Lesson 115. Review of Lessons 99 & 100.
How to Contemplate, continued:
A common block to receiving wisdom through contemplation is perceiving the text that is being contemplated as straightforward and easy to understand. Maybe you are contemplating a sentence that is short, simple and clear. “I get it,” the mind says.
Well … that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to be gained through contemplation. Joseph Benner had realization after realization, resulting in a book called “The Impersonal Life,” through contemplating one short quote continuously. The quote: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Consider this story on contemplation by William Samuel, written in his book “The Awareness of Self-Discovery”:
“Once, in China, I was given a simple verse to read and then to give my interpretation. I was ready to give an answer immediately but was informed that I had twenty-eight days to think about it. ‘Why so long?’ asked I, with the usual impatience of a Westerner.
“’Because nothing has been read once until it has been read twelve times,’ was my answer. ‘Read and reread.’
“I did. Twelve times twelve to make twelve readings … and I heard a melody I could not have heard otherwise. Since then I have known why it is that certain lines in the Bible (or any other book) that have been read countless times will one day, upon just one more reading, suddenly take on a grand new significance.
“So reader, with a very gentle touch, read and re-read. If you are earnest, and act with the earnestness you are, one day when you least expect it, you will hear and feel your Heart within complete [the] words without.”
The quote William Samuel was asked to contemplate for 28 days was: “The same moon shines on ten thousand rivers.”
Jacquelyn’s personal contemplation:
Lesson 115. Salvation is my only function here. My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.
Salvation is the remembrance or recognition that I do not exist in independence from any other thing, person, process that I experience. How do I then fulfill that function. I look for the intersection of myself with what appears to be outside of and independent of self. I look to find the imagined boundary. I test the limits of this self I believe myself to be. I become curious about why things/people/events SEEM separate from me. I look at this phenomenon with a real desire to see beyond the appearance of separateness to the truth of what is really going on here. I see that this is the opposite of resistance. This is an invitation to embrace what I experience.
What is my part? It is not some grand role in the mass awakening that is occurring in the one mind (while that is true, ego based grandiosity is palpable as I consider it). What does it mean to have a part in salvation—right here, ground zero? My part means not waiting for some magic agent or grace to tap me on the head and give me enlightenment. Truth is what it is and is here to be discovered. If I am not experiencing the oneness I have seen that I am, what is it that prevents me from seeing that? What processes are being allowed that cover over the truth? What active role am I playing in the resistance? (love the “war” metaphor and the play on the word resistance). If the truth is true, what is happening that prevents me from recognition of the truth? This is my part in salvation–giving up my resistance and even my complicity in this feigned ignorance. This is an active role—not passive. Let me discover where to begin. Amen.
