Today, I went to class, worked, went to a meeting, came home, played Dance Central until my limbs fell off, had dinner with the fam, and then Madison came over so we could plan a murder mystery party we are hosting soon (I'll definitely tell you more about it later). Then...we talked from like 10:30 to 2:30 at night about a million things about how life works and how beautiful it is to be alive. I love chats like that! But my head is whirling around with scads of thoughts about the universe...and I don't want to overwhelm anyone with my brain vomit, so I shall try to talk only about something simple that I am thinking about.
It has been on my mind a lot lately the contrasts between the material and the immaterial. Or, for instance, concrete aspects of our physical world, and non-concrete material. Balls and clocks and couches and people are concrete things, while oxygen and taste and heat and music and non-concrete experiences. They seem to serve two different purposes in our assimilation of the world around us. Sounds and words and aromas and colors seem to have a great ability to enlighten us...to help us to think in a way we have not thought before. When ideas are expressed through non-concrete mediums, we become new and different from it. The concrete parts of the world seem, rather, to give validity to those ideas. We verify our thoughts and perspectives by actually witnessing and interacting with those things that prove its existence. It is when things physical happen that we can affirm ideas and fix them in our brains.
So I think it is with actual thinking: There are two categories of ideas, concrete, and abstract. It can be hard, I think, to figure out which kind of thinking is better. For some, thinking in very concrete ways is most natural. They keep basic patterns of thought where this leads to that and that leads to this. They can be confronted with a situation and recall a very basic, fundamental, and wide-sweeping rule about the universe that helps them react quickly and appropriately in a situation. They work well when things are proved to them matter-of-fact-ly in a way that can be easily followed and grasped. Then there are abstract thinkers. They flourish when given questions that cause them to doubt their current perception of the universe. They like to connect any and all subjects together to find fun connections between them. Their ideas are more pliable and their rules of the universe more like theories and guidelines. Their brain is more of a web or cloud of spontaneous thought and deep ponderings all happening at once. A lot of times, I think that we try to decide which way is more practical, or more right, and strive to push ourselves to that way of thinking if we aren't already there. But I think you really need a good balance of both! Just as the physical world we live in is a constant concrete and non-concrete experience, our thinking should be firmly concrete and abstract every day. This way, your abstract thoughts can help you to form ideas and mentalities and goals and connections, and your concrete thinking (which can even be experimental...just try to set a particular thought into a concrete rule in your head...if it doesn't work, pulverize it and pick something else to be concrete!) can help to validate those thoughts. We each have good experience in one or the other...find a friend that thinks the other way. Rub off on each other!
I think one of the reasons that all this seems to be so influential and pertinent to us is because we are dual beings. We are encased in a physical body and a spiritual body! It is important that both of them need to be fed, can be injured, can become fatigued, can grow and mature, they each have eyes and ears and senses...both of those are always happening at once, and they are quite different from each other!
I feel like I'm not talking about myself...I'm just talking...so I'll stop now. But I (I think I'm looking for the word dare?) encourage you to pay attention to what you are doing to and with BOTH of your bodies...it's quite intriguing.
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