Exciting Update

The November 19,2009 edition of the Abilene Reporter-News has an article on the Center's programs and activities, titled "Center to offer holistic approach". We are pleased with this public interest in our work.

Drive by the Center's new location at 2528 South 7th Street in Abilene sometime. We will be remodeling for the next 30 days or so. The Center for Contemplation and Healing will have a certified reconnective healing practitioner, a licensed mental health counselor, a licensed massage therapist, yoga classes, meditation sessions, art exhibits, and many other special events and programs.

Our Previous Meeting

Our last meeting was held on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 in the auditorium on the second floor of the Abilene Public Library, located at 202 Cedar Street.

The Living Matrix - The New Science of Healing (the movie) was shown and discussed.

The movie featured presentations by several scientists and healing practitioners, including Bruce Lipton, Rupert Sheldrake, James Oschman, Edgar Mitchell, Marilyn Schlitz, Lynne McTaggart, and Eric Pearl.

We also announced details about our new permanent location at 2528 South 7th Street, and we gave an update on our becoming a new non-profit organization under the new name - The Center for Contemplation and Healing. Dr.Cindi Love, Lance Taylor, and myself (Dr.Russ Meier) are the board members of our new 501(c)(3) organization.

Healing

We need to address the following question as we contemplate the subject of healing.

Is there a larger field of energy which we can learn to connect with, that can not only promote our personal healing, but the healing of others?

The key to healing may be connecting or reconnectiing to the "light and information" of the universe. According to Dr. Eric Pearl, "This energy is like light passing through a prism. We are the prism. We join the patient and the universe in the generation of a mutual field that consists of love - in the most exalted meaning of the word - and a state of unity. The patient's needs are recognized by the universe, which then supplies the circumstances that allow for the appropriate response to those needs."

Our True Identity

You are cut off from who or what you are as long as "thinking" takes up all of your attention. You need to reclaim your state of being from your thinking mind.

Rather than trying to become more conscious, enter meditation with the vivid realization that you are consciousness, awareness, being.

Not as a desire or an affirmation, but as the truth.

Who or what you are exists beyond your thinking mind.

Sense deeply who or what you are - Consciousness, Awareness, Being.

"Enlightenment means rising above thought. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness....

The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp (understand) it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being." - Eckhart Toole

Beyond Religion

Former Episcopal Bishop John Spong, in his new book, "Eternal Life: A New Vision", makes some interesting comments about religion. He sees religion as a stage which must be transcended in our journey from self-consciousness (the sense of a separate self) into universal consciousness.

"Our ultimate destiny was never to be religious human beings, as we once thought; it was simply to be fully and totally human. Religion, that activity to which we once entrusted our destiny, is now revealed only as a stage of life that had to be transcended before we could discover our destiny. Humanity is not alone, as we once thought, separated from God and thus in need of rescue. We are increasingly aware that we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is. Suddenly it made sense to me that the ancient name of God found in the Hebrew scriptures was part of the verb 'to be'. God, the great 'I Am', blends with the 'I am' affirmations that each of us must make on our journey into self-understanding....For God is ultimately one, and that means that each of us is part of that oneness. 'My me is indeed God'. The mystics are right. They are people of a deeper consciousness." - John Shelby Spong

Spirituality

According to Wayne Teasdale, "Spirituality... is the quality that we most require in our time and in the ages to come, but it is a quality refined only in the mystic heart, in the steady cultivation of compassion and a love that risks all for the sake of others. It is these resources that we desperately need as we build the civilization with a heart, a universal society capable of embracing all that is, putting it to service in the transformation of the world. May the mystics lead the way to this rebirth of the human community that will harmonize itself with the cosmos and finally make peace with all beings."

For a free copy of an article on seven essential spiritual practices, either contact Russ Meier or come to one of our meetings.

Book Club

Hastings at 4709 South 14th (near the Winter's Freeway) in Abilene,Texas is now offering a special discount to anyone who wants to buy books which are recommended by the Center for Contemplation. Lance Taylor or any assistant at Hastings will help you find the display area. A few of these books are listed in the right hand column of this website and in Diane's profile on her website (Becoming Awakened).

The Contemplative Life

Through contemplation one becomes fully awake. It is the vivid realization that life proceeds from an invisible SOURCE. Mystics "know" that SOURCE.

Contemplation (like mindfulness) is nourished by many things, including reading and meditation. But before reading and meditation turn into contemplation, they must merge into a intutive vision of truth or reality.

Reading becomes contemplative when, instead of reasoning, we abandon the sequence of the author's thoughts in order not only to follow our own thought, but to rise above thought and penetrate into the mystery of consciousness or being which is experienced intutitively.

You contemplate with your whole being. (Thomas Merton)

Spiritual Friendship

One day Ananda, who had been thinking deeply about things for a while, turned to the Buddha and exclaimed: "Lord, I've been thinking - spiritual friendship is at least half of the spiritual life!"

The Buddha replied: "Say not so, Ananda, say not so. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!" - Samyutta Nikaya

More to Contemplate

Please read and contemplate my wife's website, too. Diane is an excellent communicator of spiritual insights and practices, including an emphasis on reconnective healing. You can click onto her website (Becoming Awakened) in the upper right hand margin.

Ageless Wisdom

Aldous Huxley tells the following two anecdotes about the Sufi saint, Bayazid of Bistun:

When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, "Four years." They said, "How can that be?" He answered, "I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one's life."

On another occasion someone knocked at the saint's door, and cried, "Is Bayazid here?" Bayazid answered, "Is anybody here except God?"

The Great Within

Through meditation and contemplation, your inmost “I” (as Thomas Merton calls it) begins to awaken. And since that inmost “I” is the image of God, when that “I” awakens, you find within it the PRESENCE of the image you are. And , by a paradox beyond cognitive understanding, Spirit and your inmost “I” seen to have but one single “I”.
This realization or breakthrough is known as enlightenment. According to Ken Wilber, mystics realize that we all share the same nondual Self or Spirit. Or, as Meister Eckhart says, “In this breaking through I find God and I are both the same”.
The path to wholeness is truly within. Going within, you begin to realize who or what you are at the deepest level - a spark of the Divine..

The Third Eye

"The great and secret message of the experimental mystics the world over is that, with the eye of contemplation, Spirit can be seen. With the eye of contemplation, God can be seen. With the eye of contemplation, the great Within radiantly unfolds." - Ken Wilbur