If you understand God, what you understand isn’t God.
– St. Augustine, slightly paraphrased
Yes, although that’s the same with everything.
If I think I understand an apple, what I understand isn’t an apple. What I think I understand is my idea about it, and I don’t even really understand that.
That’s for several reasons which can be boiled down to two that can be talked about in many different ways. It has to do with our relationship with thoughts and the relationship of thoughts with the rest of existence.
THE ESSENCE
Mental representations are questions about the world. Even statements are questions.
Mental representations help us orient and navigate in the world. They have a practical and pragmatic function only.
Mental representations cannot hold any full, final, or absolute truth. They can, at most, have limited validity.
Reality is always more than and different from our ideas about it. (And also less than, in our immediate noticing since it’s all, to us, happening within and as consciousness.)
THE MORE WE KNOW, THE MORE WE KNOW HOW LITTLE WE KNOW
The more we know, the more we understand how little we know. I have explored my nature, and these topics, for almost four decades now, and I feel I know less than I ever have. The more I explore, the more I understand how little I am familiar with and understand, and the vastness of what’s out there to explore. (That was my orientation from the beginning, but now it’s a more lived and visceral part of me.)
In a conventional sense, in the world, we may know more than most, and in a more real sense, we know we know almost nothing. We are just dipping our toes in the ocean.
A FEW MORE ASPECTS
Mental representations are different in kind from what they point to. This is just like a map is different in kind to the terrain, or a menu is different in kind from the food.
Mental representations are simplifications at best, they highlight some things and leave out other things.
Mental representations reflect our biases, limited experience and understanding, hangups, culture, hopes and fears, and much more. They inevitably say more about us than what they apparently are about.
Our mental representations about the world is a mirror for us. If a mental representation says something about the wider world, we can turn it to be about ourselves and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true about us.
Mental representations are more or less accurate in a conventional sense. Sometimes, they are completely inaccurate and downright wrong.
Mental representations take on a completely different meaning depending on the context, worldview, and set of assumptions they are understood within.
If we, or a part of our system, hold a mental representation as true, it’s inevitably stressful. It’s out of alignment with reality. We feel we have to prop it up, defend it, remind ourselves about it, and so on. Also, life will always come up with situations that show us the limited validity, or outright wrongness, of our cherished idea.
THOUGHTS IN THE SENSE FIELDS
If we, or a part of our system, hold a thought as true, that experience is created in a certain way. Our mind associates certain mental representations (mental images, mental sounds) with certain physical sensations in the body.
The mental representations give a sense of meaning to the sensations, and the sensations give a sense of solidity, reality, and truth to the mental representations.
If it’s a central or important belief, the body will contract in order to create sensations used to give a sense of reality, solidity, and truth to the thought.
It sounds silly, and it is a bit silly when we notice. We get a peak behind the curtain.
It is relatively easy to explore and notice this. Anyone can do it, for instance, guided by someone experienced in sense field explorations. The one I have found that’s most effective is the Kiloby Inquiries which is a modernized version of traditional Buddhist sense field inquiries.
A PART OF OUR SYSTEM HOLDING A THOUGHT AS TRUE
It’s quite common, at least in my experience, that I consciously don’t hold a certain thought as true, but I find that a part of my system holds it – more or less – as true.
This is what Freud and many others talked about. Our conscious orientation, noticing, and insights is one thing. An entirely other thing is the many perspectives, beliefs, hangups, traumas, and so on that different parts of our system live from and within.
It’s good to explore both and invite the rest of our system to join in with whatever wisdom, insights, and useful noticing that’s happening at a conscious level.
APPLIES TO EVERYTHING
This applies to everything, not just God… or an apple.
It applies to our ideas about ourselves, our spouse, parents, children, bosses, employees, health, money, the past, the future, the present, life situations, and anything else.