A web space for thought, reflection and contemplation. A website of contemplations in words and images, charting a journey from the secular to the Divine; from the dream of empiricism to the ideal; from the passive to the active; a journey that is still incomplete.
Left: Kyriakos the anchorite born in Corinth in the year 448.
Like most empiricists, liberal humanist or Marxist, I believed for years that the individual was developmentally passive; a product of social interaction. Social individuals confronted the rest of society (embodied typically in the state) which, inevitably came to be seen as a limitation to individual potential for development. Society was a reality external to individuals, which imposed itself upon individuals. Psychology was the product of the external.
The instinctive response to the tyranny of the object, society, externally imposed reality, call it what you will, was an anarchistic desire to be free from the herd. My objective as an egoist was to assert the subject in confrontation with a hostile object. This left the subject alone, isolated and, ultimately, solipsistic and impotent in a new passivity.
My weltanschung is now changing dramatically. Society is no longer a reality which imposes itself on the lives of individuals. The subject is now the concrete and objectification is abstraction. Whilst I was of the Marxist tradition, I no longer consider the dialectic to be an external object. The dialectic is concrete subject, not abstract object. In this understanding, the external is a product of psychology. Whereas I previously reified the external, it is to me now only a thinking reality.
For me, Christianity has been core to the change in my thinking. Ancient thought started with external nature; modern thought starts with spirit. Christianity marked the beginning of the modern. Prayer emphasised will and heart, not merely intellect. It unified the divine and the human will. The world was no longer conceived at that which is, but that which ought to be. Real knowledge became love, the creation of our experience. Truth was not something external or alien to us, but the result of our sincere efforts. Men and women were no longer spectators, but creators.
Modern empiricism threw us back into the role of passive spectator, whereas progress in the twenty first century will be defined by a more adequate understanding of Spirit. Contemplation is the active search for self-knowledge, for God and for God's desire to become known to us. Instead of discovering the world as it is, we are free to see the world again as it ought to be. God is no longer an empiricist’s God; a reality who already is, but the God who is begotten in us.
It is the shift from a passive empiricism to an active spiritualism that underpins the content of the Contemplative Life.
John Dunn.
The Contemplative Life.
A life ordered to lead to and facilitate active contemplation. A way of living with contemplation in mind, excluding other preoccupations and intents.
The Contemplative.
A person devoted to contemplation. Thoughtful, reflective and meditative, the contemplative, in his or her investigation of Divine things, is actuated by love for those things.
Contemplate.
To look at or view with continued attention; observe or study thoughtfully. To consider thoroughly; think fully or deeply about. To gaze at, behold, regard, study and ponder.
Contemplation
The act of contemplating; thoughtful observation. Full or deep consideration and reflection.
|
