Insomniac's contemplation

 

“If you live by the cosmos, you look in the cosmos for your clue. If you live by a personal god, you pray to him. If you are rational, you think things over. But it all amounts to the same thing in the end. Prayer, or thought or studying the stars, or watching the flight of birds, or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, it is all the same process, ultimately: of divination. All it depends on is the amount of true, sincere, religious concentration you can bring to bear on your object. An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. Every real discovery made, every serious and significant decision ever reached, was reached and made by divination. The soul stirs, and makes an act of pure attention, and that is a discovery.

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It is the same with the study of the stars, or the sky of stars. Whatever object will bring the consciousness into a state of pure attention, in a time of perplexity, will also give back an answer to the perplexity.” D.H. Lawrence

What D.H.Lawrence calls “attention” I believe to be contemplation. In my insomnia recently I have tried to make the most of that awake time and bless it as an opportunity. I have tried to actually pray through and with this unusual time and to “contemplate” family, memories and beauty. I use the word “Grace” to transport me.

Sometimes it works and I am consoled by gracefilled thoughts; sometimes I just cannot get beyond the desire to conquer insomnia. 

But when able to go deeply into some full presence, some cosmic alignment, I experience deep calm and feel that I am exactly where I belong. 

I am not entirely sure how to define “cosmic” but I am confident that it has something to do with the humble assessment that there is something so much greater than oneself and so much more powerful. 

And so in the middle of the night I surrender, to a cosmic humility and cosmic possibility. That is the fruit of my insomniac contemplation, a certain freedom!