Contemplative Prayer

Paradoxical as it may seem, it would not even occur to a person -- no, nor to an angel or saint -- to desire contemplative love were it not already alive within him.  I believe, too, that often our Lord deliberately chooses to work in those who have been habitual sinners rather than in those who, by comparison, have never grieved him at all.  Yes, he seems to do this very often.  For I think he wants us to realize that he is all-merciful and almighty, and that he is perfectly free to work as he pleases, where he pleases, and when he pleases.

Yet he does not give his grace nor work this work in a person who has no aptitude for it.  But a person lacking the capacity to receive his grace could never gain it through his own efforts either.  No one at all, neither sinner nor innocent, can do so.  For this grace is a gift, and it is not given for innocence nor withheld for sin...

Contemplative prayer is God's gift, wholly gratuitous.  No one can earn it.  It is in the nature of this gift that one who receives it receives also the aptitude for it.  No one can have the aptitude without the gift itself.  The aptitude for this work is one with the work; they are identical.  He who experiences God working in the depths of his spirit has the aptitude for contemplation and no one else.  For without God's grace a person would be so completely insensitive to the reality of contemplative prayer that he would be unable to desire or long for it.  You possess it to the extent that you will and desire to possess it, no more and no less.  But you will never desire to possess it until that which is ineffable and unknowable moves you to desire the ineffable and unknowable.  Do not be curious to know more, I beg you.  Only become increasingly faithful to this work until it becomes your whole life.

To put it more simply, let that mysterious grace move in your spirit as it will and follow wherever it leads you.  Let it be the active doer and you the passive receiver...  Your part is to be as wood to a carpenter or a home to a dweller.  Remain blind during this time, cutting away all desire to know, for knowledge is a hindrance here.  Be content to feel this mysterious grace sweetly awaken in the depths of your spirit.  Forget everything but God and fix on him your naked desire, your longing stripped of all self-interest.

from The Cloud Of Unknowing
which was written in Middle English by an unknown mystic of the 14th century.