Creating a Picture

[Mole]

Here we are creating a picture, and each one of us is a pixel.

Because we only focus on each individual pixel through mbti, we can't see the picture we are creating, pixel by pixel each time we post. We can imagine each post is a brush stroke. Or we might imagine we are putting together a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, and each one of us is a piece.

To start to see the picture we are creating, we don't have to agree on what the picture is, all we need to do is to let the picture reveal itself. And we note we are not in control of the picture, the picture comes as a revelation.

Naturally this will be resisted by those invested in themselves as individuals, but come as a relief for those in touch with their deeper selves, and they may even see themselves reflected in the picture as in a mirror.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Naturally this will be resisted by those invested in themselves as individuals, but come as a relief for those in touch with their deeper selves, and they may even see themselves reflected in the picture as in a mirror.

How do you conceive of the deeper self?

 

[Mole]

How do you conceive of the deeper self?

I dont conceive of a deeper self, I experience my deeper self.

 

[1487610420]

u can't pixel me, I'm analog

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I dont conceive of a deeper self, I experience my deeper self.

Very well. How do you experience your deeper self?

 

[Mole]

Very well. How do you experience your deeper self?

I let go of control while remaining fully conscious.

We achieve full control by about 22 years of age. And it is only then we.can give up control - we can't give up what we haven't yet achieved.

In giving up control we naturally feel fear as we are undefended and vulnerable.

 

[Typh0n]

Very well. How do you experience your deeper self?

How you describe an experience fully without losing something when it is put into verbal form?

 

[Mole]

How you describe an experience fully without losing something when it is put into verbal form?

There are two aspects: the experience and talking about it.

Talking about it can take us away from the experience or direct us back to the. experience.

And the two aspects are different.

 

[Obfuscate]

Pointing at Pixels

Some are made of metals.
Some are made of clay.
Some are made of petals.
Watch them blow away.
Distance paints a picture.
Resistance meets a frame.
The pixels have their pixels;
The observer has the same.
You can watch them intermingle
Or (turning inward) intermixed.
Colors intertwined, not a one is single.
No man an island, no woman individual.
Each to the other, another is affixed.
No part can say "I stand alone."
'Tis hard to see the structure; stone buries stone.
Each pixel holds the other: mother, child, crone.
Your brother is my brother, every soul a loan.
The picture in the distance echoes my own.
Concentric ring, spiral, circle, cone...
Heart is heart. Bone is bone.

 

[Mole]

Pointing at Pixels Some are made of metals. Some are made of clay. Some are made of petals. Watch them blow away. Distance paints a picture. Resistance meets a frame. The pixels have their pixels; The observer has the same. You can watch them intermingle Or (turning inward) intermixed. Colors intertwined, not a one is single. No man an island, no woman individual. Each to the other, another is affixed. No part can say "I stand alone." 'Tis hard to see the structure; stone buries stone. Each pixel holds the other: mother, child, crone. Your brother is my brother, every soul a loan. The picture in the distance echoes my own. Concentric ring, spiral, circle, cone... Heart is heart. Bone is bone.

What a lovely pixel you are, and what a lovely poem!

 

[Cellmold]

This puts me in mind of a patient Oliver Sacks writes about in his book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" concerning a lady, Mrs B, who turned out to have a cerebral tumour affecting the orbitofrontal aspects of both frontal lobes:

"When I saw her, she seemed high-spirited, volatile - 'a riot' (the nurses called her) - full of quips and cracks, often clever and funny.

'Yes, Father' she said to me on one occasion.

'Yes, Sister' on another.

'Yes, Doctor' on a third.

She seemed to use the terms interchangeably.

'What am I?' I asked, stung, after a while.

'I see your face, your beard' she said, 'I think of an archimandrite priest. I see your white uniform - I think of the Sisters. I see your stethoscope - I think of a doctor.'

'You don't look at all of me?'

'No, I don't look at all of you.'

'You realise the difference between a father, a sister, a doctor?'

'I know the difference, but it means nothing to me. Father, sister, doctor - what's the big deal?'

In effect this demonstrates a stark difference between 'knowing' and 'experiencing' the world. One can know, in the abstract, what something is denoted to be (and language at it's most literal is only about finding denotation; the reduction of reality to what can be defined over what can be experienced) but to understand involves experience, an engagement with the world that is about motion & flow in relation to (but not necessarily opposition to) something static and timeless.

Of course, language has it's own flow and ebbs, which change over time. But it's interesting that the damage the tumour has caused to Mrs B's frontal lobes reduced her phenomenology to that of the denotive, to know what a doctor, a sister & a father is, knowing the difference, but not caring about that actual difference in the experienced manner.

This could also be extended to how one deals with individuals. For people suffering from prosopagnosia, faces are impossible to recognise, the understanding of the whole is stripped and replaced with fragmentation. But I don't believe that this is only experienced by those suffering a neurological impairment.

I think that certain kinds of thinking and stresses can produce a similar fragmenting, albeit on a much less intense scale, where the picture is not whole and we reduce one another to composite characteristics or ideologies that can aggravate or are dismissed, or perhaps even attacked.

Hence the need for a necessary distance in perception in concerning the world. If we are too close we cannot conceive a whole and miss a great deal that would otherwise engage us, all the while biting at (what appear to be) the forces that threaten us. At the same time, being too far removes experience as a factor in comprehension and this leaves us detached and distant from concerns, at least until they directly affect us.

A very simple (due to the complexities of real individuals) but effective comparison might be between the extremes of an out of touch academic and the average stressed-out working person.

I can't say I've found any balance or secret solution to such a paradox in human experience, but I certainly appreciate the struggle to understand and apprehend it.