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Greetings. I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone. And welcome to our time here together.

Turning for guidance to the Christian mystic, Glico II, that he offers us in his classic work, A Latter of Monks.

In the previous introductory session with Kirsten and then the following session, I was sharing with you that I think was particularly helpful for us here in our reflections in the series of podcasts.

As Glico gives very practical experiential guidance in the practice of Alexio Divina, discursive reflective meditation and prayer.

As an actual experience, something like guidelines and how do we actually engage in these modes of seeking to deepen our experience of God's presence in our life.

We saw how he presents these teachings in the metaphorical image of a ladder to heaven reaching from earth to heaven.

So each rung of the ladder is a great state of consciousness.

And by stabilizing ourselves in the first state of consciousness, Alexio.

How that evolves in a great state into a meditatio, a kind of a great dialogue with God, which evolves in this prayer, which is from the heart center, this desire for deeper union with God.

In this session, then we're going to turn to the fourth rung of the ladder, which is contemplation.

And contemplation is significant here and distinct from the previous sessions.

And by contemplation, Glico means infused contemplation or the point at which the deepening experiential awareness of God's presence in our life,

because it starts to become mystical and this infused contemplative state.

And here a clarification, I think, is helpful, is that in the first three rungs of the ladder, there are contemplative dimensions that are always present.

A contemplation meaning what's always present in the Alexio is we instinctively pause and taking in the beauty of a word heard, God speaking personally to us.

And we pause to contemplate that, that is to kind of quietly ponder it or to sit in the presence of that.

And so too with meditation, in this loving exchange with God, in this reflective consciousness, there's a natural kind of contemplative pausing to let it soak in, to rest in it, and so too with prayer.

Likewise, in each of these three states, there are mystical awarenesses, or sure, awarenesses of God's oneness with us.

This unexplainable sense of God's oneness with us in our body, God's oneness with us in our emotions, God's oneness with us in our senses, God's oneness with us in looking up to see the moon at night and so on.

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