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Paste - We have the ability to paste more than mere pieces of paper together to create something new and good.
Even though we may think of paste as a kind of glue, we might also be familiar with how the word is employed in digital formatting, as in “cut and paste.” The analogy is appropriate, for only something already existing can be pasted onto something else. Children, and adults too, have spent time gathering images, words, and letters which they paste together into collages, which convey meanings far different from the intent of the various sources in themselves.
Just as we can look at a scene, an object, or a person and appreciate the subject of our viewing, we can also make mental collages that change the original meaning of images by mentally bringing others into conjunction with them. For example, we could at one moment simply admire the beauty of a sunset, and at another, bring it together with thoughts about ageing, or with images of self or others who are in the later stages of life, and thereby receive a different set of perceptions even though the original subject has not changed.
We do not cut thoughts or images from one place within us and paste them somewhere else, but we often metaphorically glue together some imaginative thoughts that affect us differently from the previously individual mental pieces. Or we might bring forth specific memories, which, when gathered, reveal to us new ideas and cause different interior movements than any one of them had suggested to us before. This capacity is, according to how we choose to exercise it, a means for greatly enhancing our lives.
Either on our own, or as suggested by others, we can take almost anything that comes to us through our senses, thoughts, and memories, and deliberately add to them a belief, ideal, or other spiritual consideration from within us. Doing so transforms the original movement into one that literally lifts our spirits to a higher and better reality without altering, changing, or denying whatever we had at first received or perceived.
Another way of observing this activity of which we are capable is to reflect on some of the ways we pray. When we recite written or memorized prayers, we might intend or “direct” them for a specific personal intention that is not contrary to the prayer but is clearly an addition, which enhances this manner of praying. When we pray spontaneously, whether in our own words or in any other way that we open our minds and hearts to God, the implicit or explicit belief that God is present, loves us, and “hears,” us, is always a blessing for us. Sometimes we receive perceptible feelings of consolation, at others a simple awareness that this moment of prayer is right, good, and true.
No training is required, nor do we need anyone’s permission, to use our ability to paste together spiritual components that are pleasing to us and to God.
Last Updated 8/9/2025