REMEDY: Contemplation Practice for Week Two

Silence and Solitude Again

Preparation

You may wish to prepare yourself for this time of contemplation by:

• Making sure your attention is not required by anything else. For example, not driving a car, crossing a street, talking with someone else
• Consider finding a quiet place where you’re not likely to be interrupted. Awareness and attention are fleeting, jumping from one thing to another and one thought to another. So, a quiet place with few distractions seems to work best.
• Eliminate as many visual stimuli as possible as they tend to distract and draw our attention away.
• Use a timer to help you keep track of time

Practice
We want to build on our experience from last week by adding additional time and practice to this soul-training exercise. Once again we will begin with silence.

• Take a comfortable posture.
• Close your eyes.
• Try and attain stillness and silence of body and mind for a period of ten minutes.
• At the end of ten minutes, open your eyes.

If you find yourself struggling to be still, don’t be discouraged. It takes time to develop the spiritual muscle this practice requires.

• Close you eyes again and become aware of your wandering mind... for just two minutes...
• Now sense the silence that makes it possible for you to be aware of the wanderings of your mind...

It is this minimal silence that you have within you that we will build on. As it grows silence will reveal yourself to you. Let's continue...

• Close your eyes. Seek silence for another five minutes.
• At the end of the exercise note whether your attempts this time were more successful or less.
• Note whether silence revealed something to you this time that you failed to notice last time.

Consider sharing with others online about your experience and whether you felt more successful in this week’s attempt.