Thinking Styles to Perceive the True Nature of Reality
There are perhaps an infinite amount of thinking styles that we could employ to think about the world. Today, I want to highlight the most common form of thinking that we tend to use and then point to alternative thinking styles that can help us perceive reality more fully and accurately.
Categorical Thinking
This is the thinking that we begin to learn and use early on in life. For example, a young child may learn that a particular object is called a peach. The child may quickly learn that “peach” is not the name for this unique peach – such a name does not exist. Rather, “peach” is the name for all fruits of this type. The term “peach” is just a category.
This form of thinking is quite powerful because it allows us to learn and understand very quickly. Perhaps you have never heard of lychees, but these are just a type of fruit. Due to your familiarity with the category, we call fruits, you can immediately form a basic idea of what the lychee is.
When we think in categories, we are not thinking of one particular object in the real world. Rather, we are thinking of a general class of objects (or beings) in the world.
Socrates referred to the idea of forms. For example, we have an ideal conception of what a dog must be, even if that dog does not exist in the real world. These forms or ideals that we hold in our minds help us to better understand the world around us. If I see a 3-legged dog, I can understand that this is still a dog, even if it does not fit the ideal that is in my mind.
Although categorical thinking has many uses, we should understand that it is flawed because by thinking of the category, our idea of what the category must be then influences what we see. We are likely to see what we expect to see rather than what is actually in front of us.
This becomes problematic when it comes to prejudices and biases. Someone who has had repeated negative experiences with individuals of a particular ethnicity may come to assume that this whole category of people is somehow bad. Every time he sees such people, he will become angry, scared, or worried, possibly avoiding such people or treating them with contempt.
Our prior experiences shape how we see the world, so we can sometimes make the mistake of improperly categorizing something. In Into the Wild, Chris McCandless made the fatal mistake of thinking a plant was edible when it was actually poisonous. He mistook two similar-looking plants for each other, only realizing his mistake after he had eaten the poisonous one.
Of course, most mistakes that we make will not be fatal, and most of the time, we will likely be correct in our categorizations. But because we are correct most of the time, we may be overconfident in the categories we form. And we may be overconfident in thinking that our categories are meaningful when they are not always so.
Bacteria may be something that has led to many deaths. Yet, now we know that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Most people will have a balance of both in their bodies. Just because bacteria can lead to deaths does not make them all bad. Yet, this is the kind of assumption we often make. Something bad in one case will be assumed to be bad in most or all cases.
We intuitively think if one bacteria is bad, they must all be bad. This is because our intuition is based on categories, and those categories are often based on faulty assumptions.
Categories are useful, but other modes of thinking may help us see reality more clearly.
Essential Thinking
We can look at a sunflower (or anything in nature) with essential thinking and see it clearly for what it is. We can let go of our need to categorize everything, at least for a moment. We can stop perceiving this sunflower as just a type of sunflower – since such thinking will cause us to not see the sunflower right in front of us, but rather to see all the sunflowers we have ever seen inside of the one we are looking at. Is it more of a real experience to perceive the general idea of something, which is the concept of something in your mind based on all prior experience? Or is it more of a real experience to perceive what is right in front of you right now?
If you can perceive what is in front of you without needing to grasp all your old ideas, then you will be free to see what is indeed there. You will see that sunflower as if it were the first time you ever saw one, and you may have a magical experience.
We do not need to abandon categorical thinking, as this is probably our default mode of thought. However, we should introduce more essential thinking into our lives. There is something powerful about meeting someone from any race, background, and of any quality or feature, and then allowing your mind to melt away all those superficial qualities of a person. I say superficial because how much can you truly know about a person based on their height, weight, clothes type, and skin tone? We may just be led into making a variety of faulty assumptions based on this.
I have met people dressed very plainly who were quite wealthy. I have met people with brand new cars who were in immense debt. Some tall people feel very small on the inside. Some white people relate more to blackness, and black people who relate more to whiteness. Whiteness and blackness as words express our preconceived notions of these groups and are likely quite flawed – how can we generalize to such massive groups?
To continue, some men feel like women on the inside and vice versa. Some people of a group, ethnicity, or religion feel quite strongly about their identities, and others do not feel that it is a significant feature of them. How ignorant can we be to see that someone belongs to a category of beings based on external categorical features and then make assumptions about who they are on the inside?
I have a Hispanic skin tone and features (since I am indeed Hispanic). Thus, when I am in Mexico since my Spanish is not perfect and I have an accent, I am often seen as the American or the gringo. Yet when I am in the US, sometimes people ask me where I am from, as if they are caught up in my superficial form or my physical appearance. In being caught up in the superficial, they have failed to observe that I speak well-educated English, as you would expect a professional writer and someone with a master’s degree to have. Also, I have no foreign accent. I am just as American as any other American since I was born on this soil.
I often sense that people have identified me as not being one of them before they have had the chance to know me. I am sure I have committed this mistake with people in my past too. It is quite an easy mistake to make. We think we know something about people by seeing them at a glance, but often, we really don’t. Subconsciously, a part of us always seems to be thinking this when we meet someone new: “Is he one of my kind, or not?”
In Mexico, people can often tell that I am not from there before I even speak. Recall that I have an accent in Spanish, and I speak it imperfectly – so if I speak, the natives know I am not from there. Physically, I appear Mexican, so how would they notice that I am not from there so quickly?
Sometimes I think I am too tall. At 5’11, most Mexican men are somewhat shorter than me (at about 5’5), and I have only seen a woman taller than me once (while on average they are about 5’2) in three years of living in Mexico. Sometimes I think that perhaps we Americans dress or walk differently, or we are not in tune with some basic mannerisms and customs of the area. All these things may immediately signal to some people that I am not from there, despite my skin tone and physical features being common to the area.
So in Mexico, I am the American or gringo, and in the US, I am the Mexican American or Hispanic American. Both viewpoints are calling attention to where I am not from. Somehow in my life, I have come to feel at home with not appearing to be from wherever I happened to be at the time. I mention this feeling because I am sure all minorities have this feeling to varying degrees. And it can be difficult to process and understand this feeling even when you live it, so I imagine it is not easy to grasp when you do not have to live it.
I took us down a winding path here, but the point is that we need to learn to see the essential features of the person, or animal, or plant, or even the thing in front of us. We can lazily revert to thinking:
I have seen one dog, so I have seen them all. I have seen one tree, so I have seen them all. I have seen one apple, so I have seen them all.
But if we do, then eventually we start thinking:
I have seen one Native American person, or white person, or black person, or Hispanic person, or Asian person, so I have seen them all.
We start to see our preconceived notions of a group of people when we see a person rather than to see the particular person in front of us.
Learn to guide your focus to the essence or spirit of things. See what is actually there, not what is not. Focus on what is, not on whether some quality is lacking.
Interdependent Thinking
With interdependent thinking, we will see that the essence of people or things does not exist on its own. I am who I am, but only because of my interactions and interdependencies with the rest of the universe. For me to be here, the sun had to be there, the Earth had to be there, my parents had to be there, and the neighborhood I grew up in had to be there. For these things to be there, my parents’ families and ancestors had to be there, countries had to be there, and governments had to be there. For these things to be there, nature had to be there, ecosystems had to be there, and dinosaurs and all organisms that led to our evolution had to be there. For those things to be there, some first mover, or Creator, or big bang, beginning, or eternity had to be there. I don’t exist outside of all these other interdependencies.
We see the essence of people and things with interdependent thinking, but we move beyond this and take it a step deeper. When we study the essence of things, there is a point where there is the absence of essence. My matter is the same matter that has always existed. At one point, it was a part of the stars, at another point, a part of the seas, at another point, a part of the dinosaurs, at another point, a part of the air, and so on. The essence of things is that they are always here, and they are always flowing from one form to the next. I am a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. You are also a temporary form that the universe was leading up to. But we are not the end. The universe and its forms move on, before us, through us, after us, beyond us.
I’m not sure that we ever came to be. Perhaps we were always here, and our consciousness cannot access that because we were a part of different forms at that time (e.g., a part of the stars, the air, the water, other living organisms, etc.)
Categories are temporary classifications of things. They are impermanent. For example, did dogs exist a billion years ago? No. Did humans? No. Will we exist in our current form in another billion years? It’s quite unlikely.
Categories are impermanent. Essence is absent (or perhaps also temporary). And so, interdependence is the truth that we are left with when we chisel away the falseness of categories and essence.
Categories are truer than random or disorganized thought. Essence is truer than categories. And interdependence is truer than essence.
When you see the daisy at this level of thought, you don’t see it at one point in time, but you see it at all points in time. When you do this, the daisy is soil, water, fertilizer, a seed, sunlight, and a part of the Earth and the air, and intermixed with everything for all time. The daisy is not just the daisy we see it as now. The daisy is a temporary form, and that form will change and become a part of other forms of life and nonlife.
A Summary
With categorical thinking, we learn to perceive the general idea of things. The problem is that these categories we form can give us an incorrect picture of the thing in front of us. We focus on the categories and how we have defined them or how society has defined them that we stop seeing what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to reality and the truth rather than enlighten us to it. When we have mastered how to think categorically, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.
With essential thinking, we learn to perceive what is actually right in front of us. Categories can blind us to the reality, so essential thinking forces us to be in tune with the present, the here and now, and to experience reality to its fullest as it actually is rather than responding to our ideas of what we thought a person or thing was supposed to be. Essential thinking helps us live according to what is, rather than to what we thought was supposed to be. When we have mastered how to think essentially, it is time to seek a higher form of thinking and understanding.
With interdependent thinking, we learn that categorical thinking focuses on the temporary, essential thinking focuses on something absent, and interdependent thinking is what we are left with. This is a principle that is not bound by time. Nothing exists as a theoretical category – since these are just abstractions. And nothing exists as a pure essence of itself – since nothing exists independently on its own. Everything exists as part of a relationship with the rest of the universe. In physics, there are four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, weak forces, and strong forces. Other forces (or emotions) in the human world, such as love, happiness, anger, and fear, similarly guide the way humans move, act, and interact. All of these forces guide our relationships and interrelationships and keep us working as interdependent forces upon each other.
