We begin to see that the contemplative is not beholden to the idea that emotions and reasons are two distinctly different states or that rationality rules in the strictly Kantian sense. Through reflecting on why compassion, for example, is a reasonable response in a world where everyone equally wants happiness, we can open into actual feelings of compassion. Likewise, by tapping deeply into our own feelings and the kinds of images, memories, or associations linked with them, we can gain clearer insight into the causes, or reasons, for them. When jealousy feels like a punch in the stomach, for example, we slowly remember that our sibling seemed favored at the dinner table. Second, most contemplative practices have a fundamentally nondualistic orientation. For example, both the Buddhist and Diamond Approach systems hold that when these practices bring their full fruition, the ordinary dualistic way of approaching self and world will be challenged and finally dissolve. At the same time, both make clear that a collapse of ordinary dualistic processes is not disruptive to one's ability to be in the world. Third, the contemplative practitioner understands herself as a being whose mind, body, feelings, and energies are inextricably intertwined. She learns that simple attention can open to insight or to vision, and can settle the body's energies or refine them. Any of these shifts, brought to some modest level of maturity, can begin to reveal and break up the kind of self-habituations that dull us to the fire of our own curiosity and learning, and to the aliveness of our own consciousness.