The "Sleep" of Awareness

“It is not without reason that I liken this work to sleep. For in sleep the natural faculties cease from their work and the whole body takes its full rest, nourishing and renewing itself. Similarly, in this spiritual sleep, those restless spiritual faculties, Imagination and Reason, are securely bound and utterly emptied. Happy the spirit, then, for it is freed to sleep soundly and rest quietly in loving contemplation of God…while the whole inner [person] is wonderfully nourished and renewed.”
—Privy Counsel Ch. 9

Two comments on this passage. First, the author notes the actual physical benefits of contemplative practice, for which he had a limited vocabulary in the 13th century, but which are now firmly established by modern science. Secondly, his comment on the faculties of imagination and reason emphasize again both a fundamental part of the practice of contemplative prayer and also an outcome of the process.

The mind of a meditator is not blank. It is full of all the things minds are usually full of. The difference, however, is that the meditator sees the thoughts and feelings for what they are, an impermanent part of the whole flow of the universe. This may happen first through progressive technique. The contemplative may begin practice by simply ignoring thoughts and feelings as they arise, returning again and again to the breath, a mantra, or another object of awareness that grounds her in the present moment. Later, she may from that place of centeredness peer into the thoughts and feelings and note their impermanent, empty nature, seeing that they rise and fall away like all other phenomena and therefore are not to be clung to or pushed away. Finally, she may arrive at a place of choiceless awareness in which there is no effort to ignore these “faculties,” no noting or comment of the mind at all. They just simply come and go through the vast mind of the contemplative, and like all things are lovingly embraced and then surrendered back into the ocean of awareness.