LEXICON OF DEEP PHILOSOPHY

Bubble – an insight that surfaces in the mind, like a bubble rising from the depth of a lake, accompanied by a sense of special realness and significance.

 
Centering exercise – a short meditative exercise at the beginning of a contemplative session.

 
Cipher – a short text which can take us beyond the level of objective understanding to a deeper, non-objective level of encounter reality. (Origin: Karl Jaspers. See also Paul Tillich on “symbols.”)

 
Clearing – an inner space of silence which we create when we empty a portion of our mind from thoughts and images.
Companion – a member of a Deep Philosophy session or group.

 
Companionship – a group of participants who contemplate in togetherness over time.

Contemplation – reflecting on a text or idea, in a group or individually, from our inner depth.

Door to the depth – a selected phrase in a philosophical text, which cannot be fully grasped intellectually, and which can lead us to our inner depth. (See “Cipher”)

 
Facilitator – a participant who leads a session of a Deep Philosophy.

 
Gentle reading – a contemplative technique of reading a text silently, receptively, while listening carefully to the meanings that rise in one’s mind.

 
Guided philosophical imagination – a technique of exploring a philosophical text through visual imagination, using non-discursive understanding.

 
Inner depth – a central dimension of a person’s being, often dormant and hidden. When it awakens, either spontaneously or through Deep Philosophy exercises, it gives us a sense of intense focus and realness, often with new understandings that we experience as precious and meaningful.

 
Interpretive reading – a technique of studying a philosophical text in a semi-contemplative way. Participants resonate with it sentence by sentence or passage by passage.

 
Landscape of ideas – the conceptual “skeleton” or “essence” of a philosophical text, viewed like a network of landmarks on a geographical terrain.

 
Map of ideas – a sketch of the central concepts of a philosophical text, which represents the text’s conceptual structure (“conceptual landscape”). It is used in semi-contemplative techniques to understand a text “from the inside.”

 
Polyphony - a discourse in which the companions compose several different lines of thought in parallel, like musical instruments in a concert. Participants respond to the text, as well as to each other, without agreeing or disagreeing, without judging or analyzing each other.

 
Precious moment – a special moment in a Deep Philosophy session, in which participants sense an intense meaningful insight.

 
Precious speaking – a contemplative technique of communicating in a condensed, poetic way. Participants formulating a sentence carefully yet spontaneously, without repetition or redundancy.

 
Recollection – a daily exercise which a companion does during the day in order to maintain connection to one’s inner depth.

 
Resonating – a technique in which we respond to the ideas of a text or companions without talking “about” them. Participants speak not “about” but “with,” like musicians playing side by side in the same concert.

 
Ruminatio (repetitive reading) – a contemplative technique in which we read a brief text again and again in order to go beyond our normal patterns of understanding and to awaken insights.

 
Speaking-from (contrasted with speaking-about) – a contemplative discourse in which we attend to the source within us from which our ideas emerge.

 
Text-contemplation – reflecting on a philosophical text from our inner depth.

 
Togetherness – a “shoulder-to-shoulder” relationship between companions that is not judgmental and welcomes personal differences. Companions think, speak, and act “with” each other, like musicians playing together.

 
Trio – a small group of philosophical companions conducting a Deep Philosophy session, usually of three companions. (In the case of four participants, it is usually called a Quartet). The dynamics of a trio is more personal than in a larger companionship.

 
Voice of reality – a philosophical idea, viewed not as a theory about reality, but as an expression of human reality, and as emerging from it.

Voicing is a contemplative technique in which the participants sit silently for a few minutes, reflect on a short text, and write gently the ideas that rise in their minds. In this way they "give voice" to their inner depth.