i've been wanting to reply to this for a while - i think it touches on so many things, i wanted to throw my 2 cents in ...
WWW, Lemniscate - i read the link posted to the Mobius strip thread - interesting read - and related to what we're talking about ...
WWW - when i said that it's not worth thinking about inifinite - or what lies beyond the periphery of thought because thought can't reach it - i didn't mean that it's not worth examining, or investigating - i meant that i don't think thought - thinking - can take us beyond the periphery. that's what i've gathered from my own investigating - so now i want to explain why i think thought itself, is the limitting factor.
Lemniscate wrote:If we're able to expand a point to a dimensional circle, that circle is dimensional only because it has an inner part AND an outer part,
right
Lemniscate wrote:hence we can conceive of that which is beyond the boundary.
i think it is possible to have a relationship with what lies beyond the boundary - to be in contact, in communion with it - although that's a purely speculative statement that i'm making - because i don't have contact with that thing beyond the boundary of thought - (as far as i'm consciously aware of, anyways - and i want to get into the subject of conscious/subconscious later)
but like i said, what i'm saying is that i see thought as being limitted - as being the factor which stops us from reaching beyond the periphery - whether that periphery is of a circle of sphere or whatever. that's what i want to expand on ... why i think thought is limited.
to say that we can conceive of that which is beyond the boundary - that's just it - it's just our own conception, isn't it ?
Lemniscate wrote:We are, in fact, both part of the inside and outside of the circle, because we can "imagine" it.
i agree that we're part of the inside - but what i'm saying is that to be part of the outside, to be in contact with it - maybe we need to examine the inside care-fully (i think the meaning of that word - the thing behind the word, gets lost to so many of us - how often do we give our total energy, our whole being, to doing something?) ...
you say, we are part of both sides because we can imagine it - but that our perception is limitted because of our minds' desire to do so ... i say, just because my mind can image something - does that make it real ? how can thought imagine infiniti, how can thought conceive something which is beyond itself ?
so i have to explain why i think infiniti is beyond thought, and why thought is limited.
look at fear. what is the root of fear ? are the root of all fears the same thing ? this is a serious question. there's physical fears, and psychological fears. Lots and lots of different types of fear. But maybe we have to be careful when we're talking about fear - wanting to preserve your life, to not put it in danger - like for example - there's a guy outside with a gun and you want to run away - that's not fear - that's you wanting to preserve your life ... but we do have fears ... some people have a fear of their spouse - lol - sounds funny, but it's true. i know about this situation in my own family. some people experience something bad - like maybe they have a car accident - and develop a fear of driving cars because of their bad memory and experience - (my dad doesn't drive 'cause he was in an accident when he was young) ... that kind of stuff ...
so back to the question - what is the root of ALL fears ? is it something common ? someone says - look - the root of it all is thought. Thought/Time.
what do i mean by time ? i mean psychological time - not chronological time.
so what's psychological time ? right now - there's this moment - which is a fact. It's real. But does tomorrow exist psychologically ? This is something worthwhile to look at carefully if it's never been considered or questioned before. I know it hit me hard when i thought about it saw what was there ... No - there's no such thing as tomorrow, psychologically - it's a thought - an idea - but it's not real.
If someone says - tomorrow I'll change, tomorrow I'll quit smoking, I'll be better, etc. - they are deceiving themselves. If you're aware of something that needs to be taken care of, a problem, a situation which needs to be dealt with - you'll do it as soon as you get the chance, right ? You will if you understand this thing about time - it's a way that our mind plays a trick on us - to say we'll look at it later, we'll deal with it later.
So I'm saying that thought and (psycholgical) time are related. They're part of the same complex. They are also limitting - they limit us in this way.
and we say inifnite is something limitess ...
What about love ? This is again, a hard topic for me to talk about. For me to come on here and say, I know what love is - that's a little bit rediculous, maybe. But I know what love isn't.
I know love doesn't have anything to do with possession. Love doesn't cling to someone, and demand love back from that person. I understand at least that much.
I know love doesn't compare one to another and says, you are better, I love you, and you are worst, off with you. I know love doesn't judge in this way. Yet I also understand loving myself, which means I probably won't mix with people who are abusive to themselves, and to others ...
I know love doesn't have anything to do with hate, with anger, with jealousy. I understand that.
But what happens if we happen to be jealous ? or happen to be angry ? If we find those things within ourselves in a given moment, in our relationship with someone - with something - with life, with the world ? It happens, doesn't it ?. It's happened to me - maybe it's happened to you. So how can i go beyond those things ? Does my desire to be good person - to say, I won't be jealous, or I won't be angry - does that change me, does that get rid of my anger or jealousy or whatever ?
Please - look at it for yourself and you'll see. To say that you can gradually change, by changing your thinking pattern, that you can change through time ... I'm not so sure at all if that's true. If I find myself jealous in a given moment in my relationship with someone - I recognize that feeling - that thing I call jealousy - and I don't like it - I want it to go away - I can move away from it - but it's still there. I can also bury it - but it's still there - it'll pop up again, one way or another. But what happens if I face it - if i look at it directly - without judgement - with condemning it or identifying with it? Without even naming it. Because what happens when I name something - I'm giving it continuance, right?
Someone said we all get bored with our 3D existence and want to move on. What happens if you face your boredom when it happens ? If you keep escaping it - it will always come back. But face it, sit with it when it comes up, and see what happens.
The same goes for pain - everything - all things that we experience, think, feel - maybe they're all gifts. Maybe they all lead to something else - but maybe they need to be faced in order to go to what lies beyond.
The point that's being stressed is learning to face yourself as you are - NOT imagining yourself as how you want to be. There is world of difference between the two.
There's still so much more that relates to this vast and open discussion.
I want to talk about images now. We tend to carry images of one another and or ourselves. We have experiences with other people, whether they're pleasant or not pleasant, and based on those experiences, we create and keep an image of someone - and the next time we meet that person - we're meeting them with that image from the past. Which means that our perception is distorted, right ?
and what about images we carry of ourselves ? Someone identifies him/herself with his/her job or his/her title or his/her religion or whatever and say, yes, I'm a healer, I'm a doctor, I'm the president and CEO, or I'm a Christian or a Wiccan or a Satanist or Hip-Hoppin G ... all that is the action of thought - thought separates (when i say thought, i'm including feeling in the what i call thought - it's my thought/feeling that thought & feeling go together) ... but back to identifying ourselves with an image - even though that image can change - what basis for truth does that image have ? An image is rather static, no ? That's what we think we are too, no ? We think we're something permanent. (I'm not saying we are or we're not) but we like the idea of permanence ... it's comforting ...
So let's say we have this image of ourselves, and we have an image of others, and so in our relation with each other - it's actually a relationship of one image with another image. Back to the question of love - how can there be any real contact between two people, any sort of real communion, if there's only a relationship between images ... ??????????
I know maybe I've veered a little off topic in this discussion - but these are some of the ways that I see thought as a limitting factor. This is why I think thought - something which limits us in so many ways - can have no relationship with something that has no limits.
... checking out the mirror of relationship ...