Into the Path — Purification, Insight, Contemplation (OM009)

Words: 1328 ⁘ Length: 10:00 min
⁘ Created: 2025-10-18 ⁘ Updated: 2025-11-06
Into the Path — Purification, Insight, Contemplation (OM009)Play

— Is there a path to be found here? A framework of methods one might engage? A bigger picture to provide context for all that has been shared?

Yes: What has been shared so far are but early glimpses and windows into the path. In the whole of the journey, we have three major spheres of concern: Purification, insight and contemplation.

  • Purification. Both a necessary precondition and a sustaining guardian on the path. Inner and outer purification — hand-in-hand, reconciling your internals and harmonizing your interactions.
  • Insight. More than mere knowledge or information. The patterns and models we explore are lenses of perception and recognition. Seek them in your direct experience, find them in the fabric of life.
  • Contemplation. Yes there's a need for deepening meditation. Open awareness and concentration. There are also means for rewinding and reflection accessible at each instance of our dynamic lives.

Whatever that has been shared — look at them in terms of these basic concerns. Is this for my inner or outer purification? For refining my frameworks of understanding? For self-awareness and contemplative reflection?

The exact shape of the living path is determined by your capacity and your contexts. We may explore the general principles together. Their specific application is your journey and your responsibility.

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Is there a path here? A clear method I might engage? Much has been shared, much of it resonates, but I struggle seeing the big picture — seeing how it all comes together as a path for me to progress in my life.

Indeed, what has been shared so far are windows of exposure, glimpses into the full field of concerns. The season for spelling out the complete framework with its distinct methods is yet to arrive. That said, let us be aware that there is not a linear, singular path that you might just engage, iterate, compile, execute, and be done with it. That is not the nature of life. That is not the nature of your conscious evolution.

Rather, there are interconnected concern domains, each supporting the other, forming the whole of your path — as it may unfold. These three are, in short, Purification, Insight and Contemplation. Three major spheres of engagement, three major concerns to attend to.

Internal and External Purification

Purification is both an initial necessity, a precondition, as well as the sustaining and guarding force throughout the entirety of your journey. Purification is both internal and external.

Externally, you mind your conduct, you mind the ethics in your interactions. You do not cheat, steal, abuse, exploit, manipulate. You try to be a good person, and in that you reduce the friction and conflicts arising from the external world. That obviously impacts your inner states. You streamline your life in interaction, and with that, in reflection, your inner world is also streamlined, step by step.

Internally, for your purification, you seek, you discover, you evaluate, reflect on and overcome your inner biases, your cognitive distortions — arising from the urges, the desires, the habitual frames of thinking and feeling and identity that you have settled into. They all veil you. They shroud you from a broader perspective of what is. Inner purification is a central condition for progress, just as outer purification is central for a harmonic life in this world.

Cognitive Frames of Living Insight

Second, into insight. Now, insight here is more than mere knowledge or information. Yes, much of what we look into, the diverse models of existence, the patterns of consciousness and the turnings of the world, they may appear theoretical. However, they lend themselves to direct observation and experience.

We do not cultivate insight simply as a matter of retaining much data in our heads. We cultivate insight as a matter of widening, deepening our perception and recognition of the life before us and the life within ourselves.

Do not be lazy in the cultivation of insight. Insight provides you the framework, the scaffolds that support the bridging together of the diverse, separate experiences in your life, that aid in the convergence of all your insights from diverse fields of review.

Insight should not be an intellectual sport, an indulgence in your analytical mind. Rather, insight should be there to refine your consciousness, to sharpen it, to broaden it, to deepen it. Insight is a means for your conscious evolution, not simply a static outcome of a particular process of evaluation. Insight, as in living insight. Insight, as in evaluations that lend themselves to your direct living experience.

Fields of Contemplation and Meditation

And third, into contemplation. Here, I do not use the word meditation. It is limited. We are not only concerned with the times of sitting down in classical meditation. We are also concerned with each and every instance of our lives where contemplation is relevant. Where you withdraw from the hands-on engagement, the busy flux of your life — even while you may be in motion. You zoom back, you reel in and contemplate.

You ponder, what is actually going on here. What are the forces at play, what objects with what properties, what dynamisms are influencing this situation. Their beginnings, their presence, their ends. These sorts of reflections, they are a type of contemplation in the midst of your active life.

Yes, there are particular methods of contemplation and meditation. We have micro-meditations, the sorts of drops that fit in between the gaps of your life, and there are macro-meditations or more classic in-depth sessions that you may engage in, the details of which are a matter for a separate exploration.

But in short, you have open awareness, broad spectrum types of meditations, where you do not attend to anything in particular, but where you attend to all things as a whole, as an interconnected system. Without assertion, without an agenda, simply taking in all of existence exactly as it is, without reaction. A particular genre of meditation.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have narrow band concentration meditation. Whether you attend to singular objects — a particular color, a particular element, even a particular painting in front of you, or a flower growing on the ground before you. A particular specific focal point — everything else removed for the time being.

Or you may have a broader zone, but still a contained zone of focused concentration, attention. The point here is the training of your attention, it's honing into a tighter and clearer beam that reveals you more of the nature of a particular facet of reality in front of you.

Your Path — Three Fields of Concern

So these three fields, Purification, Insight and Contemplation, form the concern domains for your path. Whatever that you encounter, whatever that has been shared, look upon them in terms of these basic categories. To help yourself organize all that has been put on the table.

Is this relevant to my purification, internal or external? Is this a matter of insight, philosophy, the frameworks of understanding? Or is this a matter of contemplation, reflection, self-awareness, meditation? And take that as the broad diffuse lenses by which you organize the concerns of your path.

Then the exact course of the path, in real life, is determined by you, by your abilities, by your emerging contexts. Do not let anyone prescribe the steps that you must take in specific terms. Yes there are general steps. Get over yourself. Stop resisting. Stop reacting. Engage with what is.

These sorts of steps are always there, but as to what you should do in a particular situation, we may share insights, broaden your perspectives. But you make the decisions — and the specific paths that open as the outcome of your decision, they are yours and yours alone. Yours to travel, your responsibility — the outcomes yours to be harvested.

So — safe trails. May you proceed wisely on your journey.