Contemplative Suckling

“The open and the full are one and the same, bound at the root within a single continuum. This continuum is the changeless ground that always manifests as constant change, awaiting recognition at the twilight between knowing and unknowability. Heavy ordinary conceptuality is invited to drown within it, awakening the mind to the fact that it has never been other than this same mystery from the beginningless beginning.

Drawing forth the subtle resonances through which the ultimate awakening ground can be discovered is what the great thirteenth- century kabbalistic master Isaac the Blind called “suckling.” It is based on a thirst for the nourishment of absolute meaning in the midst of the barrage of its relative projections. It coaxes and draws forth its nutrition by direct immersion in the onslaught of mind’s upheaval, accepting and rejecting nothing, always reaching further and deeper to recognize what is truly meaningful with single-pointed focus.
The suckling is accomplished through the flesh and blood of appearance, poised at the cusp of its emergence and dissolution. As poetic resonances flood the perceptual fields, the ground of space sparkles with scintillating life, suffusing it with ungraspable beauty. Contemplation trains the mind to enter this boundless resource no matter what things appear to do or not do. It hangs with the spread of pure possibility, hiding within the parade of everyday details, displaying and consuming itself like the Ouroboros serpent swallowing its own tail.

Any display of phenomena can be used for contemplative suckling if awareness is trained to enter the mixing field of phenomena to endlessly reach toward its essential nature. Within the clusters of randomness gnosemic and conventional tendencies mix, mingle, and permeate one another. Within the amalgam the treasure can be excavated. The key is the ability to recognize what is truly precious and not waste energy on lesser concerns. It comes down to a question of learning what is truly meaningful within the barrage of possibilities that extend to forever without end…

Any set of relative meanings can be used for contemplation if the mind can clear a path to approach their innate absolute nature. Breaking through the reified shells that obstruct such paths does not leave a trail of broken pieces without value. All phenomena express equal value. All mental activity without exception is the self-elaboration of the awakening ground. The shards of broken conceptions melt back through the same space that they arose in. The continuum of the mind also returns, equalizing itself with the broken pieces of its own vestigial artifacts. The whole process goes where all dead dreams go, to the placeless place beyond the coming and going of relative concerns. In point of fact, nothing ever leaves that place. Understanding that no construct can ever depart the awakening ground is monumentally important. Whatever interferes with contemplation only persists until the ground itself becomes the central concern. Through it no such things as distractions or interruptions can possibly exist, and all differences are made irrelevant.”

~ David Chaim Smith, The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism
"David Chaim Smith began an immersion into the root sources of Alchemy and the Hermetic and Hebrew traditions of the Kabbalah. In 1996 he abandoned visual art for a total dedication to spiritual practice, from which came a unique blend of practical mysticism and creative innovation. This blend coalesced while working with an obscure thirteenth-century text called "The Fountain of Wisdom", which he mapped out diagrammatically in notebooks during his ten-year hiatus from visual art. The resulting symbol vocabulary served as the basis for his 2006 return to art, generating the content for several books. He currently lives in the suburbs of New York City with his wife, Rachel."~ Amazon