Common Obstacles to Contemplation
Number One: The Illusion of a Distant God
“You were within me, and I was outside of myself.”
“God is not far from any of us.” St. Paul
How did you do with your contemplative practice this week? Did you designate a “closet” in which to go and have sweet, silent, sacred contemplative communion with God?
As we delve further into this topic of contemplation, we immediately recognize that there are elements working against us, some of our own doing, some of the doings of others, some the doings of the religion in which we were raised, and some the doing of the devil (Those last two can sometimes be intertwined and work in concert). Therefore, I’ve decided to devote some time in the next few blogs focusing on some of the most common obstacles to contemplation, and perhaps providing a few ways to overcome them.
So what ARE the biggest obstacles you face in your desire to spend time quietly with God? What was it this past week that put a stumbling block in your way, perhaps entirely preventing you from participating in time with God as you would’ve liked?
Presently I would answer that question by saying “quieting my mind”, but in the past I would have said that it was my perception of God as a distant deity. I perceived God as kind of a faraway relative who only makes occasional appearances, and even that after a great deal of coaxing and cajoling. I’ll call this the obstacle of “Locating God.” By this I don’t mean to imply that God is lost, and we must undertake a search and rescue mission. Rather I would suspect that many of us who have religious backgrounds were taught that God is transcendent, somewhere far away in the outer galaxy (which is also where we place heaven by the way), and not at all immanent. And that God, like a kind of sacred Santa Claus, (consider here Michaelangelo’s depiction of Creation in the Sistine Chapel), only made occasional appearances to punish those who were naughty and reward those who were nice. Therefore, we came to believe that we must try hard to get outside of ourselves in order to touch the Divine, or have the Divine touch us.
While it is true that God is transcendent, it is equally true that God is immanent. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Look at the first quote. I intentionally omitted the author’s name. What tradition do you think it comes from? Who do you think said it? You might be surprised to discover that it was St. Augustine, considered to be one of the greatest of the Christian Church Fathers. He is clearly stating, as so many others have done, what we often-times overlook: God is intimately connected to our inmost being. Augustine is echoing St. Paul’s recurring teaching on the mystery of Christ in us. Martin Laird in his book “Into the Silent Land” puts it this way: “We go off in search of what has from all eternity sought and found us.”
Laird has another description that I believe is worth quoting in its entirety. “God becomes an object that is ‘over there’ and as much in need of appeasement as praise. This tyrant god is generated by the illusion of separateness and requires us to live in a mental prison (however lavishly furnished). It makes us believe that we are alone, shameful, afraid, stupid, unlovable. We believe this lie and our life becomes a cocktail party of posturing masquerade in order to hide the anxiety and ignorance of who we really are.”[i]
But God isn’t “out there”; God is “In here.” God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Every breath that we take is a reminder of the sacred breath, which is what The Holy Spirit is called, who breathed us into being, who lives within our being, and in whom we live and move and have our being. We will spend more time on the value of the breath and breathing in contemplation in a future meditation, but for now I’d like to pause for a moment and ask you to consider how this change of perspective on the locus of God would affect your practice of contemplation.
Imagine settling into the lap of The Loving Lord as we settle into the silent solitude of our sacred practice. Imagine being embraced by the One whom you are trying to embrace. What does that look like? What does that feel like? What does that mean to you?
[i] “Into the Silent Land”, by Martin Laird, p. 20.