The Art of Contemplation: Gentle path to wholeness and prosperity

Recreate this room as a mirror of the internal space you wish to cultivate.

Things may improve for you across the breadth of your life — relationships will become softer and more open, new creative currents will flow through you and fortunate circumstances may ripple through your life. It may seem as though a miracle has happened to you.

When you now enter into the space of a pause, imagine you are a car mechanic doing a quick engine check in the middle of a race. You scan the inside of your body for any discomfort, you observe your breath patterns, you check your emotional state and you do a general diagnostic of what thought patterns are running through your mind.

Our body is like a beloved pet. The better we take care of it and love it, the happier and healthier it will be.

pivoting is an act of will that in the space of a single second, changes the direction of our energy from a downward arc to an upward spiral.

Each time the hot water is added, the leaves release another level of flavour and nuance. Those drinking the tea are therefore taken on a contemplative journey together that leads to subtler and more refined spaces. This whole process can be done formally in silence, or informally just enjoying each other’s company.

The deepest level of this contemplation is when you imagine that you actually are that being — that their perfected state of consciousness has been transferred into you.

The deeper we enter into the art of contemplation the more we want to keep our body pure, because a pure body leads to a pure, calm inner state.

This leads to a lessening of defensiveness, a letting-go of stress and a general softening and opening of your heart.

As you experiment with the techniques and innovate your own, it’s important to remember the core purpose of all contemplative paths, captured so beautifully in a line worth contemplating by Moinuddin Chishti, a revered early Islamic saint: