Comment

Comment by Jaakko Matti Johannes Alhola on March 17, 2012 at 4:53am

thank you guys for your words. nice to recognize that these ideas are common in such an universal and timeless way. may there be love and light in your eternal hearts.

Comment by Wes Hansen on March 16, 2012 at 11:21am

The new level of reality is one in which the Eternal Now is known (experienced). The fundamental purpose of the life adventure is to take a mental entity, a human, from their time-centric perspective to a perspective where time has no meaning, from a temporal perspective to an eternal perspective, and, paradoxically or not, this takes time. The journey is an exercise in endurance. At times it seems as though the whole world is out to get you. Occasionally you encounter a magic helper but they’re few and far between. They’re the people who extend a helping hand when everyone else is trying to beat the hell out of you. After you’ve been beat up so many times you start to have a hard time convincing yourself that this too shall pass but there’s no way out. The only way out is to become subservient, to embrace mediocrity. I would rather embrace death. Eventually death starts to look pretty attractive and that’s when the dawn begins to break, that’s when time starts to become meaningless. The last obstacle, desire for life, is overcome. What takes you there? Love for the Mother, spiritual discipline, and, paradoxically or not, time. Sri Ramakrishna once said, "Whomever pursues enlightenment must pursue it with the intensity of a man whose beard is on fire pursues water." What Sri Ramakrishna fails to mention: it's a marathon . . .

The caterpillar analogy is marvelous. I believe I read a quote somewhere to the affect that the caterpillar doesn't understand the butterfly . . . hence all the discord between fundamentalists and mystics. The caterpillar is a butterfly on a caterpillar's journey just as humans are spiritual beings on a human journey, to borrow a quote from Teilhard de Chardin.

Comment by Michael Simon on March 14, 2012 at 10:46pm

Pre-Flight (Pondering Contemplation)

"Contemplation is a breakthrough, an awakening, to a new level of reality. Explain." - Professor's question in my wife's Philosophy of Religion class


A caterpillar eats voraciously, but not by choice. If it went on a diet, renouncing food, it would not survive the meditative-like cocoon from which it may emerge as winged caterpillar, also known as butterfly. The being literally breaks-through its self-made cage which has both preserved it from the external world, and given it time to do nothing; and it is in this doing nothing, in which the bodily transformation occurs. I liken the cocoon to contemplation, and also suggest that contemplation without what precedes or follows it is meaningless.

The latin root of the word contemplation is an open space for observation, both literally and figuratively. And contemplation is very much about getting to the root of the matter, seeing, intuitively, rather than just perceptively, what's beneath the Ocean's surface, metaphorically speaking.

Reality is, in a sense, defined by what one sees, or what one ceases to see (once certain beliefs fall away, like a cocoon husk). Contemplation, like all things, is meaningful only by contrast. Prior to contemplation, one sees through the lens of self-protection, and may seek to do good, and seek to renounce bad, all under the illusion of free will, but one is unconsciously driven by a voracious hunger, an old brain, which always seeks to protect what it considers its "self," and, in this protecting, it sometimes succeeds, and sometimes injures itself through misperception of what is truly harmful.

Contemplation results from one having fed enough. It is not, I suggest, a choice one makes, though one may indeed believe it to be. When one has experienced enough misery by pursuing happiness, by attempting to grasp the ungraspable, one simply lets go. And in this letting go, one's vision naturally broadens. One begins to see simultaneously perceptively and intuitively, and to differentiate between the two. In essence, one is given choice, or free will, which one thought it had all along. One is given the space to observe. And, in this space, one sees that one's thoughts are not to be believed; meaning that they arise spontaneously, and do not absolutely need to be acted upon. One can, rather, in this space of reflection, choose a thought and subsequent action which is preferential, rather than simply in preservation of the self.

As a result of this newfound choice, one experiences a feeling of levity; one feels less tethered to the world, which includes relationships. And, simultaneously, one sees that it is of greater, or more efficient, service, to the world, which includes relationships. It can then differentiate between doing for others what they cannot do for themselves, and not doing for others what they can do for themselves, thereby treating others with independence and dignity, and helping to create an atmosphere in which others too may experience this transformation; which is to say, for no reason at all. Naturally.