SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
Contemplation in action
ーLandscape in my heartー
[3] Lightly handling both work and life
As we receive God’s blessing each and every second and live while experiencing spiritual sympathy with God, we become able to handle work and life in a “light” manner.
Because we do not hold onto anything, we see a “broad road” ahead of us. And we have reduced feeling that it is troublesome to move on.
How we work, what we choose, and how we organize our life are all based on sympathy with God. Therefore, we can take natural steps according to our truer self.
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Assume you need to write a letter to a person of high social status with excellent capabilities. You are asking for an opportunity to see him and seek his assistance. When writing such a letter, we tend to make us look bigger or sugarcoat things. But if we are spiritually awakened led by the Holy Spirit, we feel that we can stay as we truly are, and it is easier to handle the issue. What we are trying to convey in the letter does not overwhelm us. We do not have to think of pompous greetings to begin the letter, choice of words, and how to put the request down on paper. We do not have to pay too much attention to how the letter looks. So we can mail the letter relatively easily.
Let’s look at another example. We sometimes have to fulfill a certain responsibility in front of many people. We tend to have many concerns in doing things in front of people, even if we do not get nervous. There may be some people in the audience who do not accept us favorably. We also need to pay attention to materials we use and possible impact of the view we provide as well as how we speak, hardware we need in order to achieve our goal, and time allocation. While we need to fulfill such responsibilities, we do not regard them as something special if we know how to “contemplate in action.” We tend to accept the duty like normal tasks. Without overstraining ourselves, we can fulfill the duty calmly but carefully, like other duties.
“People who contemplate in action” often see God’s hands and goodwill of others. This expands our trust, which significantly helps us relieve our tension and handle things in a natural manner. When we stay natural, we tend to work with our true self, and handle our life in the similar manner.
Also emotionally, we have less concern. We are not very worried about our own weaknesses or faults. This simple and calm mentality contributes to making our life “light.”
Thus, we can handle work and life in a “light” manner. And with lively wish to approach God, we walk through our life, often filled with joy, while accepting “easy yoke” and “light burden” (Matthew 11-30) every day.