Methodical Musings

So in an effort to switch the focus of my blog, I want to try something a little different. I want to talk not about religion or Christianity, but about thinking.

We often learn how to think (reason), but rarely do we learn how we think.

How do our emotions influence our thoughts and vice versa? How do conversations with ourselves or between us and another person flow? Basically: how do concepts move and change in our minds?

So I’m hoping to write a series of tantalizing posts that include my… of all things… thoughts on this subject. Enjoy this first one! I’m hoping this will give some of you a mind trip!

~

When I was younger, I remember trying this thought exercise:

Imagine nothing. Try it. Imagine a vast… oh wait… oops. You can’t have “vastness” because that assumes space exists and if space exists then you certainly are not imagining nothing. Ok, imagine an infinitely small… oops, you can’t do that either because imagining “small” requires that you conceptually visualize it against a large area of space. Okay, then imagine something that does not exist without imagining anything else in the background against which to compare its existence.

You see the problem? I, at least, can’t think of nothing because I’m always thinking of it in comparison to something else that exists in space / time.

Imagine no time. I’m not saying imagine eternity, I’m saying imagine no time at all. In other words, conceptualize an utter lack of sequence of events. Can you do it?

Some of us will just imagine a frozen world. But if time does not exist, what is there to freeze? A frozen world cannot exist unless time does.

For me, I just stop thinking for a moment – nothing happens – and voila! that is lack of time. But immediately my thoughts move on and I try to imagine more lack of time. But here I catch myself running afoul: since by trying to make my concept of lack of time reach a point where it lacks even less time, I am changing the concept itself and therefore imagining time.

Now, here is where things get even trickier!

Imagine no time and space. No dimensions. Nothingness, but nothingness that cannot be defined with comparative space or time words like “small”, “large”, “heavy”, “light”, “tiny”, etc.

And now,  something else to whet those neurons:

Existence is an impossible concept in reality. Said another way, you cannot have something “not exist” except in our minds alone. When someone says something does “not exist”, what they mean is that the thing only exists as a concept in our imagination.

Existence itself is a concept that only exists in our imagination.

Haha, like that? A self-proving sentence.

Leo, I hope you like this… since you will easily see the reference to the EOC’s concept of God.

Ultimately, these thoughts exercises helped me to see that we are prisoners of all that is: of the “natural” world so to speak. If we cannot imagine another realm or dimension (call it spiritual, if you will) without imagining it having properties of our daily life, then could it be that any other realm we could possibly visualize only exists in our mind? After all, any spiritual or interdimensional realm we imagine suddenly begins to pop up with properties of space and time…

For all you theologians: if God, all of our thoughts are idolatrous.

- Josh

Edit: Bizarrely, after writing this I feel like things are a lot more real. I don’t even know if that makes sense, but somehow realizing that things are just what they are and realizing nothingness is just a concept in my mind makes me feel so much more alive.