02-22-2021, 06:34 PM
Scattered reflections branching out from that, in different directions...
Even if you explored your whole unconscious, could you then maintain awareness of it all at the same time? I doubt it, as the brain-mind filter is heavy and keeps awareness while staying in the body way, way too small to ever be capable of that. To put that a bit differently, the soul seems way too large for more than a small portion to work through the brain at a time. That's my personal view after a small number of strange years of experiencing very much inwardly, far too much to fully keep track of at the same time afterwards.
The opening post had a diffuse focus, and I didn't mean to detract from any successful soulful deep-diving. I think that the messy business of psychology-between-people-in-life, even when touching on spirituality, tends to bring the shallower end (your "5%") into focus, and especially how things at that end clash with further spiritual development, preventing it or distorting it hopelessly. And that's a topic that remains low-hanging fruit for people in general perpetually throughout history because, historically, people tend to make a mess of it.
I see people going through a large mixture of stuff. Much I couldn't possibly give them advice on, and I'm not really the type to generally think I have advice for people. Some things I recognize, however, as old patterns I'm familiar with and have learned about. It's not generally that useful to share psychological knowledge with people, because the basic gap between theory and practice in practice is not reduced by better theory. Still, since some care and perhaps may develop something good out of better information, or out of stimulation towards better information, it's not meaningless.
Also, I have some kind of itch of my own to scratch, a lot of stuff I'm concerned with being related in complex ways I'm half-consciously aware of, and following a trail towards the more essential, wherever I find it... I've had way too much stuff on my mind I've not discussed for many years. It may look tidier than it, but in part the opening post is a disorganized opening-up shaped into something that seems like it may double as hopefully helpful and at worst mostly harmless, and so nice enough to post.
In psychology, I think that what a good therapist does is more like a performance art than anything else. I've concluded that from reading about how different conventional psychological paradigms, regardless of whether they're more or less scientific, give the same results in therapy. And, also, from reading examples of how psychologists trained in different paradigms arrive at the same advice using very different theory to explain why and to elaborate. When such a system of thought is "functionally complete", in a sense, then anything can be arrived at using it -- anything! -- and that's the nature of all psychology-paradigms generally used in talk therapy. All the rest is up to the "artist" -- or therapist. Compare to shamans, who naturally embrace their performance art and make it far more effective, rather than drawing it out in time while sterilizing its contents.
More generally, I think the soul may use the body, brain, and brain-mind much like an artist uses an instrument. Accuracy in conscious thought at this level is generally only possible within very limited bounds. (But these bounds are in large part defined by what people focus on. Focus using the brain-mind is finite, reality is infinite. Paying attention to any thing means missing many things.) Unusual feats of bringing information into this world, whether the form is scientific, artistic, etc., may perhaps have a nature somewhat analogous to great feats of computer programming, if you think of the soul as using very limited hardware while better-than-normal performance often relies on knowing how to work with its quirks using nonstandard methods. Convinced that the mind at this level is simply too small for the full unconscious to be conscious at the same time, instead I've concerned myself with understanding the work of the soul as something artistic, which in part includes what I think of as "mental computational art", of which much mystical thought consists.
Even if you explored your whole unconscious, could you then maintain awareness of it all at the same time? I doubt it, as the brain-mind filter is heavy and keeps awareness while staying in the body way, way too small to ever be capable of that. To put that a bit differently, the soul seems way too large for more than a small portion to work through the brain at a time. That's my personal view after a small number of strange years of experiencing very much inwardly, far too much to fully keep track of at the same time afterwards.
The opening post had a diffuse focus, and I didn't mean to detract from any successful soulful deep-diving. I think that the messy business of psychology-between-people-in-life, even when touching on spirituality, tends to bring the shallower end (your "5%") into focus, and especially how things at that end clash with further spiritual development, preventing it or distorting it hopelessly. And that's a topic that remains low-hanging fruit for people in general perpetually throughout history because, historically, people tend to make a mess of it.
I see people going through a large mixture of stuff. Much I couldn't possibly give them advice on, and I'm not really the type to generally think I have advice for people. Some things I recognize, however, as old patterns I'm familiar with and have learned about. It's not generally that useful to share psychological knowledge with people, because the basic gap between theory and practice in practice is not reduced by better theory. Still, since some care and perhaps may develop something good out of better information, or out of stimulation towards better information, it's not meaningless.
Also, I have some kind of itch of my own to scratch, a lot of stuff I'm concerned with being related in complex ways I'm half-consciously aware of, and following a trail towards the more essential, wherever I find it... I've had way too much stuff on my mind I've not discussed for many years. It may look tidier than it, but in part the opening post is a disorganized opening-up shaped into something that seems like it may double as hopefully helpful and at worst mostly harmless, and so nice enough to post.
In psychology, I think that what a good therapist does is more like a performance art than anything else. I've concluded that from reading about how different conventional psychological paradigms, regardless of whether they're more or less scientific, give the same results in therapy. And, also, from reading examples of how psychologists trained in different paradigms arrive at the same advice using very different theory to explain why and to elaborate. When such a system of thought is "functionally complete", in a sense, then anything can be arrived at using it -- anything! -- and that's the nature of all psychology-paradigms generally used in talk therapy. All the rest is up to the "artist" -- or therapist. Compare to shamans, who naturally embrace their performance art and make it far more effective, rather than drawing it out in time while sterilizing its contents.
More generally, I think the soul may use the body, brain, and brain-mind much like an artist uses an instrument. Accuracy in conscious thought at this level is generally only possible within very limited bounds. (But these bounds are in large part defined by what people focus on. Focus using the brain-mind is finite, reality is infinite. Paying attention to any thing means missing many things.) Unusual feats of bringing information into this world, whether the form is scientific, artistic, etc., may perhaps have a nature somewhat analogous to great feats of computer programming, if you think of the soul as using very limited hardware while better-than-normal performance often relies on knowing how to work with its quirks using nonstandard methods. Convinced that the mind at this level is simply too small for the full unconscious to be conscious at the same time, instead I've concerned myself with understanding the work of the soul as something artistic, which in part includes what I think of as "mental computational art", of which much mystical thought consists.
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