586. 

Principles

Systems, patterns, and understanding

Top down thinking

Most thought processes, disciplines, scientific research, scholarship, approach the search for truth as building a base working upwards to a pinnacle where truth becomes known.  This never works out fully.  One is always left out on a tangent.

The only approach that does work is from the top down.  You start with the biggest and most encompassing conclusion and work your way down to the particulars.

How does one know if one has the right conclusion?  I suspect that a prerequisite for grasping top down thinking is to have already reached the right conclusion.  Put another way, only one conclusion will fit.  A wrong conclusion should not fit.

If a particular thought, concept, or fact can't be placed anywhere, wait.  In time a place will be found for it, even if other particulars have to be rearranged.
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473.  Past

Principles

Thinking


Men and logic

Men are basically logical machines; at least that is their natural inclination.  They are “yes, no” machines, following or giving commands.  They logically align themselves with a goal, a means to get there, and apply effort.  Their process is step by step.  Logic and reason are the tools.  The negative to using logic and reason is they often end up overly refined and miss the big picture.  This explains why some men who followed the straight and narrow suddenly take a wild stab in an unknown direction.  When logic disappoints they dive into chance.

When we see an ant scurrying it seems to see in just two dimensions; width and length.  We can easily see where it is going from our vantage point of height.  We see where it's headed, where it came from, and what's around it. The ant doesn't.  The same is true for a man.  He operates within a certain dimension which does not envision the entire picture.

Women and the whole picture

Women often see the whole picture.  Perhaps because of child/birth which puts them in a dependent position, they are very conscious of their security and safety.  As such, they are less myopic and linear in their vision of the environment.  It is less a case of going from point A to point B and more of viewing the whole picture and seeing where they fit.  They have a bigger scope than men, but have more trouble working through a problem from beginning to end.  Of course there are overlapping areas but these natural differences should be noted.  Seeing more perspectives and angles raises more questions and doubts.

It's as if men operate in two dimensions where as women see the entire picture from a third dimension.  However, it could be said because they see from outside of the two dimensions they are less able to function within the confines of those two dimensions.  Seeing doesn't always equate to action.

363.


Principles



Systems and understanding

Cones

Since a child I've always seen reality as shapes.  The forces and thrusts of nature were shaped into cones and spheres and rectangles and triangles and various combinations.  For me only later came the words to describe them.

It seems to me in life a cone (as in ice cream cone) is the shape that describes the path of a pursuit, a discipline,  and a direction.   If the spherical base is wide and broad enough and includes enough of the person's being there is a natural progression from the broad to the refined.  The base of the  cone covers what you have taken in and is eventually narrowed and honed into the peak aperture at the top of the cone.  From there your best comes forth.

Fortunate is the person unto whom this works for.  Less fortunate are the many who find their base was not wide enough and therefore their creation not complete enough.  If their base did not include enough experience, learning, observation and just life, the end result at the top of your cone will be too narrow. At one point an idea might have made a lot of sense, but if it did not take into account enough of the soil from which you were formed, it might be deficient.

The cone that you are occupied with  then starts to die a slow death while the rest of you cries out for more.  In your narrowness part of you was neglected and now yearns for attention and inclusion.  It can feel as if you are starting from scratch, seeing everything as if for the first time. 

I recall an older Israeli lady neighbor who earlier in her life had some success as a minimalist type artist.  Although not my favorite genre there was discipline and structure in her simple shapes.  They were almost a hard edged version of Rothko if one is familiar with his work.  They held together.  At one point she was represented by an established New York gallery.   Then, after a time, we never talked about art and she didn't seem to be doing it anymore. Instead I would find her at the pool reading a mystery novel or some popular novel by a popular author.  While her talk was still forceful (she was Israeli) her thinking wandered and she seemed a little scattered and lost.  When I saw her walking her face had a child like fear written across it.

I think her cone had become too small. Her precise activity had become too exclusive. The rest of her life cried out to her and she could not contain herself anymore. Her funnel, her cone had become too narrow and internally she was crying for help, any help, even help from mystery or drama novels. Their authors' writings served as food for the neglected parts of herself. Her existence became a paradox that no longer provided certainty. The truth she thought she had was not big enough. All this happened at an advanced age. 

With some this is how it is. Their cones were too small, their output too narrow and what remained was unattached pieces of themselves still craving for their fulfillment. All one can do is slowly and painfully accept this state of affairs and not fight it and even leave room for sadness and joyful sadness. One is now again like a child feeling and touching their way through the world as if for the first time.

358.


Principles

Systems and understanding  

Two places at once

You can't be in two places at once.  This causes trouble in life. Why?  To experience anything fully, an idea, a process, a skill, a truth, one has to digest it fully or be digested by it.  Your entire configuration has to let in the influence and it has to go through your whole system.  It is as if you are entering a tunnel.  There is a lot outside the tunnel but when you are in the tunnel that is your whole world until you reach the other side.  You can try to be detached or remember what is outside but then you are not fully engaged with the journey of navigating that tunnel.  All your senses have to be where you are at to reach the other side.

This causes problems mentally and spiritually and philosophically.  It is what causes pain in life.  If the tunnel is leading you in the wrong direction you won't know that until you emerge from it.  Or it might lead you in a partially correct direction.  Once you leave it, and the outside is again in view, you regain a wider perspective.  The tunnel  had to be gone through to move onwards. To stay where you were wasn't complete.  It felt wrong.  Your overall perspective was stagnant and slightly off.  So you had to move onwards, through the tunnel.  More was needed.  But while seeking this more, what you had you had to let go of.

So in a sense there were two places.  The first is your overall perspective, knowing, understanding which felt incomplete.  The pain you experienced was evidence of this.  The second is the avenue, the tunnel you journeyed through for a time.  You felt vulnerable and lost in it.  You were pulled there, involved there, had to walk through it, but it also was painful.  Basically you could not be in these two places at once.  Both were needed, but both could not exist at once in your mind and spirit.  Hence there was separation.  And this is part of our dilemma.  Seeing this, and accepting it can be helpful.  We become less critical of ourselves and more understanding of ourselves as we inch towards what is bigger.

336.

Principles

Systems, patterns, and understanding

Spheres and the Torah  

I suppose as you live you grow towards certain understandings and let go of others.    It doesn't necessarily change what you do but your consciousness is not quite the same. 

When young my drawing was all over the place. Different influences pulled me this way and that.  The core to myself got lost somewhere and there was just not enough time for just doing it.  It was a scattered and stressed environment I felt.  Still, I stumbled along and somehow some things got done.  Recently I ran across a lady who taught a very simple principle in art.  Draw a sphere from your mind as well as you can.  It would be done theoretically.  One was to imagine a single light source  and then draw a circle and put values in.  There would be a highlight, then light, then a transition tone into the shadow, and within the shadow on the bottom reflected light.  On the surface would be a cast shadow.  This would be like Plato's ideal form, as perfect as one could imagine it.  How freeing to able to realize and do this.

Usually I drew by observation and copying tones and values and shapes.  I was dependent on what I saw and knew.  In this exercise you are drawing the perfect form in the perfect light as conceived perfectly in your inner knowing.  This is so core and at the bottom of everything.  All shapes and forms and lighting are merely variations of the imaginary sphere.  Your perfect standard has been tapped.  It doesn't get more basic and fundamental than this.

Unrelated, I heard a tape from a Kabbalah rabbi who said the Torah is a complete instruction guide for living  life.  He went on to state it goes back 3300 years.  In the comment section a lady, who had been a Christian but then converted to Judaism, commented that Judaism was a complete system.  Both comments resonated with me and clarified what I suspected.

I've always sought to understand the nature of how things work. One moves in all directions on this.  One refines certain categories and then one has to build a whole new paradigm outside of the categories.  Layer upon layer is built, and previous categories have to be remembered as well as built upon.  Then one assesses the truth and non truth of each.  You then have to absorb and practice what you've learned and seen.  Experience plus observation is your laboratory.  Doing this as an individual, however,  can become daunting as one takes in new information and well as new realizations.  Living by realization is good but it also places a lot of responsibility onto the individual.  'It's all on you, so to speak.'  Even remembering what you've learned is not always easy.  And many ways of thought are not always compatible.  For instance being in the now contradicts learning from history.

I've suspected all along that everything I've ever come up with was somehow in the Torah and its commentary directly or indirectly.  How can one mind realize and maintain the accumulation of collective minds over 3300 years that was recorded and saved.  If I was starting a system to learn, record, and realize all the wisdom of the world, and honor the past,  I couldn't really design a better system.    Even concepts that seem to contradict its premises are discussed somewhere in the texts and considered.  For instance, in Christian fundamentalism it is claimed Jesus brought grace to the world, superior to the merit system the Jewish people seemed to follow.  But yet, in the Torah, didn't David often admit how helpless he felt and that he needed God to help him because he couldn't do it on his own?  No merit system there, just mercy. 

All the directions I've looked into and the different systems,  Hindu yoga and mysticism, zen, meditation, Christian salvation, pagan cycles, Greek philosophy, the American Indian spirit world, all are there in some form.  Why?  Because its old and a continuous effort and people over time needed and went through everything.  True, the Jewish story has a certain a certain thrust and purpose, but hidden in the various corners and cracks of the Torah are all manner of thought.  As one considers all things it is definitely part of the whole, at the very least a level of seeing things that is part of the many levels one needs to balance it all out.

So appreciation of two truths happened to me recently.  Will they stand forever?  I don't know, but they were notched into me in some form and I'll nod and then continue to move through life as I steer and get steered.

 
 48.

Principles

Thinking

Knowing too much
 
Sometimes it is not good to know too much. Opposites can cancel each other out.  A certain blindness is needed in life to progress.  Things get done this way.  Moving step upon step one can build.  I remember in high school my class having read the authors Sartre and Camus. Their message, perhaps oversimplified, seemed to say there is ‘nothing.’ If so why do anything?  Why live?  An apathetic lethargy was cast upon the class.

Even if the message was correct, it did damage to us.  It killed the building process. At times even a false premise is better than no premise. It can be built upon.  It is  a foundation.  One can say how can we build anything on the earth if its core is fire? But that is looking too deeply.  We live on the surface and sometimes the surface is enough. There are rocks and soil and grass to lay structures upon.  Dealing with nothingness will come in due time while its antidote, that which is truly something, lies in wait for us.

40. Past

Approach to Writing

Note:  This is # 6 of a list of approaches and things I keep in mind when writing.  There is more than one list.

Scholar versus Primitive 

I have read my share of scholarly works.  They are insightful and defined.  They take reason as far as possible, and details are not overlooked. Logic and reason are used with care. They lead one in a direction that hones down a problem and clarifies definition. 
Scholarship can be the most precise tool man employs in dealing with and accumulating data.  However, inherent in its precision is its limited scope and ability to see the whole.
 
Primitive thinkers (preachers, seers, prophets, thinkers) are not held back by academic training and the scientific process.  They can glean what they need from scholarship but can also rely on their insights and intuitions.  Hence they can take stabs at seeing the entire picture and are not  restrained by logic and reason.
 
Often they can be wrong.  Part of their thinking is based on fear, or myth, or superstition, but there are grains of truth interspersed amid the nonsense. So they are not to be dismissed.  We just have to listen and discern what hits a true note or not.  
  
Both the scholar and the primitive thinker are not complete, but neither should be discounted.