All ideas are circles. Did you know this? You know this right? All ideas are circles. Did you know this?
Every idea is circle, that can be stretched or compressed infinitely by you. I don’t know of any physical substance that works that way.
I just drove by a mechanic shop operated by a guy who drove me out of a church. The sign under the shop sign says “KEEP IT SIMPLE GOD IS LOVE.”
Well done, sir. See, here is a man doing his own investigation. He figured something out. God is love. Love is God. He believes that, wholeheartedly; it’s reasonable, makes good sense, love is something we can perceive, the same way we perceive God. We can perceive God in the same way we perceive love. That last part he probably hasn’t thought about. But nevermind: well done, sir! (That’s what I say.)
An idea like any substance, under infinite pressure can be compressed to nothing, and under zero pressure can be distributed across an arbitrarily large space; like a circle, every idea is balanced; every idea has two sides that connect to each other quite fluidly.
But as you view an idea, you walk around this circle; you pick a point to stand. Or you say, hey, nice circle! I’ll wear the whole thing. Like a hammock. You can try simplifying it, to make it a little less cumbersome. But you have to be careful, because when circles get to small they get too simple, and all of a sudden you have nothing. You say, oh, well that’s just.. obvious, and you go quickly from obvious to nothing. HOLD ON HOLD ON YES I KNOW I’m TRYING to come up with an example ALREADY JUST HOLD ON.
“God is love” is a circle, right? With God on one side, and love on the other side, across the circle. If you drew a diameter, with one point on God, the other point would be on love. And you can make that circle bigger, as the thought gets more complicated, by adding other points. The love that we feel for other human beings–another point on my circle, a particular kind of love–is part of the love that they feel for God; what we love about other people is the God we see in them, and the God that we see in them is the love that they feel, and vice versa.
Around and around the circle,* and I can make it a little it bigger than that: I can say that community and being together as human beings is an expression of spirituality and godliness, because God is love, and we feel this love for each other; we want to be with each other because we want to feel that love, because we want to be with God, because we want to feel God, because God is love, so feeling God feels good, and we do what feels good, because we want to be in community. You can go around that circle in quite a few ways and always win: it is an unusual one that way, as I think I’ve demonstrated.
And you could keep going. You could write an entire paper on it. But you’ll always come around, whether or not you say so.
And beyond what you could say, this idea goes on, with aspects no one on the planet at this time can comprehend, and/or no one on the planet is aware of. That’s a very big circle. What God is, really–what love is, really? The combination of chemistry and something else, what is it? You can feel it, but what is it that you feel? You can think it, but what is it that you think? And it’s complicated, right? I has negatives, and positives,— and it must have some kind of existence, where? Point being ideas can get really big, bigger than you can actually comprehend– they go on — they do this all day actually, emanating out from us. We can feel them doing it, but usually don’t pay attention, being used to letting go when they reach a certain size.
You can shift ideas in the other direction, inward; you can make them very small. You can say God is Love– God good, love good — Good good — Good — Yes — Done. And then you’re saying nothing, suddenly, and everything. From Good is good, which sounds like nothing but isn’t, to Good, which has a meaning, to Yes or True, you can shrink this idea– but no further. Any smaller and there is no idea. And from these small ideas you can expand: from Yes or True you can expand into almost anything.
Maybe this is why they say in the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
Several years ago I had to learn that tautology is an important and valid part of thinking, just like paradox. Now it’s your turn, maybe.
Sometimes when you are thinking about something complicated and you go to simplify it, if you are high on marijuana especially**– suddenly the idea shrinks down to nothing and you comprehend everything, but just as a single point, like Yes or True or an imaginary humming noise. At these times we must remind ourselves, ok, I need to remember the evidence, the experience, the fact — that was holding the circle open. That people like to be community, for instance. Otherwise the world jus gets too darn beautiful to make any sense of. A fact though can stretch the circle to a size that can accommodate it and the other facts.
Or we can just hum, Yes, and feel the entirety of it, of every idea that there is contained in this one that we are thinking.
Anyway, ideas.
* o as circles go this is small one
** which I never am. a nice cold glass of lemonade is plenty good enough for me, thank you, no really, you are too kind, is there more?