It Just Busts Upon You

In active contemplation, there is a deliberate and sustained effort to detect the will of God in events...

- Thomas Merton

Contemplatives are neither conservative nor radical. Generally speaking any political, philosophical, or religious alignment are held to be distractive, not because they are confusing, but because these are substitutes for the living God.

In order to prepare oneself for this active contemplation relies on actions of self-denial. This self-abandonment seeks to relax the role of the external self and its tyranny in order to be open to a dimension that transcends our nominal understanding. A life of active contemplation might well prepare one for infused contemplation, but does not preclude it. The ascesis of this discipline itself draws from beyond the contemplative’s dependence on planning, centring them on the discovery of God’s will. All other activity and thought for them becomes discursive. And the key safeguards to purposeful active contemplation are humility, self-forgetfulness, and self-renunciation. Technically speaking, active contemplation, while lived, has no purpose. That is, it has no purpose outside of itslef, no matter where it ends up. It is inseparably tied to love. If anything then its actions are directly tied to love - the uncondional regard for God, humans, and all life - this would be its purpose.

On the other hand none of this can be said for the infused, passive contemplative experience, except for the presence of love which is initiated solely by God.

[...infused contemplation] just bursts upon you, and is there.

- Thomas Merton

Infused contemplation is itself a knowing without knowing. Passive contemplation lacks clarity and as such it is poor in descriptors. It is impossible to reduce it to rational formulation. It is beyond conepts and beynd preparing oneself for the experience. So how does one know what it is? The paradox is that without having a formal way of understanding it, you just know. If anything is characteristic of passive contemplative expereince, it would be none other than a lingering, nagging doubt of its veracity. There has simply been an experience that impresses itself directly into one’s deepest reality, one in which we simultaneously experience God and our own being. And with that you realize that you do not have to prove anything. You do not have to justify this any more than that you need to prove that you exist! How you might convince another of this will be troublesome, but one does not have to prove the obvious to oneself. However, accepting this in the face of other’s doubts, especially when facing overwhlelming numbers of those who are rational, will be isolating. The most important point is that the infused experience of God is never arrived at by a step-by-step process or rational deduction. It is something you either xperience or you do not.

Why the vast majority of people do not experience passive contemplation is not something that any passive contemplative can answer. It really has nothing to do with active contemplation.

In the end, it just busts upon you and is there.