What Ontology Actually Is — Demystified for General Readers

The word ontology sits in the name of our practice — Baraka Ontology Clinical Counselling — and almost no one who walks in the door knows what it means. That is fine. The word is academic; it comes from Greek; it sounds, on first encounter, like the kind of thing that is meant to keep ordinary readers out. I want to bring it in.

This article is the demystified version. Not what ontology means in the philosophy seminar. What it means in our practice, and why we put it in our name.

The everyday meaning

In the broadest sense, ontology is the study of being — what exists, how it exists, what makes something the kind of thing it is. As an academic discipline, this can become very technical very quickly, with elaborate distinctions between essence and existence, particular and universal, substance and attribute. None of that is what we mean.

What we mean by ontology, in our practice, is something simpler and more practical. It is the level of attention that asks not what are you doing or what are you thinking or what are you feeling, but how are you? And not how-are-you in the social greeting sense. How-are-you in the deeper sense: who are you being? What is the quality of your presence in this moment? From what place inside you are you living?

These questions sound abstract. They are not. They are some of the most concrete questions a human being can be asked.

What it looks like in real life

Consider a small example. You are at a difficult meeting at work. Your colleague says something that lands wrong. Several responses are available to you. You can speak up immediately and sharply. You can stay quiet and stew. You can ask a clarifying question. You can leave the room and return when you are calmer. The doing-level question is what should I do? The cognitive-level question is what am I thinking? The emotional-level question is what am I feeling?

The ontological-level question is different. It is: who am I being right now? Are you being someone who is hurt and protecting? Someone who is performing competence? Someone who is genuinely curious? Someone who is small and frightened? Someone who is connected to your deeper steadiness?

The answer to this question shapes every other answer. The action you take from a place of fear is different from the action you take from a place of clarity, even if the actions look identical from outside. The thoughts that come from a contracted, defended self are different from the thoughts that come from a settled, present self. The feelings that arise when you are being one kind of person are different from the feelings that arise when you are being another.

Ontological work is the work of paying attention at this level. Of noticing who you are being. Of making, increasingly, conscious rather than reflexive choices about it. Over time, of being able to choose — not just choose what to do, but choose who to be — in the moments that matter most.

Why this work has its own name

It would be possible, in principle, to do this work as part of cognitive or emotional or behavioural work. In practice, it usually does not happen that way. The other levels are noisy. The thoughts are insistent. The feelings are loud. The behaviours demand attention. The being-level register is quieter, and it gets drowned out unless we deliberately attend to it.

Several traditions have, across history, developed practices specifically aimed at this register:

The contemplative traditions — Christian, Buddhist, Sufi, Hindu, Daoist, Jewish — have spent thousands of years developing techniques for paying attention to one's own being. Meditation, prayer, contemplation, ritual, the deliberate cultivation of presence — these are not religious decorations. They are technologies for ontological work, refined across generations.

The existential philosophical tradition — Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Buber, the existential therapists who followed them — produced a Western language for the same territory. Heidegger's Dasein — being-there — is an attempt to get at exactly what we are pointing at: the human condition of existing as a being who is aware of its own being and can take a stance toward it.

The depth-psychological tradition — Jung, the post-Jungians, certain branches of psychoanalysis — has worked at this register through the symbolic, mythic, and unconscious dimensions.

The ontological coaching tradition that emerged in the late twentieth century — drawing on linguistics, somatics, and philosophy — has developed practical methods for working with how a person occurs in the world.

Each tradition has its own vocabulary and its own techniques. They are pointing, in different ways, at the same territory.

What the work involves

When ontological work happens in our practice, it usually involves:

Slower attention. The being-level register requires slower attention than ordinary conversation provides. We slow down. We notice. We sit with what arises rather than rushing toward what to do about it.

Listening to the language. The words a person uses are not just description; they are constitution. The way you talk about your life shapes — sometimes determines — what your life can be. Working with language is direct ontological work.

Working with the body. Being is embodied. How you stand, breathe, move, hold tension is part of who you are being. Body-level interventions reach the ontological level when conversation alone cannot.

Practices. Real change at the being level usually requires practices outside the session. Contemplative practice, observation, structured experiments in being differently. The work is not just talking about being; it is the slow project of being differently in real life.

Patience. Ontological change is slow. Real shifts in being unfold over months and years. The expectation of quick fixes does not survive contact with the actual work.

Who this work is for

Ontological work is not for everyone. Some people want practical, structured, time-limited help with specific problems, and that is what they should get. Some people want symptom relief, behaviour change, skill-building. These are legitimate and we offer them where appropriate.

Ontological work is for people drawn to it. People who sense, often without being able to articulate it, that the change they want is not at the level of doing or thinking but at some deeper level. People in midlife reckoning with who they have been. People in transition wondering who they want to become. People who have done substantial therapy in symptom-oriented frames and recognized that something deeper has not been touched. People drawn to the contemplative dimensions of life — religious, secular, or somewhere in between.

If you are reading this article and recognizing something in it, you may be one of these people.

Why we put the word in our name

When we chose the name Baraka Ontology Clinical Counselling, we knew it was unusual. Most counselling practices have names like Vancouver Counselling Centre or Lower Mainland Therapy Group. The word ontology keeps some readers out. We accepted that, because the word also signals something to the readers it is for: that this is a practice that takes seriously the level of being, that integrates depth-oriented work with clinical care, that does not collapse all human suffering into a small set of cognitive distortions to be corrected.

The word is in the name as a flag for the people we are most able to serve well.

When to come in

If something in this article has named what you have been looking for in therapy or in your own inner work, please reach out. We can discuss what kind of engagement might fit.

Therapy at Baraka integrates ontological practice across our clinicians' work, in proportions matched to each client. Available in English and Farsi, in person at our Ambleside office and online across BC.

• Book a free 15-minute consultation → Or call (236) 455-6306 Email contact@barakaocc.com