SPIRITUAL GUIDE WHICH DISENTANGLES THE SOUL - MICHAEL DE MOLINOS - FIRST ADVERTISMENT

There are two distinct ways of seeking an individual relationship with God.

In the first, which De Molinos labels Meditation, God is sought through discourse and reasoning, and prayer centers on the discourse. Molinos says this is the way of beginners, but not in a pejorative way- it just is for those who are learning to approach God driven by a desire for a personal experience of God.
He calls this way 'sensible' and 'material'.

In the second, which he labels Contemplative, or Internal Recollection, the way is one of Faith, Purity of Faith he calls it, and he uses the terms 'índistinct', 'general', and 'confused knowledge'. This is the way of 'Proficients'. He calls this way naked, pure and internal.

In the liturgy of the Episcopal Church, we recognize this with the words '... which passeth all understanding', because in the Contemplative stage God raises the person out of the state where God is represented by knowledge, images, feelings, and leaves them in a new place, where God is obscure, mystery, and knowledge is replaced by pure Faith. Lifted upon the 'Wings of Love'.

In the contemplative stage, or way, we leave all understanding behind. "Let her love God as he is in himself, and not as her imagination says he is, and frames him to her."

This way is difficult, because the mind is conditioned to seeing God as images, or imagined images, or ideas, or words or concepts. My belief is that the author, and others who talk about this contemplative way, (refer to the Cloud of Unknowing ) proposes that there is no way for the person to bring about themselves the segue from Meditation to Contemplation; God invites one to Contemplation.
But surely one can prepare oneself for the crossing.

Molinos says that when one arrives at the 'gate' between Meditation and Contemplation, one must have a guide, and must engage in true subjection and submission.

So I am to confirm, here, and in my studies this:

The Contemplative way requires three conditions: God's invitation(likely only after time is spent in the Meditative way), Surrender of the knowledge and images of God acquired thus far, and a spiritual guide.
It's likely that the spiritual guide will be optional, because it seems that there are those who enter Contemplation through a mystical experience, which might be defined as an entry point (thin space?) where God's invitation and human surrender meet.

I believe Molinos, in his way that is later labeled as 'Quietest', might name this entry point, where surrender of the self and the self's image of God meet God's invitation to know God, as Quietism.

We have an intersection here with the thoughts about apophatic (vs cataphatic) theology, that the way of knowing God is to talk about what God is not (forgive the bad definition here, to be cleaned up later). Here de Molinos says that "all corporal and sensible representation is infinitely distant from God".

He quotes St Denis. We know God more perfectly by Negatives, than by Affirmatives. Thou shalt not make a graven image, an angry God shouted in OT times. But this God was described as fire, or a cloud, or a burning bush. God's desire to be known by us had to be communicated by God, and the first rule was not to try to use created beauty or imagination to build an image of God; and perhaps to make the point, God came up with absurd representations of God's self- as a burning bush, or a cloud of fire.

So this introductory Preface ends with the simple proposal that we can only really know God via the Contemplative way, which accepts that God is unknowable except as God chooses to reveal God's self through pure faith and surrender. And the way that we will know God, as affirmed I think by other mystics, is that we are left with a sense of overwhelming, burning Love.