After nearly 45 years of studying human development academically, professionally, and personally it would seem that contemplation is the unifying capacity to our humanity. My life these days includes about an hour each day for this practice. Its like going to the gym for your soul. Without it my day is notably different.“
In active contemplation, a person becomes able to live within oneself. We learn to be at home with our own thoughts. We become to a greater and greater degree independent of exterior supports. Our mind is pacified not by passive dependence on things outside ourselves - diversions, entertainments, conversations, business—but by its own constructive activity. That is to say that one derives inner satisfaction from spiritual creativeness: thinking our own thoughts, reaching our own conclusions, looking at one’s own life and directing it in accordance with our own inner truth, discovered in meditation and under the eyes of God.
We derive strength not from what we get out of things and people, but from giving ourselves to life and to others.
"We discover the secret of life in the creative energy of love—not love as a sentimental or sensual indulgence, but as a profound and self-emptying expression of freedom.” Thomas Merton in Choosing to Love the World.
Isn’t this what we most deeply desire? I would add a few hugs however to his imperative!