SDS 312: Contemplation

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast. Today I am with a very dear friend of mine, Mitja Žibert. Mitja, how are you going?

Mitja: It’s good, having fun here in Cancun.

Kirill: Yeah, we’re in Cancun for our company offsite with the whole team from all over the world. We’re, I think somebody told me we’re from 10 different countries, 16 people here. And Mitja is our company coach. So Mitja, what does a company coach do?

Mitja: What does a company coach do? Well, basically I have one on one sessions with all team members. And we go, we talk, discuss, try to solve different issues or challenges that each individual is facing, either professional or personal, which are often times interlinked. And so therefore I kind of help them get through their difficult, challenging times, even maybe resolve some conflicts and get better in communication, organization and basically maybe prepare even some programs, more specific programs and goal oriented programs. Yeah, that’s basically it.

Kirill: So what would you say is the overall goal of the company coach role? What’s the main responsibility?

Mitja: The main responsibility would be covering the neutral ground or for example, somebody that’s neutral in the team that it’s kind of a point where everybody can turn to when they have problems, challenges and know that they will be heard, know that their problems will be taken care of or at least addressed and they won’t be judged for it. So it’s kind of a really a neutral ground where they can just relax and express what’s bothering them, what challenges they have. So I try to channel that and help them overcome whatever challenges they have and grow basically.

Kirill: Fantastic. Thanks. And as I told you for me, as the director of the business, the biggest or like one of the main advantages I see, of course it’s wellbeing and health of the team, but also you resolve conflicts before they happen. You resolve issues before they happen. It’s like proactive resolution. And it’s very exciting to be here in the offsite because we get to meet each other in person and do all these workshops and things like that. And you particularly did a, one of the workshops that you did was on meditation and mindfulness and contemplation. So that’s what I wanted to talk a bit about here because I thought it was very useful for the team. I found a lot of insights that I wanted to share that with our listeners on the SDS podcast. So what is this contemplation?

Mitja: Yeah, so there is a quote that basically Kirill showed me yesterday that’s related to what I was talking about during our workshop and it’s from Albert Einstein and it goes like this: “I think 99 times and I find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.” So this quote is actually the essence of what I was trying to convey in our workshop and what Einstein pointed out: basically there are two things that he wanted to point out here. And one is that our thinking is basically limited because, it’s important we understand, and once we go deeper into the whole thinking flow, the thinking process, the thought as that itself, we see that whole our thinking is just derived from our memory. So whatever we’ve collected into our memory, experiences, knowledge and everything basically that we learn, is basically stored in our memory.

Mitja: And all of the thinking process then is derived from that memory. So obviously that means that our thinking is limited. We can’t think of something new. We can think of variations, we can have imaginations, but still it’s only a kind of a conclusion from what we already have inside of our memory. And then the second thing that he pointed out when he said that he gets the insight basically into the truth. That is when new realizations come that are not from our memory. Okay? That’s really important. And here it’s important to know what insight really means or realization. It’s basically a new piece of objective knowing about the reality as it is. So it’s not coming from our memory, but it basically jumps into our thoughts.

Kirill: Kind of like when, let’s say Newton was sitting under the apple tree, probably he didn’t just like derive gravity out of the knowledge he had before. Cause it’s impossible, right? Nobody knew about gravity. It just like came to him out of thin air, out of nowhere.

Mitja: Yeah. Basically, we can say it comes from infinite intelligence, nature…

Kirill: The universe, whatever you want to call it.

Mitja: Consciousness. So yeah, whatever you want to call it. But still it’s not derived from our memory. So therefore it’s not limited.

Kirill: So basically what I understand is that you need to be in silence. You need to have a quiet mind in order to come up with these insights. Like if your mind is super busy all the time and thinking and thinking, you’re going to miss out on the insights. And I think that’s exactly what Albert Einstein alluded to. Is that right?

Mitja: Yes, that’s right. So as long as you are looking for realization or realizations or insights in your thoughts, you will not get them. There must be, like Kirill put it, a silence or I call it gap between thought or gap between thoughts. And how do we get to these gaps in our thinking? Well, we do it by training to slow down our mind. And we do that, one of the ways is through contemplation. And contemplation basically means while our thoughts are constantly running around, you can test it out for yourselves, try to focus your thinking just on one point. You will see that it’s literally impossible due to our conditioning of the mind from the past.

Mitja: So basically we train our mind to slow down. Our thinking process to slow down. And that is where this little gaps within thinking happen. And this is where insights can then jump in, in a way. So contemplation basically means that you choose a certain topic, a certain area in your thinking and you do not think outside of that. It still thinking, but you narrow it down.

Mitja: And when you do it for a long time, like practice, practice, practice, you will see that the mind actually kind of focuses, narrows down and slows down and you will start getting new thoughts. Still thinking, but they will be fresh. They will bring a certain clarity, something that you didn’t realize before. Okay? It’s kind of a small realizations happening. And then once you go forth with this, you continue with this contemplation, contemplation, the mind thinking, still narrows down, narrows down until it reaches a point when you just center in one thought, one thought alone or one point.

Kirill: And that then is called concentration. And that concentration, that point is really a much more condensed, much more focused energy and it’s needed. It’s necessary to get us even deeper, deeper to the understanding, getting more, more, more clarity, kind of a higher level intelligence, I would call it. Okay?

Mitja: So, after the concentration comes the meditation. That is a point where all the thinking basically stops. There is no… In contemplation and concentration we still have a thinking process. We still have a point that we are dependent on. Now in meditation even that point is gone. So there is just complete clarity. Okay. But, honestly this stage with this state of mind is really hard to achieve and it takes months, years for us to achieve.

Kirill: Interesting. So basically when they say in meditation, focus on your breath, that’s actually a form of contemplation, trying to move to concentration, which will move you to meditation.

Mitja: Basically the breath is essential when you start out because it helps you concentrate your mind. It’s kind of a initial process where you learn, basically you realize how your mind is agitated, how it constantly runs away. And focusing on breath helps you with this initial process of slowing it down.

Kirill: And so tell me a little bit more about contemplation. You mentioned something very interesting yesterday that when you’re contemplating, for instance, on the topic of love, what is love, what can happen in those situations when you’re thinking about let’s say love?

Mitja: Okay. So as I said in contemplation, you choose a topic or an area to think about. You don’t venture out of that. So for example, as Kirill said, you can contemplate on love. That means your whole thinking, all of your thoughts, you should keep them in the area of thought. For example, if you go okay, hate is not love. Okay. That already ventured out of the area of love, hate is not love. So you’re basically not contemplating any more because now you’re mixing hate and love and you’re venturing into other areas which kind of gets you away from focusing or narrowing down on love.

Mitja: So you really should be careful to just constantly be focused on that topic, that you chose. That is contemplation. Otherwise you’re venturing out of contemplation, you won’t get these gaps in thinking.

Kirill: Okay. And that’s very true. Like I went for a walk on the beach here, I think it was two days ago and I tried, what you described, I tried to contemplate on love while walking, while sitting down, walking back. So hard. All these other thoughts come into, into place. It’s really hard to just think about one thing. Your mind inevitably within like 30 seconds, you don’t even notice how you drift away. So what I wanted to finish up this episode with maybe some tips you can try, some actionable tips for our listeners that they can already implement to help them in the process of contemplation.

Mitja: Yes. So the first step I would say: just take, I don’t know, a couple of minutes and close your eyes and try to think of a thought that is not coming from your memory. Just so that you know how limited we really are. We think that we are creative. We imagine that that comes from, I don’t know where, but really if you really analyze those thoughts you will see that they are still from your memory, just variations of it. So this is important to realize so that you are then motivated to go forth and try the contemplation. And also you will realize in contemplation when you are actually getting realizations or when it’s just another form of your memory.

Mitja: Okay. But for contemplation itself, I would suggest, I mean, you can do it like Kirill tried walking or just seating, whatever you want. I suggest that you find a place that it’s not, that you don’t have disturbances. That it’s a quiet place so that you really can just focus on your activity of contemplation. So you can just sit down, relax don’t be too relaxed, don’t fall asleep obviously, but still be relaxed and just choose a topic that really, really interests you, that you really want to get into and get new understanding, that deeper understanding of it. And then just focus and try to do that everyday.

Mitja: Don’t expect results too fast and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get results, if your mind just wanders, that’s normal. That happens to all of us. It takes time to really master this. So don’t beat yourself up. Be gentle to yourself, in a way be forgiving. Your thoughts will wonder. That you must know. So just go ahead and try it, try it, try it. Do it every day if possible. I don’t know, start with 10 minutes and then bring it up to 30 minutes, even more, 45 minutes, and you will see that, slowly, the more you’re immersed in that, the longer period you take, you will see that it just kind of pulls you in. You just start getting this clarity about the topic and it just narrows down, narrows down towards concentration.

Kirill: Fantastic. Well, thank you very much Mitja. I am personally going to try that out. I really enjoyed that exercise and I’m going to keep trying and doing that. And I wish for our listeners to also give it a go. It’s a very challenging exercise and as Mitja said, you have to be kind to yourself. Thank you very much.

Mitja: Thank you.