In Deep Philosophy we contemplate. What is contemplation?

Contemplation is a practice in which we direct our mind to think and understand from a deeper dimension of our being. What distinguishes it from our ordinary thinking and understanding is not WHAT we think but which aspect of ourselves is doing the thinking. In contemplation we think and understand in our Inner Depth.

We contemplate because we seek to overcome the limitations of our ordinary ways of thinking, and to transcend their narrow patterns. Our ordinary thoughts have the structure of thinking-about: They select a specific object-of-thought (a person, an event, an idea, or whatever the thought is about), in isolation from the rest of the world, and assert something about it (for example, “This tree is special,” or “Love is a strong emotion”). In other words, they impose a certain characterization on selected objects.

This form of thinking is very useful for practical purposes, when we deal with specific objects in our world, but it is insufficient when we want to relate to the broader horizons of our reality. The reason is that this kind of thinking imposes on reality the subject-object structure – the structure of thinking-about-an-object – and it views reality through the eyes of this structure. It cannot deal with reality before it has been objectified, before it has become an object-of-thought, or more generally before it has been shaped by our psychological structures and mechanisms. These structures impose on our world their distinctions and interpretations, as well as their judgements and opinions, preferences and tendencies.

It is therefore impossible to do Deep Philosophy by using only our usual discursive thinking and its objectifying psychological structures. Since Deep Philosophy seeks to get in touch with the root of our reality as far as humanly possible, we need a more open kind of thinking, as open as is possible for us humans.

Contemplation is designed to transcend the limitation of our discursive thinking. When we contemplate fully, we no longer think from our usual psychological mechanisms, and are no longer limited by their patterns of thinking, of judging, of opinionating. What is doing the thinking within us is our Inner Depth, which comes before our psychological self, before we have been objectified into a psychological mechanism with fixed thinking patterns.

The problem is that this is not easy to do. Our Inner Depth is not in “our” control, not in the control of our psychological self. We cannot activate our depth at will, since it is a dimension of our being that is not governed by psychological mechanisms. It precedes all mechanisms. Therefore, in order to contemplate we must push aside our psychological self, force it to give up control, and silence it. We open within us a “clearing” – an inner space of silence and attentiveness that is free from our normal psychological activity. In this way we give to our Inner Depth a space where it can think and speak within us.

The result is a very different kind of thinking and understanding. While normal psychological thinking involves only a limited part of ourselves – our thinking-about mechanisms, contemplation emerges from a more primordial source within us before it has been objectified, before it has been shaped into a mechanism, from the root and wholeness of our being. Thus, contemplation is much richer than our psychology-based concepts and words. Although it is not as sharp and well-defined, it is not limited to discursive patterns of thinking. We often experience it as going beyond words, and as touching realities which we cannot describe. We sometimes experience ourselves flooded by insights and by a sense of realness and preciousness, or we may feel expanding beyond our familiar boundaries and taking part in a reality that is greater than us.

The main challenge for the contemplator is that our normal psychological thinking patterns tend to take control over us. They act as our “automatic pilot.” We cannot avoid them just by wanting to avoid them; we need tools – techniques – to help us. For this reason, as contemplators we use a variety of contemplative techniques to suppress our ordinary psychological thinking patterns and to allow us to maintain a deeper inner attitude. We must always remember, however, that these techniques are tools and not sacred rituals, and that we are free to experiment with them, change and develop them, or discard them altogether if they fail to work.