Introduction To "Contemplation"

This book, Contemplation: Intimacy in a Distant World, is the third book in a trilogy. The first was In Search of the Heart and the second was Shattering the Gods Within.

In the first book, In Search of the Heart, I discuss the importance of living life from the center, the heart. The heart, like the center of a bicycle wheel, is where all the spokes or issues of our lives converge. Only as we live from that center are we able to touch and be touched by our deepest or true selves as well as the selves of others. In this book I describe that life is wounded and that in order to liberate ourselves we have to work through our hurt trails to be able to open to our love story. Committing to love simply means opening to the experience of God's presence in our lives and recognizing that the presence is manifested by his loving care, which spreads between us as well as throughout nature. I discuss seven attitudes of the heart that are important in developing our spiritual and psychological life: love, communion, facing the heart's resistance, humility, simplicity, service, and transcendence.

The second book, Shattering the Gods Within, describes how once we face our hearts we find much resistance to God, our deeper selves, and love in the world. The book discusses how six major pseudo-gods or addictions in modern culture block the heart: narcissism, conformity, materialism, the sacredness of the affect, the bane of the extraordinary, and the illusion of permanence. The book deals with the shattering of these pseudo-gods or addictions of modern culture as a way to open our hearts to the love that will not let us go, and the face that does not turn away.

In this present book, Contemplation: Intimacy in a Distant World, my goal is to go beyond the search for the heart and the shattering of our resistances to love, to encourage us to live from our hearts-by moving from our false selves to open to our true selves in God. I realize that my experience fails to live up to the concepts presented, but my encouragement is that in contemplation we can never say we have arrived. My humble attempt is to paint an outline, which hopefully will be filled out by others whose experiences transcend mine. My thesis is that even though, with our modern telecommunications revolution, we communicate more than ever these days, we say less and have become less intimate. Intimacy is only possible if we are willing to live through our hearts. As the microcosm of our lives, our hearts have psychological, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions. In Part One I discuss the relationship between contemplation, spirituality, and intimacy. I also consider soullessness, anger as a brutal gift, the origin and function of the false self, the dynamics of contemplative prayer, and the concept of the true self. In Part Two I revisit these themes in scripture: Abraham's call to faith, the role of contemplation and rejection in the life of David, Mary Magdalene and her deep commitment to our Lord, and loving despite a shattered dream in the lives of Ruth and Naomi. The epilogue illustrates that although the pain of life may destroy intimacy, we can still follow God in love to experience a deeper compassion, to create intimacy in a distant world. Is this not the meaning of life?

David F. Allen, M.D.