contemplation

Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation.

Happiness lies even in ltiny ittle butterflies. You just have to open up your eyes and see where beauty flies to beautify your world lenghtwise.

Happiness lies even in little tiny butterflies. You just have to cpen up your eyes and see where beauty flies to beautify your world lenghtwise.

Happiness lies even in tiny little butterflies. You just have to open up your eyes and see where beauty flies to beautify your world lenghtwise.

Soulful love, is poetry in motion. A contemplation of beauty from the deep arises and the mere struggle to express the rapture of the soul.

Then there are the fully intentional pleasures, which, although in some way tied up with sensory or perceptual experience, are modes of exploration of the world. Aesthetic pleasures are like this. Aesthetic pleasures are contemplative - they involve studying an object OUTSIDE of the self, to which one is GIVING something (namely, attention and all that flows from it), and not TAKING, as in the pleasure that comes from drugs and drinks. Hence such pleasures are not addictive - there is no pathway to reward that can be short-circuited here, and a serotonin injection is not a cheap way of obtaining the experience of PARISFAL or THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

An introspective person seeks to attain a pure state of consciousness by merging finitude in infinity and by expressing the rapture of the soul through the contemplation and adoration of beauty. In this brief interlude of time, I surrender to becoming a cog in the roadway, an insentient time traveler, a ward of eternity, a day-tripper, a nighttime dream weaver, a blip in the cosmos, a freebase glob of energy, an imaginable disk of bundled vitality that wants for nothing.

Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better. (January 17)

What if you were wrong? What if everything you ever believed was a lie? What if you missed your opportunity because you didn't know your worth? What if you settled on familiar, but God was trying to give you something better? What if you decided not to go backwards, but forward? What if doing what you have never done before was the answer to everything that didn't make sense? What if the answer wasn't to be found in words, but in action? What if you found the courage to do what you really wanted to do and doing it changed your whole life?

A good traveller is one who knows how to travel with the mind.

Throughout our history human beings have conducted and practiced all kinds of rituals and activities with the motivation of obtaining peace. We have fought wars in the name of achieving peace because we are under the illusion that peace is something external, something to be obtained.

How often do we talk just to fill up the quiet space? How often do we waste our breath talking about nonsense?

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is pleasure beyond compare.

Maybe the point of life (and youth, once it was over), was to elevate yourself, through time and reflection, into something worthy of contemplation (even if you were the only one doing the contemplating).

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

True happiness is realized beyond circumstance. It is universal relationship, not centered or devoted or residing on other individual relationships we have. True happiness sees the actions of others as directly connected to who we ourselves are. It sees beyond individually separated relationships and is birthed from one great relationship with everything there is.

As I contemplate a relationship with God, I find that I__ afraid to ride on the coattails of the infinite. But what I fear more than that is spending my life in the coat closet.

Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don't argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot.