Editing Contemplation (section)

==Christianity==
[[File:Antoine-Émile Plassan - Devotion (Contemplation) - Walters 3745.jpg|left|thumb|A woman places [[rosary]] beads on a devotional image mounted on the wall beside her bed.<ref>{{cite web |publisher= [[The Walters Art Museum]] |url= http://art.thewalters.org/detail/14934 |title= Devotion (Contemplation)}}</ref> The Walters Art Museum.]]
{{Main|Christian contemplation}}
{{See also|Christian meditation|Theoria}}

In [[Eastern Christianity]], contemplation ([[theoria]]) literally means to see God or to have the Vision of God.{{refn|group=note|Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos: "The vision of the uncreated light, which offers knowledge of God to man, is sensory and supra-sensory. The bodily eyes are reshaped, so they see the uncreated light, "this mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal", this "radiance of the Divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom" (3,1,22;CWS p.80). Palamas asks: "Do you see that light is inaccessible to senses which are not transformed by the Spirit?" (2,3,22). St. Maximus, whose teaching is cited by St. Gregory, says that the Apostles saw the uncreated Light "by a transformation of the activity of their senses, produced in them by the Spirit" (2.3.22).<ref>Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos (2005), ''Orthodox Psychotherapy'', section ''The Knowledge of God according to St. Gregory Palamas''. Birth of Theotokos Monastery, Greece, {{ISBN|978-960-7070-27-2}}</ref>}} The state of beholding God, or union with God, is known as theoria. The process of [[Theosis (Eastern Orthodox theology)|Theosis]] which leads to that state of union with God known as theoria is practiced in the [[ascetic]] tradition of [[Hesychasm]]. Hesychasm is to reconcile the heart and the mind into one thing (see [[nous]]).{{refn|group=note|pelagia.org: "Stillness of the body is a limiting of the body. 'The beginning of [[hesychia]] is godly rest' (3). The intermediate stage is that of 'illuminating power and vision; and the end is ecstasy or rapture of the nous towards God' (4). St. John of the Ladder, referring to outward, bodily stillness, writes: 'The lover of stillness keeps his mouth shut' (5). But it is not only those called neptic Fathers who mention and describe the holy atmosphere of [[hesychia]], it is also those known as 'social'. Actually in the Orthodox tradition there is no direct opposition between theoria and praxis, nor between the neptic and social Fathers. The neptics are eminently social and those in community are unimaginably neptic."<ref>pelagia.org, [http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.05.htm ''Orthodox Psychotherapy''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120102175616/http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.05.htm |date=2012-01-02 }},  section on ''Stillness and Prayer''.</ref>}}

Contemplation in Eastern Orthodoxy is expressed in degrees as those covered in St [[John Climacus]]' [[Ladder of Divine Ascent]]. The process of changing from the old man of sin into the newborn child of God and into our true nature as good and divine is called [[Theosis (Eastern Orthodox theology)|Theosis]].

This is to say that once someone is in the presence of God, deified with him, then they can begin to properly understand, and there "contemplate" God. This form of contemplation is to have and pass through an actual experience rather than a rational or reasoned understanding of theory (see [[Gnosis]]). Whereas with rational thought one uses logic to understand, one does the opposite with God (see also [[Apophatic theology]]).

The anonymously authored 14th century English contemplative work ''[[The Cloud of Unknowing]]'' makes clear that its form of practice is not an act of the intellect, but a kind of transcendent 'seeing,' beyond the usual activities of the mind - "The first time you practice contemplation, you'll experience a darkness, like a cloud of unknowing. You won't know what this is... this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God... they will always keep you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your intellect and will block you from feeling Him fully in the sweetness of love in your emotions. So be sure to make your home in this darkness... We can't think our way to God... that's why I'm willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. He can be loved, but not thought."<ref>Excerpt from the Shambhala edition, translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher [https://www.calameo.com/read/00003925753940ebf2aba]</ref>

Within Western [[Christianity]] contemplation is often related to [[Mystical theology|mysticism]] as expressed in the works of [[Mystical theology|mystical theologians]] such as [[Teresa of Avila]] and [[John of the Cross]] as well as the writings of [[Margery Kempe]], [[Augustine Baker]] and [[Thomas Merton]].<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04324b.htm "Contemplation"], ''Catholic Encyclopedia'', New Advent. Retrieved March 19, 2008.</ref>

Dom [[Edward Cuthbert Butler|Cuthbert Butler]] notes that contemplation was the term used in the Latin Church to refer to mysticism, and "'mysticism' is a quite modern word".<ref>''Western Mysticism: Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life'', by Dom Cuthbert Butler. Dover: Mineola, NY, 2003, p.4.</ref>

===Meditation===
In Christianity, contemplation refers to a content-free mind directed towards the awareness of [[God in Christianity|God]] as a living reality.{{Citation needed|date=September 2016}}  Meditation, on the other hand, for many centuries in the Western Church, referred to more cognitively active exercises, such as visualizations of Biblical scenes as in the [[Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola|Ignatian exercises]] or ''[[lectio divina]]'' in which the practitioner "listens to the text of the Bible with the 'ear of the heart', as if he or she is in conversation with God, and God is suggesting the topics for discussion."<ref>A contemporary discussion of differences between ''meditatio'' and ''contemplatio'' is available in Father Thomas Keating's book on contemplative centering prayer, ''Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel'' (1986) {{ISBN|0-8264-0696-3}}. Brief descriptions of centering prayer and ''lectio divina'' are available online at http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/.</ref>

In Catholic Christianity, contemplation is given importance. The Catholic Church's "model theologian", St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: "It is requisite for the good of the human community that there should be persons who devote themselves to the life of contemplation." (''Sentences'') One of his disciples, [[Josef Pieper]] commented: "For it is contemplation which preserves in the midst of human society the truth which is at one and the same time useless and the yardstick of every possible use; so it is also contemplation which keeps the true end in sight, gives meaning to every practical act of life."<ref>[http://zenit.org/article-21671?l=english "Says Pope a Universal Voice for the World"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205004758/http://www.zenit.org/article-21671?l=english |date=2008-02-05 }}, Carrie Gross, February 1, 2008, Zenit.org.</ref> Pope John Paul II in the Apostolic Letter "Rosarium Virginis Mariae" referred specifically to the catholic devotion of the [[Rosary|Holy Rosary]] as "an exquisitely contemplative prayer" and said that "By its nature the recitation of the Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord. In this way the unfathomable riches of these mysteries are disclosed."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae.html|title=Rosarium Virginis Mariae on the Most Holy Rosary (October 16, 2002) &#124; John Paul II}}</ref>

According to Aquinas, the highest form of life is the contemplative which communicates the fruits of contemplation to others, since it is based on the abundance of contemplation (''contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere'') ([[Summa Theologiae|ST]], III, Q. 40, A. 1, Ad 2).

[[Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange]] elaborated upon the broad calling to Mystical Contemplation. <ref>https://catholicweekly.com.au/a-history-of-holiness-and-jubilee/</ref>