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So: a train of thought that I had this morning that I think is pretty interesting, with pictures https://t.co/NatrmnMrNh
Consider the scope of all your life's experiences up til this point. Your memories, the things you've seen and done, all that jazz. Picture it as a big ball of You Black is stuff you haven't done yet, Gray is the stuff you've felt so far https://t.co/hq7JsAi0DB
Where are you now? You, current-you, are here pictured in White This is essentially an "Activated Neurons" type of metaphor You make sense of the world by connecting my current experiences (white) to ones I've had before (gray) https://t.co/D379eLoEB3
It's likely that the thread is entirely continuous, where you are only cognizant of one part because you can feel it with another https://t.co/lvniX0Whys
With intense focus, you can pull all of your being into very closely examining a single point of your experience Your entire Attention, focused on one subject, and everything that immediately pertains to it Meditation can train this focus (samatha?) https://t.co/9l4TJlp7mw
Meditation techniques are very varied, but I think they all are about explicitly cultivating the experience you're currently having? Another way to do that is to Notice where the Boundaries of your experiences are https://t.co/nEKtEmXjE3
Once you can identify those boundaries, you are much more equipped to push past them, and explore novel-to-you spaces (vipassana?) https://t.co/EXxAdtImQv
Note: exploring beyond your boundaries is an uncomfortable experience, because a big part of your meta-experience up to this point has involved being grounded by things relating to each other Thread (it branches in directions if you're into that): https://t.co/E87qDjn8ZN
Being able to remain grounded is pretty important, but whether you can handle that boundary-pushing exercise safely or not, the experience is there now, and it's part of your collection https://t.co/zy3jZUSjIs
This means that the NEXT time you push out in that general direction you DO have a point of reference So now your new boundary-pushings can be related to the last time you did this You have more metaphors now, and can better poke around in the space https://t.co/Lr9NUsHehM
Do this enough and your bubble expands Fill in enough of the gaps, get enough experience here, and this is just a normal thing now Repeat until satisfied Though this also describes how we learn any new thing, so life will repeat it for you anyway https://t.co/lK3ucSxRag
So now that we have a grayscale picture of an idea, a fun trick we can do is to invert it, to get a sense of what the dual of the idea was What does THIS picture imply? https://t.co/Vz3Pq6eaj4
I think it's clearer if we direct our focus onto a dot, as before Here we are Everywhere Outside Ourselves, EXCEPT for that tiny black dot that we call "ME" Ultimately the being I call me is Ego talking If you can shrink the Ego to 0, there's nowhere that you aren't https://t.co/zJOSjQ4ZNi
What does the gray represent in this picture though? I'm not sure 🤷♀️ Possibly has something to do with all the experiences that I'm holding on to, to attachments Where Ego is a barrier erected between the Inner and Outer, building a shell for itself to live in https://t.co/aSZpKysXzI
