Space. The final frontier. These are the continuing… Just kidding. Well, it is possible to be a geek and still be sexy, no? The internet, with all its vast resources and loads of pictures seem to suggest that. Anyway, Star Trek is really not where I am going with this little piece of writing. However, that television program did touch upon a point that I think is worth exploring. That point would be the notion of vastness. What does this bring to mind? Roll the word over your tongue. Taste it (what, you think you can’t taste a word? I beg to differ. Go ahead and give it a try. I will wait). Bring it to your mind and allow the imagery and sound to take over. I hear the surf crashing on a lonely beach in the soft silver of the moon. I look into the sky and see the endlessness that makes me feel sometimes hollow and insignificant and sometimes full of wonder. The ocean harbors that same feeling, filled with areas that in all the time we have been here, we still do not know. It is teeming with hidden wonders, the soup from which life was generated. Vastness. It is the same as trying to wrap your mind around what infinity means. Human minds don’t like to think about concepts that have no beginning and no end. Substitute the word immortal for vastness. They have a similar feel to them. The term immortal is a type of vastness. It is a vastness of time. When I think upon this concept, I often wonder about the human fear of death. Animals do not seem to fear death. They have a self-preservation instinct, but that is not the same thing. Death is a natural state and, as far as I know or have read, animals do not contemplate death. We do. I wonder if it is not so much the idea of dying that we fear, but the idea of the vastness that comes after. If you adhere to the notion of immortality, that is incomprehensible and that kind of an idea generates fear. If you do not adhere to the notion of immortality after death, then you are contemplating the great nothingness/vastness instead. That is equally daunting. I also ask myself, why is it that when I hear the word vast, I think of dark places. Not everyone will have this same reaction, but when I have asked about this, I frequently get that response. The flat Midwestern plains are vast, unbroken lines of tall grass. Deserts are vast. In an experiment, I created a simulation of vastness through the use of dim lighting and a fog machine that tripped the psychological triggers I generally feel when working with this concept. There is something inherently powerful in this concept that it can invoke such strong reaction. It is made more so when you can recognize those triggers. We have the ability to explore this concept by understanding what this word creates visually, in an auditory sense, as well as physiologically. I leave you this trail of breadcrumbs to follow with regard to the external sense of vastness. So, what else is there to this vastness? Oh, I am glad I still have your interest. Have you thought about your own psyche? Where does that go? How deep is that rabbit hole? The contemplation that the universe may actually have a boundary, admittedly, hurts my head when I wonder what that is like. The idea of looking into my own psyche and realizing that it may actually not have one hurts more. When the cliché of “we only use 10% of our brains” comes out, I laugh a little. No, we use it all. You can see that from the scientific research and all those MRI scans. However, that doesn’t mean we have explored the depths of the psyche. What is beyond the wall of noise in our minds? There are so many tricks our mind play on us, interpreting and twisting the reality it says is in front of our eyes, when volumes of research demonstrate that is simply not true. What does the data look like that our mind general filters out? How many filters does a mind have? Is each mind constructed the same way? How do you work with the concept of internal vastness? This one is, to me, more daunting than the exploration of the idea of external vastness. You are now playing in the more formidable field of your own mind. It is pretty surreal in there and full of dark places you are inevitably going to step into. I find a number of exercises valuable. To ease into it are disciplines like meditation, internal style martial arts like Tai Chi, yoga, etc. Coupling this with contemplative/reflective thought work like reviewing the day you have just had and maybe finding points of interest therein that you do associative imagery with. The hard part is dissociating yourself from the exercises so you can observe your own psyche. Yeah. Wrap your mind around that one. If you want to have even more fun, you can work this on a regressive scale and observe the psyche observing the psyche. I will leave you with that bit or psychological fun!
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Lasciel AnnwynnI am one of those. Yes, that kind. I poke around in the corners and lesser explored paths of life looking for it's mysteries. There is so much magic in the world when you open your perception to it. Look with eyes of wonder. Archives
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