness. Each one of us is invited to develop a personal discipline of spending time with God. The wonderful thing about discipline is how by its nature it will conform to the particular lifestyle of the individual who is seeking God. Jesus becomes, for us, a living presence we can relate to. We are in dialogue with the living God, here and now. The ideal of making our whole life into prayer remains nothing but an ideal unless we are willing to work at it. If we choose certain supportive disciplines, they will lead us into the realm of great possibilities.
From: Clowning in Rome By Henri Nouwen
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