The Four Steps In Contemplative Reading

The design of the contemplative approach to Scripture is easy to explain and remember, as it involves just four steps.
They are: Reading, Meditation, Prayer and Contemplation.
The 1996 small group study guide, Contemplative Bible Reading, by Dr. Richard Peace, is a tremendously instructive book, and utilizes these four steps.
I would like to go back a little further, to a 12th-Century monk known to us as Guigo II, who wrote an essay to his fellow spiritual brothers titled Ladder of Monks.
Guigo used the same four steps, and refers to them as rungs on a ladder: “These make a ladder for monks by which they are lifted up from earth to heaven. It has few rungs, yet its length is immense and wonderful, for its lower end rests upon the earth, but its top pierces the clouds and seeks heavenly secrets.” (Page 68, Cistercian Publications)
Again I remind you that spiritual language, such as the phrase “heavenly secrets,” must be kept in its immediate context of Christian thought. Contemplation is not a wild-eyed hunt for secrets. The early Gnostic heresy in the Church revolved around the notion that “special knowledge” was granted to certain extra spiritual people, and this “knowledge” was the centerpiece of Gnostic theology. (The Greek word for knowledge is gnosis.)
Guigo’s “heavenly secrets” are not hidden truths. Rather, he describes the effect of contemplation as the experience wherein the soul “tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness.” (Page 68)
He speaks of encountering God in a way that we see the Lord “hastening to us” to bring us restoration and in-filling.
Those hungry for mystery must recall that all mysteries are revealed in Christ. Those thirsty for secrets in the form of “new truth,” must check this sinister work of the mind set on earthly things (ironically), and recall that all secrets are told in Christ.
One can deeply enjoy contemplative reading, but, one ought not play with it.