about becoming aware

about becoming aware

 

being around infants is amazing… their world is really incomprehensible to us.  imagine though, as they come into the world… they have a direct interface with everything around them, filtered only through the senses.  it’s wide open… but it’s all just raw data.  born into the world, it’s still life, but not like we know it… stimulus and response in the reptilian brain, but no interjecting awareness.

 

but as time goes on, you can literally watch the awareness develop.  the baby realizes: these objects drifting in and out of my vision are part of my world.  then, incredibly, if there is a sound over there, there might be something making that sound, and if i turn my head, i may be able to see it.  then, these things here at the end of my arms part of me, and i am able to control them!  and not only that, but if i handle things in just the right way, these things–let’s call them hands–can let me interact with the other things that are part of my world… and heh! damn! i can use them to put stuff in my mouth too!  and that opens up a whole new way of sensing and knowing the world…

 

the first steps in the process are gripping to watch.  i wish i had so many epiphanies myself these days.  for babies, the paradigm is always flexing and breaking and morphing… but the paradigms, like the rest of the kid, become less malleable as time goes on.  it might be true that the more we learn the easier it becomes to learn more… but it might also be true that the more we learn, the harder it becomes to step outside that learning–even for a second.  it’s harder to shock ourselves.

 

once language develops, we’re pretty much goners.  our minds are locked into a way of thinking, our language–for most of us–becomes the only way we can think.  Confucius said we should rectify the terms… which would help in some cases, but i don’t think it’s enough because no matter how upstanding our terms are, they’re still going to limit us.  language, like all good structures, scaffolds… is allows us to go beyond the original limits, but imposes new limits based on that structure.  there’s probably some greek myth about that.

 

anyways, i think it’s helpful if we can all just be like babies sometimes… i guess people who meditate kind of do that–thoughtless awareness… who knows, but if we set aside the limits of our mental structures–in some way–once in a while, it opens us up to new possibilities.