We want the world to be elegantly simple and make sense. We want it to be made of water, earth, wind, and fire, but it's made of hundreds of elements like rubidium and chlorine. -- We want good and bad to be clear; we want it to be obvious and what's right and wrong. However, even for those with moral systems written down, it's incredibly difficult to rectify them with the endless complications that arise when applied to the world. There's too much for a mind to hold, but the closer we look the more the world gives us. It's perfectly natural to want things to make sense and be intuitively simple, but it is often not so (Like Bertrand Russell's trying to prove the base of mathematics for absolute truth being unproveable, just 'pretty sure' for scientific predictions (which we wish was intutively evident, but requires generations of work to get to)... Ludwig Wittgenstein's language games etc.) It's easier to deal with categories rather than the continuum of experience - making it easier to understand and deal with things. However, it is restrictive and not as accurate as the continua.

How come we are only conscious of a small subset of our body and the environment? Because it would be impossible to monitor the trillions of processes going on. Our consciousness focuses on certain things and has to simplify. We stay at our level of perception abstraction. We know there are processes bigger than us and smaller than us, but we don't have to be aware of them to function as humans. I can go my whole life never consciously knowing that there is such a thing as a 'liver' in my body, but it continues its necessary bodily functions nonetheless. Our experience goes through a great compression of information.

Everything in our lives have nigh endless complexities to them as you look closer. When you start to learn a new subject, you begin seeing any incredible breadth and depth you couldn't see before. For instance, if you start sewing you begin to see clothing entirely differently. Noticing how sleeves are attached, different kinds of stitching, hems, and on and on. Learning these things also allows you to see the abstraction layers above and below as well. You can suddenly be shocked, imagining the preciseness of the weaving from the fiber threads, as well as, a whole new world opening up in fashion where you can see the stylings of clothes in a new way. You can do this with everything in the world and see the connectedness and depth. Trees, sewers, grocery stores, beavers, wind, electricity, and on and on. This can often inspire angst from the heavy weight of the realization of size, however there can also be a peace (or even an excitement) that comes with this understanding.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" (Whitman). The great unknown sea within yourself has no reason to be consistent whenever it bubbles up into your consciousness. If anything, it is very useful and natural to hold many conflicting thoughts. (Where are the headwaters of this lake?) If you watch lots of westerns, your mind will be filled with it day and night. If you listen to a recording of someone with a particular way of speaking for long enough, your thoughts begin to speak with that cadence. --- A drawing from and mixing the past environments.

And it always continues and changes. From the Stream of Consciousness (like William James) we again use focus and attention in a feedback loop of thought creation (thoughts caused by previous experience lead to focusing on new things that lead to new experiences that lead to new thoughts - we can want what we want, but we can't decide what we want). You can't hold on to a single thought even if you wanted to because as soon as you have the thought it has already started changing in time whether in reference to itself, the environment, or a new thing that has arisen from it.

Looking into a microscope and seeing a cell for the first time was an incredible experience for me. The realization you aren't an abstract singular being but made up of a multitude of little creatures working together for something they can't see. If we go down the cells are themselves made of a bunch of smaller parts (possibly even other creatures i.e. Mitochondria) and you can continue down and down smaller and smaller to these different worlds of existence that things are made up of. Additionally, you can go up from the cell to the tissues and the organs and up to a creature like a bee who is a part of a beehive which is a part of an ecosystem which is a part of a world which is a part of everything.

We want there to be such thing as a bee, that platonic ideal, and it exists in our perception on our level of abstraction. But it simeltaneously exists on all levels below and all levels above. It is impossible to have a bee without a beehive and it is impossible to have a bee without the flowers whose nutrients the bees take into themselves that become a part of them. The plants need the water and sunlight which they take into themselves and becomes a part of them. They need soil, the dead grounded earth churning below to feed them. Just like us, we live on the dead, we live with the dead: they are all around us. They make what you sit on, what you wrap your body in, what you are made of - the dead life in your cells that you've eaten, it's a spiritual transfer of energy when not a horrific, unnecessary terror. Energy does not need to be a mystical, unseen force - it already is.

Somehow, this is all so comforting. The recognition of the way things likely are. And so to remind myself for comfort: Understanding as a Virtue. Yes, for the natural world but also for the elusive, etheral connections on our most important level of abstraction of humans. Understanding why is a great comfort. There does not need to be an unseen force that flows between people and through the air because there already is. The human perception of surroundings is already magic. Light being transmitted through a void turning into pictures that can be interpreted as electric sparks firing in the head. Particles floating off of things can be sensed and interpreted by touching them in the nose and mouth. The literal vibrations are sensed and interpreted as one of the most mystical experiences possible with sound. And being able to pick up on each other's emotions from social ability with these senses and language is magic in and of itself and one of the most human things in the world.