Revaluing Contemplative Disposition
Recently, I have been listening to Fr. Richard Rohr, a contemporary Franciscan friar and spiritual writer which sparks my interest especially with regards to prayer and ways of thinking. Rohr insists that the way we see determines what we are able to see. He repeatedly brings up his teaching on non-dual thinking, a way of perceiving reality that refuses to reduce everything to two opposing camps. Dualistic thinking, the habit of sorting life into good or bad, right or wrong, sacred or secular, insider or outsider, is useful for basic survival and for making quick judgments, but Rohr argues that it was never meant to be the final word on how we understand reality. When it becomes our default lens, it creates a barrier to what is truly essential. It narrows the vast range of human possibility into a small set of boxes and cuts off the many other ways a person can grow and be understood. Non-dual thinking does not abandon discernment but it holds it more humbly. It makes room for the middle ground, the “both/and” that the “either/or” mind cannot tolerate.
This vision matters because it exposes the limits of the mind that most of us live in. Rohr describes the ordinary human mind as a “jumping bean,” restless and forever in motion, replaying the past, rehearsing the future, and producing a constant stream of commentary and judgment. We rarely notice this stream because we identify with it. We assume that we are our thoughts. Rohr points out that much of this mental traffic is repetitive and that it quietly blocks our experience of God and of the present moment. The first step in spiritual growth, then, is not to acquire new ideas but to become an observer of our own consciousness. When we learn to watch our thoughts without being captured by every one of them, we gain the freedom to let go of the patterns that keep us stuck. This capacity to observe and release is the doorway into a deeper kind of knowing.
For this reason, the heart of spiritual progress lies in the ability to have a moment of stillness. It may be nothing more than a simple breath, a pause between tasks, or a small and slow step taken without hurry. Rohr stresses that transformation rarely arrives through dramatic effort but it grows through modest, repeated acts of presence that gradually train us to recognize what is truly essential. In a culture that prizes productivity, such stillness can feel unproductive or even threatening. Yet it is precisely in these small gaps that the compulsive mind loosens its grip. Stillness allows us to stop managing reality and begin receiving it. Over time, the quiet moments accumulate, and a person discovers that peace does not depend on resolving every question but on resting within a larger awareness.
Rohr therefore describes contemplation as inherently non-dualistic. For him, contemplation is not primarily about reciting prayers or producing correct religious language. It is about developing what he calls a “third eye,” a way of seeing that moves beyond the split between subject and object, self and God. From this place of conscious union with the Divine, reality is no longer something we stand over and analyze but something we participate in. This kind of seeing requires living with paradox and unresolved contradictions rather than forcing premature closure or demanding definitive answers. Rohr argues that modern Western Christianity, shaped by rationalism and the need for certainty, often mistakes having the right answers for having a real encounter with God. Contemplation invites a different posture: one of humility and trust that truth can be held even when it cannot be fully explained.
One of Rohr’s most striking insights concerns the sacred name Yahweh. He explains that the Hebrew name consists of consonants that cannot be pronounced with the lips and tongue in the usual way; it can only be spoken as an imitation of breathing, an inhale and an exhale. If this is so, then the name of God is the first word every newborn utters and the last word every dying person releases, and every human being, regardless of religion, is already speaking it with every breath. This effectively democratizes the divine experience: God is not a distant reward for the spiritually elite but the very air we live on, as intimate as our own breathing. Here the non-dual vision becomes concrete. The separation between the human and the divine, which the dualistic mind takes for granted, is quietly undone by the simplest bodily act. To breathe consciously is already to pray.
This understanding leads Rohr to criticize the way religion so often drifts into a system of moral competition or external belonging. When faith is reduced to belief statements, group membership, or the effort to prove who is worthy and who is not, it feeds the very dualism that contemplation seeks to heal. People become preoccupied with being right, with defending boundaries, and with measuring themselves against others, while the transformation of the heart goes untouched. Rohr proposes an alternative centered on practice over belief. Daily disciplines of silence and stillness retrain the mind, soften the ego, and open us to presence in a way that argument and doctrine alone cannot. The goal is a shift in identity, from being people who “say prayers” to people who “become a prayer,” whose very way of being in the world expresses union with God and compassion toward others.
These themes present a coherent and demanding path. Non-dual thinking begins by recognizing the limits of either-or judgment; it deepens through the discipline of observing and releasing the restless mind; and it matures in contemplative stillness, where paradox is held without panic and the divine is discovered in the ordinary rhythm of breath. The practical implications are significant. A person who learns to see non-dually becomes less reactive and less judgmental, more capable of holding tension, forgiving others, and recognizing the dignity in those who differ from them. Such a person is also freer to grow, because they are no longer confined by rigid labels about who they are or must be. Rohr’s profound invitation is to pause, breathe, and begin where you are. In that small act of stillness, the many possibilities that dualistic thinking had closed off begin to open again, and what is truly essential becomes visible.
