Quotes about Contemplation

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of its mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.

Gandalf: Three hundred lives of men I have walked this earth and now I have no time.

Trust the uni~verse and respekt your hair.

There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

"Why would one give up everything to live on the streets of India, when there are so many wonderful opportunities to be homeless right here in America? Closer to home, and without the expense. Whether you stake your spot and sit in meditative contemplation, or stalk the streets like a raving lunatic, like John The Baptist---others---here or there, will still look upon you with total indifference."

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused.

I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?

Contain your experience with the divine so that it does not escape you but rather shapes you.  Be silent.  Silence will help you avoid engaging in the games of competition and illusion that regularly seduce us in the outside world.  Silence also helps you avoid distraction.  It helps focus the busy mind---the mind that always has to be doing something, thinking something, the mind that always has to be otherwise engaged lest it become introspective and allow the soul's voice to override its own.  The silence I am describing is a silence that you use to contain the grace you receive when you enter the Castle of your soul.  This quality of silence allows you to engage in discernment.  You carry this silence within you, even when you are with others.  It allows you to hold your center amid the chaos of your life; it keeps you clear so that you do not do or say things you will regret or make decisions out of fear.

Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom.

That which a man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

Take an hour every day at dawn and give it to your Self. Meet your Self there, in the holy moment. Then go about your day. You will be a different person.

Your deepest, most perfect happiness will be found within, and once you find it, nothing exterior to your Self can match it, nor can anything destroy it.

The question of what is "traditional" always baffles me.  Who is to say whether something is traditional or not?  The question I ask is, "When does contemporary become traditional?"

It is necessarily true that we are having experiences; it is not necessarily true that what we reflectively consider to have been the content of those experiences has any truth-value whatsoever. This arises from the nature of reflection as we have seen, in which we have objectified an experience and begin to analyze its component parts. Our ability to develop understanding from our experiences is not to be found in reflection, but in the clarity of awareness and the intensity of our focus. How well and how quickly we “get things” depends upon our ability to still our affections and intensify our contemplation of what we are experiencing. How can we possibly pay attention, when our minds are racing, filled with thoughts that our affections are conditioning? To understand quickly we must allow the spontaneous nature of Omnific Awareness to shine through the obstructions that our fears, doubts, desires, and predispositions – those phenomena and their traces that have already arisen and which condition what is arising now – create.

Contemplation is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it