Stuck in our Abstractions

Our minds can seem more or less real depending on how much attention we give them.

Have you ever had someone tell you to touch a texture to get out of your head? That is because the moment the skin of your finger touches the texture and your nerves start relaying information to your brain to be interpreted, momentarily something in you realises that there is another reality out there. A reality that comes before the interpretation. A reality that already exists and that your skin can bump up against. A reality that does not depend on nerve impulses or the brain's interpretation to exist as it does in that moment.

You may take in this reality, the texture you touch, and integrate it into your mind map. You can play with the thoughts, images, sensations and meanings that arise the moment the nerve impulse travels to your brain to be matched and compared to what is already there. You can stretch your awareness to explore all the corners of your experience, within your mental map, your body and beyond. This is something nobody else will ever experience in the same way. Only you know the kaleidoscope of your inner world.

Because this inner world is so familiar and close to us, we sometimes forget that it is only a small part of the space our bodies inhabit.

Sitting outside in the sun with our eyes closed the characters in our mind’s eye might seem large and alive, until it starts raining and we feel the reality of water on our skin. We may leave our mind video behind or add the rain as another layer of experience.

Having abstract thought and imagination is a beautiful and sometimes scary thing. There is power there. Living only in this mental world though, looking to integrate the outer reality into our mental map, without letting ourselves be integrated into the larger moving structure which extends beyond us, can get us caught in our abstractions. Like molecules of water that are organised into a wave, we constantly have forces moving us. We can tell stories about those forces, but they move according to their own laws.