"The Existential Altar Which Simply Is": A Quote On Contemplation By Thomas Merton

     "Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish, or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial 'doubt.' This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious 'faith' of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false 'faith' which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our 'religion' is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray on contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas. Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe--for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in the steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply 'is.'

     "In the end, the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because 'God is not a what,' not a 'thing.' That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no 'what' that can be called God. There is 'no such thing' as God because God is neither a 'what' nor a 'thing' but a pure 'Who.' He is the 'Thou' before whom our inmost 'I' springs into awareness. He is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo 'I am.'"

--from New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton