THOUGHT KNOT

April 12th, 2021

With all the thoughts we have on loop, we’re bound to make a knot.  And when thought and mentality and psychology is all knotted up, what is the solution?  More talking?  Talking, or language in general is often what gets us in the jam I the first place.  We’re universally convinced by our constant urge to talk that more talking will fix things, but what if talking about a problem simply makes it more of a reality?

Albert Einstein once said that “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  Now we might wonder, what is the most effective way to evolve a new form of thinking?  Do we evolve new forms of thinking by talking and rehashing?  Maybe, but the answer doesn’t seem clear cut either way.  We might wonder if there are other methods that are far more effective.

If anything creates new forms of thinking, it’s new experience, pure and simple.  Experience, as vague as the word is, wraps up all the senses.  Not just the ones that help out thoughts get all knotted up.  Experience is something done with the body that engages the spirit.  

Now an odd angle on this is whether talking about an old problem is such an experience?  Or rather, is talking about an old problem a new experience?  We might like to think so when we feel marginally better.  Again, it’s a matter of degree.  Why move the needle a single degree when there are other experiences out there that might swing the needle across tremendous swathes of change?

Perhaps we’re not so adventurous and many actually prefer the crawling progress of merely talking out one’s problems.  An practical example might be someone likening a 10 hour psychedelic trip to 10 years of talk therapy.  Many have certainly undergone experiences that would be phrased this way. 

But where is the middle ground.  The world of therapeutic psychedelics is still just beginning and there’s a tremendous amount to figure out. 

What is left to us in the real world to dive into in ways that might heal?  Where is the breakthrough that requires not a single word?