The All Things Contemplative Blog©

Show Notes - to leave comments/questions click on title above. 

In 1982 Pat Johnson and family moved to the Lama Foundation in New Mexico and there two months later she met Fr. Thomas Keating. She served as the Lama liaison for two 16-day centering prayer (CP) retreats that he led at Lama in 1983 and again in 1984. These were the first intensive contemplative practice retreats using CP in the Christian tradition and inspired by Zen shessins he'd experienced.

In 1984 she served an experimental 9-week retreat Fr. Keating led at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, CO where he was a monk. This began the Snowmass CP retreats at the monastery. From 1984 until 2018, Pat served and oversaw these retreats. She has also served as a Board member of Contemplative Outreach Ltd. and was its overall interim administrator for several years. 

“My mind was racing with a thousand thoughts. I was not sure how I would deal with the long, dark hours to come but I soon noticed that each hand pull stirred up the bioluminescence in the water and broke up the darkness below. After I mentally adjusted to the dark space below me, I turned my focus to the night sky and the universe on display in the stars. I had rarely seen a night sky so bright and so full of stars…I got lost in the stars for several hours and the time passed as if I was time traveling…I realized that the whole ocean below me had lit up with its own show of bioluminescence…below me as deep as I could see, there were star-like dots of light, mimicking the night sky. I felt like I was floating in space, suspended between the sky and the sea. It was humbling and at the same time, felt primal on a level that is hard to articulate…it was the ultimate experience…time melted away in the largeness of it all.” (Jim Clifford, Catalina Channel night swim)

Jim Clifford, attorney, farmer, and senior citizen shares how he trains his body and mind;  the psychology of open water swimming including "the zone"; how he manages his mind during the many continuous hours involved; his experience of two contemplative values silence and solitude when swimming alone for hours at a time; and transcendence in nature.

References from the Show

https://openwaterswimming.com/2015/11/jim-clifford-thrice-as-nice/

Jane Goodall https://awaken.com/2020/05/mystical-experience-of-jane-goodall-ph-d/ 

Simplicity is often cited as a contemplative value. As the Shakers sang, "tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free”.

In making things simpler, our days, weeks, or lives overall we can for some period of time withdraw, psychologically, socially, and/or physically in order to experience self and other more openly without the usual demands of daily life. 

In so doing a simpler mode of being brackets the usual demands on our time and energy while allowing us to experience the unseen, unheard, and even unimagined. In other words, it aids in awakening to the potential richness of lived experience. 

Retreats are one such traditional and common way to this end as are time spent in nature and meditation. Less well known is focusing on a single sense like seeing or hearing. For example, with the sense of seeing as described at The Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography ("True Perception True Expression") or with sounds from the BBC's Slow Radio ("An antidote to today’s frenzied world. Step back, let go, immerse yourself: it’s time to go slow.")