The Clandestine Room

Christian meditation and contemplation is tightly interwoven with Christ-love. It is love and being loved at the most profound level. It is living a life of protection and security within a Love that breaks boundaries, a Love that spirals into the reality of the Cosmos and fuses with the risen Christ, a Love that lasts beyond death through all Eternity. This Love forced Augustine to cry out: “Oh Lord, do I love thee. Thou didst strike on my heart with Thy word and I loved Thee.... but what do I love when I love thee? Not the beauty of bodies nor the loveliness of seasons, nor the radiance of the light around us, so gladsome to our eyes, nor the sweet melodies of songs of every kind, nor the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices, nor manna and honey, nor limbs delectable for fleshly embraces. I do not love these things when I love my God. And yet I love a light and a voice and a fragrance and a food and an embrace when I love my God, who is a light, a voice, a fragrance, a food, and an embrace to my inner man.... This it is that I love when I love my God....” . It is a way in which God's love and grace and the truths of His Word reaches the heart. It is also a much neglected way.

In the fourteenth chapter, second verse of the Gospel of John, Jesus is clarifying to His disciples how it will be attainable for them to follow Him to the Father. By following Him to the Father, each of them will recognize how to discover his own concealed and immanent place where he may meet with God. He says: “There are many rooms in my Father's house........ I am going to prepare a room for you, so that where I am, you may be”. The word room in this verse, is captured from the Greek word koilia which literally means hollow space and is used to describe both the womb and the belly. The ethereal birth will be from the womb, and the belly illustrates the spring of living water that is the Holy Spirit. This room is immanent in every human being. It is the benthos of the spirit. It is the holy chamber in the deepest depths of the innermost self, the cloister that is always available whenever man needs to repose into seclusion with the ALONE. This room has the versatile ability to be in the heart of man, as well as in heaven simultaneously. Inside this room the glory of God reigns and gives birth to the paradise inside man into which the love of God will flow in and out, endlessly and incessantly. No one can enter this room, only God and man himself can. Here, the utmost hermitage is available to man, here in this glorious stillness of his bosom where God dwells, performing His own works. But this mysterious and lavish room can be an unknown place to man, and therefore Jesus wanted to know from the disciples whether they have noticed that He was in the Father and the Father in him. Then He promised to go to the Father to prepare a room, a secret place, for each of them and thus each of mankind, for this secret place in the heart of man, is the way to the Father. To enter this room, man may use meditation of contemplation as his medium.

From: The Road to Damascus

Nymph completed her L.T.C.L. in music and drama, and obtained a B.A. Psychology and Philosophy a few years later. She trained as formal singer under various renowned vocal advisers and performed in numerous concerts, recitals, and oratorios. After a car accident that lead to a few neuro surgeries, she began investigating the benefits of deep relaxation and wrote a few books and numerous articles on the subject.