Uncertainty is a mathematical thing. Math is the language of the physical. The physical creates emotions, which in turn, influence the physical. Where does the mind fall – thoughts? Thoughts can impact the physical and vice versa. Do thoughts fall somewhere between, serving as a bridge between the physical and the emotional? Are we our thoughts, or something separate? Words are the language of the emotional. Words are physical. They say that words can hurt. Math speaks about the physical world to the emotional, the emotional world speaks to the mental world with words. Physical = math. Emotional = words. Thoughts are the how. What is truly the distinction between mental and emotional? If the difference is the presence of rationale, then math or logic has to be its language. I keep seeing a triangle in my mind. Flow charts too. Thoughts impact the emotional. Physical – MATH -> Emotional – WORDS -> Mental – LOGIC. Math transforms the physical into emotional, words translate the emotional into thoughts, and logic transforms thoughts into the physical. There is a bigger thought here. If I am not my body, then we can also infer that I am not my emotions, and I am not my thoughts. I am aware of and separate from all three. Awareness. Awareness is the only element that exists without translation or transformation. That is what I am.
Category: Ponderings
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I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine and he was telling me about a comedy show where the dude also hypnotized the audience members. During the show, the dude instructed the audience members in a few things, but the final part was to put your palms together, press them together as hard as you can, and imagine that the two hands fused into one.
My friend told me he could not separate his hands after being brought out of the hypnosis, try as he might. This got me thinking.
Your mind really does have amazing power over your experience. In this case, you are guided to a place of openness by the hypnotist, given a task that makes you imagine something, reinforces that imagined reality with something physical, and once you bring your focus back to the moment, that imagined thing becomes your reality.
I don’t think most people realize how much your mindset and thoughts truly do shape your reality. If you want to change your reality, you have to start with your thoughts…
Interesting factoid. I read somewhere that your brain reacts the same no matter if you are experiencing an event, remembering it, or imagining it.
My friend is fine now, by the way. His hands are no longer fused together by the power of his mind.
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Which is worse for a child? Having parents who think you will never amount to anything, or parents who expect you to accomplish things that may be unreasonable?
There are bad consequences to each circumstance, without a doubt, but which is more damaging to the child in the long run? I think it kinda depends on the child, honestly.
There could be a child in situation 1, whose parents believe they will never accomplish anything, but they make a choice to prove the parents wrong, and wind up being a successful individual, but they deal with the knowledge that no one believed in them from the get-go. There could also be a child in situation 2, who does their absolute best to accomplish everything, but falls short, because, well… they are human and can’t do everything. They carry a sense of guilt and the idea of “I should have….” when in reality, they did everything they could at the time.
I am curious about this… admittedly, I feel that I belong to group 2, because I tried my damnedest to do what my parents expected, but that just wasn’t going to happen because, well…. life. At this point, I don’t blame my parents for any of that. They certainly had their own issues to work through, which bled on to me. But, what is it like on the other side of this? I don’t know what it is to be in group 1, but I want to know and understand that side of things.
If anyone reading this belongs to group 1, please reach out, I want to know your story. If you belong to group 2, please reach out, I want to know your story. I love to hear people’s struggles, and what they have done to cope with/mitigate them. Understanding one another and our various circumstances is one of the keys to growth….
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Responding to Weekly Prompts – Weekend Challenge
Weekly Prompts – Weekend Challenge – Wrong
Anyone who knows me knows that I am big on the meaning of words and their relationship to one another. Wrong is an interesting word. If you check out the dictionary definition, you will see that most of the definitions are saying that wrong is something that is not something else. Something that is not moral, not just, not successful, not accurate. The list goes on.
I think that “wrong” in many cases is actually a subjective term. Now, if you say 2+2 = 7, that is wrong. It is not a factual statement at all. In any given non-arithmetic situation, you could say, “That person was wrong for doing what they did.” Were they? Perhaps. But the idea of wrongness invokes and necessitates a certain amount of emotion, and therefore, subjectivity.
Something can feel wrong but not be wrong. And, at the same time, something can be wrong and not feel wrong. Allow me to explain. A child who deals with abuse at home will perhaps grow up to be a person who does not stand up for themselves. Doing so feels wrong to them because it is not familiar, but most people will agree that standing up for yourself is right, and it is important. On the flip side, you squish a mosquito or a spider. It doesn’t feel wrong because of the consensus that these creatures are pests, but in a way, it is wrong because you are ending a life.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? In so many cases, the idea of “wrong” has to do with the societal consensus, with the overall judgements of the culture and the era. Where is it that we can find objective evaluations of what wrong is? I don’t know that we can. I don’t believe that life or the universe or perhaps even god in whatever form, is concerned with right vs wrong. It is concerned with balance. In any system, micro or macro, the net-net of any transaction or interaction is zero – you see this in finance, in physics, in math, in many personal relationships. The system is attempting to maintain homeostasis, to balance both sides of the equation for a net gain of zero so that things continue the way that they were designed to.
“Wrong” is largely a subjective judgement placed on things in a broad way to keep society in line. Perhaps we are on the right track with those judgements, but we have no way of knowing for sure because of our physiological and mental limitations.
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The first dog I had as an adult was Patch. She was a mutt, but definite pit bull and boxer in the mix.
This dog was my freaking world, and I know for a fact that she would have done anything to protect me. I love the dogs I have now, but definitely felt safest when I had Patch around.
Patch was multi-faceted, and very smart. She would oversee any home improvement projects, with a required test sniff/lick of any tools or materials being used. She would run behind the tv to catch perpetrators who ran off screen, and she absolutely loved fries from Five Guys. She would lick the peanut butter away, then spit out the medicine hidden inside it. She patrolled the yard relentlessly, and even protected us from two “assault” skunks.
We spread her ashes around the perimeter of the yard to commemorate her devotion to protecting her domain and her humans.
It’s been years, but I still miss her terribly.
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I had an awesome conversation with a friend of mine over breakfast today. For the record, conversation with her is always awesome, but I’m going to share this particular part of this one.
In the somewhat crazy and always varied range of topics, the word selfless came up, and how being selfless is generally considered to be a good quality. At most points in my life, I definitely agreed with this. But, I have learned that it can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. Like anything else in life, moderation is key. It is possible to be so selfless in your service of others that you literally find yourself without a sense of self (i.e. – “self-less”). Also, without a concept of caring for yourself, and knowledge of the fact that if you don’t do so, you cannot take care of other people.
It’s conversations like this that drive me and inspire me, talking about the human condition, why and how we do the things we do, how balance in everything is essential. All of it, and more. I just love it. This was a great start to the day.
Happy Sunday!
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When I was about 10, I opened the front door to take the dog out. It was super early, and cold that morning. I go to open the screen door and as I look up, there is giant buck in our front yard, and a couple females as well. (His harem, I’m guessing. Do deer even have harems? Or are they the mate for life kind of animal?) Anyway, I shooed the dog back, telling him we would go out in a little bit. I then crept outside as quietly as I could so as not to scare the deer.
The buck was bigger than any animal I had ever seen at that point, and as I stepped outside, he turned to me and just stared at me. The female deer seemed a little apprehensive and a bit jumpy, but this dude just stared me down. It was intimidating and exhilarating. I sat down on the front stoop and just watched. Mr. Buck got bored with me, I guess; he went back to grazing on the frosty grass since he determined that I was not a threat.
It was one of the most peaceful moments of my life. It was so incredibly quiet, the cold making it seem even more silent than silent. It was truly a beautiful thing, and I wish that was something I could experience more often in life.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past few days…. I do talk about myself in the third person sometimes, especially when writing in my journal, and I am very curious as to two things. 1 – does anyone else do this? and 2 – what does this stem from? Why does my brain/mind sometimes choose to ignore or diminish its own existence? What is the coping mechanism at play here, because I have this sneaking suspicion that this is not a “normal” thing.
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I disagree with this idea, for a couple of reasons.
First, it defies logic. 1+1 does not equal 1, unless we’re talking about one sperm and one egg joining to create an embryo. But in that case, the sperm and the egg each only have half the genetic material necessary to create an embryo, so that situation is actually 0.5 + 0.5 =1, which makes sense.
Now, since we are each born as a whole being, that means we are complete on our own. Any completeness that someone may be seeking will only be found within themselves, not from any external thing or entity.
I believe this idea started in Greek mythology, and humans were said to be these strange beings with 4 arms, 4 legs and two faces….Even now, the mental image of this is bizarre and difficult to comprehend… Anyway, for whatever reason, Zeus got a bug up his ass, split all the humans, scattered them, and we were then doomed to roam the earth in search of our other half. Nice story, but I don’t buy it.
I just wonder why we’ve held on to this idea, why we curse ourselves generation after generation with this delusion that we are incomplete without this elusive counterpart. Why do we not instead think of ourselves as intact from the get go, and view relationships to/with others as ways to accentuate our qualities and experience things in life?
I also wonder where the world would be by now if had it been populated the whole time with people who knew their entire lives that they were complete as they were? A bunch of people searching only for experiences and things they are passionate about, not someone to make them whole or worthy as a result of that wholeness. How much happier would humanity be?
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Control is a funny thing. It is a bundle of deception wrapped in a pretty package that looks like stable predictability. But it is all an illusion. A sparkly, beautiful, self-defeating illusion.
There are millions, if not more, variables that impact any given day or event in your life. The idea that you have any amount of control over what happens simply baffles me. Complete control over events simply cannot happen, and I think the people in the world who are most at peace are intimately familiar with this fact.
The one and only thing that you can control in life is your response, which – for the record – is not the same as a reaction. Most people react to things, and they are exerting no control in doing so, but don’t realize that. A response is more thoughtful than a reaction. Reactions are almost automatic, and rarely rational. If you can temper those reactions and take the time to respond instead, it is then that you are in control, and only of yourself.
A Peculiar Cerebral Tangle 