Amen. It was excellent having him on and both of us gained a lot. Thanks for watching!

Thanks be to God. He is incredible and I am blessed to know him. His recent conversation on fasting inside our CG+ platform was phenomenal and inspiring. God bless you, -John

@JoeAdams This is great to hear. Truly, this was an episode that changed my view of the active work I have been doing for the Kingdom and for holiness. It has brought more purpose to my practices and discipline and I am grateful for Fr. Abernathy. He is going to be our guest expert on catholicgentlemanplus.com in the month of August. Blessings and Prayers to you as you continue to pursue holiness.

Praise God. Thanks for the comment. Father has such clear and excellent responses for all of us to hear. Blessings!

Amen. Thanks for watching! - John

Thanks, Sam. I hope that we can. Blessings - John

You are welcome, Todd. It was incredibly rewarding to us as well. The depth of his knowledge brought a new meaning of these topics to us. Blessings in Christ.

You are welcome. Fr. David Abernethy was an excellent guest that we would both like to have on again. God bless you.

Would you recommend an introductory book or writing on this subject which you beautifully wrote so we can learn more?

@@sshealy1 To practice it, go to a quiet dark or low lit room. Sit in a comfortable chair. I sit in a hammock chair. You can sit on a mat. You can lie down. With the latter you risk falling asleep. Remind yourself there is nothing in the next hour you need. God has provided all your needs. All your needs can wait. Be grateful. Any want you may have or that may arise are not needs. They can also wait. There is no need to desire anything outside yourself or inside yourself as in urges, feelings or thoughts. There is no need to be averse to anything. There is no need to desire to avoid anything inside or outside yourself. Remind yourself you are already satisfied. You don't need to do any physical or mental work to make anything happen. God has accomplished all the work. Remind yourself all you need to do is rest your body and mind, thoughts and emotions. There is no need to think about something to make something happen. There is no need to desire something to happen. There is no need to desire something not to happen. There is no need to desire. There is no need to desire not to desire. There is no need to force anything to happen. There is no need to force anything not to happen. There is no need to go after anything as in urges, emotions, images, or thoughts. There is no need to push those things away either. There is no need to analyse feelings or thoughts. There is no need to jump on a train of thoughts. There is no need to resolve any questions that arise. There is no need to solve any problems that arise in your thoughts. There is no need for that ceaseless inner dialoguing with yourself. There is no need to fix any mistakes you make that you inevitably will make countless times in your thinking as you try not to think. Thinking is recalling past experiences from your memory. Thinking is referencing in the mind by pulling up visual images and verbal thoughts. It is comparing and contrasting. All those things occurring in the mind take mental effort or work. The mind is to be in an effortless state of awareness where it is alert, watching the dynamic occuring in the mind, soul, or psyche. When your awareness dispassionately and objectively and disinterestedly observes or experiences the subjective urges, emotions, images, thoughts that arise, the awareness no longer is captured or carried away or raptured by them. Awareness takes no effort. It is a resting, calm, peaceful experience of the perceptions in the psyche. It is when the awareness shows deference to any urge, feeling or thought that it becomes focused or attentive and gets carried away. Attention is captured or focused awareness. Attention shows deference. It becomes enslaved by desire, aversion, fear, anger, thoughts or anything else requiring satisfaction. Attention goes to work. Awareness is already at rest. It comes naturally and easily. It is free from deferencing. It just is. It experiences all it takes in without being under compulsion, like attention, to satisfy. It needs not to become anything or be attracted to anything or be averse to anything. Awareness is an alert, equanimitous, experiential, nonreferencing, nonthinking, nonstriving, restful state of mind. It is already in a state of satisfaction. Attention that follows the unsatisfied urges, emotions and thoughts, is not satisfied and pulls awareness away from its peace. Contemplation in theory requires no work. Yet we can't understand that, so everyone who starts it, works at understanding it and works at trying to accomplish it. We do the very opposite thing we ought to do. Instead of resting in our awareness which is already satisfied, we get to work attending to the very desire to accomplish or satisfy a misunderstanding we have of contemplation. Other desires, urges, feelings, and thoughts arise and put our attention to work also. So our attention will all too often be distracted away from our peaceful already satisfied awareness. So our attention needs to learn to remain with its awareness and not be carried away. It needs to be disciplined. It needs some sort of technique to keep it focused on one thing. It needs a technique to bring it back to its awareness which will need to occur countless times until it learns to remain where it started. In contemplative discipline, our attention thinks it needs something other than what it already has. It seeks something but moves away from the very thing it is seeking. To bring the attention back at rest and prevent it from wandering again and again, it needs one focus, a discipline, a technique. Once that is mastered, it too needs to be let go of for the attention to reside and remain with the awareness. There are various techniques such as the repetitious Jesus Prayer or a sacred word or a intuitive sense of God's presence for the attention to return to every time it wanders. If it wanders 7 times, bring it back 7 times. If it wanders 70 x 7 times, bring it back 70 x 7 times. But be gentle and patient each time. If you get perturbed or disturbed, your putting too much effort or work into it. That is counter productive. If your frustration or disappointment or dissatisfaction steals away your attention, gently and patiently bring it back. This will teach your spiritedness to become poor-in-spirit, meek and mild, calm and compassionate, persistent not insistent, willing not willful, blessed. All the above is the purification process for the soul which will lead to insight then onto enlightenment or inner illumination. And we haven't even gotten to the unitive stage of the soul with the divine.

Theoria article in religionwikia and contemplative prayer article in wikipedia give overviews.

@@jbeauty4150 Practicing Buddhism is more than merely meditating. Practicing Christianity is more than contemplation or hesychasm. Though contemplation and meditation can be described in common psychological terminology, and they both experience inner illumination or enlightenment, they view the unitive experience differently, and Christianity and Buddism view God differently, view Jesus and Buddha differently, and, though their ethics are similar, their ethics are not exactly the same.

@@jbeauty4150 I suspect we would be experiencing similar psychological phenomena of disciplining/purifying/unencumbering the psyche, and gaining insight and enlightenment in the psyche, but whether we encounter God in some manner could vary as it would depend on God also. We can seek, knock, and ask, but we can't force the door open and barge in. The door has to be opened on the inside and we have to wait for the invitation before we gain entrance.

Thank you so much! We both gained a lot by the conversation as well! I pray you are blessed! - John