We continue to integrate contemplation and meditation in order to establish a vipashyana-type habit of consciousness: the ability and interest to look more deeply at something. The wise through the ages have advised doing so in order to perceive a wider reality and to poke holes in the automated ways in which human beings are trained to think.

What is real is the fundamental question. But that question includes more than one question within itself. What does the word “real” mean? Is “real” ever truly real? How would one know it? Furthermore, what does the word “know” mean? Or what does it include? For the indigenous person, what is real likely includes factors that are not considered real to a lab scientist. For example to the Native People across much of the globe the Stone People hold the memory of the land and of the epochs of time and change, the Tree People embody the sacredness of giving all and the strength of being that comes from embodying such a fullness of giving and equanimity. The Winds carry the Songs of the Mother as well as the voices of all her children. The Spirits of Animal Brothers and Sisters are recognized in various ways, honored, thanked, and known to be integral to harmony on Earth. For the lab scientist using animals for experiments, none of this is so. Instead, the animal is an expendable part of scientific research, nothing more nothing less.

Our contemplations are intended to be neutral and to illumine some of the more that is in every moment and situation. Then, with our consciousness seeded with the fruits of contemplation, we meditate. May it be that each contemplation (on time, or direction, or what is real for instance) is brought fully into our day where these robotic habits of collective consciousness hold sway; and may we realize that we are not robots.

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