CAPUT XIV. Quae sit prima via omni ingredienti ad invisibilium contemplationem, videlicet per imaginationem
The First Step: Imagination as the Path to Contemplation
The mind, unable to directly perceive invisible things, must begin by imagining them, using the imagination as a servant to reason, just as Rachel first bore children through her maidservant.
But who doesn't know how hard it is—even nearly impossible—for a carnal mind, still untrained in spiritual pursuits, to rise to an understanding of invisible things and fix the eye of contemplation on them? In fact, it knows nothing yet but physical things; when it thinks, nothing comes to mind except the visible objects it's grown used to. It seeks to see the invisible, and nothing comes to mind but the forms of visible things; it longs to gaze on the incorporeal, and it dreams of nothing but images of bodily things. What then should it do? What should it undertake? Isn't it better to think of those things however one can, rather than handing them over to forgetfulness or neglect? Indeed, if the mind loves them well, it doesn't easily forget them; yet it is raised to their contemplation with far greater difficulty. Still, it does what it can; it gazes on them as best it's able. It thinks by means of the imagination because it isn't yet able to see through the purity of understanding. This, I think, is why Rachel has children first by her maidservant before she bears them herself: because it's sweet for her at least to keep the memory of those things by imagining them, when she still can't grasp their meaning by reasoning. For just as we take Rachel to mean reason, so by her maidservant we understand imagination. So reason advises that it's better to think of true goods in whatever way you can, and at least by some imagined beauty to kindle the soul toward desire for them, than to fix your thought on false and deceptive goods. And this is why Rachel wanted to give her maidservant to her husband. No one fails to see that this is the first path for everyone entering upon the contemplation of invisible things—except, perhaps, someone whom experience has not yet schooled in this knowledge.
Read the original Latin
Sed quis nesciat quam sit difficile, imo quam pene impossibile mentem carnalem, et adhuc in studiis spiritualibus rudem, ad invisibilium intelligentiam assurgere, et in illis contemplationis oculum figere? Nulla quippe novit adhuc, nisi corporalia; nil aliud adhuc cogitanti occurrit, nisi quae cogitare consuevit sola visibilia. Quaerit invisibilia videre, et nil occurrit nisi formae rerum visibilium; desiderat intueri incorporea, et nil somniat nisi imagines rerum corporalium. Quid igitur faciat, quid agat? Nonne melius est qualicunque modo illa cogitare, quam oblivioni vel negligentiae tradere? Imo, si bene amat mens, ea non facile obliviscitur, multo tamen difficilius ad eorum contemplationem sublevatur. Facit tamen quod potest, intuetur ea quomodo potest. Cogitat per imaginationem, quia necdum videre valet per intelligentiae puritatem.
Haec, ut arbitror, est causa cur Rachel prius liberos habeat de ancilla, quam generet de seipsa; quia dulce est ei saltem imaginando eorum memoriam retinere, quorum intelligentiam nondum valet ratiocinando apprehendere. Sicut enim Rachel rationem, sic per ejus ancillam intelligimus imaginationem. Suadet ergo ratio commodius esse qualicunque modo vera bona cogitare, et imaginaria quadam saltem pulchritudine ad eorum desiderium animum accendere, quam in falsis et deceptoriis bonis cogitationem figere: et haec est ratio cur Rachel voluerit ancillam suam viro suo tradere. Hanc esse primam viam omni ingredienti ad invisibilium contemplationem nemo ignorat, nisi forte, quem ad hanc scientiam necdum experientia informat.
Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs / Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation) companion
A daily portion of stillness
Chosen Portion delivers one short contemplative reading and a guided moment of silence each day — the ascent, one step at a time.
Chosen Portion is the paced doorway into this collection: it portions the dense mystical treatises into one daily reading plus guided silence, exactly as the 14-day plan teaches.
- Daily bite-sized excerpts from the contemplative classics, never a wall of text
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