weirdway

I like to imagine supersized objects sometimes. So for example, if for whatever reason you wanted to imagine a pencil, you can imagine a pencil that is larger than the sky. If you're imagining a foot, it can also be larger than the sky and so forth.

The reason for this is because even though we might consider imagination fanciful, but if I pay attention to my own imagination, I have what could be called "imagination habits." So if these habits also align with convention, then I think this reinforces the convention. So for example, conventionally pencils are just a bit longer than one's body's hand, then if I also imagine it like that, I am implicitly giving some weight to convention even in my "fanciful" imagination, which in retrospect might not be all that fanciful.

This is just an idea. I don't literally imagine pencils. I'm just using "pencil" to get a basic idea across. Also "super-large" is also a basic idea.

The main point is to notice any kind of patterns in my imagination and either build new patterns, or simply disrupt the old ones.

Imagination is important and I think imagination is very much related to manifestation. It's possible that one's manifestation might be too rigid also because one's imagination is too small (I don't mean a literal size here). That's how it seems to me right now.

Also, instead of visualizing things inside this experience you can visualize things outside. So what I mean is, instead of me sitting at the table and inside this experience of sitting at the table I am visualizing say an apple, I can visualize that my experience of my sitting at the table is really happening inside a giant apple. In other words, the apple is the context, a platform, a space for other things, rather than an object inside "this" "normal" space. So it's like putting another space outside and over this space and then by visualizing things outside this space we can change the meaning inside this space. That's the idea.

One thing the above kind of visualization does is that it takes away the feeling of immensity from the conventional appearances. So you might think the sky and the earth are so huge, but if you then imagine the whole experience is happening inside a tiny pearl that is held by a child's hand somewhere else, then suddenly even the vast sky seems incredibly tiny. Then after one gets a sense of its smallness, how can it still create the same overwhelming feeling? In the same vein although I think it's better not to associate one's identity with the body, but for those who still have a strong tie to the body, they can imagine their body to be larger than the solar system. At first this might seem silly, but if you do this repeatedly a few times, it can create an after-effect that lasts even when you're not imagining this anymore. That effect would be to feel much less overwhelmed by whatever appears, even if it's the sky, which would be conventionally used as an example of a vast and overarching expanse.

So I like once in a while fooling around with my imagination like that.

Also, Zhuang Zi talks about this when he asks something like "is your arm really small and the universe large?" "Is someone dying an infant" really having a short lifetime? And is someone who lives for 300 years really having a long lifetime? A lot of people would accept this as a fanciful thought experiment that at best needs to be done once and forgotten, without any practical use. But what happens if one trains like this?

Training occupies a gray area between serious and unserious. So if I am training to do a tennis serve, I am not doing an actual serve, it's not for real. But it's not entirely unreal either. Training is liminal activity. Imagination would normally be held as clearly and unambiguously fanciful. But if one trains using one's imagination instead of being purely fanciful it would become liminal. That's because by training one takes whatever one trains a bit more seriously. But because it's considered "training" it's still not 100% serious. So for example, am I training to be a human or am I a human? By convention and I think most people would say, "no, I am actually a human, and I am not training to be a human, I really am and this is it." So training is still less than 100% real, but that doesn't mean it's bad or useless.

Training can be used in reverse too. For example, we take something like "being a human" and we would ordinarily feel like of course yea, I am a human and there is no need to train to be one. But if you live your days as though you're training to be a human, you reduce the weight of humanity in your own mind but you're also doing it in a way that doesn't make humanity 100% fanciful either. So something that was fanciful can be made liminal, and then relatively real. But something that is relatively real can be made liminal and then fanciful.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-18 11:04:49 (e4dxnx9)