Limitations of Human Thought
- We’re All Insane! Second Edition will teach you how to think better and saner.
Limitations of human thought help us apply and use thinking where it does the most good. It makes no sense to use thinking where it must fail.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein
“I once tried to think for an entire day, but I found it less valuable than one moment of study.” —Xun Zi
“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.” —William Butler Yeats
“If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.” —Chung Tzu
- Click for quotations on human thinking.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Discover the limitations of human thought and stop trusting in thought over energy.
- Thought cannot do.
- Thought cannot bind.
- Thought cannot know.
- Thought cannot sense.
- Thought cannot create.
- Thought cannot understand.
- Thought cannot be anything but thought.
Absence of Thought
- All great performers report the absence of thought during their best performances.
- For the artist, it does not matter whether those performances are in theater, music, sports, or any of the arts.
Thought Is a Pointer
- Thought cannot be what it points to.
- Thought can point to experience.
- Thought can point to sensation.
- Thought can point to memory.
- Thought can point to thought.
- Thought can point to feeling.
- Thought can point to reality.
Thought Cannot Understand
- Confusion occurs when you try to understand two disparate thoughts with another thought.
- Why? Because thought cannot understand.
- Understanding is difficult when you try to understand with thought.
- Why? Because thought cannot understand.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
What Is Thought Not?
- Thought is not talent.
- Thought is not reality.
- Thought is not action.
- Thought is not wisdom.
- Thought is not experience.
- Thought is not what it is about.
Illusion Is Thought As Reality
- Why?
- Thought can only be about reality.
What Happens Without Thought?
- Creativity happens without thought.
- Talent happens without thought.
- Skill happens without thought.
- Joy happens without thought.
Stuckness Always Involves Thought
- Why?
- Because thought pointing to thought as reality prevents the natural flow or passing of thought.
- Thought becomes stuck on thought instead of eventually pointing to sensations.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
Intelligent Use of Thought
- The intelligent use of thought is to drop and forget a thought once you see or go where the thought is pointing—because its job is then done.
Use Thought In These Ways
- Thought is an alert.
- Thought is a pointer.
- Thought is a beacon.
- Thought is a signpost.
- Thought is a flashlight.
- Thought is a ladder to something else.
- Thought is a stepping stone to something else.
Thought Directs Attention
- Thought is a magnificent tool to focus attention.
- Thought is no more or less than that: a flashlight.
Thought Requires Outside Forces
- Even mathematical systems cannot prove themselves.
- Proof comes from outside a system (Kurt Gödel) because thought cannot create or understand anything.
Thinking Distorted
- Thinking is regularly distorted to meet the goals of the ego.
- See Freud’s Ego Defense Mechanisms.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
Common Thinking Distortions
- Cognitive Psychotherapies expose common distortions in human thinking.
- See the 7 Thinking Errors of CT and the list of Irrational Beliefs of REBT.
- For quotations related to thought and thinking, see Quotations: Thought & Thinking.
3D: Daily Dose: 2020
#Thought-knowing #Blocking: 2020-01-24
- Thought-knowings, thought-doings, and thought-beings are all forms of thought-things.
- Thought-things are thoughts that seek to play God and replace reality with thinking.
- Whenever you have trouble finding something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you and stop relying on them.
- Whenever you have trouble learning something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you and stop relying on them.
- Whenever you have trouble remembering something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you and stop relying on them.
- Whenever you have trouble producing words or finding the right word, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you and stop relying on them.
- Whenever you have trouble performing a skill you have previously performed, look for the thought-knowing(s) blocking you by stealing your time and energy, and stop relying on them.
#Sensations #Thinking: 2020-03-23
- We try to convert experience into thinking; however, experience is only alive and real when it exists as sensations, not as thoughts.
- We try to convert action, doing, and movement into thinking; however, action, doing, and movement are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not as thoughts.
- We try to convert emotions and feelings into thinking; however, they are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not thoughts.
- We try to convert reality and truth into thinking; however, reality and truth are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not as thoughts.
- We try to convert sensing into thinking; however, sensing is only alive and real when it exists as energy perceiving sensations, not as thoughts.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
Quotations from Various Sources
Listed Alphabetically
“A book gives knowledge, but it is life that gives understanding.” —Jewish proverb
“Correct knowledge is dependent on objects, but the objects of knowledge are relative and changing. How can one know that the natural is not really of man, and what is of man is not really natural? We must, moreover, have true men before we can have true knowledge.” —Chung Tzu
“Do not apply reasoning to what is unthinkable. The mark of the unthinkable is that it is above all material causes.” —The Puranas
“He who knows what is of God and who knows what is of man has reached indeed the height of wisdom.” —Chung Tzu
“I once tried to thinking for an entire day, but I found it less valuable than one moment of study.” —Xun Zi
“If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.” —Chung Tzu
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein
“Let your ears and eyes communicate within but shut out all knowledge from the mind.” —Chung Tzu
“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.” —William Butler Yeats
“The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.” —Lao Tzu
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
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- CBT, CT, & REBT Cognitive Psychotherapies: List Pages
- Coping Skills: Free Help
- Counseling Issues: Free Help
- Ego & Self-Esteem Fast-Facts
- Emotional Responsibility: List Pages
- Exercises & Techniques: List Pages
- Feeling & Coping: Fast-Facts
- Meditation: List Pages
- REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy): List Pages
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- Thinking Skills: Free Help
- Unconditional Self-Esteem (USE): Defined
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Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.
Limitations of Human Thought
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- Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
- Read and discover the world’s best breathing exercise for your feelings and stress.
Limitations of Human Thought
- Read the best understanding of how our thinking makes us irrational and insane.