All Teachings Point Toward You
The only measure of value for teachings given in a classroom is in the way they are utilized outside the classroom in real life.
Without those teachings becoming a lived experience they remain a mental masturbation, an interesting packet of academia at best.
The same can be said for spiritual teachings. They are not given so that they can be studied, analyzed, and learned.
You actualize the value in a spiritual teaching when it is examined within your lived experience and then integrated as some form of adjustment leading to your own confirmation of the teaching.
This is also why on a superficial level certain spiritual teachings can appear contradictory. They aren’t inherent truths; they are hints and tips and catalysts.
The emphasis isn’t on the teachings objectively but on what they reveal for you subjectively.
Such is the long-lost art of contemplation. Our English language equates contemplation with "thinking about something." The reduction of contemplation to a thought-based activity entirely misses the point.
Wikipedia offers a lovely definition: "In a religious context, the practice of contemplation seeks a direct awareness of the divine which transcends the intellect, often in accordance with prayer or meditation."
So a teaching doesn't inherently matter if you do not chew on it, experiment with it, marinate in it, and test it. This means to say none of it matters if you do not practice, whether that be prayer, meditation, or other spiritual technologies. It is never about whether you agree with or believe in a teaching.
If I were to quote you an Eckhart Tolle teaching, "Gratitude is the foundation of all abundance," it wouldn't matter if you don't contemplate it. The quote sounds pretty and makes enough sense. Yet without sustained practice of gratitude and examination of how it impacts your sense of abundance or scarcity, you don't benefit from the wisdom given.
"Contemplation is the art of holding a word or a phrase patiently in the silence and stillness of awareness until it begins to disclose deeper and deeper meanings and understandings. Contemplation has the power to transcend beyond (not regress back from) the limits of analytical thought and logic, and open consciousness up to an order of wisdom and Truth that can only be described as revelation."
-- Adyashanti
Keep this in mind with anything you encounter here on my blog or elsewhere. Otherwise you may collect many pretty words all the while remaining bereft of lucid illumination.
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