In praying, do not babble…
or think that you will be heard because of your many words. – Matthew 6.7
Jesus’ teaching on prayer provides no specific method of meditation, but Jesus does provide a clear indication that there is a pattern of prayer beyond words, and invites us to enter into the stillness of the inner room – our heart.
I find Valentin Tomberg’s description helpful in articulating the process from concentrative prayer – such as with words – to meditative prayer, and then to contemplation. In my experience, the “imprint of reality” is love.
“Meditation is therefore the honest and courageous effort of the ‘lower self’ to think together with the ‘higher self’ in divine light. And just as concentration necessarily precedes meditation, so does the latter lead soon or later to contemplation, i.e. a transition is made from consideration and discourse to the immobility and complete silence of supernatural communion, where one no longer thinks something from a distance, but where this Thing itself is present and reveals itself. Contemplation is the union of the thinker with reality. Here one does not arrive at a ‘conclusion’, but one receives – or undergoes – the imprint of Reality.” [i]
[i] Anonymous, Meditations on The Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticisim (Jeremy P. archer / Penguin: New York, 2020), 456.
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