The Art of Contemplation

Whenever we begin something new, we generally bring a great deal of learned mental baggage with us. When you enter a temple or a library or a museum, usually you are asked to leave your baggage at the door.

The first confirmation relates to pausing and is called Insight, the second confirmation is called Breakthrough and it relates to pivoting, while the third confirmation, Epiphany, relates to the technique of merging.

Self-illumination occurs as we let our contemplation wander freely through our life until it alights on something numinous, something that resonates very deeply inside us.

One purpose of this book is to increase the frequency of these spontaneous rushes of clarity in our lives.

The other purpose of contemplation is to create more clarity in our lives by helping us diffuse challenges. You can begin this process right now if you wish. You can think about the issue that you currently find most challenging in your life and make that the focus of your contemplation.

It is recommended that once you have chosen the subject you wish to focus on, whether inspiration, challenge or both, you stay with that subject until you experience some manner of opening occur inside you.

Essentially, we begin our contemplation by focusing our awareness on something. If we are contemplating a challenge, then we focus on the resolution of the challenge. We hold that goal for as long as we can and when our awareness drifts away, we simply keep bringing it gently back again.

The more often we return to the subject of our contemplation, the deeper it enters into our unconscious mind. It even enters into our dream life.

Once we have determined what kind of mystery we want to unlock, we need to create the right conditions for contemplation to occur.