Thoughts can increase our understanding of a subject, or they can just as easily constrict or block our understanding of a subject. It very much depends upon the language we are thinking in.
Language is the medium of our thoughts.
Grammar has qualities, shapes and forms.
As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning.
Intelligence is something that is not just thinking, it's feeling. Ultimately, the highest reflection of intelligent life is cooperative life in which all benefit.
We are intelligent atoms. We are intelligent organic structures. We can change who we are. We can heal ourselves. With genetic engineering, we are considering changing the physiological structure of the body.
The universe is holding congress with itself.
Our past affects us, our present affects us, and even our future can affect us. We live in the relative world of time and space.
Many aspects of life cannot be explained through logic or reason. The reasoning part of the mind simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the many whys and how's of being and non-being.
Psychic perception is a much more efficient and accurate method of seeing and knowing reality.
Metaphysics is the study of how to shift the self. How to get outside the self-reflection and to just gaze with awe and wonder at the countless universes, the countless celestial radiances of mind, of life, of enlightenment, nirvana, or God, whatever you want to call it.
C. S. Lewis, Plato, Aristotle and many more names that I could add, including Einstein's, were individuals who were able to see the innate order in life, which others perceive as chaos.
Take chaotic mathematics, for instance. The universe is chaos. But chaos is whimping out. There is no chaos. There are just different levels of order in the universe.
Chaotic mathematics is essentially the study of chaos. It can't be chaos, if you can study it and it has an order.
Do not be a sniveler. Do not say you can't be happy, you can't be enlightened. How do you know? It is all chaos.
Is there Chance? No. There is karma. Karma causes all things to happen. There is only one thing karma cannot decide, and that is how far you will evolve in this lifetime.
I recommend, for many people, the study of computer science. Our natural resource in America is the mind. The mindset in computer science is very similar to the mindset in Zen.
Computer science is fascinating. As you study computer science, you will find that you develop your mind. It is literally like doing Buddhist exercises all day long.
Computer science is the most misunderstood field there is. You are being paid to solve puzzles. For a person who has practiced meditation in past lives, that is the way your mind works.
The logical and extralogical exercises you do in meditation are very similar to advanced systems analysis and programming.
Consciousness, like a complex system of software, has thousands of levels of nested, self-accessing subroutines
In Buddhist practice a great deal of time is spent practicing mandala meditation. You learn to visualize and hold simultaneous concepts in the mind during meditation.
I have yet to see a career that is similar in benefit as computer science for doing the advanced exercises.
As you study computer science you develop this wonderful mental acumen, particularly with relational databases, systems analysis, and artificial intelligence.
Programming will aid a person in developing their mind and will aid their meditation. I find that people who have pursued programming are doing much better in their meditation.