Hello,
The following is a short or relatively short (hopefully, I tend to ramble on sometimes please bear with me) thesis on the potential power of
re-framing context and meaning (and significance) and in the process, discovering or making available for consideration, a new domain of possibility
capable of altering one's own state of mind and being by fundamentally altering the context or lens through which we see ourselves, others and the
world around us, and within us. It is both within and without.
When we really think about it, I think most people would probably agree that our human experience and our psychological and spiritual condition (there
being little if no distinction between the two), is defined by information and interpretation and a whole host of impressions and evaluations and
emotional states as seen/perceived through our reality filter. In other words, for the human being, meaning and context is decisive (which could be
potentially humorous if not ironic if we say had it all wrong to begin with..).
It shapes our reality, the meaning and context and significance that we assign to every little thing; it determines how we feel and our whole outlook
and our entire fundamental paradigm and worldview. It's who we are, or were (if at some level we were operating from a faulty context and meaning or
were in some way out of alignment with the way things really are and thus in a state of conflict and anxiety even anguish and despair and I've shed
more than a few tears in my time let me tell you!).
Some philosophers say that life itself has no intrinsic meaning except that which we assign to it. This leads to the same conclusion but at an even
more decisive level (we define our reality), but, once recognized, also retaining a great deal of latitude or flexibility in how we experience and
react to our outer and our inner world, if it's nothing but a projection laid upon a meaningless absurdity because we can't help ourselves as meaning
making machines. Others, like myself, purport that by the very fact of life's occurrence and our place in it (even if it's true meaning and
significance is obscure) is
itself, meaningful and significant simply because we are present, even if only to play the
role of
subjective observer and assign whatever meaning and significance to it that we may choose
In fact, before we consider some possible re-frames of the meaning and context by which we might see ourselves and our place in the world (universe),
with new eyes, it's worth stopping and noting here that the very act of stepping back to make any of these type of distinctions and observations, is
itself a decisive, contextual reframe that allows a larger field of potential awareness to come into play, now to observe the subjective
observer observing the observer observing ad infinitum, including, from this loftier, bird's eye view, his/her own reality filter and apriori biases,
judgements, impressions, and evaluations that have made up one's own experience to date including one's own personality and all interactions with
people, places, things, and at last, the self.
Were we being too small minded or judgemental, even in our own valuation of ourselves and who we took ourselves to be? That must be the case if we
don't really know precisely who and what we REALLY are..
If we can just stop for a minute and try to take an honest inventory about how we're been operating based on some sort of continuous "activity" of
mind and emotional experience from moment to moment, then, in the recognition that a re-frame might even be in order, at least for some of us (who may
be in conflict with people, places or things, or with one's own self, in some way or another) - in our open-mindedness and willingness and receptivity
to another potential way of seeing and of being or a whole new meaning and context (that is decisive) - EPIPHANY!
yet knowingly blind to what it might be or look like, as the domain of an unknown or what was outside of our comfort zone (in the end it's not
comfortable, at all), or outside of our "box" of self-imprisoned subjective judgementalism - the light of truth and life shines like new sight to the
blind man (you and me). The blind must know he is blind and ask, to see, to see the light of the truth that sets him free. The hungry or thirsty for
what's right and true must be hungry or thirsty. One must seek to find that authentic once and for all time, truth, that sets us free.
In the very act of seeking it out, amid the potential joke that we might have had it all wrong, we find it; and when we knock, the door is opened to
us (with a welcoming smile).
So that's the first contextual re-frame; of recognizing (re-cognizing) that we were worry warts because we were nothing but a meaning-making machine,
unaware of any other possible way of being or seeing, locked up in a box of our own making as a wholly subjective observer who judges and makes too
much out of nothing or something out of all the wrong things..
Once that distinction is made, then a new one becomes possible.
There is the truth that sets us free, in the recognition that who and what we took ourselves to be was what might be thought of, in hindsight as our
inauthentic self and thus isn't really who and what we
really are (even if still an unknown or a mystery), but was little more than subjective
"box" who's framing and context decisively self-imprisoned us, but, in the re-cognition of the nature of the predicament, and voila, the box is gone,
even if in the trade off, the new field of awareness contains a very high degree of uncertainty in the knowing of not knowing.
Mirth and charm here arises, when we can no longer take ourselves seriously any more.
This is a different type of knowledge, as the knowledge of experience in the humor of true understanding.
Funny, I was going to make this thread all about a certain reframe that I had in mind as a fundamental shift in meaning and context that would be
decisive and from which a new possible experience and way of being and relating would follow automatically, and there's still time to do that, and it
would be nice to hear about other people's ideas in this regard.
What's more important is that people really get this idea though about the possibility of a fundamental shift in meaning and context that's decisive
arising from a new, honest consideration of new paradigms. What are they, do you think?
edit on 29-8-2016 by AnkhMorpork because: (no reason given)