How to Contemplate, continued:
As with all things spiritual, the best way to learn contemplation is to learn from yourself. Therefore, for today’s tip I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes on contemplation. As you contemplate these quotes, you learn how to contemplate through contemplation:
Abandon the words but remain established in the experience of the truth they indicate. That supreme state is beyond all concepts. ~ Yoga Vasistha
Contemplation is the art of holding a word or a phrase patiently in the silence and stillness of awareness until it begins to disclose deeper and deeper meanings and understandings. Contemplation has the power to transcend beyond the limits of analytical thought and logic, and open consciousness up to an order of wisdom and Truth that can only be described as revelation. ~ Adyashanti
The words are no more than signposts. That to which they point is not to be found within the realm of thought, but a dimension within yourself that is deeper and infinitely vaster than thought. A vibrantly alive peace is one of the characteristics of that dimension, so whenever you feel inner peace arising as you read, the [written word] is doing its work fulfilling its function as your teacher; it is reminding you of who you are and pointing the way back home. … Allow [it] to do its work, to awaken you from the old grooves of your repetitive and conditioned thinking. ~ Eckhart Tolle
Your contemplation has to be a naked contemplation that does not rely on any luggage from the past, a contemplation that does not rely on learned beliefs and past feelings. ~ Magdi Em Be
To bring the attention to a single point and to dwell on that single point for a very long time is the way to awaken insight. Insight is not thinking and insight is not belief. Insight is a permanent new perspective. ~ Michael Langford
Regina’s Personal Contemplation of Lesson 119:
Truth will correct all errors in my mind. I don’t have to do anything but stay out of the maze of thought. This is the advantage of meditation, loving all and forgiveness. During meditation I sit in awareness-watching-awareness outside of the maze of thought, and truth quietly corrects the errors in my mind. With loving all I stand lovingly back from the mind’s judgments about how things should be, and truth corrects the errors in my mind. With forgiveness I rest away from anything that I recognize as ego thinking, and truth goes to work correcting the errors in my mind. I get out of the way, and truth corrects all errors in my mind. How does truth correct all errors? Simply by being the truth. Take away the attention on non-truth and truth reestablishes itself, just as nature would fully reestablish itself if humans disappeared from earth.
To give and to receive are one in truth. This is the snowball effect. What I be, I gain. As I live up to the highest light I have, more light is given. As I do my best, my best gets better. As I be as egoless as I can be today, more ego is erased from my mind. As I abide in truth, truth is more deeply realized.