Watch and listen to Father Richard Rohr explaining contemplative prayer/the contemplative mind, historical background and why it is so needed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0o5J0-8OA0
Month: Feb 2018
Surrender to Silence
At times you realize that your chattering mind makes you very talkative. Words, words, and words fill up the space between yourself and other people. Then you realize that these words are what they are, just a lot of words! You feel an energy that makes you keep talking and this whole process just makes you fed up with yourself. You tire from taking up so much space. The ego is truly showing its face. It wants to be something important in this world.
Now you may realize it is time to sit down and quiet yourself. It is time to choose silence and follow the energy inward. It is time again to realize that you (the ego) is not important and again it has to go. It is time to stop talking and start listening and looking inward. As the German poet Rilke said The only journey is the journey within.
Are you realizing now that you are talking too much and your ego is taking up too much space? Jesus said we have to die from ourselves to find our (true) selves. Your ego has to die for you to find truth, true life and existence.
It may be that you are ready for silence. You may listen to and say these words of the Psalmist, when you sit down and surrender to silence:
Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be…
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When The World of Thoughts Loses Power!
When man realizes that thoughts are just thoughts and that the ability to think is just a tool that can be used when it is beneficial and useful, this can be experienced as a small revolution! In the lives of many people, thoughts are honored with too much credibility and power. Man are too often easily governed and therefore thrown around by the strange and sometimes chaotic thinkinggames of the mind.
In the moment that thoughts are revealed as what they truly are, nothing but simply thoughts, this creates a sense of freedom. From then on thoughts can come and go like leaves on the river’s surface and this can help man to move along on the peaceful, contemplative road.
When the mind loses its unjustly power, the chattering mind can also calm down so man himself becomes calmer. In this experience, a room for contemplative silence and new expectations can grow. Man is ready for new steps into the exciting unknown within his Godgiven inner being.
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To find rest from “yourself”
In the comtemplative, often quiet, prayer you can find the calmness to rest from your own (false) self. Several times in the New Testament (se Matt. 10, 38-39 and Mark 8, 34-35) the words of Jesus, about laying down your own life and taking up your cross and following him, are repeated. It is all about losing your life (false self) to find true life itself. Jesus is showing the way that leads to a new dimension through the resurrection in which you can partake in, in your own life. Seek to live your life, more and more every day, in touch with the depths within yourself. Through this connection with your inner being and God’s own Spirit that is awakened in your innermost, you will find rest from yourself. “Yourself” means not your real and truest self, but it can be all your personas, masks and your ego which are used (and also at times useful!) on your earthly journey. By surrendering your ego/false self and not counting this self as decisive and your true self, you will find that which God has placed within you. In a quiet surrender you can lay down all that which is not real and search for life in the depths of your inner being, where you will find the kingdom of God.
The Contemplative Life 