Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins Archives - Page 43 of 94

Contemplation

The task that confronts the spiritual student, devotee, or aspirant is how to actualize conceptual spiritual information into subjective, experiential reality. Thus arises the necessity for application of practices and techniques that evolve progressively into that process whereby the potential becomes the actual. In addition to devotional prayer and authenticated sources of truth, there are the major, basic, time-honored avenues of meditation and contemplation, the efficacy of which is increased by intention and devotion.

… Contemplation allows inferences and general principles to formulate spontaneously because it facilitates discernment of essence rather than the specifics of linear logic. A benefit of contemplative comprehension is revelation of meaning and significance.

Whereas meditation generally involves removal from the world and its activities, contemplation is a simple style of relating to both inner and outer experiences of life, which permits participation but in a detached manner. Intentional doingness is focused on result, whereas contemplation is related to effortless unfolding. One could say purposeful thinking is quite ‘yang’ in character, whereas contemplation is very ‘yin’. It facilitates the surrender and letting go of attractions, aversions, and all forms of wantingness or neediness.

… Whereas the goal of the ego/mind is primarily to do, act, acquire, or perform, the intention of contemplation is to ‘become’. … Devotional contemplation is a way or style of being in the world whereby one’s life becomes a prayer.

… replacing instinct-based emotionality with spiritually based comprehension.

From Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man, p. 291-293

Devotion as a Way of Life

Worship is recontextualized by devotion. It is not done for the benefit of the worshipper or the imaginary benefit to God, but instead, it is merely an acknowledgement of Reality. It is aligned with gratitude for the gift of awareness/consciousness as the Reality of the Knower/Self. It is by virtue of the truth of the Reality of Divinity that the Reality of Divinity can be realized (apperceived and comprehended), which results in gratitude for the capacity for the recognition. Thus, devotion is not the same as piety, nor is it a mood, but instead it is a way of life and a way of being with oneself, God, and the world.

Divinity emanates as consciousness/awareness, which sources Creation in its expression as the emergence of existence. The conditions implied by the term ‘beingness’, ‘existence’, ‘awareness’, or ‘consciousness’ are without subject or object and devoid of causal qualities. The Nonlinear is therefore a field of Infinite Power by which manifestation emerges as the consequence of potentiality, which itself is an expression of Creation. Within that which is perceived is the Unseen as the Source of All that Exists.

From Discovery of the Presence of God p.36-38

The Impact of the Media

Discernment of reality and truth has always been problematic to the human mind, whether it was aware of it or not (i.e., the subject of epistemology). The process is now made even more difficult by the overall impact of the media, the effect of which is both subtle and unconscious as well as visible and apparent. The most obvious influence of the media is by virtue of the selection itself, as well as the time devoted to its reporting, all of which are enhanced on television by visual as well as musical pictorial additions. Emotional and political distortions and dramatizations add to the editing impact reinforced by the sequence and style of presentation. … The overall impact of the media is the production of a ‘virtual reality’ that includes distorted values.

While the modern, sophisticated viewer is subliminally aware of the foregoing, persons of lower levels of consciousness are not so aware and, like children, they tend to believe fiction is truth and live in an “alternate reality”… Thus, falsehood dominates the thinking and reality testing of the majority of people in today’s world. As the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels observed, if a lie is told frequently enough, it is eventually believed to be factual (a virtual reality) because the population lacks the capacity to discern truth from falsehood.”

From Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man p. 137-138

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

Happiness

The separation from the source of happiness is not only in space, but it is also in time, so it is something that is going to come into our life tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week, or the year after, or when we finally graduate, or when we reach middle age, or when we get that big house or Cadillac. Because it is always in the future, we are always separated from the source of our happiness and never feel complete. The realization that we are the source of our happiness, and that we can create it at any second, gives us a sense of completion.

… Joyfulness accompanies the experience. There is no tomorrow about it because of the sense of completion. If someone enjoys the presentation, so much the better. That is only frosting on the cake because it is not essential.

What one does in the world has to be accompanied by the sense of completion in the doing of the thing itself. The payoff is not something that is an aside, something that is outside or separate from the doingness; it is the experience of it in this moment. The completion is with the experiencing right now, not something separate from it. In that, one is then aware of the lovingness of all experience. That is the way one is with experience. It is the loving of life in all its expressions, including its disappointments. It is the ups and downs, the continual learning process of making the mistake and learning from it, so it is nothing but a mistake.

One might say that depression is nature’s way, God’s way, and our own psychology’s way of saying to us that the way we look at our life is not okay. It is our psychological, biological, and spiritual way; it is our body, mind, and spirit saying, “Look at what is out; look at what needs to be fixed. Please understand me out of your compassion; heal me; heal all of it.” The defect is an inner sense of separation that we will not be complete and whole unless we become united with something ‘out there’ or in the future. The ego moves from incomplete to complete. In contrast, the Self moves from complete to complete. True happiness is always in the ‘right now’ of this moment. The ego is always anticipating completion and satisfaction in the future “when a desire gets fulfilled.”

From Healing and Recovery p. 385-387