"I dare to call action and contemplation the greatest art form because I believe that it is. It underlies all those other, more visible art forms that we see in great sculpture, music, writing, and painting, and, most especially, in the art form called human character. When these two are one, we always have beauty, symmetry, and transformative form — lives and actions that inherently sparkle and heal, even with dark images.

"With most humans, the process begins on the action side. It is surely the first half of life for almost all of us, even introverts. We learn, we experiment, we try, we do, we stumble, we fall, we break, and we find. It is largely done in the outer world of activity, starting with crawling, walking, playing, and speaking. The stage gradually gets larger for these 'enactments,' but we are still constructing our own good stage on which to act. (We just don't know it yet!)

"Yes, there are inner thoughts, feelings, and imaginings during this time. Maybe even sustained study, prayer, or disciplined thought, but do not call that contemplation. These are necessarily and almost always self-referential, both for good and for ill. Do not be put off by this, but at this point it is still largely about 'me' and finding my own preferred and proper viewing platform. It has to be, and it is good. But it is not yet the great, much less the greatest, art form of the union between action and contemplation that we want to talk about here. We must go further. . . .

"Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and contemplation. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you.

The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and most especially in religion, have gained a PhD in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use such a limited tool for prayer, problem, or relationship. It cannot and will not get us very far.

"We are led forward by brightness and by that I mean a 'larger force field' that includes the negative, the problematic, the difficult, the unknown — that which I do not yet understand, the Mysterious that God always is. Brightness is not into exclusion or denial of anything."