Guys, I already know that you’re going to be able to use Dirk’s reply to yesterday’s chat to clarify something that gets confused. But I wonder – well, anyway, let’s see.
It is true, this is an opportunity for clarification, but the path from here to clarity may not be smooth. Quite a bit of turbulence first, more likely. You know which sentences we want quoted.
[TGU: The human condition is not nearly rational; it is rationality trying to play catch-up with the results of your ionized air on re-entry, or your relatively smooth laminar flow of water as the canoe moves. In other words, it isn’t all drama but it is always seen through – and only through – the layer of feelings that interprets the inner and outer worlds.
[Me: Did you say just what you meant, there?
[TGU: “ In other words, it isn’t all drama but it is always seen through – and only through – the layer of feelings that interprets the inner and outer worlds”
[Dirk: This I know to be false – at least in my case. In my case life most often is not seen through drama, nor through emotion or feeling, mood or affect. These in most cases come as delayed responses to events, conditions, and reflection.
[If it is passing through that layer, it is doing so with no interaction at all.
[My default and most predominant mode is to experience the word in neutral – sans emotion or feeling of any kind. That is not always true. The more years that have passed, the less predominant it has become.]
I know what you are going to say and I sense that it may not convince.
Not that it won’t convince, so much as that it will seem to miss the point, because what is the problem here is a matter of definitions. Still, clarifications won’t present themselves, so here goes our attempt to present them.
A basic mistake enters because of what we might call linguistic slippage. Words, being imprecise, are often a source of confusion. But words when they don’t quite exist can be even more so. When a concept is needed and does not exist, you use words that sort of mean the same thing, or let’s say that somewhat say it, but not closely enough to add clarity.
In this instance, some word other than mood or feeling or emotion would have conveyed our meaning better, and perhaps would have prevented anyone from mistaking it for something similar but different. We said, human life is always experienced though a layer of feelings. Dirk replied that in his case, “life most often is not seen through drama, nor through emotion or feeling, mood or affect… If it is passing through that layer, it is doing so with no interaction at all.” He spoke of experiencing the world in neutral. You see the slippage here?
I do. You didn’t say nor mean that we do or don’t experience the world in a dramatic fashion, though it looks like what you said. You said, or meant, anyway: The invisible layer that we are comparing to an ionizing layer of air, or to the tranquil interface between water and something being propelled through water, is always between our 3D awareness and the “external” 3D world we experience. Only, that layer isn’t what people mean when they say “emotion” or “feeling.”
Yes. It is always there: There is no possibility in 3D terms of seeing the world directly, without a level of interpretation. We call it feeling to contrast it to thought. We may call it emotion (if it is of a peculiar nature) to contrast it to a sort of mental neutrality. We may call it a mood, or a generator of moods, to stress that it is a long-lasting relatively unvarying attitude coloring one’s view of life.
Nor is Dirk reporting his experience incorrectly, only we intend to show that things aren’t quite as they appear. In his case – as in yours, and as in most people’s who are drawn to this exploratory work – perception comes not only from the 3D but also directly from your non-3D component, which blurs the picture analytically. Let’s see if we can adjust the focus. This is so central to what we are trying to convey, a picture of 3D life as it is lived by people who are very different combinations of elements.
- You are all projections into 3D of a complex of elements
- You are each inserted into a different specific time/place moment, with a specific 3D heredity and environment.
- You experience life as an interaction between “you” and “the world,” and as we have been exploring, this may be redefined as personal and shared subjectivity, what is “external” being actually part of yourself of which you are not conscious.
- The interaction between the subjectivity you experience as “I” and the subjectivity you experience as “other” is a layer of energy we are comparing to the ionizing layer or the laminar flow between objects and the medium with which they are interacting.
- That layer is always there. It can’t not be there. it can be defined out of existence, or be not noticed, but it cannot be not there. Something is always going to interpose between object and surrounding medium.
- This says nothing about how that layer will be experienced by this or that person. Experiences will differ (and in fact the ionizing layer is itself a factor in why experiences differ). Its existence does not imply nor rule out drama.
- You experience your life through that transparent layer; your view of the world is shaped by the existence of an interpretive layer, an intermediary between what you can sense and what you cannot sense. To a degree, you never see the world as it really is, only as your filters allow you to see it – and those filters are never the product of thought, but of direct experience as it interacts with what your invisible interpretive layer allows you to see of the world.
- However – and it is a big “however” – you experience your lives not only through this filter-determined 3D lens but also through your non-3D-dependent direct knowing, call it intuition or divine promptings or whatever. Depending upon your construction, the stereoscopic view produced by 3D and non-3D mode of perception will be sharp or blurry, will show more or will show less or will show other.
Therefore, some will experience the world in ways very different from the mainstream. (Remembering, of course, that the mainstream itself is different in different situations.) The variables are many: environment, heredity, decisions on a 3D level; environment, heredity, past decisions on a non-3D level. To some the world will be self-evidently on –
Got a little tangled, there?
Well, you see the problem.
I do. You’re wanting to differentiate between people’s natures (emotional, unemotional; feeling types, thinking types; well-connected to non-3D or connected only unconsciously, etc.) And it’s hard to do that without your point being smothered.
It is. We are juggling so many variables.
Seems to me you’ve been doing all right.
Wait till you see how many conflicting interpretations of what is here said.
And that’s the issue, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. Because everyone experiences the world only indirectly, and because everyone’s experience of filters is different, and because to many the existence of filters has no evidence for it, it is difficult to say anything that can be read only one way. In fact, not difficult; it is impossible. Thus we are continually correcting misinterpretations of what we meant, in words than cannot avoid causing further misinterpretations. That’s why there isn’t only one opinion of the world , one interpretation.
Hmm, indicating that even misinterpretation isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Good, bad, convenient, inconvenient. We aren’t concerned with judgment but with exposition. We merely point out, life is interpreted.
You aren’t nearly finished with this, I can tell.
Hardly begun, in fact, but this should prove quite productive.
And a word for that ionizing layer that is neither “feeling” nor “emotion” nor “mood”?
Let’s leave it as is for the moment, lest in assigning a label we prematurely imprison it.