The fractured psyche
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There's a pink one and a green one and a blue one and a yellow one and they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
One of the desired effects of the relative thought system is the idea of compartments or categories. You can think of them as conceptual boxes. The definition of the boxes is their boundary. The boundary, or definition, determines what goes into that category or conceptual box. Imagine an infinite conceptual box. This box contains all concepts. Whatever concept you can imagine, the box says, ”Yup, I love you too. You are still in the box. You are still inside me and not outside”. If for some reason you have the urge to give this infinite box a name, you can call it God. Oh, you don’t like that name? Well, too bad, because the universe is something else. Unless you capitalize it. Anyway. Where was I? What? Yes, you can call it All-That-Is. The infinite conceptual box. The absolute idea or Idea. The One. Not in conflict with anything. Peace.
As soon as there is a boundary, one is enough, which is a concept, that does not include everything, or, in other words, is not an absolute concept, a total concept, then it splits, breaks, fractures, divides, separates, segregates, fractures, divides, separates, segregates and compartmentalizes. So many descriptive words for the same concept, the concept of a boundary or a limit. It must be quite an important concept in our lives, one would think. And I am sure there are many more words for it.
So, as soon as the first boundary is created and believed in, the thought system seems to change from Absolute to relative. Now, the thought system has not changed. The focus has changed. There was a desire to change the focus to go from a bigger box to a smaller box. Keep that desire in mind as you read on. This is how one gets into trouble and hurts oneself. But you are lucky. You can hire me to help you help yourself jump back from the smaller conceptual box to the bigger conceptual box. What credentials do I have, you ask? I wrote what you are reading. That should be enough. Anyway.
One is imagined to become (at least) two. Imagined only because the infinite box still exists. Shifting the focus to a smaller concept appareantly breaks the infinitive concept into two. One becomes the smaller box (this), and what is outside the smaller box (that). One becomes this and that. When the concepts of this and that are in total opposition to each other, so reversed, 180 degrees, the opposite, then the concepts or boxes exclude or fight each other. So this AND that becomes this OR that. No, it’s not 360. That would be a full circle, and you would be back where you are. Unless the circle is a spiral looked at from the top down. Then there would be conceptual movement from one level to another, up and down the spiral. Have you ever spiraled down into the darkness? Well, that is what happened. You can spiral up to. It’s called bootstrapping.
Why is it moving at all? What makes it move up and down. Identification is the driving force that freezes the concept. Whatever you identify with freezes the conceptual box you are in. This becomes your home. This is where you live. This is your mental boundary, or if you will, your prison. Now take this one process of defining boundaries and multiply it by a billion. This is our fractured psyche. Many boxes. Too many to focus on at once. So you have to choose some. This is your identity. Your carefully chosen and cherished boxes. You want them, and you think you know them. Some we say we like. Some we say we hate. Most of them are not even based on much, if any, personal experience. Usually a regurgitation from younger years for which you were praised or punished. Some seem to be fighting each other. Some seem to attack you. Some are very hard to shake, aren’t they?
Keep in mind that a box can contain many boxes, and when you focus on the small boxes, you do not realize that you are looking at the same box. You are not aware of it, so it does not exist for you. Therefore, it has been denied. So why do you focus on the smaller boxes within a bigger box? Because you do not recognize the characteristics that all the small boxes have in common. They must have at least one featue in common, otherwise they would not be in the same box or within the same conceptual boundary or concept.
What you just read probably went way over of your head. Don’t worry about that. I am going to give you some real-life examples of this idea of making conceptual boxes making in different aspects (again, boxes) of our lives. Let's start with a Twitter profile. It is a good example of a fragmented human identity. We call them roles, and we usually aspire to them. For some reason, we think these boxes are special. Uuu, shiny boxes. Not like the other shitboxes that I would never identify with, because they are so lame. Unlike mine! Anyway. Let’s choose the fractured psyche of a beloved former American president.
Isn’t it beautiful? Notice the order of the concepts, or the boxes. Yes, one is forced to choose the first one and the second one, and so on, because we are reading from one word to another. So the first one is apparently the most important. Dad. Yes, how sweet. Family before America. God bless him. I wonder how many of his tweets are about fatherhood and marriage vs. politics.
Trump is keeping it more simple, though. I am the President!
Next one. Short one. So called animal lovers, self-proclaimed and adamant about it. They take some into their homes and take good care of them. They clean up their poop all their lives. But some they eat. Some animals go in the ”pet” box and some animals go in the “food” box. Notice the incongruity?
Let’s pick something recent and political. These are fun boxes full of addictive emotions, aren’t they? By body, my choice! Do you understand?!?! I will ride or die with it, that is how important it is to me, you mofos. Unless there is a so called deadly virus with a death rate very similar to a seasonal flu, then inject me and everyone else with whatever you think is good for me. And others should do it too, for their protection, of course. But, otherwise, my body, my choice! Notice the incongruity?
This one, the last one, is the one that burst my carefully nurtured procrastination bubble and made me write this post. Thank you very much. The screenshot is not edited; it is just partially blurred. I was surprised that there were two consecutive posts from the same user on my FB wall and these beautifully illustrate the box mechanism.
Again, some shooting in the USA, land of the (too much?) free. The shooters are kids, to make it even more wrong, because if the adults do it, then it is in a different moral box, neatly tucked away. So when kids do it, on TV, the emotions are high. Guns are bad and should be banned and taken away. There is no need for them. Except when Keanu wants to play with them. Then it is entertainment. Bang bang. 2 shots, 7 people dead. Amazing. And Keanu looks very good doing it. He is also such a nice guy. He gives food to the homeless. Bang bang. A kick and a stab, while reloading his guns. Bang bang bang. Marry me, Keanu.
As you can see, these boxes are a clusterfuck. Now, let’s finish with an epic demonstration of jumping from a smaller box to a larger one. The jump is from a box, that is at least 55 years old, carefully nurtured, enforced by society. There is no doubt about it. This tattooed thug with roses helped the man jump to a bigger box in three seconds with one line. How amazing is that?
Do you want to know how that feels? Then get yourself some well deserved private sessions with me and unbox yourself to more freedom and consequently more peace and happiness. This is how it is done. Jumping to bigger conceptual boxes. Ultimately!