Contemplation and Discipline

Few people, anywhere, are aware of the spiritual depth of silence, the depth of contemplation.

Today, I finally got a chair and a cushion set up in my new apartment in order to practice contemplation (Centering prayer for Christians or zazen if you are into Zen). I spend 15 minutes in each place and go back and forth.

It is a formal way of doing it. I haven't done it formally in over a week. I discovered that the formality is important because it defines the activity as prayer and not anything else. I realized it takes discipline to move your body into position and formally do the meditation.

As I start a new job and new life, I probably need to make a commitment to do a certain amount of formal meditation each day. I don't struggle with spending an hour or two in spiritual reading. I do struggle with the meditation. I think it is because my ego doesn't get to play the meditation game. In fact, silence takes my ego out.

There really is no gratification to contemplation; except afterwards I am glad I did. Usually nothing happens in my consciousness, but I know at a deeper level that I was in Communion. It must be this subtle Communion which brings me back day after day. Yet it is a fragile pull; so easily dismissed. But whenever I pause, stop my activities, and reach into the Inner, It responds with the call: Please come sit with me. So, I do.

"I do," is the marriage promise for the contemplative celibate. "I do," with nothing added and not attached to anything, is nothing other than a total yes to the Ineffable.

I do and that is it.