On Wednesday night of this week, we were gathered in the Awakening Together Sanctuary for the Michael Langford Study Group. We were reading from his book, “The Importance of Practice and Effort”. On page 22, Nisargadatta Maharaj and a devotee are discussing awareness-watching-awareness meditation. The devotee said, “I have tried many times and failed.”

When I read that, my first thought was, “How do you know you failed?” And this analogy came to my mind:

NTI Luke, Chapter 17 says that gratitude “nurses your willingness to full health. Do not hold back on gratitude. Take time to sit in quiet and know your gratitude.”

NTI Hebrews, Chapter 12 says, “Worship in reverence and awe the true desire of the Heart by giving your gratitude to it. Through gratitude, [true] desire is increased.”

What do you think you want? Today is a good opportunity to look and uncover the world-based ‘wants’ that are driving you. Consider writing down everything you think you want, and then ask ‘why.’ Look deeply at your wants until you discover what you really, really want. After you’ve done that, read today’s lesson again.

“Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset? All this forgiveness offers you, and more.”

Today’s workbook lesson describes the ego mind. This mind, as described in the lesson, may be more or less conscious for you now. You may be well aware of being torn with doubt, confused, afraid and angry, weak, blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; seeing only sin; wanting to live, yet wishing to die.

When this mind is conscious and believed, the experience is hell. When it is repressed, there is some relief, but it also breaks through into consciousness in a distorted way, projecting blame for our uneasiness away from our self. Freedom comes from the death of this mind, the end of this way of thinking.

Today’s workbook lesson says of the ego mind, “It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.” The lesson also says that we learn forgiveness “from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you.”

It is time for us to begin asking within for understanding and guidance. If we are to find freedom, we need to let the teacher who knows the way take the lead.

The ego mind does not ask, because it thinks it knows. Therefore, we will ask. We will not come from ego. We will accept that we do not know, and we will ask. I encourage you to take time at least 1-3 times a week to sit quietly and ask within for whatever you need to see or realize now. Leave the question open, and let the genuine answer come.

Here is how I asked the question today, and the answer I received. Notice the first question I asked was, “What shall I ask,” so that even the questions that followed were guided by the inner teacher.

Regina’s personal journaling from today:

What shall I ask? How can I be myself? What is absolutely the best practice for me now?

Slow attention. Rushed attention goes in habitual directions. Even some old habits are being reborn. You feel the disconnect even though you don’t believe it like you did before. Funny how something untrue can be experienced.

Truth can be realized and blocked simultaneously. This has happened millions upon millions of times before. The ego does not give up easily, so as one nears the threshold some distraction is found, and off attention goes in the wrong direction. The memory of nearness lingers, the clarity it brought remains, and yet there is a feeing of being separate too.

Your weakness is busyness, and it comes from wanting to please everyone, to meet all demands. It is time to put personal awakening back in the forefront and let go of the wish to make others happy.

The master does nothing and yet nothing goes undone. Relinquish all mental doing, and watch what gets done.

The other thing to watch is desire. As the feeling of separation increases, desires increase. As the feeling of separation dies, desires die. When you notice yourself desiring outside of yourself, realize that is only a distortion of your calling for God, and return instead to your one true desire.

Be slow. This is your prescription now. When you notice going fast, slow down.

How to Contemplate, conclusion:

In summary, here are the keys to contemplation.

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:

How to Contemplate, continued:

In my experience, the ego will almost always (& maybe I should say ‘always’ instead of ‘almost always’) try to block contemplation, and it will do it in any way that it can.

Peace Pilgrim said that the ego knows the weakest spot in your armor. That means the ego will say whatever YOU will listen to. Just as the spiritual path is highly individualized, the ego’s attempts at blocking us can also be highly individualized.

Michael Langford has a teaching that can be very helpful here. He says, “Hundreds of times every day ask yourself ‘How is what I am thinking now helping to feed the ego illusion?'”

This question can be very helpful when ego tries to block contemplation. You could edit it to be more specific by asking, “How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?”

For example, let’s imagine thinking says, “This sucks. I’m just making this up, and it’s not any good. It’s not at all poetic.” And then you ask, “How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?” That will help you see that if you listen to the previous thought you might give up on contemplation, which serves the ego quite well.

If thinking says, “This isn’t deep. It isn’t profound enough,” you ask, “How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?” Then you can see that if you listen to the previous thought you might give up on contemplation, which serves the ego quite well.

Here are a few tricks the ego has tried to play on me over the years:

~ When nothing was coming right away, the thought would be, “I’m not going to get anything out of this quote. It’s too straightforward. There’s nothing more to be had here.” Or maybe the thought would be, “I don’t understand this quote at all. How am I supposed to get something out of this?” (How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?)

~ When something came very quickly, the thought would be, “That came too fast. That’s just me, not wisdom.” (How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?)

~ When flowery poetic language came, the thought would be, “I’m just writing this to impress others. It’s not genuine.” (How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?)

~ When plain and simple language came, the thought would be, “This isn’t anything. I’m just not good enough to receive something real.” (How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?)

~ When something came through feeling or a silent knowing, and I came up with the words to describe it, the thought would be, “I should hear words.” (How is what I am thinking now helping to block contemplation and serve the ego illusion?)

Etc.

You get the point. In order to allow contemplation, you need to be able to ignore the ego’s attempts to block contemplation, regardless of what those attempts look like.

I had a conversation with Jacquelyn Eckert about this yesterday, and she said something funny, but helpful. If you can think a thought like this in response to ego’s attempts to block you, you will be able to go right passed ego and write whatever is coming in whatever way it is coming.

Jacquelyn said, “Even if this is crap, it’s the highest crap I’m capable of at this time.”

~ ha ha ~

And this is why Jacquelyn IS learning to write with inner wisdom.

Regina’s Personal Contemplation of Lesson 118:

God’s peace and joy are mine. Peace is my natural Self. I am peace so pure that I peacefully allow even ego insanity and emotional illusion. Nothing affects the peace that I am. It is untouchable. Joy comes from the conscious expression of my truth. Live as peace and I know joy.

Let me be still and listen to the truth. Thought is like a maze that leads into the land of lost. This land resides within peace and is embraced by peace at all times, but it is so fantasy-filled that truth is overlooked in favor of dramatic action. To realize ever-present truth, rest outside of the maze. From outside of the maze, truth is obvious

How to Contemplate, continued:

Contemplation is a process of discovery, a process of going deeper into something or going beyond what was already known or consciously realized.

I ‘d like to share an article by Adyashanti. In this article he talks about “meditative self-inquiry.” His meditative self-inquiry is contemplation. He does an excellent job of describing how contemplation feels.

“How I Discovered Meditative Self-Inquiry” by Adyashanti
An excerpt taken from Adyashanti’s book, True Meditation

I’d like to tell the story of how I came across meditative self-inquiry. In many ways, it was very spontaneous, almost a mistake. Nobody ever taught me about meditative self-inquiry directly, and nobody even suggested that I do it. It came naturally out of years of spiritual practice and meditating.

At one point, I realized that I had these questions … questions I think lots of people have about their practice, about their spirituality, about life. My questions were actually fairly basic.

For example, what is surrender? I had heard a lot about surrender, and I thought, what is surrender, really? And what is meditation? What is it really? I had been meditating for years, but what was it really? This line of questioning ultimately led me to ask, who am I really? I noticed that these questions were running around in my mind, and I was looking for a way in which I could actually engage with them directly, and that’s how I discovered meditative self-inquiry.

I found myself going to coffee shops in the evenings after work, and I would start with a question. I would take a piece of paper and a pen in hand and I would start to write about the question as if I was talking to somebody else. We are always the best in transmitting what we know when we are teaching it to somebody else, so I would sit down and write as if I were teaching the answer to someone. The agreement I made with myself was that I was not going to write a single word unless I knew in my experience that it was accurate and true. So I would take a topic like “what is surrender?” And I would start to write on it. As I said, I would not complete a sentence until I felt that the sentence was true, that I wasn’t in any way speaking outside of my own experience. In this way, I would write the next sentence, and the next sentence, and the next sentence.

What I found was that I would write myself right up to the end of my knowledge about the subject I was investigating in a relatively short period of time. I found that usually within two handwritten pages, three at the very most, I would write myself right up to the edge of what I knew. And so I would come to this inner wall, and I would feel it … not only in my mind, but in my body too. I would know: this is it; this is as far as my own experience goes.

I could sense that I had not gotten to the bottom of what my question was, so I would literally sit there with my pen in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other hand, and I would refuse to write a word unless I knew that it was true. Sometimes I would sit right at that place for many minutes, sometimes half an hour, sometimes two hours … but I would not write the next word until I knew that it was true and it was accurate. What I found was that the only way to move was to hold still, right there at the edge of my knowledge, and feel into my mind and my body at that threshold. Not to think about the question. Not to go into a lot of philosophizing in mind. But literally to kinesthetically hold at that boundary between what I knew and what was beyond what I knew. And what I found was that by holding at that boundary … by feeling it, by sensing it, by knowing that I wanted to move beyond it … that eventually the next word or sentence would come. When it did, I would write it down. Sometimes I would write no more than half a sentence before I would know, right in the middle, that I had hit the boundary again. I would stop again and I would wait. I’d hold at the boundary.

Eventually I found that I could go through this mysterious limitation, this mysterious wall of what I knew, and I could move beyond it. And I knew when I had moved beyond it, because all of a sudden everything would start to flow again. I would start to write things that I never knew that I knew. All of a sudden this deeper wisdom would come out, and I would be writing it down, and eventually I would reach a conclusion.

Now these writings were not very long. I think the longest I ever wrote was probably seven or eight handwritten pages. So they weren’t long dissertations; I was trying to make them the shortest, most succinct expressions of what I knew. And when I was finished writing, what I found, number one and most important, was that the question had disappeared.

Regina’s Personal Contemplation of Lesson 117:

God, being Love, is also happiness. What is love? Love is not judgment. What do I do when I judge? When I judge, I reject what is. Rejection results in emotional closure. That closure blocks the natural flow of happiness, so by judging I cut myself off from happiness. Why do I judge? Because I think I need things to be a specific way in order for me to be happy. That means that I block happiness because I want happiness. That makes no sense. The way to be happy is to allow the natural flow of abundant, unending happiness. Stay open. Let everything be as it is. Let freedom be free.

I seek but what belongs to me in truth. What do I seek? Happiness? Yes, happiness is a natural desire, but that is only because happiness is natural. What I seek is what’s natural. I seek my natural Self and the ease of being that. What I really want is full and complete realization of my natural Self, my true Self, which I can see means dropping everything that is unnatural, contrived. I want to know and be purely natural Self without any lingering doubt, denial or confusion

How to Contemplate, continued:

Sometimes we may be asked to contemplate material we do not like. Maybe the material uses words or symbols we do not like. Maybe we don’t have any mental understanding at all, and we feel frustrated about that lack of understanding. Maybe we don’t like the source of the quote. Maybe we have judgments against the person who spoke or wrote the quote, or maybe we have judgments against the text or spiritual path the quote comes from.

God’s Will for me is perfect happiness. That is my will too. Whenever I am not perfectly happy, it is because I want things to be different than they are. However, since things are as they are, to want it different is merely to believe mental chatter, mental chatter that is coming from a limited personal perspective. The personal point-of-view is darkness. Miracles are seen in light.

I share God’s Will for happiness for me. And miracles are seen in light. Light is open, embracing awareness. Therefore, I will to remain open and accepting of everything as it is. I will follow my inner intuition and not my head. I will allow others to be as they are and love them for what they are, miraculous living freedom. I will see the Regina-life as a temporary adventure and embrace it as the miraculous adventure that it is.

“Life is like a rollercoaster. It has its ups & its downs, but it is always exciting.” ~ Received from within at age 11 (the night my mom told me she was going to divorce my dad).