Contemplation and silence nip the ego and its negatives in the bud by teaching you how to watch and guard your very thoughts and feelings—but from a place of love and not judgment.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Contemplation"
"Guarding Your Mind and Heart"
Monday, 8 September 2014
Paul beautifully speaks of prayer in Philippians (4:6-7): “Pray with gratitude, and the peace of Christ, which is beyond knowledge or understanding [the making of distinctions], will guard both your mind and your heart in Christ Jesus.” It is all right there in very concise form! Teachers of contemplation teach you how to stand guard with both your thoughts and your emotions, both of which tend to be self-referential. Only a deliberately chosen “gratitude,” love, or positivity can stand against this barrage of fear and negativity.
Emotions are given to us by God, so that we can fully experience our experiences. The only problem with emotions is that we get addicted or attached to them. We take them as final or substantive. Emotions do have the ability to open you to consciousness, but then they tend to become the whole show. Most human thought is just obsessive, compulsive commentary. It’s “repetitive and useless,” as Eckart Tolle says. I would say the same of emotions.
Contemplation allows you to see (contemplata means “to see”) this happening in yourself. An oft quoted aphorism describes this well: “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” Contemplation and silence nip the ego and its negatives in the bud by teaching you how to watch and guard your very thoughts and feelings—but from a place of love and not judgment.
Adapted from Transforming the World through Contemplative Prayer,
disc 3 (CD, MP3 download); and Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, pages 5, 11, 17
Gateway to Silence: Christ is in me, and I am in Christ.
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cac.org
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