How do we perceive causality when we notice our nature?
CONVENTIONAL PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY
In a conventional sense, we assume causality in daily life. I stub my toe, experience pain, and stubbing my toe caused or led to the pain. I step on the gas pedal, the car goes faster, so stepping on the gas pedal made the car go faster.
As with our thoughts and assumptions in general, these assumptions of causality help us orient and function in the world. They work often enough and well enough to help us function.
They are often relatively accurate in a conventional sense. They are often layperson level understanding of causality, which means they are simplistic and work reasonably often and well. And they sometimes miss the mark and are not accurate in a conventional sense, and if we receive feedback we have a chance to learn from it and modify our assumptions.
NOTICING MY NATURE
It’s not wrong that I am this human self in the world. It’s how others tend to see me, it’s what my passport says, and it’s how it appears to me when I take on that role. It’s an assumption that mostly works well in daily life.
But is it what I more fundamentally am in my own first-person experience?
When I look, I find I am more fundamentally something else.
I find my nature as capacity for the world as it appears to me. It’s what allows any and all content of experience.
And I find myself as what the world, to me, happens within and as.
Said another way: To myself, I am inevitably consciousness, and any content of experience – of this human self, others, the wider world, and so on – happen within and as what I am.
PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY WHEN I NOTICE MY NATURE
When I notice my nature, my perception of causality is much the same as described above, although the conscious context is different.
Here, the world happens. It’s what it is in immediacy. Any content of experience lives its own life.
And any sense of time and space and causality is created by a mental field overlay. It’s created by mental representations.
Mental representations says what happened, what’s happening (always a little behind), and what may happen in the near and possibly distant future.
This is where causality lives. There are mental representations of having walked, stubbed my toe against a rock, that this experience is called “pain”, and that walking and stubbing my toe is the cause of pain. Similarly, there are mental representations of driving, of having pushed the foot down on the gas pedal, and the car going faster as shown on the speedometer when images of how it was just seconds ago is compared with images of how it is now.
It doesn’t mean ideas of causality are inherently wrong. It just means that I recognize where causality, for me, comes from. It’s created within my mental representations.
I appreciate the gifts in it. It helps this human self function and live in the world.
And I can more easily recognize the limitations inherent in these assumptions. They are assumptions. They are often roughly accurate. I am aware that they are rough approximations and simplifications. And I also recognize that since they are assumptions, they are sometimes wrong – either in details or more completely.
INITIAL NOTES
Perception of causality when I notice my nature
- Conventional,
- Oneness forming itself into
- Happens here and now
- Causality, from mental field overlay, memory, images, thoughts
- Memory of walking, hitting toe, so stubbing toe is reason for pain
- Not wrong, can be accurate in a conventional sense, and does come from concepts
…..
Is it what I more fundamentally am to myself?