Last Sunday, I worshipped, if that’s the word, at a Contemplation Day, all alone, mostly in the dark, in absolute silence. I didn’t dictate to it or set goals or subjects. I allowed myself to sink into a space I’d never been before, and I had one of the deepest spiritual experiences of my life. I wish I could describe it without saying it gave me a new level of reality.

I never expected to write regularly about getting older, never mind about death. And it never crossed my mind to take on complex issues like meditation,  spirituality, mysticism, or Contemplation. Aging really is liberating, if you let it be. When I talk about the freedom of old age,  or tossing out much of the weight of living, I’m really talking about having the time and the motivation to explore these issues in my own life.

I find, to my surprise, that there are an awful lot of people out there eager to read about these subjects or join the conversation.

You won’t see CEO’s or most working people considering their spiritual lives because they are too busy making money or buying enough food for their children to eat. But these are some of the most fascinating subjects on Earth because they affect our lives, our deaths, and the planet’s future. They define what it means to me to be a human being. It removes the cutter and chaos of modern America from my mind.

Sunday, I took the day for what I called a Contemplation, a day of silence and reflection. I want to admit at the outset that I can’t clearly even define Contemplation or find the line between it and similar explorations – Yoga, Meditation, Spiritual Exploration, Mysticism (a close friend of Contemplation), or just the old-fashioned sitting in the living room and thinking about life.

The closest I ever came to this burst of feeling was when I sat on a sand mound on the ocean off of Cape Cod.

I’m sticking my nose into all of these things as I get older and closer to the end. They are all helping me greatly decide how to live in a meaningful and very exciting way. I have rarely felt happier or more fulfilled.

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I have a new companion in my research – it’s my Google Gemini AI software, the best research tool I’ve ever found. It’s shaping up as a great help to me.

I read books and study essays, but today I asked Gemini to find a single, simple definition of “Contemplation,” which I have been thinking about and practicing for years. These are the definitions Gemini came up with. Take your pick.

• Deep Thinking: Mulling over a big question or idea (e.g., “What does happiness mean to me?”).

• Quiet Observance: Looking at something in nature or art with total, uninterrupted attention.

• Spiritual Reflection: In many traditions, it means quietly opening your mind to connect with the divine, the universe, or your innermost self.

In short,  Contemplation is turning off the mental rush, slowing down, and just being present with a single thought or sight.

The irony is that all of these are true and none of them are true. The one most familiar does with nature. The surprise is that I know what it all means.

Sunday, I did turn off the mental trash, set out to talk to my divine, and ask some big questions about my life, especially important and essential as I get older – two weeks away from 79. This means closer to death.

I got some critical answers to some of the most important questions and issues in my life. Turning off the mental rush and think in silence was the key for me to think on a new and different level. It’s not fully explanabile, just like mysticism, which also fascinates me and reflects the way my mind works.

I don’t have the time or space to write about the difference between meditation, increasingly popular among the middle class, and Contemplation, a very different kind of mystical exploration.

Thomas Merton, my longtime and late spiritual guide, has written that poetry, music and art have something in common with th contemplative experience. I see that.

But, he warns, contemplation is beyond our intuition, becond speculative theology.

“It resumes, transcends and fullfills them all,” he says to add to my confusion, “and yet at the same time it seems to supersede and deny all of them.” Having just spent a day in Contemplation, I know just what he means.

Merton says to really enter the realm of contemplation, one must die in a certain sense, to clear out our minds, and then enter a higher life. It’s death, he says, for the sake of life, so we can get to the know the entrence as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, at the wonder of simply being, accepting us as we have evolved and exist.

When I stopped my contemplation Sunday, I felt like I have been to a different place, and seen my life in a different, safe and liberating way. I was in no way dead, I was refreshed and to some degree, reborn.

For me, comtemplation superseded and pushed aside every other form of intuition and experience in my life – in art, writing,  books,  photography, in philosophy or theology. Contemplation took me deeper and in a different way than meditation, beyond ordinary levels of love and belief.

When  you contemplate in a serious way, insists Merton, you “die” in the soul to be born again on a higher level of life and understanding.

The great challenge of writing about contemplation is that there is really no way to clearly explain it on a personal level. Everyone’s experience will be different. It simply cannot be clearly explained, any more than mysticism can. The fact that that is beyond me deepends the experience.

It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed, symbolized. The more I might try to explain it, the more its emptied of its content.

“For this experience,” writes Merton, “is beyond the reach of verbelization and of rationalization.”

In the superful consciousness that defines contemplation, there are just not words, only feelings. Next weekend, I’m going to take another contemplation write. I can’t wait.

I still haven’t figured out the first. I need to accept that, not describe it.

But I will continue to share my contemplation day to the best of my ability.