Okay, look...
I wasn’t going to email you again so soon,
but this one’s been brewing.
A full-blown, caffeine-fuelled, you-know-what-really-grinds-my-gears type of rant.
/clears throat
So...
You know what really grinds my gears?
Blanket statements.
Painting with a broad brush.
Stereotyping.
Pigeonholing.
Generalisations.
And all their brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, and ancestors. (Yep, I'm about in insult your ancestors too probably ha!)
Look… they have their place. I get it.
But for the love of all that’s helpful in a conversation… be specific.
For example...
(and this one came up again for me recently...)
Meditation. Right?
Now, I’m not going into the full ins-and-outs here…
But have you ever noticed how vague the instructions are?
You’ll hear things like:
“Just sit.”
“Notice your thoughts.”
“Let them go.”
“Be present.”
Cool. Thanks. That cleared everything up.
Now look...
I’m not anti-meditation.
I’m anti-vagueness.
Especially when we’re talking about this whole "experience inside our head" thing.
Because here’s what happens when you throw abstract advice at a concrete experience:
People sit down.
They try to “notice their thoughts.”
They notice they’re terrible at it.
Then they judge themselves.
Then they quit.
The irony?
They were noticing their thoughts.
They just didn’t know what the hell to do with them.
“Let them go” – with what?
“Be present” – who? where? how?
What even is this experience of “being”?
Do we need to sit on a mountain for 30 years until the answers arrive via beam of light from some other space-alien or alternate dimension?
(The sci-fi fan in me kinda likes this version haha!)
Should we switch off our minds and regress back to an animal state of stimulus response?
Or try to quieten the voices so we can be 'free' from this existential dread of conscious awareness?
Honestly... not how this works.
What NEEDS to happen is an understanding of the specific mechanism in play when we introspect.
Protip:
It's not a secret.
It's not information held by the illuminati.
It’s not mystical, other-worldly, or magic souls, ghosts, spirits, or some kind of cosmic Æther.
The missing piece is naming things.
Getting specific about what’s going on in there.
Because it’s all:
Language.
Symbolism.
Story.
Metaphor.
Dialogue.
So tightly wound that the parts disappear.
They blend, merge, fuse…
Until you can’t tell what’s what anymore.
It becomes invisible because the thing you’re using to examine yourself...
is the thing you’re examining.
It’s like trying to bite your own teeth.
Or look directly at your own eyeballs.
(Which, incidentally, you can kinda do with binoculars and a mirror, but that’s not the point right now.)
No wonder people give up and default to religion.
(Yeah, I said it.)
This is that kind of problem.
The kind that gave rise to gods, myths, and sacred scripts.
But here’s the kicker…
That Gordian Knot was made with language.
And the thing that made it…
can also untangle it.
Pen. Mightier. Sword.
Use language. Any language will do.
(Though it helps if you already know it.)
Your inner world...
This mind-space...
It’s built from recursive loops in symbolic language:
Metaphor. Analogy. Narrative.
And religion?
That’s what happens when those loops try to explain themselves before they had enough hindsight.
They’re not bad.
(Although many things done in the name of religion are.)
They’re just... well... archaic now.
We’ve got better tools now.
Better language.
More precision.
So when someone says, “Observe your thoughts,” I say:
Cool... but what kind?
Are we talking inner monologue?
Memory loops?
Cultural scripts?
That one awful voice that still sounds like your Year 8 English teacher?
Which part are we working on today?
How do you want to approach this?
Because that... dear reader... is how you do the work.
Not: “empty your brain and wait for serenity.”
That’s not a method.
That’s a McGuru serving up soft-serve but their machine is (always) broken.
And I’m not in the mood for junk-food-mysticism today.
So...
Call it plumbing.
Mechanics.
Debugging.
Use whatever metaphor works.
Install more RAM (coffee helps).
Swap out some parts.
Update your mental operating system.
Just don’t forget the main point:
Your inner experience is built.
You can renovate.
Heck, the best part of a reno is knocking down a few walls!
Get to work.
~ Chris
/rant