“the mind of the Spirit”

A lot is written today about meditation, communing with our “own heart.” Throughout human history, various processes of meditation have promised a life of balance and wholeness. And they can be helpful. In many ways, self-focus is the brain’s best tool. … Christian contemplatives, however, have tended to avoid mental strategies like those involved in meditation. For example, the Christian mystic author of The Cloud of Unknowing shows he was way ahead of his time when wrote: “For as long as the soul dwells in this mortal body, the clarity of our understanding in the contemplation of spiritual things, and especially of God, is always mixed up with some sort of imagination” (Light from Light, Dupré and Wiseman 262). … As Saint Paul concluded, we ourselves don’t know “what we should pray for as we ought.” And so it is “the Spirit” that helps “our infirmities,” interceding in ways “which cannot be uttered.” Prayer and contemplation work best when powered by “the mind of the Spirit” (KJV Rom. 8: 26-27). In stillness and yielding, the Lord comes to us effortlessly and unbidden. (Drawn from Living Strong, chapter 45, ©️ 2014)