how to understand meaning and make sense of things?

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ok. i'm not sure if i'm posting in the correct section, if this section is related to aspergers or not. but, i'm wondering if someone can help me here or explore this topic with me. i have trouble understanding meaning and making sense of things. i have an extreme need to though. i am intelligent, but i just don't understand certain things, so that makes me seem not-very-intelligent. i am great with understanding technical things, but not meaning. i finally did "discover" the "larger" picture in life, things about purpose, etc. and learned how to think for myself, but i still have trouble understanding the meaning of things. i just don't get it. in an intuitive, emotional, spiritual, or psychological sense i do, but not in a literary sense, or in a way understanding what the larger picture is of what's going on with interactions. i can feel it, but can't think it very well. it's like my mind is blank in a way. i know i could use reading some books (i'm not a big reader), but i haven't gotten there yet to help myself with this. any help please?

I would need to know more about the way your mind works, but for now will respond simply to what can immediately be seen.

Just for starters - you will never understand it all. Everybody from Dr Bob head of the Institute to Guru Sahib of the Enlightenment Centrum. only gets a fraction of it.

So - you focus on the parts you get - which to start will be minimal. Do NOT focus and stress out on the parts of the map that are blank.

Slowly, calmly, not telling yourself or letting others tell you of your inadequacies, you will build it up.

And you still will not get all of it, but a little can go a long way.

Not everything has meaning, and not everything will makes sense.

If you find yourself obsessing over the "Why" behind something and no answers are forthcoming, then maybe it's a sign to drop the inquiry and get on with your life.

OR, everything has meaning, but the meaning is not always accessible
AND everything makes sense, but we do not always have the data which put it in context
AND a lot of what SEEMS to be meaning and sense is wrong but we make do with it.

But yes- we agree on not pushing at doors that do not want to open.

Would it be possible for you to give examples?
Of the kinds of things you understand, and the kinds of things you used to not understand but now do, and the kinda things you still dont get?

Just a suggestion.

I very large body of knowledge is knowingly kept away from the masses by the ruling elite

Television and media create a matrix like reality

Truth should only be ingested in small bites with lots of chewing.

Eating truth too quickly or if unaccustomed to truth, will cause indigestion

Once adapted, a human can digest truth all the time.

This is an ideal state of being

Stay with it. Sooner or later you will work out by empirical methods what is intended and meant. It took me several decades by I am a well adapted Aspie and I can pass for human fairly easily now.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 07 Sep 2011, 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, same here. I have spent at least 80% of my time over the past half-century studying and trying to learn about all of that, and living within "mutual vulnerability, openly shared" (Ernest Kurtz) seems best. We all need the interactions and protections of human community, and "the meaning of life" seems best-discovered there.

thank you for the replies. good ones, gives me food for thought.
barring knowledge being repressed/restricted by the "elite" (which has been an interest of mine).....i have always been a truth-seeker. probably just by having to make an effort to understand or make sense of the world around me, which leads to that being applied to a larger context.

it's really difficult for me to communicate what i want to. but for examples, i have trouble connecting things together. i have trouble drawing conclusions, or useful ones.

i can't have conversations with "normal" people, who understand what's going on in the world. people who are or seem less intelligent (or different intelligence) know what's going on, and i don't. or maybe i just do in a different way, but i am not able to like people normally do.

i can't talk about the plots of stories, movies, etc. or maybe at just a very rudimentary level. i just don't understand the complexities, besides maybe some sense of psychological drama, suffering, etc. but not really a "cognitive" understanding, of what caused what, etc.

religion might be another area, that seems really complex to me and i wish i could understand.
i just would like to be able to drawn some kind of useful conclusions or meaning so i could apply it to something somehow.

i have trouble connecting the theoretical and practical, trouble applying my knowledge, unless it comes up in conversation, and then i'm spitting out the things i know.

i've known someone who is very literary and verbal and reads a ton and understands this woven world of meaning, and i just don't. it's taken me a TON of effort to even be able to communicate and be more articulative. it takes me so long to write. i just feel so stupid, and seem to be easily taken advantage of because i just don't understand or know things that other people understand (i guess what is considered common sense).

how people read and understand complex stories, how people read and can see how the story fits together, and get meaning from it.
just in general, making connections.

i maybe don't understand things about relationships that people normally do.

i also just have trouble really understanding minute things, like cognitively processing what people are saying, the words i am reading, etc. it's like i have to visualize each word and consciously process it, which takes time.

just seeing things connected together. i have some sort of framework, "worldview" (it was great to find that CONCEPT), but things are missing, it's hard for me to see the larger picture and how things fit together. a while back i was working on "creating" a framework that worked for me.

i only discovered concepts a couple years ago at age 26. i never knew what a concept was. how crazy is that.

i know that is out of order, but hopefully works for now.

Actually you did know but you did not know that you knew. Any human being over a month old uses concepts whether they know it or not. It is the way our brains work.

ruveyn

hmm, interesting. it makes sense, we know all sorts of things we aren't conscious of knowing. i know our brains are apparently wired to make sense of the world. it just seems that things should be clearer though, at least for me.

Do you have a black&white logical straight line thinking mind that depends heavily on concrete and observable evidence or do you have a hyper associational mind that is constantly running from one thing that is somehow connected to the next to the next thing, and somehow connected to the next thing, and they arrive at a conclusion that is totally incompatible with the past conclusions they drew, but there's somehow a connection between it and the previous conclusions. The psychotic mind and the asperger mind are at polar ends but both suffer from "the inability to adjust their behavior or their perception to deal appropriately with interacting variables."

http://www.caetextia.com/pages/defaultnetwork.html

Sometimes something will make no sense, simply because it has no inherent meaning - it simple is.

now that's really interesting. i have both of those things. i would like to be told about myself, have neurological or some kind of testing, i'd been trying to figure myself out. sometimes i think i should just quit and just be who i am (and quit trying to be "normal" or like everyone else). i've thought i have aspergers, it does help me to read about it. i have a therapist who works with people who have it who laughs at me for thinking i do, and told the black and white thinking is because of codependency and dysfunctional environment i grew up in. i don't appreciate being laughed at. what i experience inside isn't apparent outside.

anyway, that link you posted was really interesting, context blindedness (like mind-blindedness, etc)....all sorts of theories that maybe relate to the same thing, a larger-picture item (like aspergers, or a "neurological" condition). i have always had an issue with context, never had it before (stuck in the details), and when i discovered context, it was great, to see the larger perspective and how some things interact together. i began to try to setup some kind of context system/framework for me to use, to keep things in perspective, to see the larger picture. i started thinking from the top down, to always see the larger picture, because i need it. i have to TRY to keep it, so it's like once i am in the larger picture place, i don't want to let go of it, i DO have trouble transitioning between the two. so i'm either spacey and abstract, or in the details and logical/analytical. something like that.

i used to be like that, or naturally am that way - no labeling, not judgemental or judging, etc. but then, that is blank to me, it's like maybe you don't learn anything that way (besides maybe esoteric things). it doesn't seem to work very well in this world (at least the part of the world i have interacted with). i began trying to think how other people apparently think, making sense of everything, learning from things, and getting messed up a bit. i guess it's that context thing again, i have trouble with context. i try to find something that applies to everything, like universal laws, etc.

What is the meaning of a pebble? What reason for a grain of sand?

These things simply are, and have no meaning or purpose behind them.