Depth – We contemplate because we treasure profound ideas and profound understandings in togetherness. We cherish the profound, just as in music we cherish the beautiful, and in cooking we cherish the tasty. Profoundness is, so to speak, the “beauty” or “tastefulness” of philosophical contemplation.

Togetherness - Participants see themselves as sharing a common endeavor, as participants in the same reflection, instead of asserting themselves as isolated individuals with separate goals. They do not argue with each other, or analyze each other, or assert themselves over others, but rather compliment and enrich each other’s reflection. Each individual is therefore concerned with what is happening to the others, and to the group as a whole.

Resonating – Companions resonate with each other’s ideas just as jazz musicians improvise together with their different instruments, responding to each other, giving space to each other, and creating together a rich symphony of ideas. They do not put themselves in opposition to others (or to the text), they do not express themselves in isolation from others (or from the text), they do not even examine each other from the outside. Rather, they develop a symphony of understandings together, responding to each other, elaborating on each other, continuing each other, like different instruments in the orchestra.

Contemplative reading – Reflecting on a text while putting aside our opinions and intellectual thinking, and “listening” to the ideas that arise within us. Such ideas can arise in response to specific words in the text, or the words of fellow contemplators, or sometimes spontaneously. When contemplation is full, it is experienced as if my deeper self speaks within me.