Cognitive Metaphor

As meditators we can realise that it is possible to consciously place thoughts anywhere within our field of awareness. We tend to do this unconsciously in the way we think. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not - in psychology there is a growing literature on 'cognitive metaphors' that function like this. Events in the future are not literally ahead of us but if we imagine them there this makes sense so it is a useful way of thinking that orients us clearly. As meditators we can see more subtle implications of the perceived position or movement of mind states.  For example there is a real sense in which more refined states of mind are higher, raising the mind in space is purifying because we are drawing it away from its attachment to its material ground.
Discovering these mental dynamics gives us all kinds of new ways to work with our minds.
Also revealed is the true relationship between the mind and the body.
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