Brian Weiss, “Same Soul, Many Bodies”  Chapter 11

Sometimes when you focus on a concept, you may discover that what comes up differs from what your training, education, or history has taught you.  This is to be expected since we have all been indoctrinated with the belief systems and values of our families, teachers, cultures, and religions.  That you now see things in a new way will not hurt you.  Keeping an open mind is essential.  If you can attune your mind to different ideas and new possibilities, then the learning process can continue.

Perhaps what you were taught as a baby or child is not what you are experiencing now.  How can you know unless your mid is active and aware?  How can you awaken to a deeper or more meaningful reality unless you allow your mind to function in an open manner, making no judgments until you have mentally tested every option for yourself?  Try not to dismiss or discard ideas or brush aside what you experience because they are different from what you were led to believe.  It is possible that the strange might be true, the familiar false.

When you contemplate, take your time.  By definition, contemplation implies an unhurried mental focus.  Your mid must reflect on its responses and perhaps add another reflection and response to the first—and then another and another.  You may find memories popping into your awareness like stars in the early evening sky.  You may experience sudden clarifying insights with their attendant healing effects.

I recommend contemplating one thing at a time, to ensure that you provide the proper depth and duration to your experience.  Even then it is unlikely that one session will bring you to the core of the object or concept being contemplated.  You can and should return to the object or concept until you master it, fully understand it, and are aware of the changes within you that it has wrought.  It is then that you will be amazed and delighted at the beauty and power of your insights, liberated by the healing effects of your understanding.

When you believe you have found the core, don’t stop your contemplation.  Begin a new contemplation on the same concept the following day.  Close your eyes and take a few relaxing breaths.  Imagine you can actually exhale the tensions and stresses in your body and that you are inhaling pure, healing energy.  Relax your muscles and let the core of the concept or object reappear in your awareness.  For approximately the next ten minutes consider all the levels of meaning that this thought or object holds for you.  Loving kindness is a profound spiritual concept, but there is profundity, too, in a butterfly’s beauty.  Consider the implications.  How will your life change with new understanding?  You relationships?  Your values?  Take your time.  There is no hurry and no test at the end.  Savor your insights and instructions.  Remind yourself that you’ll remember everything you are experiencing.

If your mind wanders and you lose focus, don’t criticize yourself.  It is normal for your thoughts to drift away, and all you need to do is gently return to the subject.  After some practicing, you will notice that even when your mind strays, there is still a connection to the original thought; in psychiatry we call this free association.  The more you practice, the easier it is to maintain focus and the deeper and more profound your understandings are.  So try to let any frustrations float away, but don’t compel yourself to sit and contemplate if the outside world is too much with you.  Try again tomorrow.  Pleasure is a vital component to contemplation and meditation.  The purpose is to become free, not to chain yourself to the process.

After you have finished and your eyes have opened and your mind has returned to everday consciousness, you might want to record your experience in a journal or on tape.  This is a way to solidify your thoughts and aid your memory for future insight.

Many people find it fascinating to return to the concept weeks or months after they have “mastered” it and to compare this journey with the previous one.  There are no rules in this regard.  Trust your intuitive wisdom.  As the Christian mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “You are not a human being having a spiritual experience; you are a spiritual being having a human experience.”  There is meaning in everything, and purity of spirit when you find it.