Since days of old, prayer without ceasing has been a theme of
the mystical elements of world religions, especially its
monastic parts. Sans religious context, nothing has changed.
Substitute awareness, still works. It's a thing that goes beyond
the thing into a realm that only those who understand,
understand. It's available to everybody - and really isn't that
difficult to get a taste of. Everybody's had a taste of it at
some point - at least I hope so - but like piano, it takes
practice. But perfection is of a different sort. It's more a
relieving than a precising... a widening rather than a honing
in. Yet it goes both directions and neither. It's a realm that
words are really awful at conveying. I blame Plato but really,
he didn't know. = Well said. I find the most powerful tool to
comprehend in this regard (language) is metaphor. I can find
little else that's "atomic" in the same way that a note might be
for music. (or rather, I'd say that it is the gaps between notes
that is atomic ... and even then, the gaps between wave peaks
and troughs but this is the point I wish I could draw animations
rather than use words). Metaphors are for sensemaking and the
more metaphors you can notice, the more understanding comes your
way. You can take a single word within a context, find a
physical metaphor that it comes from and just there, you get a
deeper meaning. Or if you know some of the etymology of your own
language (in my case English), you can go even deeper. It
creates a fascinating structure like marionettes hanging down
from cascading surrounding fibrous structures that connect them
all together as meaning is negotiated culturally, historically,
socially, internally - all to get past a very strange issue
humanity suffers from: Private minds. How do you know what I'm
thinking? How do you know what I'm feeling? How can you convey
what you're thinking? How do you convey what you're feeling?
What about those things beyond thinking and feeling? SO much
human trouble over something that should be so simple. ==
