Contemplation v Thinking

Unlike the Buddhist meditation I was taught earlier which was to ultimately attain a state of stillness and emptiness, Raja Yoga meditation, by contrast, seems very 'noisy'. We always play background music or commentary. We are told thoughts are okay. For beginners we were even taught to direct our meditation based on four questions so that our thoughts would stay focused.

The four questions to ask are:

1. Who am I?
2. What is my form?
3. What are my original form?
4. Where do I come from?

On the surface, these two meditation methods seem to be contradictory to each other with one focusing on emptiness and requires absolute quietness and the other focusing on thoughts and allows sounds. But when you delve into it, you will find that they are quite similar and can achieve the same result.

In Raja Yoga, the questions to use together with the background music and commentary during meditation are aids to quieten the mind through contemplation. Contemplation is different from thinking as thinking normally engages resources from the external world while contemplation is about plunging into deeper realms where we can draw emotional information, the response from the body, and ultimately the promptings of our heart.

I find contemplation is quite useful during meditation as in contemplation I can drop a question into my awareness, allow it to sink out of view, and then simply wait. Sometimes an answer comes, sometimes not. Sometimes I simply receive a feeling: an intuition, an inner prompting. I think this may be similar to auto writing.

In contemplation, energy finds its own way to work on you and opens you up to insights and peace. This is where healing takes place.