The Split

 Contemplation is not a prayer of escape from life but rather a way to overcome the barriers to care-filled living.  With the loss of a spiritual sense in our modern age, along with the outward focus on ritual routine and rules in religion, we have lost a sense of a heart connection with earth and one another.  For some people there is a sense of not caring, a malaise, responded to with interminable time on the Internet.  Others are bothered by not being bothered by the malaise.  It is all a disconnection of body/spirit from ourselves and the world around us.  The contemplative life puts aside for a moment these feeling of guilt and malaise, while the body rests from negative thoughts of how messy and dark the world is.  Our inner self, spirit-self, truer self, gets a chance to breathe and stretch out from the confines of our sadness.  The chains of a life low in meaning are let loose, and we can come around to an energy that will connect us in a more positive way to Mother Earth and its inhabitants.  In our modern world contemplation is anything but a waste of time.