All men are destined to divine contemplation.
Worldly life is opposite to contemplative life, and that is why people do not understand what contemplation is. Two opposite things cannot be real in themselves.
In essence, life of prayer usually is deep absorption. In these states of prayer, you shall find this inner point: participation.
If on any ascetic-mystical path certain time is established for prayer and spiritual exercises, not always the latter are enough for absorption when the soul reduces prayer to them.
To speak about absorption does not mean a sensible state that a soul enjoys in certain type of prayer without distractions.
Even absorption is not a natural self-concentration produced by activities that require of attention, or of more or less intense concentration on daily duties.
Contemplation does not detach you from contingencies of life.
Material things are not evil, but your type of relation with them may be evil. Evil is eagerness and desire, which settle life on a material level.
The exercise of meditation is an organized mental movement to produce certain effects in the soul.
In questions related to love and enlightenment, this exercise leads to lofty feelings and considerable experiences so far unknown.
Renunciation leads naturally to contemplation. One cannot define Renunciation itself. There is void between perfect state and ascetic state, and a continuous Renunciation of the soul should fill this void.
In the beginning of his path, the soul is too much busy with his troubles and sorrows, and that is why worldly evils are to him just a mere consideration to which he sticks by attachment or sympathy.
“My soul is tied to all souls forever. Just as God is a prisoner in the Creation, so my soul is a prisoner of its love to all souls. These souls are my life; and I am these souls.
You talk, you think and you feel always in dualistic terms, and life is unity. You should not understand this unity as only one thing, but as an organic totality, indivisible and simple in itself, and composed as attribute.
Simple knowledge is a state of unity and similarity between subject and object. This unity cannot be achieved through an active state of your mind, which is always dual. Knowledge or rational understanding is dual always.