About Matter

Now I don’t propose here to write something scientific about the nature of a substance or particle, or write something particularly substantive about anything in nature, or indeed express in words anything that is really natural in some way, shape or form.

No, metaphors and ambiguities aside, I’d like to come straight to the point about what really matters. What does matter?

You know that quip “Do you believe in Mind over Matter”?
The clue is in the answer, “Well if you don’t mind then it doesn’t matter!”

And as clue follows clue, the truth (to you at least) about whether something matters or not is purely down to if you “Mind” – or, in other words, if it is important to you.

A further clue here is in important, like that, where we import whatever it is that matters into our Mind.

And this presupposes that it was never there in our Mind in the first place.

So where did it come from?

Thought Energy

I talk a lot these days about thought energy, about the nature of it being likened unto being a constituent part of a formless and endless stream that just flows through our lives. We can notice and select parts, or particles, of this formless energy and import it into our minds. That that we do not select just flows on in the stream, uninterrupted.

We then have a number of particles of thought energy which we can then choose to grow or discard, or keep in abeyance – perhaps there on the ‘backburner’, if you like.

Of course when we discard the import it is gone, blown away like a grain of sand back onto the beach. And once gone back onto the beach we are never going to notice that particular grain amongst all the others.

And what, then, of the ones we have kept?

Well, there are the ones on the ‘back burner’ – that unnamed retentive place in our memory. Once the thought is there it isn’t being ‘grown’ but we feel there might be some as yet unknown use for it - to us - at some future point. When that use comes around, we might then choose to ‘grow’ that thought we have kept in abeyance.
We may be considering a particular thing as being perhaps of some importance to us and we’ll remember, “Oh yes, I was keeping X on the back burner somewhere in mind. Let’s go and find it and add its weight to this thing of importance I’m considering here. This will justify my keeping X all that time, plus it now, too, has an importance that I will keep growing.”
In whatever way we might particularly grow our thoughts, this ‘inner dialogue’ has probably taken place in order to match X.

Then there are the thoughts we grow right from the moment of import. And perhaps it is here – in the domain of thought processing – where the thoughts cease to be formless energy, and take on a form of their very own. We begin to make the formless energy into something Real. At least – something that’s real as far as we are concerned.

The Growing

The next stage of growing is to amplify the importance, so that it begins to matter to us. Of course, as we know, the more it matters to us the more important it gets. Very soon, and maybe even by now, the reality of ... whatever it is ... has become so almost tangible, that we’ve lost all sense of it being under our control. We’ve lost the sense of choice, and here the option to ‘discard’ feels out of our reach.

At some point in this growth process we might run the idea past someone else – because ‘thought’ has already grown and morphed into an ‘idea’. And remember we are very good at grouping ‘ideas’ into ‘sets’, which is also part of the growing process!
Of course, the person we’re running the idea past might give us their opinion, and here – depending on their opinion, and the credibility we assign to this particular person – we extend to them our choosing process. “You decide,” we can almost hear ourselves saying.

If it matters not a fig to them, if they attach no importance to the idea – AND tell us – then we may consider discarding the idea, or perhaps putting it on the ‘back burner’. If it’s an absolutely scatter-brained idea then they’ll have done us a favour if we discard it. If we choose not to, then our brains deserve to be well and truly scattered!

But if it matters to them as well, then the weight of their importance is now added to ours – and in our mind its growth is at once accelerated, and it is well on the way to becoming a full-blown belief.

We then, by further thought processes, reach the point where what matters, what’s important to us, has been inducted into the Hall of our Beliefs and Values.
Now it may be hard to comprehend, but let’s remember that it started out as a formless particle. A particle that was accelerated, and then grown – by us – into this glorious edifice!

What’s the matter?

So a client comes to see me and I might very well ask them, “So how can I help? What’s the matter?”
And they’ll describe what’s the matter, and I’ll test their worldview to see just how much of a handle they have on all matter, like that.

Ask Yourself this, is very much the next stage in my approach, because regularly checking out with ourselves about matter can be quite a liberating process. A little bit of self-interrogation every time we observe our inner and outer language using words like “important” and phrases such as “it matters to me” probably wouldn’t go amiss.

How much does it matter? Am I growing this matter? For what purpose do I retain this matter? Am I losing sight of something else by holding onto this matter? How real is this matter to me? How much of this matter is my own? How much of this matter is familiar to me?

“I’ve had a lousy day at work – I need a drink/some chocolate as a comfort, a reward, a respite, to make all the ‘lousy’ go away.” This may be familiar to you as it is or maybe in some other guise!

So, this need – how important is it to you?
How much does it matter – and then launch all the other questions listed above too. And notice your responses, especially “Shut up” or “To hell with the consequences.” Because in those two are the very real and damning responses to ‘How Real is this matter to me?’

It is in the very nature of our own matter, that it is ALL important to us. Some of the matter we want to keep and grow some more; some of it we have, until now, kept and grown it – and now it is important enough to us to want to discard it. From nail-biting, comfort eating and fear of spiders right across to wanting more confidence, motivation and positivity – these are things that matter to us, they are important. Some we want more of, some we want to stop.

The ones we want to stop are the very ones we have ‘grown’ at some stage in our lives – and the ones we want more of, we don’t know how to grow at this stage of our lives. There is an irony here!

Conclusion

It is all down to the nature of Matter.

And here’s the thing - Once we understand the nature of Matter then we’ll know how we’ve grown it, we’ll know how to discard it and we’ll realise the part our mind plays in the very existence of Matter.

Then, we’ll be able to lead our lives more in the way we want, no matter what!


AUDIO VERSION now can be heard on my YouTube Channel:
About Matter