Journey Through the Eye of a Needle: The Contemplative Path

Starting the Journey: Invitation and free will

Jesus referred to the eye of the needle following his discourse with a young man who was clearly spiritually alive and who deeply desired to reach full union with God. He could represent each one of us here today whose presence suggests our desire to make progress on the spiritual journey. Jesus, looked at the man loved him and said, “ You lack one thing, go sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me“ (Mark 10:21) The young man struggled with this invitation and decided that he was not yet ready to respond to such a request. He freely chose to walk away.

So often in our own lives we know what we need to do but do not have the courage or the strength to carry this out. This is the dilemma St Paul found himself in when he exclaimed, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom 7:15) According to St Francis de Sales the problem we are experiencing is not of the intellect but of the will that has been weakened by our own past failings and misdeeds. To counteract such brokenness, meditation is intended to strengthen our weakened will so that we have the tenacity to carry out our resolve in our daily life. [1]

Freedom to Choose: How can I be free to chose when I am trapped?

The freedom to choose how we respond to a given situation is what Victor Frankl, a survivor of the concentration camp, described as the last of the human freedoms. God never infringes on this freedom. The young man that Jesus encountered, chose to walk away having deliberated over the choice that he had been given. Life and death are set before you, said the prophet Sirach, whichever you prefer will be given to you. (Sirach 17:15) For many, the choice is often one of safety rather than freedom like the man in the parable of the rich fool (Mark 12: 13-21) who tore down his barns and built bigger ones in order to contain all the grain he had harvested, not realising the ephemeral nature of all he acquired and how his own life would be taken from him that night. Such a perverse attachment to anything, whether it is people, places, belongings, ideas, habits and behaviours, never deliver the freedom we hope for. Rather we find ourselves caught in a mental prison where the battle for freedom takes place. Soon we realise that what we once thought we possessed has now come to possess us.

This is the plight of the contemplative who in their time of meditation find themselves on the battlefield fighting against the onslaught of raging thoughts as they come from every direction. The choice is to dodge the bullets by taking refuge in the mantra or to be held captive to the prevailing thoughts that whirl around in our minds. The choice is ours. What do we choose?

The Eye of the Needle: Journeying through the Cross.

There is an evocative drawing by the artist David Haywood that captures for me what the “eye of the needle” represents. It depicts a narrow opening in the form a cross. For the artist the only way to get through this narrow opening is through the cross. The important word is through as it points to something beyond, something to aim for, something to focus on. When Jesus speaks about the eye of the needle, I reckon he is directing our attention to what lies beyond the narrow opening, beyond emotional attachments and superficial desires, beyond afflictive thoughts and distractions.

Divesting the Camel: Poverty of Spirit

In meeting the young man Jesus saw beyond his attachment to wealth, to the freedom that awaited him if he let go of his possessions. It is the paradox of the Christian journey in that “whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for [Jesus’s] sake will find it”. (Matthew 16:25). Being despoiled of our own powers and all our attachments can result in a feeling of great emptiness, even if objectively something very beautiful is taking place that will make for our everlasting joy and peace. [2] We only have to think of Christ on the cross, naked, helpless and forsaken and yet what appeared to many as a cause in ruins became the moment when Jesus performed his greatest work, reconciling the whole of the human race to God.[3]

Realising that our feeling of emptiness and perhaps abandonment, is leading to the freedom that our heart desires, does not mean we will feel less empty or more able to carry our cross with joy all the time. Our ego baulks at the idea of emptiness and will resist such feelings by using fear as its weapon to regain control. Yet our freedom lies in the ability to recognise, name, and let go of all that constrains us. Until we deal with the whole inner world of afflictive thoughts, passions, moods, fears, hurts, prejudices, hostilities and resentments [4], we won’t be free. What we fail to acknowledge and recognise in ourselves has the power to enslave us and what pains and hurts us is likely to be transmitted if it is not transformed into meaning and purpose.

The disciples asked Jesus, “who then can be saved?” to which Jesus replied, “For human beings it is impossible, but for God all things are possible”. (Matt 19:26). The purpose of acknowledging our weaknesses and our failings is not to remonstrate or punish ourselves for our shortcomings but rather to recognise our poverty before God. We can all talk so beautifully about weaknesses and poverty when it is outside us, but when we have to confess to it within ourselves, it is not so beautiful. To know ones’ need of God is true poverty of spirit. Without such a disposition we will be like the invited guests to the wedding banquet of the king in the gospel of Matthew (22: 1-14), who refused to come because they were preoccupied with other matters. In his disappointment the King sent his servants out onto the streets to invite everyone they could find, everyone who knew their need of God.

The practice of meditation helps us to embrace this poverty of spirit and give our yes to the Kings invitation. It teaches us how to lay aside all our preoccupations, our thoughts, ideas and imaginings and choose the poverty of one word, the mantra, maranatha. By repeating our mantra throughout our time in meditation we will eventually become detached from all the distractions that possess us. St John Cassian a 4th Century, Christian monk, born in 360AD, compared the human mind to a constantly grinding millstone, always churning over thoughts that subtly enter our minds against our will. [5] In our endeavours to stay with the one-word in the midst of such inner chaos, God reveals to us our poverty and our need of Him. This kind of poverty does not anxiously look for results, or count on success but perseveres without any indication of progress.

Through the Gate: From Darkness into Light

The goal of our Christian journey that we have likened to a camel passing through the eye of the needle, and the goal of the contemplative heart, is union with the beloved. It is a journey that begins with an invitation and our freedom to choose our response. It is a journey where we all have to navigate our way through obstacles and negotiate difficult times, through the cross. Falling is inevitable on this journey, as it was for Jesus who fell three times on his way to Golgotha. We should not be surprised when we fall nor should we become discouraged, instead, we show our love for the beloved by getting up again, and again, and again, in the knowledge that we are moving towards our primary goal, the beatific light and Divine union.

This reminds me of Plato’s allegory of the cave. He was a Greek philosopher who writes about the fate of a group of people who have lived their whole lives facing a blank wall and chained to the wall of a dark cave. All day long they watch shadows. They give names to these shadows and believe them to be real. They know no different. They do not realise that behind them is a fire which they cannot see. Real objects, passing in front of this fire are responsible for casting the shadows onto the wall. Oblivious to any other reality they live their lives in this world of darkness and shadows believing that it represents true reality. Then one day one of the prisoners is seized and taken from the cave. At first, he is angry and tries to resist. Then he experiences great pain as the radiant light of the sun overwhelms his eyes and blinds him. In time his eyes adjust to the light and, for the first time, he can see everything so clearly that he realises the falsehood of the life he had been living in the cave.

The rhythm of the contemplative journey can be compared to this movement between darkness and light. The more we meditate, the more we move through the field of inner darkness towards the light where all suppressed material hidden in the shadows of our mind starts to resurface, like silt in a quiet stream that has been stirred up, floats to the top and into our conscious awareness. This can be very painful. The temptation is to become discouraged and give up thinking that meditation is not for me. What we fail to recognise is that what we are now seeing has been illuminated by the inflowing of God into the soul… a mystery of presence: presence too close, too personal, too Godlike [6] for the person to be able to perceive. It is the impact of the radiant light on the eyes of Plato’s prisoner, blinded at first by the light and then liberated from his world of shadows to the true reality and beauty of life outside the cave.

So when all appears dark and the wound inside us begins to ache and the anaesthetic starts to wear off, St John of the cross encourages us not to panic. “Do not be a slave to the fear of not being anaesthetised” he said, because the place where we are most needy and where the wound is, is the place where God dwells. “Go there” he says and “Stay there; let God work there; say yes to the God who is feeding you precisely there”. [7] This is where the practice of meditation comes to our aid. The saying of our mantra helps us to stay there and shifts our attention from “the objects of attention to the silent vastness of the heart” [8] where the Divine physician is ministering to our need. As Meister Eckhart says, “The noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within”. [9]

Keep going: The Journey of perseverance

The greatest tragedy of the contemplative journey is that we become so distracted and discouraged that we give up and like the young man in the gospel story, we walk away. Jesus, the hound of heaven, continues to pursue us, always inviting us to change and not to congeal, to trust and not to despair, to have faith and not to doubt. He wants us to actively engage in life and not become passive observers. The young man had obeyed God’s commandments all his life and Jesus does not want him to settle for that. He sees in him greater potential and rewards his faithfulness by giving him the opportunity to demonstrate an even greater act of trust, “Sell all that you possess, and give to the poor; and you will have treasure in heaven” (Matthew 19:21) This may appear to be an unreasonable request from Jesus but it is characteristic of his ministry as he endeavours to inspire his followers to become the person God intended them to be. As St Irenaeus tells us, “The glory of God, is man fully alive” and this is “realised through the unfolding of all the potentialities he has put in [a persons’] heart”. [10]

So even when darkness surrounds us and we feel abandoned and alone, Jesus invites us to “put one foot in front of the other along a road whose directions is known to God alone” [11].

This reminds me of an experience I had when visiting Medugorjie some years ago. I was climbing the mountain called mount crucifix. It is a high mountain and extremely rocky. Care is needed so as not to trip and fall. In front of me was a blind man. He was being led up the mountain by a friend who was holding him by the hand. He listened intently to the directions his friend was giving him and slowly but surely, one step at a time, he made it to the top.

Whatever challenge we are currently faced with, whatever darkness we may find ourselves in, like the blind man climbing the mountain or the prisoner coming out of the dark cave and blinded by the light, the important thing is not to stand still, not to become discouraged but to keep going forward. As St John of the Cross tells us, “Let your need be your prayer, hold it before God”. It is the stance Mary took at the Wedding Feast of Cana, when she held the need of the bride and groom before Jesus. “They have no wine” she said. She did not try to convince Jesus what to do or tell him how to do it, but surrendered the situation to Him and left Him to attend to the need of the host.

The stance Mary took, is the same stance we are also invited to take as we come to meditation. Recognising our need, we place it before the Lord and leave it with Him, confident that He is taking care of everything. Then quietly we return to saying our mantra.

Conclusions

Taking the contemplative path, the journey through the eye of the needle, is the analogy Jesus presents to us for the journey we are all invited to take regardless of our age, our ethnicity, our sexuality or our religious persuasion. It is a journey to freedom; freedom to be our true self where we realise all the potentials God has put in our hearts.

It is a common mistake to equate freedom with the removal of restrictions or external constraints that may interfere with our liberty to do what we want and to go our own way. This does not necessarily deliver the freedom we hope for. True freedom lies within. It is the freedom epitomised by the naked Christ on the cross, stripped of everything he possessed and yet still free to accomplish His greatest work for all humankind. It is the uncluttered contemplative gaze, divested of its attachments to thoughts, ideas, imaginings and opinions as it embraces the poverty of the sacred word. It is the aching heart that holds its wound before the Beloved Physician and trusts it to His care. It is the weary traveller, ascending the mountain in darkness, persevering until he enters into the luminous vastness where he finds loving union with God. This is the Freedom God offers us now the choice is ours. What do you choose?