A blog on understanding your 'self' – and for lovers and teachers of interfaith as inter-spiritual living. It's an ongoing stream of interspiritual Nondual & interfaith resources for realizing happiness by finding our way home to our true Self.
Click HERE to read the full article at The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
The Tree of Contemplative Practices
The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the Tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the Tree and image files for downloading.
We hope to soon offer more information and resources on all of the practices listed on the Tree. Thank you for your patience!
On the Tree of Contemplative Practices, the roots symbolize the two intentions that are the foundation of all contemplative practices: cultivating awareness and developing a stronger connection to God, the divine, or inner wisdom. The roots of the tree encompass and transcend differences in the religious traditions from which many of the practices originated, and allow room for the inclusion of new practices that are being created in secular contexts.
The branches represent the different groupings of practices. For example, Stillness Practices focus on quieting the mind and body in order to develop calmness and focus. Generative Practices come in many different forms (i.e. prayers, visualizations, chanting) but share the common intent of generating thoughts and feelings of devotion and compassion, rather than calming and quieting the mind. Please note that these classifications are not definitive. For example, mantra repetition may be considered a Stillness Practice rather than a Generative one.
Any activities not included on this Tree (including those which may seem more mundane, such as gardening, eating, or taking a bath) are a contemplative practice when done with the intent of cultivating awareness, or developing a stronger connection with God or one’s inner wisdom. We offer a free download of a blank Tree so that you can customize it and include your own practices.
ACCEPTING – “You are accepted!” … accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask the name now, perhaps you will know it later. Do not try to do anything, perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. – – Paul Tillich
.
AMBIGUITY – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
.
ANGER “Anger is a noble infirmity; the generous failing of the just; the one…”
.
ART AS SUBJECTIVITY – Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature. (Paul Tillich)
.
ASTONISHMENT – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. (Paul Tillich)
.
AUTHORITY – The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority. – Paul Tillich
.
AWARENESS – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
.
BECOMING AS FULFILLING PERSONAL DESTINY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. (Paul Tillich)
.
BEING AVOIDANCE – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being
~ Paul Tillich
.
BEING GRASPED – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
.
BEING RELIGIOUS – “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.” – Paul Tillich
.
BOREDOM – Boredom is rage spread thin. (Paul Tillich)
.
CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
.
COURAGE – The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable. – Paul Tillich
.
COURAGE TO BE – The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. (Paul Tillich)
.
CRUELTY – Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. ~ Paul Tillich
.
CYNICISM – Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it. (Paul Tillich)
.
DECISION-MAKING – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich)
.
DEPRESSION – Depression is rage spread thin. – Paul Tillich
.
DEPTH – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
.
DOING SMALL THINGS – We can do not great things – only small things with great love. (Paul Tillich)
.
DOUBT AS FAITH – “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith” – Paul Tillich
.
FAILURE – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. – Paul Tillich
.
FAITH – Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. – Paul Tillich
.
FAITH AS BEING GRASPED – Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite. – Paul Tillich
.
FEAR – Fear is the absence of faith. – Paul Tillich
.
FEAR v ANXIETY – Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured… anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object. (Paul Tillich)
.
FREEDOM – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free – Paul Tillich
.
GOD – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
.
HELP – There is no love which does not become help. – Paul Tillich
.
HUMAN BEING – The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”: the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces – both individual and social.- – Paul Tillich
.
HU-MAN-ITY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. – Paul Tillich
.
KNOWING GOD – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
.
LANGUAGE, LONLINESS & SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. – Paul Tillich
.
LISTENING – The first duty of love is to listen. (Paul Tillich)
.
LONLINESS – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
.
LOVE AS HELP – There is no love which does not become help – Paul Tillich
.
LOVE AS THE BLOOD OF LIFE – For love … is the blood of life, the power of reunion in the separated.- Paul Tillich
.
MEANING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
.
MEANING OF EXISTENCE – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
.
MEANING SEEKING AS FAITH – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
.
NEUROSIS – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being (The Courage To Be) – Paul Tillich
.
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION – We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea. – Paul Tillich
.
PHILOSOPHY – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. – Paul Tillich
.
QUEST FOR MEANING – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
.
QUESTIONING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. (Paul Tillich)
.
RAGE – Boredom is rage spread thin – Paul Tillich
.
REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith – Paul Tillich
.
REFLECTION AS FAITH – “Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
.
RELIGION AS ULTIMATE CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
.
RISKING – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. (Paul Tillich)
.
SINGING YOUR SONG – If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song. (Paul Tillich)
.
SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
.
SPEAKING OF GOD – I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment. (Paul Tillich)
.
SYMBOLIC EXPRESSION – Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate. (Paul Tillich)
.
ULTIMATE REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
.
WORK AS PLEASURE – The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us.- Paul Tillich
Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?
My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now. They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness. My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden
-0-
RUMI
1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi
ANON
2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)
VIKTOR FRANKL
3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl
W.B. YEATS
4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats
MARK TWAIN
5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain
BUDDHA
6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)
SENECA
7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)
KEVIN KELLY
8 There is only One machine.
The web is its OS.
All screens look into the One.
No bits will live outside the web.
To share is to gain.
Let the One read it.
The One is us.
Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)
KAREN ARMSTRONG
9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong
M SCOTT PECK
10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).
ANON and ECKHART TOLLE
11 The voice of God is silence
ANON and GHANDI
12 He/She/It has no religion.
ANAIS NIN:
13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
ANAIS NIN:
14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
ANNE FRANK:
15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ARTHUR MILLER:
16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
BRENDA PETERSON:
17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:
18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
CORITA KENT:
19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:
20 Light tomorrow with today!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS:
21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
HENRY FORD:
22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
HUGH PRATHER:
23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
THICH NHAT HANH:
24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..
JOANNA RUSS:
25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.
KALIDASA:
26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
MARGARET BONNANO:
27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
MATTHEW ARNOLD:
28 Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done…
PEMA CHODRON:
29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
ROBERT FROST:
30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:
31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Soul Needs - One Garden 
