I’ve come to realize these past several months that I don’t really understand what internalization is–I’ve always thought of it as a means of assimilating our realities into our being, but I had never understood what that process looks like until this class. Contemplation and our contemplative practices have given me merely a glimpse into how this process can be. Learning for me has always been a surface level of information absorption in which I would take in information and memorized via rote practicing until I had “understood” it. However, I never bothered to figure out the “why” or “how” something was the way it was. Through contemplation, I was able to engage with the material on a deeper level, mobilizing my emotions and even my physical body to also learn.

One of the most impactful contemplative practices that we had done was one in which Karen walked us through taking different perspectives:

1. One that believes that the world is progressively getting worse, and that our future is bleak–a sort of pessimistic worldview.
2. One that believes that the world is great and is healing–a more optimistic outlook.
3. Finally, one that is indifferent to the world, and takes everything as it is–acceptance.

In each of these practices, it was notably hard to focus as these perspectives are particularly disparate. Each one was accompanied with its own set of emotions and physical reactions. When we were instructed to take on the first perspective, I had felt a lot more tense than before, and my mind started to become inundated with worrisome thoughts. In contrast, the second perspective galvanized me, and made me feel a rush of gratitude and a desire to feel active.

I began to apply this thinking to Active Hope and I found that the disagreements that I had with the seemingly pointless steps to achieve progress had converted to curiosity through these practices. Our discussions have become less abstract for me, and contemplation has allowed me to feel what people were saying and what I was seeing on a very deep, personal level.

While these practices have been insightful, I do have my reservations about them. For a good amount of them, I found myself lost in my own mind and unable to really grapple with what Karen was saying. Nevertheless, these practices have been enriching, and I hope to continue exploring these practices.