4 wnt. Enter Life Analysis through Language

These might be some our most important word pictures. Then some day I may try to tie them all together.

We operate life out of a thought premise. Some may say "I operate out of truth". Some others call it a belief. But I try not to use that “B” word. It seems too fixed. A "belief" is masquerading as the "Truth". Actually, these premises are not fixed at all. So, we are going to start calling your premise a "verbal context", and the word "belief" gets thrown out.

The image of "context" may be sort of like a cloud in which the subject argument resides. But "a container" has a sharper image that suits our purpose. It has limits, they're the sides of the container. (The connotations of all these words are so important). So, we'll change verbal context into verbal container. It is these verbal containers’ limitations that we want to investigate, it's the sides of the container.

The apparent limitations to our doing are our access points. Our most potent question is: ARE THEY REAL? - Where we see that they might be of a flimsy construct is where we are going to work first. Later we may find that many more are just a construct. If we do, we are finding more and more places where we can expand and broaden our verbal container, and push back our limitations. I am surely not saying that we can get rid of verbal containers. Verbal containers are a critical component of our ability to do things.

By "A Construct" I mean that some limitations are not existential. (They might even have an existential component, like the people around you are doing "this" today. But that is not the full context.) Let's just focus on the ones most obvious to us at first.

Not existential, or not real means that these limitations are actually built with beliefs or abstract definitions that don't much correspond to the greater whole. They're not totally real or true. They are just another verbal container, all of which ring-fence our main life playing field, (fence us in). "Playing field" is a metaphor for our assumed range of possible actions. It is true that with these premises, we cannot go outside this fence. It is useless to study "fence climbing", or try harder. We must rebuild our premises.

1. I am not saying I know humanity's purpose for creating these limitations, most likely it's through unawareness. Or we could stick a label on it: that somehow it feels better to be in a confined space, if it is felt that the confined space is well known, and is therefore somewhat safe? (It's our fortress.)

But that label is optional. The label is just another part of thinking that we know our limited playground, same-same as what we are trying to investigate. Please know that we do-not-know our life playground. Especially if we want to expand it or venture outside the fence. It's a verbal fence remember. If there are no words, there is no awareness. Where language drops, that's the edge of our universe, and where we cannot act. Some might want to refute that, saying that we can actually bump into a reality that we weren't previously talking about. So maybe it is there? I don't have to refute or deny anything. Did it happen today? If not, let's leave that one until later. Let's stay focused on those small things that we can implement, and don't get caught up in global deviations or remote scenarios.

2. If you want a different outcome, a different solution, I believe that you have to start from a different premise. The old premise gives the old results. Where is this new premise located. I think it must be lower down, closer to the axioms of life. Lower down is where we don't know much about it. It may be the edge of our "knowing". Unknowing is uncomfortable and may be frightening or fraught with emotion. So, we usually resist exploring there. Our excuse is that it is a waste of time, "everyone already agrees about that". This sticks us in the familiar, and our living experience is static and old. Maybe we like it that way, it is comforting. The measure of how much we like it is how much we complain about it.

Others might say that no, my methodology (old premise) is correct, you just haven't been applying it with rigor or done correctly. They claim that you can get something new with an old premise. Just do it right and don't give up. Gee, haven't we been butting our head against that old premise for long enough now, to learn some little new thing?

Are there old premises that are valid? Well, there are scriptures that are 1000's of years old. Some people swear by them and try to make them real in their lives and even try to fulfill ancient prophecies. Some of it might certainly have value. Are the prophecies going to happen anyway as an “act of God” or source or destiny, or is it just the true-believers that attempt to make them come true in the present? Some of these prophecies are very dangerous. Like if you are trying to make the “rapture” (the end-time event), come true, watch out!

3. So, we enter into this discussion. I'll call it a "Conversation for Possibilities". At first an idea is presented. Where do we go, up or down. That means do we take the argument and expand upon it? Or do we dig into the assumed presumptions and see if they are rock solid? If they are flimsy then we need to dig deeper and see if we can't get on a firm basis. I used the word axioms, but it is just simple. Let's just find and talk from what everybody knows experientially. That means no (or limited) jargon that is used by specialists. Or if we can coin some simplified word pictures, we will have to define them well. I believe that we will know if we are adding complications to the issue and making it further out of reach. Or are we simplifying, stripping away the unnecessary baggage? If we don't know about these things, we don't have to try to disprove them. Instead, we look to see if they work in our lives, maybe so often that they are definitely useful. Whether they work 100% or less of the times, or whether we can find some exceptions loses importance.

4. Human life is made up of many seeming linkages. I say seeming because our scientific method is to divide things up into their components. It has proven useful for science, even if it may not be totally true. Maybe a silly metaphor; but like studying a coin and looking at all the properties of heads, and then another group is studying all the properties of tails. Sure, heads and tails are linked, but are heads the cause of tails or tails the cause of heads?? Should we discuss the chicken and the egg? Oh, by golly that is one thing! It is not sequential, even though we can describe each component with a different word, they come together as a package.

Like with a human, we have thoughts and a body and emotions. Are these separate phenomena? Well what causes what, do thoughts cause emotions or do emotions cause thoughts, and which of them cause bodily contractions or illness? Or is it all germs coming from the outside causing illness? We can point to myriad times where these seeming linkages operate in both directions. In fact, life is a matrix of perhaps 100's of connections, where every node pushes on every other node. They all must “jiggle” together. Are they all arising together as one thing? What could that mean? Where do we enter into the network then, if we want to develop a plan of action?

I say that the most convenient place is to enter the matrix is through language.

What are we saying to ourselves and others? "Self-talk" is a good label. Surely our action (our doing) follows our saying, and our life circumstances are a product of our doing. If we have been saying the same thing for all of our lives, then we are doing what we did yesterday and we are producing tomorrow's circumstances precisely with the same conflicts and unknowns as we faced yesterday and even last year. So, then we are moved to define those conundrums as a fact of nature, and as the properties of humanity.

Some may say that it is all conditioning and it comes from the unconscious. That doesn't make it a fact of nature. The fact is beliefs, of which many are unconscious, and inherited or adopted, are there. Please take the most practical step, I define all beliefs as "definitions". Definitions are something that you do (and then can undo, modify or redo). This rethinking of beliefs as definitions, puts the power in your ballpark. Just become aware of them and then investigate what is their effect on your life. Both in our personal lives and in the international situation. Those with power, those making life and death decisions on the world stage, are stuck in last century's thinking.

But let's just talk about our own personal lives before attempting to save the world. Everything that I say or do is designed to empower me and any others I have contact with.

Thanks

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