How has the practice of contemplation improved your life?

[Toadie2018]

Leo stated in his contemplation video that the quality of your life improves the more you contemplate. I'm just curious to see if you guys can attest to this.

[electroBeam]

1 minute ago, Toadie2018 said:

Leo stated in his contemplation video that the quality of your life improves the more you contemplate. I'm just curious to see if you guys can attest to this.

What is an average human's life other than a collection of problems and issues? And if you contemplate so much that your life drops away, can't you see how that would massively improve your life?

[Aaron p]

Contemplating is so cool. Questioning things. Why am I typing this, why are you reading this. There's a reason for everything. 

It also cuts a lot of bullshit out. For example, the reason I did terrible in my high school exams was because teachers didn't advocate solo, critical contemplation and authentic understanding. I didn't contemplate *why* I was at school, or how it could benefit me. They didn't show me concentration exercises to help me focus. 

After I found Leo, I contemplated and realized that education is very important...and with concentration exercises helping my focus, I'm on my way to getting my degree in business studies

Edited October 12, 2020 by Aaron p

[Preety_India]

 

Greatly. Abundantly. Way beyond expectations. 

2 years and counting. 

 

[susanyzm]

Leo videos have opened doors to things that I've never thought are essential in life. And this forum has helped me to cultivate in-depth thinking. 

With contemplation and journaling, I'm looking for my life purpose, learning to look at my life and life in general in different ways, and believing that an actualized life is possible for me. 

[Moksha]

Contemplation is conceptualization.

Meditation is meaning.

Contemplation has led to suffering in my life. Meditation has led to freedom from suffering.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Moksha

[Kalki Avatar]

It saved my life. 

[zeroISinfinity]

Improved my coffee making skills and cofein consumption. 

[Chakra Lion]

3 hours ago, Toadie2018 said:

Leo stated in his contemplation video that the quality of your life improves the more you contemplate.

Contemplate; To look at attentively and thoughtfully.

See it’s different from thinking because contemplation requires peace and love. Peace of Mind and enough Love to care.

Then you are able to carefully study whatever it might be. Contemplating the truth of one thing, or wondering why you feel or think a certain way. That could be Humans greatest strength. To heal the past, find meaning and purpose in the present, and create a future that only a thought-out developer could have engineered. The Mind is contemplated to be very beautiful and powerful tool. 

But how long does a Soul have to contemplate before it reacts to the new understanding. Until it takes action and moves another step forward. That is another level which requires more energy, more love. 

And when does it end? Will you contemplate forever, until you tell your Mind to stop? If you continue to surrender your Ego you will never be done. You will unfold into another being, over and over again you are able to experience another perspective of reality.

[Persipnei]

5 hours ago, Moksha said:

Contemplation is conceptualization.

Meditation is meaning.

Contemplation has led to suffering in my life. Meditation has led to freedom from suffering.

Would you say it's a good idea to only be contemplative when issues arise? Not contemplate everything just for the sake of contemplating? I just found the path and have quite a ways to go, so contemplation will be usefull, but I realized over the last few days that too much contemplation only brings psychosis or spiritual ego...

[Moksha]

4 hours ago, Persipnei said:

Would you say it's a good idea to only be contemplative when issues arise? Not contemplate everything just for the sake of contemplating? I just found the path and have quite a ways to go, so contemplation will be usefull, but I realized over the last few days that too much contemplation only brings psychosis or spiritual ego...

Generally, thinking does more harm than good. It's like trying to douse a fire by throwing wood on it. The mind-ego perpetually feeds on itself, and is incapable of wisdom. Don't be its tool.

You experience presence by simply being aware and accepting the isness of the present moment, free from thought. Don't name or judge anything, just be. Once established in presence, the brain can be a beautiful tool that will help you find creative and intelligent solutions to life's challenges, but only because it is fueled by presence.

The best way to handle conditioned thoughts and feelings is not to fight them, but allow them to arise in presence. Recognize and feel them, but don't get sucked into them to the point that you identify with them and are no longer present. Presence is like the sun shining in an an infinite sky. Clouds are the conditioned thoughts and emotions that float by, and that is ok. The light of presence eventually dissolves them, while you experience the spaciousness that is yourself.

Edited October 12, 2020 by Moksha

[erik8lrl]

True contemplation will always lead to beingness and silence. If you really do deep concentrated contemplation for many many hours on a topic, you will always end up in the same place. The reason why we think about things is that we don't know things. Through contemplation, you can gain knowledge directly from the source, and thus over time, your mind will actually become quieter due to an increased understanding of everything. 

[Persipnei]

@Moksha
@erik8lrl

I like how both your views on contemplation contradict each other yet resonate both with me. 
 

[erik8lrl]

@Persipnei Both ways works, you can try to contemplate until you know all there is to know so your mind goes quiet, or simply be and realize that you are everything. Or you can do both at the same time, I switch between the two because they lead to the same place, and they naturally flow into each other. 

[Moksha]

Yes  There are many roads that lead to enlightenment:

• Raja yoga (the yoga of meditation, discipline the mind and senses until the mind-process is suspended in a healing stillness and we merge in the Self)
• Jnana yoga (the yoga of knowledge, use will and discrimination to disidentify from the body, mind, and senses until knowing we are nothing but the Self)
• Bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion, achieve the same goal by identifying completely with the Lord in love; mostly taken by the mystics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam)
• Karma yoga (the yoga of selfless action, dissolve identification with body and mind by identifying with the whole of life, forgetting the finite self in the service of others)

Common among all of them is the absence of conditioned thinking. Thoughts themselves are not harmful, as long as they arise from the abundance of stillness.