Micro-transformation: Seeing how meaning makes up a me
psychology · 2.5
What’s something you’re making sense of right now? Anything… for example “There’s music over there.” or “My mom wants me to be more involved with the family.”
OK here’s the practice: notice how the meaning not only requires a separate you (there and here are separate, mom and me are separate), it creates a separate you.
Eg: the distinction is a mental framework overlaid on a continuum of experiencing that doesn’t natively have these separations. Check it out if you’d like (right now, in your experience, not just conceptually): phenomenologically, the music and the me-ness aren’t separate; that gets added after the raw act of perception. “Mom” and “me” are both categorically relational in this meaning, requiring each other. It’s not to say there isn’t a separate me, but to say that the framing of a network, or relationship, is at least as valid as the frame of separate entities (amongst many others).
What good is this? Maybe nothing for you, no value imposition here. This and $4 will get you a cup of coffee. But I like it because it helps me see more truth. I’m not sure what I am but I know it’s more than I usually identify with. This offers me more flexibility, which then opens me to love more freely. So, it’s a nice way to increase truth and love.