Practice
Of Contemplation
To Empower You
A very powerful technique is the practice of contemplation. Some might call it navel gazing but these people probably don’t understand how or why this discipline can change your life. As a child I remember contemplating why I could see the pen on the table.
Contemplation was too big a word for a ten-year-old but I was just curious why could I make the distinction between the pen and the table.
After considering the matter for a while I knew that the light was different between the two objects and that allowed me to see that one thing was not the other. Pretty simple explanation but nevertheless it sort of says enough.
Do you remember doing such things as a child?
Maybe you didn’t acknowledge it but you doing this was engaging in the practice of contemplation. I am sure at some stage you would have wondered why things are the way they are.
The practice of contemplation is to look into a matter to become aware of the way something is, or the why something is.
We generally hold a thing to be something we can pick up, something tangible, a form that two or more people could come to some agreement about its existence. Consider that a thing – a form – is also a thought, a feeling, an experience, and a way of seeing the world.
These ‘things’ are invisible we might say but still they occur.
These things occur in your experience of life and you can objectify them to a greater or lesser degree. By that I mean you can watch them occurring. You can step back, so to speak, and say ‘I am noticing I experience this’. You would do well to consider anything that you can distinguish as a ‘thing’, ‘object’, ‘form’.
I am calling a thing anything that you notice now which wasn’t there once upon a time and won’t be there in the future. That being the case, why is it there now? If it is not fixed, unchanging and absolute then why is it there now? This is fodder for the practice of contemplation. Why is it? Why is it so? Why is it so the way that it is?
Take shame for example. The next time you feel embarrassed, be curious about what you assume to be true to make you feel embarrassed right then. You can do it later if more appropriate but the important point is to notice that it is there now, or was there and it will go in time. So why is it there now? What do you hold to be true in your idea of yourself and the world that causes the shame? We are too passive in our living. We assume that experiences and feelings come pre-packaged. Combined with the ‘it is just the way I am’ naive mentality we end up living a life of self-ignorance and reaction.
I rarely have negative emotions these days. I rarely feel that inner contraction to a noticeable degree. Sure if there is a confrontation or some issue being worked through I might feel some physical sensation but rarely do I notice any real emotion.
For a couple of years I have engaged in the practice of contemplation. Either on the spot or later that evening contemplating anything that happened that day which I reacted to with a feeling. Even the slightest contraction away from another person would see me wonder what I didn’t like about this situation. If I felt fear I wondered what was I afraid of happening. If I felt down or uninspired by work I would contemplate the way I was thinking about life and work. I could then see the cause and effect relationship between my thoughts and my experience.
Once I could see I was creating this unconsciously I could change it consciously and feel better. Contemplation is powerful, ancient and used by great spiritual leaders and masters the world over. It can also be used by you.
