Thursday, May 21, 2009

Contemplative Group


This week we explored the many intrusions we experience throughout our days. We discovered how much of our lives are consumed by being annoyed or irritated by these intrusions, and we discussed ways to accept these intrusions rather than try to resist them.

We are so used to controlling our environments that we forget to adapt to our environments. If it is hot or cold, we adjust the temperature. If music is too loud, we turn it down. We are used to controlling every aspect of our environments rather than incorporating them into our overall experiences. We expect to be comfortable and at peace all the time, but when we resist uncomfortable intrusions, we are missing out on important parts of our lives and important lessons to learn. We let these intrusions distract us from the act and art of living fully, and these intrusions become compulsions that obsess us and obstruct our paths on our journey. We must learn to adapt to intrusions rather than letting them become compulsions and hinder our path.

For further contemplation: "One moment we are 'pathing,' only in the next to find ourselves 'stuck' and 'blocked.' We may not have lost our sense of purpose and direction, but feel incapable of making any headway. It is as though a barrier has been placed across our path and we can find no way to surmount it...Compulsions obstruct the path by monopolizing consciousness. The hypnotic fascination they exert prevents us from attending to anything else. We behave like a rabbit dazzled by the headlights of a car. Not only do compulsions make us lose sight of our goal, they inwardly paralyze us. To escape their grip does not entail suppressing them but creating a space in which we are freed to let them go and they are freed to disappear...

...Compulsions not only disturb and enclose, they distort. The emotion of hatred is not possible without a perception of the other as hateful. Everything about the person is repellent: the slant of his mouth, the shrug of his shoulders, the tone of his voice, the cut of his suit. Although he has a wife, children, and friends, it is inconceivable that they could love such a man. A compulsive feeling about someone encloses him or her inside a frozen image...

...Once revealed for what it is, the world is opened up as tentative and contingent, impossible to pin down as 'this' or 'that,' 'me' or 'mine.' A thing is what it is not because of an irreducible essence that marks it off from other things but because the complex and singular relationships that enable it to emerge with its own unique character from the matrices of a contingent world. To emerge contingently like this is what it means for a thing or a person to be 'empty'...

...Thus emptiness is a path. It is that open and unfettered space that frees us to respond from a liberating perspective rather than react from a fixed position. It is the absence of resistance in the heart of life itself that allows the boundless diversity of phenomena to pour forth in creative profusion and abundance."

Stephen Bachelor - Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good
and Evil


Wherever you are on your path, you are welcome in this place. We hope you will join us when you can.....

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Contemplative Group

Tonight we reiterated some important intents and purposes of the group. We reflected on the intentionality and discipline required to cultivate a contemplative stance towards life, and we discussed the importance of incorporating meditative practices into our everyday lives.

We focused on cultivating an intentional awareness towards all the moments of our lives, and we noted the difficulty in living this way. So much of our lives are lost to us in a blur of distractions and un-focused spirituality, and it is only through an intentional awareness that we can begin to recover a sense of wonderment towards life.

We discovered (again) that much of our lives are also a struggle between the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves and learning to live with our limitations and boundaries. For, we often live as if we have no limitations, but part of becoming more aware is also becoming more aware of our own limitations, which serve to guide us in the process of healing and wholeness. We should not resist discovering our limitations. Rather, we should embrace them and learn to live with(in) them. It is important to temper our strong drives towards idealism with a certain pragmatism about living. Otherwise, frustration will follow us on our path.

Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome in this place. We hope you will join us when you can....