when we walk in the world with an open mind, we will often find ourselves touching the thread of a small weaver’s efforts. if we follow that thread, as a metaphor for anything that draws us with a particular kind of light, we will find a treasure.

there’s a term in psychology that is relevant here. “overdetermined.” important truths for us (the truths we live or that live us) tend to be true for a lot of reasons (conscious and unconscious), not just one. things are never beautiful or interesting or [any term here] for one reason. they tend strongly to be overdetermined … so it takes a while to sort the “reasons” out and feel them each individually.

the psyche is adept at communicating to us. it will find something “out there” on which to project and “make interesting” what it “wants” us to know consciously. it is a still, small voice. it is a thread.

for instance, a part of us knows there is something within us that might be infinite.

there is a part of us that knows we are living smaller lives than we have been given. a huge poetry lives within us that demands expression.

the numinosity of a number can be a reminder that we are “underachieving” in some way. and both the notion that anything useful about the mind can be contained in one number … and the notion that anything important in life can be “measured” as sufficient “achievement” with yet another number … is symptomatic of the patriarchal disease … to objectivy and decompose and measure and judge as boundaried abstractions.

you capture the opposing realm (feeling) and answer your own question perfectly with the very title of your post. “how many gallons in the sea?”

the sea is a classic symbol of the feminine, the infinite, the realm of spirit and feeling.

to THINK that one would know anything important about the sea by knowing the number of gallons in it is to fail to FEEL the value and power of the infinite, or to even approach with the right question (it’s not “how many gallons”). the limitation of thinking — and it is a severe one — is to know the measure of things and the value of nothing.

we can’t measure the beauty of a cornet sunrise on the sea … nor can we know much important about it by the number of light waves of different colors that comprise it … and the dimensions of complexity in a sunrise are far fewer than the dimensions of complexity in a psyche.

and you say all of this in your post. i’m just echoing you in different words, following a different inflection of the same thread.

the faculties and abstract judgments of thought are barren without foundation in the mysteries of the universe. thinking is useful but it only goes so far … thoughts can’t measure (boundary or hold) feelings.

the numinous image of “iq” as a metaphor (for how much you are and how much you should accomplish) drew you where it needed to draw you and you followed … on your shimmering mindspinner threads of woven fate …

back to the bedrock of what’s important … the unmeasurable sea and the unmeasurable enchantments of your own unmeasurable life on your own infinite golden thread.

/ehj2