Crossing The Threshold

Don't be outside looking in, cross the threshold and enter in.

"The only way to get rid of misconceptions about contemplation is to experience it."

~ Thomas Merton

As meditation is spiritual practice, so contemplation is spiritual encounter.

In meditation, we practice our spirit. In contemplation we encounter God, the Holy and transcendent.

Contemplation is nonsense until we get our ego out of the way.

Hard-driven people tend to read the Scriptures and live their lives like a legal manual of Christian do's and don't's. Reaching the goal is everything. And Heaven tends to be their goal in the great by and by. That's no way to live. So don't be driven by fear, be drawn by love. We drop our discursive mind so that we might enter our intuitive heart.

All spirituality is received, never attained. It's the nature of Grace.

The contemplative reads Scriptures like a love letter, or a sage, where she reads the best parts again and again. She soaks them up. She holds those words of love in her heart. She meditates as they nourish her heart in the mystery and wonder of God.

In contemplation, we rest in God's Presence, like a child nestling in the lap of their dad, or like a nursing child rests against the breast of her mother.

Contemplation takes many forms, and yet, it's always new every time we enter in because we're present, not driving on automatic.

Meister Eckhart puts it this way. "Be willing to become a beginner every single morning."

Contemplation is when we open up our spirit, rather than being ordered by our soul.

Contemplation draws us into spiritual encounter before it becomes our souls' reflection.

However we enter in, transcendence and transformation are the results of contemplation...from glory to glory, or little by little, bit by bit, day by day.

Don't be outside looking in. Come, cross the threshold and enter in.

Oh, Taste and See...

And when you read, read the Scriptures with your breath and your being, then listen, as they become a gateway into the eternal.

Jesus says, "It is the Spirit that quickens and awakens, the ego doesn't count. The words I speak to you are Spirit and they are life."

John 6:63

~Bob Holmes #comeintothequiet