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WAYNE TEASDALE
W.T.: Presumably we all think, and that is very useful in so many areas of life-except prayer.
L.M.: We are too calculating.
W.T.: We're calculating, but where you don't need that is in contemplative prayer.
L.M.: Whether it's in making human love-or, in our experiencing divine love--that won't work.
W.T.: It won't work. In fact, it can't work there. In active contemplation, there is the part that is my effort—which is united with grace. And in this relating to God-intimacy with God—I feel so often a failure. Yet I also experience constantly the divine making up for my deficiencies in prayer by carrying me through it. One way in which the spirit carries me through prayer—and carries me along in my life—is through the grace of being aware of the spirit's presence.
L.M.: Some mystical poets like John of the Cross use the language of sexual love to evoke spiritual love, the mystical union of the soul and God. It is all one and the same energy.
W.T.: It is one energy, but it's used differently.
L.M.: Is the concentration practice that you use in your meditation similar to concentrating at the third eye, or the kundalini practice found in yoga?
W.T.: I have done that. But as I say, I am very much a failure at meditation. And so I have just surrendered to the divine presence. I am aware of it, I experience it constantly--not simply in prayer, but most of the time. If I allow myself to be aware of it, it's there. It is just a question of removing the obstacles to your awareness. It's God's grace, it's not me. I can't make it happen; it just happens. All I can do is go back to my room and make myself receptive.
L.M.: That's a key word, receptive. The Christian sannyasi's meditation practice is not like discursive prayer. It is listening, more than anything else. Isn't it really a kind of waiting?
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