Comprehending "reality" is a difficult thing to do. Perhaps the biggest single barrier is our own subjectivity to reality. I consider it like trying to comprehend a foreign or alien culture. There are many components to a culture, and the depth of a culture can be deceptive. How does the symbolism & signs of a culture relate back to the individual's language, and how does the individual's language relate back to their own mind.
As a big fan of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), I was fortunate to catch that stream before it became run down in populist, dumbed down "positive thinking" guru "streams". I was also fortunate enough to have been able to study it at my leisure and so in-depth, being able to dig deep into the work of Milton Erickson who helped found a lot of these modern discoveries.
Yet, to this day, Milton Erickson remains obscure, despite his amazing discoveries and accomplishments. Why is this? Partly, to be sure, it must be due to his bizarre tactics and approach to psychology. Successful or not, how can people make sense of it. Another aspect of his work is that it dwelves deep into the "scary" aspects of "trance" and "hypnosis" which many reflexively take as a sort of black magic... fearing the unknown.
Comprehending "reality" is therefore bounded first by our own subjectivity: the knowledge we have, the knowledge we think we have, and the limits of choice we have. Typically, in the world, with knowledge, we have to decide between the "lesser of two evils". This is something many do not understand.
God alone is good, therefore clearly we are often deciding between the "lesser of two evils". One may ask, "When" and this would be a good question: we are constantly deciding between matters. This is how we literally think. We "weigh" matters of information against other matters of information internally constantly.
It may be judgments about others, areas of study, leisure, work... anything. To get a cup of coffee or not in the morning. To brush one's teeth. How one relates with a sports event. How one relates with a news event. What to think when one perceives the wall in front of them. And so on.
We build up, through our lives, a massive repository of information. And we are constantly taking in new bits of information. We organize the new information in context with the old. It really is very simple if one thinks about it.
We typically do not think about such matters, however, because to understand one must come up with an abstract model such as this. And, secondly, because it is objective analysis of a very primal, subjective state: the state of perceiving.
The importance, however, of such an abstract model... is first to understand how perfectly it fits to the practical. It is a sound and perfect fitting abstract model. Secondly, it is to see the limitation of how we perceive. This model shows us that if we do not see something, if we have not heard something, if we approach the alien: we have no method of comparison with past information.
Further, this model helps us understand the "weighty". Weight, in the physical world, has to do with mass. And mass has a direct relation to energy.
Considering this in a metaphor: What if you could suddenly change the bones in your hand from being light to being extremely heavy, heavier then lead? Then you could use your fist to break through hard material with sizable power.
Uranium is the heaviest element in atomic weight.
More importantly, one starts to see a few things here: one is the value of weightier knowledge and why to seek it out. Two, is the value of unbiased weighing of new information. The mind and heart naturally are extremely biased and often work against this principle. Three, in short, this means more truth has intrinsic value for the perceiver. In terms of power. Power here may be defined as "capability to do". Four, one sees that with this model how completely strange, alien information may effect the entire person, if that information has awe staggering ramifications which, to be understood, must mean a realignment of much information already perceived within a person.
This is why some information of profound push or effect takes a long time to process, whereas other information does not take so much time. Because such information must, to be taken in, be weighed against a great many things as opposed to just a few.
Usually, when we take in new information, be it of greater or lesser weight or value, does not have soul bending ramifications. Sometimes, it does, such as perceiving a war event, seeing some horrific tragedy, and so on.
There is a great amount to say about this. But, at first, one should see how incoming information effects us on a very, very deep level. This is not strange to people, as we all know how - for instance - profound personal events may effect us deeply. But what may be more strange is how one must believe that information, consider it weighty or rightly perceive it as weighty if it is weighty... and then fit it in with everything pre-existing.
Fiction, in a sense, bypasses a lot of the protection people have in place to avoid serious down time. It has a subliminal element to it, always - unless one is able to perfectly dissect it - and that subliminal element ends up effecting people, but not giving the downtime an actual event may give.
If that fiction has great weight hidden behind it, then the components of it are believed, taken in, and literally "consumed" by the person. Though they do not see this: it changes the course of their lives.
New Shape of this Blog
I have started and stopped a number of blogs, as well as interest points in discussion with friends. Some weird, a lot abstract, what I have decided to focus on, instead, is thoughts about the signs & symbols in popular media.
Popular Media: Movies, Books, Songs, whatever.
Popular Media: Movies, Books, Songs, whatever.
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