Your Inner Will by Piero Ferrucci

Author:Piero Ferrucci
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

The Art of Reflection

To reflect is to deepen. To think repeatedly about a subject helps us understand it. If we persevere, if we examine it in its various aspects and from different points of view, we will know it more intimately; we will be able to immerse ourselves in that subject and comprehend it.

This way of thinking is the opposite of the fleeting and superficial wandering that is currently so common. Our thinking is often hurried and scattered. We urgently need to learn the art of reflection.

In reflecting deeply we activate the will as self-discipline and perseverance.

Exercise

Choose a quality (for example, love, beauty, honesty) as a focus for reflection (the same technique can be adapted, with small, appropriate changes, to any subject you want to explore: a person, a project, a situation).

Think of the quality you have chosen. By way of example, let’s say it is love. How many kinds and varieties of love can you think of? What effects do they have? What are their main characteristics? What are their benefits? What are their possible dangers? What memories do you have about this quality—in yourself and in others?

Imagine a knob, like the volume control on a radio. You can increase or decrease this quality, in yourself and around you, and in the world. What effects would this operation have? What would your life be like if there were more—or less—of this quality?

Consider your mental assumptions in thinking about this quality. Now turn them upside down, or at any rate begin to question them. What if the opposite of all you had thought until now were true?

Let analogies and symbols come to mind regarding this quality. Can you come up with a metaphor?

Think of absurd and paradoxical situations. For example, is it possible to love your own enemies?

Create some “thought experiments,” imaginary scenarios in which to deliberately experiment with new attitudes and behaviors.

Change perspective. How would an astronaut perceive this quality? Or a poet? A farmer? Someone from a faraway culture, or a different epoch, or another planet? Or you—at a different stage of your life?

PRACTICAL HINTS

It is important not to stop reflecting too soon. Sometimes we seem to have exhausted a subject, when really we are just beginning. We have to keep going even when it may appear we have finished. If we continue without being discouraged, new ideas and surprising scenarios may soon emerge.

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