We can find an image of God in all of creation and in all other people. All living things are part of a bigger wholeness. Including you. It is my firm belief that we are led to believe a lie regarding who we really are which is why we need contemplation and a second thought before taking any action in real-time. This is no accident. When God created man some of the angels got particularly upset with the idea. Humans have fought and killed each other century after century. Imagine how ridiculous this would look to angels for example. If only we would have thought twice about the things we have done in the past and then learned from our mistakes. We never seem to learn much from history and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. One such mistake which we should stop repeating is the one that makes us feel separate, divided or ‘better-than’ anyone else. Christians kill each other never mind what they do to their enemies, ignoring the central premise of what God desires in the two most important commandments; put God first and love thy neighbour. Love is a verb not a fantasy! Christians killed Christ, not Jews or the ‘other’. If we can disregard, throw away and transcend our egoic, dichotomous minds where I am always right and you are always wrong, then we can really get somewhere with becoming more like God. Thats the purpose of this blue spinning marble we are on and it’s your purpose to.
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
Meister Eckhart
How easily can we change the world?
My message is clear. We need to re-think all that we think we know! Although it sounds like a tall order it becomes easier if its done one thought at a time. We have God all wrong. We have gotten ourselves wrong to. Don’t naively throw out the baby with the bath water and despise ‘religion’ or Christianity or belief just because people have abused the truth. Jew, Christian, Buddhist and Muslim all know is a little about God as each other. If God is love then we must love the Buddhist, Jew and the Gentile. They are all the same even if some are black, or white or Japanese if you please. Thank God for such diversity! We can start to love what is different much like a mystic would do. We can embrace our uncertainty today and be a little more open to people and their thinking. Some people are asleep still and some are in the first half of life. Immature, arrogant and self righteous and they feel better than another person in a different package. Inside we are all the same. What we look like can be likened to the clothing we wear. Now, if you come home to your house and your Rottweiler doesn’t recognise you because you changed your clothes there would be trouble. But he does recognise you no matter what you wear. If you wear a suit or board shorts with a hat and sunglasses he still recognises you for you. Thank goodness for that. We need to end the judging, egoic dichotomous mind by choice. By simply stopping to think again about our prejudice, recognise it and then let it go. This second thought is what we call Contemplation or higher, meta-thought. If we would stop and think and introduce a second thought we would end racism, war and prejudice. We would stop prejudging difference and start embracing it with gratitude. This simple second thought would change the world. It is changing the world already as more and more of us embrace otherness and difference. Before we act we should think, feel, think again, ask for help if we need it, meditate on it and do any practice that allows us to move past the initial judging mind. Practice the art of contemplation in your life.
The eighty-twenty principle means that twenty percent of the worlds people who can become contemplatives and practice their thinking (faith without works is dead), putting it into action, then this good energy makes change happen with eighty percent more potency. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) is a phenomenon that states that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. This is also known as the law of the vital few. Doctor David Hawkin teaches that even though eighty percent of the world may be dancers or followers, who are asleep and therefore not awakened and enlightened human beings change by twenty percent of awakened human beings is enough to compensate for the other eighty percent and make paradigms shift. These are the scales of enlightenment and we may be closer than we seem possible to world-changing action.
What is contemplation and a second thought?
Contemplation teaches you to think about thinking and may be the highest form of intelligence that we have. It is a dance with the physical, psychological and the spiritual and has a tendency to heal people and then transform them. Many equate it to prayer or meditation. You might be surprised, however, to discover that you can practice contemplation while mindfully washing dishes, singing, being with a friend, or walking in a park.
What is contemplation and a second thought? Contemplation encompasses embracing the mysterious, not just the known. Contemplation is a mindset that can shift us from a survival to a thrive mind. It is thinking about thinking. Contemplation is the highest expression of our intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that is alive. So then. How easily can we change the world? Very easily. The seven most important words ever stung into a sentence prove this. As you think, so shall you be. Everyone on earth has the power to think twice. When we teach each other in our schools and at work, in the synagogue and in the mosque that we are all different expressions of the same source, then we change the world.
“True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.”
Thomas Merton
Contemplation and a second thought is simply being fully present in heart, mind, and body, to what is in a way ‘that’, that allows you to creatively respond and work toward what could be. Contemplation is both personal and communal, internal and external. It helps us let go of our usual, self-focused way of thinking and doing things so that our compassionate, connected, and creative self can emerge. Through contemplation we develop the capacity to witness our egoic motivations, bringing this awareness into our day-to-day actions and living with increased freedom and authenticity through deeper awareness of self, other and God. What is contemplation about? Well, imagine for a moment that you could be all-knowing. Where would that get you? Although we can’t be all knowing like God is, we can benefit from knowledge and wisdom. The more we have, the more we will benefit in all areas of our lives. So let’s not under rate it! At the very least it is a kind of self actualisation and God realization at depth.
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