Participation is active engagement in the world. Marcel says that personal identity includes both the objective identity in the outer world, and the felt quality of identity in the inner world. A felt quality, or a quality of feeling, is not a mental object, because a person s feeling cannot be separated from what the person feels. A felt quality is a unity, which cannot be dissolved by primary reflection. Contemplation is a mode of participation in which the duality of the inner and outer world are transcended.
Contemplation is an inward regrouping, or ingathering, of mental resources.
To contemplate is to gather one s mental resources in the presence of whatever is being contemplated. Marcel does not distinguish between Existence and Being. Being is being in a situation, and thus is always changing. Being is transcendent, it transcends objective enquiry. Our own experience of Being is subjective.