Quotes About Contemplation

Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself.

When a thought takes one's breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.

We see things in this material world, wherein our bodies dwell, only because our mind through its attention lives in another world, only because it contemplates the beauties of the archetypal and intelligible world which Reason contains.

I am continuing to explore a run in the Senate from Connecticut, absolutely exploring it. In fact, I would say exploring it intensely.

My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.

To show my everyday life to the world was not my intention.

I don't interact with people much.

I want to interact with the divine energy everyday.

No matter if we're in a contentious situation or simply engaging in an everyday interaction, we should aspire to have the strength to be kind always. If each of us shared this aspiration, we'd all be better off.

I can go days without meaningful human interaction.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

Boredom means you develop your own interior life.

I can get very quiet and internalize things.

Places are part of nature, of the bigger picture. We are interrelated. When we contemplate them in their own right, they can sometimes change our lives; they can become spiritual experiences.

All artist are of necessity in some measure contemplatives.

Being, not Doing, is the first aim of the mystic; and hence should be the first interest of the student of mysticism.

It is a state of preparation: a way of opening the door. That which comes in when the door is opened will be that which we truly and passionately desire. The will makes plain the way: the heart--the whole man--conditions the guest. The true contemplative, coming to this plane of utter stillness, does not desire "extraordinary favours and visitations," but the privilege of breathing for a little while the atmosphere of Love.

True contemplation can only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations: quietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other. Neither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to gain.

So long, therefore, as the object of the mystic's contemplation is amenable to thought, is something which he can "know," he may be quite sure that it is not the Absolute; but only a partial image or symbol of the Absolute. To find that final Reality, he must enter into the "cloud of unknowing"--must pass beyond the plane on which the intellect can work. "When I say darkness," says the same great mystic, "I mean thereby a lack of knowing. . . .

That dreadful consciousness of a narrow and limiting I-hood which dogs our search for freedom and full life, is done away. For a moment, at least, the independent spiritual life is achieved. The contemplative is merged in it "like a bird in the air, like a fish in the sea": loses to find and dies to live.

Prayer, then, begins by an intellectual adjustment.

All artist of some measure contemplative.

The committed student needs to be wide awake, to look and listen closely, to slow down, scrutinize and reflect. The language of poetry is so dense, so multivalent, that it demands a concentrated act of attention — and offers its greatest rewards only to those who reread.

Wisdom is the beginning of sadness.