Over 100 people came out to join me in an exploration of my new initiative, an online course, which I hope will be the first of a series I’m calling The Contemplative Study of Mystical Writings. Here’s a recording of that meeting, see below. And if you want to learn more about the course, click here.
Tag: contemplative spirituality
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In Case You Missed It — Here’s a Recording of the Launch of “The Contemplative Study of Mystical Writings”
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Explore the Mystical Life — with a Christian Mysticism “Unknowledge Base”!
Friends, I’m excited to announce a major new initiative on this website. Coming on February 1, 2021, I’m launching a Christian Mysticism (Un)Knowledge Base. (Update: it’s been launched! Visit the Unknowledge Base by clicking here)
What’s that? You might be wondering.
Think of it as a help desk for exploring the world of Christian mystical spirituality. If you develop websites, you know that a “knowledge base” is a collection of articles and resources to help someone learn about a particular topic, product, or service.
Let’s say you just purchased a new iPhone. As you begin to work with it, you discover you don’t understand a certain feature or you can’t find the steps to complete a basic task. So you go to Apple’s support page where you enter a question or a few key words into a search bar, and you find (hopefully) an article, or several, that walk you through the steps to answer your question. If you are not able to find an answer to your question, you can always post the question in the hopes that the support folks will either reply to you directly, or at the very least post a new article that addresses your issue.
A knowledge base: a database of information to help you gain knowledge about a particular topic or item. So the thought first occurred to me several years ago: Wouldn’t it be good to have a knowledge base for Christian contemplation and mystical spirituality?
You know the old saying, “be careful what you wish for.”
The idea stayed with me, and what I eventually realized was that this was something I could (slowly) develop myself.
I’ve been blogging off and on since 2003, and began to seriously write about Christian mysticism in 2007. Over the years I have published over 2000 posts to my blog. Not all of these concern contemplation and mysticism, but many do.
In a way, a blog is like a newspaper: once something is posted, it has a moment in the digital sun, but then it ends up in the archives section, where no one ever reads it unless they happen to stumble across it thanks to a random key-word search, either on Google or on my site.
I could see this at work, when relatively new readers to my blog would send me emails asking me questions that I had already addressed in a previous blog post, several years back.
What I soon came to see: my idea of a Mystical Help Desk would mean not just writing lots of new content, but also curating many of my old posts, and making them more visible/accessible to a person who is specifically interested in learning about Christian mysticism and contemplative living.
And so… during the past few months, as my work and activity slowed down thanks to the covid-19 pandemic, I began to research knowledge bases. I discovered that it would be easy and fairly inexpensive to create a knowledge base on a WordPress site (my blog is a WordPress blog). It could be set up both with a powerful search function, and a user-friendly table of contents where visitors could be given a summary overview of this compendium of information.
So I installed the necessary software on my blog, and am preparing it for launch on February 1.
Granted, the very notion of a knowledge base is rather ironic, given mystical theology’s emphasis on topics such as hiddenness, ineffability, darkness, and of course, mystery. So, borrowing from the beloved contemplative classicThe Cloud of Unknowing, I’ve decided that this new compendium should more properly be described as an Unknowledge Base!
The Topics Covered in the Unknowledge Base
Here’s the basic table of contents for the Unknowledge Base:
- Overview of Christian Mysticism
A few introductory articles for people who are new to mysticism or new to my website.
- Profiles of Christian Mystics
What’s the best way to explore Christian mysticism? By getting to know the lives and teachings of some of the great mystics, whom you can meet in this section. - Mystical Theology
What do mystics believe? How do they understand God? What are the dynamics of the mystical life? This section helps to explain why mysticism matters. - The Practice of Mystical Spirituality
What do mystics do? How does one become a mystic? The articles here provide inspiration and encouragement for those who want to embrace this path. - The History of Mysticism
From its Jewish and Greek roots to the contemplative renaissance in our day, mysticism has had a long history within Christianity. This section will help to tell that story. - Mystical Locations
Christian Mysticism is an embodied spirituality. This section celebrates this by looking at where mysticism thrives: from monasteries, to the desert, to the human heart. - Miscellaneous Topics
Some topics are important but may not fit anywhere else in this Unknowledge Base. So they go here. Examples might include Celtic spirituality and interspiritual mysticism. - Questions about the Mystical Life
I suspect this will be one of the largest sections, eventually. This will be the place where I will respond to specific questions posted by readers like you. - Recommended Books and Authors
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love to post book reviews and recommendations of specific authors and titles. Those resources will live here. - Glossary
Sometimes you just need to understand what words like kenosis or theosis or nonduality mean. Such definitions will be gathered here. - Media
Contemplative videos, podcasts and/or images — both my own and curated from other authors and speakers — will be available through this section. - Community Resources
Many organizations, websites, Facebook groups, etc. exist to help individuals and churches and other groups to foster a contemplative life. Find such resources here.
This is a Multi-Year Project!
I hope from the table of contents you can have a sense of how ambitious this project is. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so this Unknowledge Base will likewise take some time to assemble. It will include both “old” content (blog posts that I have already written, but that I will need to move over to, or link to, the Unknowledge Base), along with new content that I will be writing in the months and years to come, especially to make sure this is a well-rounded resource. While on launch date there will be at least one or two articles under each section, I’m anticipating 2-3 years of steady work before this truly becomes a comprehensive compendium. Of course, assuming people like it and use it, and support it (see below), I intend to continue adding both old and new content to this site, for the foreseeable future.
But all this is to say: it will be a modest resource at first, but keep coming back — and watch it grow!
How You Can Help
If this sounds like a resource that you will enjoy using, please help me in the ongoing work of developing it. There are four specific ways you can help out.
- Pray. This entire project is offered in love to Christ and the Body of Christ. It’s meant for the glory of God. So please, pray for it (and me), that the Holy Spirit may direct my work and my writing, to make this a truly useful, inviting, and inspirational resource.
- Ask Questions. At the bottom of every article in the Unknowledge Base will be a question box, where you can submit your questions or suggestions for me to review. I can’t promise that I will answer every single one that comes my way, but input from readers like you will help to ensure that this unknowledge base is truly a helpful site.
- Tell Others. I operate on a shoestring, and so I don’t have a big budget to promote this site. And that’s okay, because I think mysticism thrives best in small, intimate settings. But word of mouth matters — you can help make sure this site reaches everyone who needs it.
- Make a Pledge. I do not intend to run advertising or to charge admission for this Unknowledge Base (I’m also looking at creating online courses that will be tuition-based, but that’s a separate endeavor). The funding to support this project comes entire from my crowdfunding patrons, who support me through Patreon. Just a small monthly pledge can make a huge difference — because your pledge combines with everyone else’s to create meaningful support that allows me to keep working on this website. Patrons get early access to new writing and news from me (patrons have known for a while that I’ve been working on this). So please, join the circle, and be part of the effort to make writing about Christian contemplation and mysticism freely accessible online. Thank you!
A Final Word
You’ll notice that the featured image for today’s post is the new logo for my website. It’s designed around a URL that I’ve owned since 1996 but hadn’t used in a while: www.anamchara.com. Anamchara means “soul friend” in Gaelic. It’s a beautiful word that evokes several of my great loves: Celtic wisdom, spiritual direction/companionship, and of course, contemplative and mystical spirituality. I’m glad to be bringing it back to the foreground.
- Overview of Christian Mysticism
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Contemplating Calm Awareness
The contemplative psychiatrist, spiritual director, and author Gerald May wrote in his book Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology:
Water is a commonly used metaphor for consciousness and awareness in both Oriental and Western traditions. Sometimes consciousness is seen as a vast ocean, constant and unruffled in its depths, and awareness as its more variable surface, sometimes tossed about by winds and currents, sometimes still and calm… In the East, and especially in Zen, awareness is often likened to clear water in a bowl. In this analogy, the water ideally reflects all there is around it, clearly and without distortion. A favorite Zen example is that of water reflecting the moon with total accuracy. This “clear mind” of Zen is the pure and immediate awareness that we have called intuition. It does not really “perceive” or “take in” anything, but impeccably reflects all that exists within its field.
May goes on to point out that two problems can arise that can impede the clarity of the water’s reflection. First, the water might be turbulent: think of how a reflection is broken when a rock is dropped into a pool. Water that has been stirred up cannot accurately reflect with clarity until it settles back down. The second problem is if the water itself is dirty or filled with silt. Here, even if the surface is smooth, the cloudy quality of the muddied water prevents it from truly reflecting the moon (or whatever it is that it might be mirroring).
For contemplatives, this represents two qualities that we might seek when we enter silence. The first is calmness and the second is awareness. When we can maximize calm awareness, we are able to truly “reflect” the light in our minds and hearts that comes from the Spirit.
Turbulent water, in the bowl analogy, represents life that is stirred up by emotions and attachments. For many of us, this is our default setting. We are an excitable species, prone to powerful feelings such as jealousy, envy or rage. Even relatively “minor” emotions such as annoyance, self-consciousness or low-level angst can feel like a kind of inner turbulence.
It’s important not to assume, from this analogy, that emotions are therefore “wrong.” That can be its own kind of subtle dualism that can lead to thinking spirit = good and body= bad. It’s better to approach this is the spirit of Ecclesiastes 3: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Emotional and feeling-responses to our relationships and environment certainly have their place, but there are times when we attain greater clarity by discovering a way to be non-attached or non-grasping toward such inner turbulence. Like stirred up water, the “solution” to turbulent feelings is to find enough interior space to allow the emotions to gently calm down of their own accord. Resistance is not generally helpful — getting irritated at ourselves for feeling irritated generally just makes the inner stirred-up-ness worse rather than better.
As for the sediment that can keep water from being clear, that represents ways in which we dull our awareness. If stirred up water has too much energy, muddy water has too little. We can be lethargic or sleepy from not getting enough sleep, eating too much, not enough exercise, or simply feeling overwhelmed by how over-stimulated or distracted our live may seem. Many of us are chronically fatigued for medical reasons, but we might also suffer from ongoing sleep deprivation. Boredom or feelings of powerlessness or hopelessness might also contribute to this kind of dulled awareness.
Cleaning and Calming Our Inner Oceans
The truth is, as May puts is, “More often than not in normal daily life, the water is both muddied and turbulent. Most of the time we live with awareness that is to some extent dulled as well as restricted.” In other words, this problem of being overly agitated and/or simultaneously dull and lethargic is something many people struggle with in our society.
So, if you find that your “inner bowl of water” is anything but calm and clear, resist any temptation to feel ashamed or to blame yourself. This is the default setting of our society.
Now, if your inner angst or torpor is caused by a medical condition, addiction, or a mental health issue, then please turn to the appropriate kinds of caregivers to help you address your concerns. Once again: no shame! When situations arise, we need to turn to those who can help us.
Assuming you aren’t struggling with an addiction or some other health concern, what can be done to move from agitated lethargy to calm awareness?
Speaking from the contemplative tradition, I believe there are three steps that can yield tremendous benefit. First, we need to establish or strengthen a daily discipline of silent prayer; then, we need to be gentle with our distractions and “bad prayer days,” and finally, we need to persevere, for both calmness and awareness yield their richest fruit over time.
- Establish (or strengthen) a daily practice of silent prayer. It’s been said that 90% of life is simply showing up, and this is certainly true of contemplative discipline. Making a commitment to prayerfully be still and silent in the presence of God, as a daily practice, is the single most important step on the path to calm awareness. Most contemplative teachers and traditions recommend praying twice daily, ideally for 20 to 30 minutes per session. Many people struggle with this ideal — like any other good habit, starting small is usually helpful. If you can’t swing 20 minutes a day, commit to 10. If twice a day is too difficult, try for at least once a day. Contemplation’s rewards are cumulative (see #3 below); but that hardly matters if we never start. So begin already! And if you’ve already begun, then see if you can stretch your practice a bit: maybe now is the time to go for 20 minutes each time you pray, and/or to open your practice to twice a day rather than just once. Contemplative prayer is a gift you give both to God and to yourself. Be generous in the giving.
- Be gentle when you experience distractions, sleepiness, or other less-than-perfect times of prayer. No one is perfect. That not only explains bad days at work and fights in an otherwise loving marriage, but it also should guide us in how we experience prayer. Some days will be better than others. Some days we just feel distracted and out of sorts. Other days we might be sluggish and sleepy. It’s important to recognize that imperfections are par for the course and that we will grow faster through encouragement than through criticism. If you have a “bad prayer day,” encourage yourself to try again later (or tomorrow). When you get lost in distractions, take time to breathe deeply and remind yourself that you seek both calm and attention. If you’re sleepy, take a moment to yawn deeply (get your lungs full of oxygen), stand up if you need to, maybe sing a verse of your favorite song. You can monitor your energy level, and calm yourself when you’re agitated or energize yourself when you’re lethargic. And if nothing works, you have another chance in 12 hours. Which leads to the final step:
- Keep on keepin’ on: Persevere, for the fruit of silent prayer emerges over time. Perseverance is considered a virtue for good reason. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and neither do we master contemplative practice in just a short time. It’s humbling to accept the fact that something as simple as silent prayer takes time for us to get the knack of; and yet, that’s just the way it is. Think of the psychological process of habituation: how we learn to ignore stimuli that doesn’t not benefit or threaten us. For example, I live less than a mile from a train track; when we first moved into this house, the train would wake me up in the middle of the night; now it no longer does, even though it still runs at all hours. I’ve become habituated to the sound. Likewise, over time we learn to be less distressed by both useless distractions and sluggish sleepiness when we pray. As our prayer becomes more and more undistracted, we begin to experience calm attentiveness more and more effortlessly.
A Final Point to Remember
As a type of prayer, contemplative practice is different from other forms of meditation. We don’t just do this to master a technique, but rather to deepen a relationship. We seek the calm, attentive stillness of interior silence so that we may lovingly enjoy the presence of a compassionate God. Being awake and alert while resting in a vast, oceanic calmness is a profoundly glorious way to “be still and know” the presence of the limitless, boundless God whose Holy Spirit has been given to us in our hearts (Romans 5:5). But it’s important to remember that this is not a race or a contest. God loves us, just as unconditionally, even when our prayer seems to be distracted or torpid. Keeping our gaze ultimately on the lavishness of God’s love rather than the quality of our performance is itself a devotional practice — a trusting way to highlight the very beauty we hope our stillness might reflect.
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Four Keys to a Contemplative Life (Courtesy of Psalm 37)
For years now I have loved Psalm 37, for it includes one of my favorite verses in all of scripture:
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)But there’s much more to this Psalm than that one splendid verse, excellent as it is.
I’ve been reading Alexander Ryrie’s Silent Waiting: The Biblical Roots of Contemplative Spirituality, which contains a lengthy chapter called “Waiting for the Lord in the Psalms.” This chapter includes commentary on a number of Psalms, including Psalm 37. It’s always a treat to read scripture commentary from a contemplative perspective, and this book does not disappoint.
On the surface, Psalm 37 seems to be a generic Psalm about how the prosperity of unspiritual people (and the sufferings of those who love God) are temporary, and will eventually be made right in God’s justice. But actually the Psalm goes much deeper than that. Ryrie points out that verses 3, 4, 5, and 7a actually provide four essential keys to living a contemplative life.
So the Psalm really provides us with wisdom teaching on how to enter into contemplative spirituality — and with this in mind, its overall message (how the injustices of the world will be made right in the eternity of Divine justice):
The psalmist’s main point is that, when one is confronted by the prosperity of the wicked, the most important thing is not to ‘fret,’ but to adopt a certain attitude toward God, and to enter a particular kind of relationship with him.
I think this has application far beyond having to deal with the temporal injustices that we encounter here and now. Indeed, any kind of suffering can be more easily endured (or perhaps even transformed) when we “enter a particular kind of relationship” with God — that is to say, a contemplative relationship.
But what, then, are the four keys to a contemplative life?
Following verses 3, 4, 5, and 7a, they are:
- Trust in the Lord, and do good (verse 3);
- Take delight in the Lord (verse 4);
- Commit your way to the Lord (verse 5);
- Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him (verse 7).
Let’s take a closer look at each of these in turn.
Trust in the Lord, and do good.
I love how the Psalmist doesn’t begin with contrition or compunction — that is to say, feeling sorry for your sins — but rather with trust as the essential first step into contemplation. In her Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich echoes this: she says that God gives us “true prayer and steady trust and God wants us to be generous in both alike.” To enjoy the blessings of contemplative prayer, we need to be generous with God in our prayer (take time to pray), but also generous in our trust (lavishly cultivate faith and hope).
A corollary to trust, is doing good. The contemplative tradition has from the beginning insisted that cultivating a virtuous life is essential for anyone who seeks to enter the mysteries. Clearly, this principle has its roots all the way back in the Psalms.
Take delight in the Lord.
The Hebrew word that gets translated here as delight, וְהִתְעַנַּג, is a delicious word — it means not only “take delight in,” but also “take pleasure,” “indulge,” “have fun.” It’s a deeply sensual word — for example, Isaiah uses this word when exhorting his audience to find joy in Jerusalem, comparing the holy city to a nursing mother:
That you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious bosom. (Isaiah 66:11)It’s a word that carries connotations of daintiness, of being pampered and indulged. God wants us to enjoy God… in a spiritual way that is comparable to how lovers enjoy one another.
This only makes sense; after all, this is the same God whom the mystics kept comparing to the bridegroom in that classic erotic poem, The Song of Songs!
Commit your way to the Lord.
But there’s more to the contemplative life than just indulging ourselves in the pleasures of God. The next step: make a commitment. A commitment to God, of course, but also a commitment of your way to God. Give your life to God. Let God direct your path, and lead you in all areas of your life. Is this easy to do? Of course not. And yet, this is the call of the contemplative life.
Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.
Finally, we get to a verse that echoes a more famous verse in the Psalms, 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.” But here we are not only enjoined to be still before God — obviously a very static concept — but also to wait patiently, suggesting that the stillness of contemplation is not something that we just devoted few seconds or a few minutes to, and then we’re done. This stillness will become a defining feature of the contemplative’s prayer life. Waiting — patiently waiting — is the heart of contemplative silence. It is the crowning spiritual practice of a holistic way of life that encompasses trust, delight, and commitment.
Putting Psalm 37 into practice.
So how do we put these four keys into action? And really, since two of them are “two-parters,” we could say there are six essential steps here: 1. Trust God; 2. Do good; 3. Take delight in God (yum!); 4. Commit your life to God; 5. Be still; 6. Wait patiently. Just a few thoughts:
First, I don’t know that there is any magic in the sequence. In truth, any of these steps is a lifetime challenge. Don’t feel like you have to wait until you have “mastered” trust before you can delight, or until your delight is satiated before you can make your ultimate commitment. You might be waiting for a very long time! I think the invitation here is to take each of these keys seriously, and to begin cultivating all of these spiritual commitments, more or less simultaneously. Cultivate trust. Cultivate goodness. Cultivate delight. Cultivate commitment. Cultivate stillness. And cultivate patient waiting.
Next, allow the process to be messy and imperfect. We all make mistakes, and so our journey into contemplation will likewise be rough around the edges. I know that I, for one, am not very good at trusting, I often fail to do good, I’m often too distracted or self-absorbed to truly delight in God, my commitment is spotty at best, and my waiting stillness tends to be full of distractions. But God does not ask perfection of us, rather simply faithfulness and perseverance. Don’t be discouraged, but rather keep returning to the contemplative call.
Finally, remember that the greatest of journeys begins with a single step. Just finding one way that you can exercise greater trust in God, or one good deed that you can accomplish, can get the process rolling. And keep taking steps, one step at a time. Be bold. Trust, do good, take delight, commit yourself. And then be still. And wait.
And breathe.
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What is Contemplation?
What is contemplation? Unfortunately, answering this question is tricky — for contemplation is like some other words in the English language, such as love or success or happiness. In other words, different people use it to mean different things.
Recently a reader named Daniel sent me this message:
I’ve been gradually learning about contemplative spirituality for a couple of years now. Throughout this journey I’ve continually wondered how “contemplation” should be defined. I’ve discovered that it seems to mean different things in different contexts. Nevertheless, I’ve often felt confused after contemplating the meaning of contemplation. Anyways, the purpose of my message is I’m wondering if you might be able to give me some of your thoughts/feedback/suggestions on the following definitions. Anything would be welcomed!
Daniel went on to offer his thoughts about defining contemplation/contemplative/to contemplate:
As a noun: “Contemplation is personal, experiential knowledge of God’s love and presence.”
As an adjective: “Contemplative activities and disciplines are those that aim to foster a personal, experiential knowledge of God’s love and presence.”
As a verb: “To contemplate, as a way of being, is to live with a personal, experiential awareness of God’s love and presence.”Here’s how I responded to Daniel:
I think it’s helpful to look at the etymology of word when parsing out its meaning. Contemplation comes from the Latin word contemplari which means “to gaze, observe, behold.” So contemplation has it its heart the sense of beholding God’s presence. There is both a visionary dimension to this (seeing) but also an embodied dimension (finding God within). That’s why I think the word “beholding” is so useful, since it implies both seeing and “holding” God.
I would encourage you to avoid the word experience. It has come to mean something very narcissistic in our culture, reducing God to an object of our feelings or sensations or even imagination.
I could have a very powerful (and entirely self- generated) “experience” of God, complete with mystical visions and exalted feelings, but it could leave me utterly un-transformed. Meanwhile, someone like Mother Teresa went through life with little if any conscious experience of God, yet she changed the world with her selfless love and service to the poorest of the poor. So which one of us is the true mystic?
This begs the question: what if you don’t have this kind of an “experience” of God? What if your time of contemplative is simply filled with restlessness, or boredom, or distracted thoughts? Is that “failed” contemplation? Or is God operating at a level below the threshold of our conscious awareness?
Put another way: is the goal of contemplation for me to experience God, or is it for God to experience me? After all, who is the active subject here, and who is the receptive object?
What does it mean “to experience” something anyway? Many people can’t define it, but when you get right down to it the word is often used as a way to subtly undermine the presence of God that comes to us through other people.
People say, “I don’t want dogma, I want to experience God directly.” But what is dogma, other than the collective wisdom of all the lovers of God, over many generations, who have gone before us? Why should I be so quick to throw all that out, just because (living in an entertainment-obsessed culture like we do) I want God to “entertain” me directly?
So, I would caution against relying too much on “experience” as a foundation for contemplation. Instead, I’d suggest defining it in terms of waiting, of loving, of trusting, of obeying. Also silence. We contemplate God when we trustingly await God’s leading in our lives, resting in the silence found within our hearts, which is to say within our own bodies (beneath and in between all our restless thoughts and feelings), seeking to obey God’s word for us wherever it may come from.
So you see, contemplation really invites us to a place much deeper than mere experience. But we can’t find that place unless we befriend silence, unknowing, trust, and a willingness to wait in the darkness of our lack of control over God.
The Best Definition of Contemplation That I Have Found
For what it’s worth, I find the definition of contemplation in the Catholic Catechism to be useful:CONTEMPLATION: A form of wordless prayer in which mind and heart focus on God’s greatness and goodness in affective, loving adoration; to look on Jesus and the mysteries of his life with faith and love.
You’ll notice that it is consistent with the etymology of the word, and the “e” word doesn’t appear at all! Our task in contemplation is to pray in wordless (silent) love, adoration and beholding — recognizing that God comes to us in many ways, often at a level deeper than the threshold of our conscious awareness.
I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have further questions.
A few days later, Daniel replied:
I think my confusion over the meaning of contemplation stems from the fact that in some of what I read the term is used to refer to a subjective mystical experience, whereas in other instances it is used to refer to the act of gazing, beholding, and waiting upon God, as you explained.
Understanding the etymology is very helpful. So if “contemplation” or “contemplative prayer” is a spiritual disciple through which one seeks to silently behold and gaze upon God, then would you say that “contemplative spirituality” or “contemplative life” is a way of being through which one seeks to behold God within oneself, others, and all of creation and in every circumstance?
What still confuses me sometimes is the meaning of “contemplative” when it is applied to various things as an adjective (like prayer, disciplines, spirituality, life, Christianity, etc.).
I like your examples (contemplative spirituality, contemplative life). I think you’ve grasped the definition that I have found most useful — which is the definition found in the Catechism.
But as you yourself point out, since contemplation “seems to mean different things in different contexts” — in other words, people use the word in a variety of ways — naturally the adjective (contemplative) will have a similar “fuzzy” meaning. As I said above, it’s a word like love or happiness or success. Different people mean different things when they use these words, so we always have to try to discern exactly what they mean.
If you have an engineer’s mind (or simply prefer concrete ways of thinking), this will be an ongoing source of annoyance for you. My apologies. The way I deal with it is this: having found a definition that I think is both useful and reasonably accurate (i.e., the Catechism definition), that has become my “default” way of understanding contemplation/contemplative/to contemplate.
But knowing that this is one of those words that gets used in a variety of different ways, whenever I encounter these words, either in writing or in speaking with someone, I recognize that I have to discern what the author/speaker means by the word, which may not exactly line up with my understanding. That adds an extra challenge to the task of communication. But it’s an extra step worth taking, for the purpose of continuing to grow in my own spiritual life.
I’m sorry I can’t be any more definitive than this. But I hope this is at least somewhat helpful. My bottom line: the best definition I’ve ever found for contemplation is the Catechism definition, so when I use the word, I use it with that definition in mind. But when I hear or read others using it, I recognize that they may have a different understanding of the concept, so I make the effort to comprehend where they’re coming from.
God bless you on your continued journey.