Wikipedia notes that "phrases such as “contemplating one’s navel” or “navel-gazing” are frequently used, usually in jocular fashion, to refer to self-absorbed pursuits.”
Navel-gazing or omphaloskepsis is the contemplation of one’s navel as an aid to meditation.The word derives from the Ancient Greek words ὀμφᾰλός (omphalós, lit. ‘navel’) and σκέψῐς (sképsis, lit. ‘viewing, examination, speculation’. Actual use of the practice as an aid to contemplation of basic principles of the cosmos and human nature is found in the practice of yoga or Hinduism and sometimes in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In yoga, the navel is the site of the manipura (also called nabhi) chakra, which yogis consider “a powerful chakra of the body”.[3][4] The monks of Mount Athos, Greece, were described as Omphalopsychians by J.G. Millingen, writing in the 1830s, who says they “…pretended or fancied that they experienced celestial joys when gazing on their umbilical region, in converse with the Deity”.
Philosophy itself apart from dialog has been derogatorily characterized as belly button gazing. Phenomenology is a way of doing original philosophy centered in one’s own consciousness.
But there are so many phenomena where we wonder if we have understood or recognised the phenomenon for what it is, or if I am missing something.
Exactly. And those are phenomenological questions. Per Kant we can never know “the ding an sich”. And the special sciences put the true nature of objects out of the reach of our everyday consciousness.
With the technological expansion of images and words, everything seems to fall apart into mere appearances. it seems that we now are flooded by fragments without any wholes. But, through phenomenological reflection we discover that parts are only understood against the background of appropriate wholes. Identity and intelligibility are available in things. We ourselves are the ones to whom such identities and intelligibilities are given.
I am at present looking into the influence of Greek thought on Christianity and have come across the fact that the Roman Emperor Theodosius went about destroying as much influence as he could. The Coptics had a field day in Egypt too. It was something like the ISIS terrorists destroying statues or defacing them. It makes me ask whether the take away from Christian teaching on wholeness would have been available (perhaps in abundance) had there been no church.
I hear what you’re saying. Church Orthodoxy destroyed much of the diversity of early Christianity. But the historic church was also the means by which not only the teachings of Christ but, along with Islam, classical civilization itself was preserved and conveyed to the present. Whose account are you reading? Have you read Dominion by Tom Holland?
Holland, a professing agnostic, makes the case that the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination. Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves.
How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this conviction as they influenced history.
Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a Western civilization that was Christianized and remains so today if often subliminally.
Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
There are a bunch of videos where Holland discusses the book on YouTube if your interested.