Contemplation

Q: How can contemplation be instituted, started, or learned? It is a decision?

A: It is only a matter of awareness.  It is really nothing new and therefore does not need to be learned but only given attention.  A useful decision or choice is to decide to stop mentally talking about everything and refrain from interjecting comments, opinions, preferences, and value statements.  It is therefore a discipline to just watch without evaluating, investing worth in, or editorializing, commenting, and having preferences about what is witnessed.  One then sees the rising and falling away of phenomena and the transitory nature of appearance, which, with ordinary mentation, is conceptualized as a sequence of cause and effect.  It is an informative practice to ‘pretend’ to be stupid, and by the invocation of radical humility, Essence shines forth.  All thinking, from a spiritual viewpoint, is merely vanity, illusion, and pomposity.  The less one thinks, the more delightful life becomes.  Thinkingness eventually becomes replaced by knowingness.  That one ‘is’ does not really need any thought at all.  It is helpful, therefore, to make a decision to stop mental conversation and useless babbling.

From Discovery of the Presence of God, ch. 4, pg. 88-89