Immersion in things

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I'm curious if this one is just me, or more generally "us".

People speak about the subject in here, and the object out there. I never quite identify as a "mind" with sharp boundaries between inside and out, and often find myself as it were inhabiting the object of my deep interest or my sensory immersion. This is a feeling that is hard to put into words, but I'm trying. I get the sense that it is quite unusual for NTs, whereas for me it happens all the time. I experience this kind of immersion as very pleasant.

I'm also wondering if this could be connected to my missing of social cues -- if "normal" people's sense of self is more narrowly focused on immediate social interaction, and that has something to do with why they pick up on those things, whereas mine spreads out into my sensory continuum or whatever I'm thinking or talking about. I'm off in that to me much larger world, and that's how I can miss something right in front of me.

This is a kind of talk that would make my wife lovingly tell me I'm weird.

Sounds like your sensory world is very strong!

That's very interesting. I'm not troubled by overpowering sensations the way I hear some are (except when I'm trying to sleep), and I'm anything but a visual thinker. But I love gazing at trees and rocks and landscapes and things, and it is transporting. Maybe I have more neurodivergent sensation than I give myself credit for.

A tangential point -- in another thread, I mentioned having doubt about the way the Myers-Briggs personality test assumes, e.g., that orientations toward "intuition" and "sensation" are inversely related. Over 40 years ago, that test put me far over on the intuitive, supposedly nonsensing side. Maybe I believed it too much as applied to me, in spite of my doubt about that principle. But if I recall correctly, the way they treat a sensing orientation has little to do with the kind feeling of immersion that is a big part of my life.

Seems relaxing. Are you a dreamer?

I estimate that im far more sensing than intuitive but have elements of both

In the sense that people say that, I'm very much a dreamer. But I have very poor recall of actual dreams in sleep.

And yes, this is important for me for de-stressing also.

I used to stare out the window looking at trees during school. The teachers thought i was doing it to be defiant!

As a child, I saw all kinds of shapes in them, like a Rorschach blot. Nowadays I don't so much see other things. It's more a feeling of some sort of connection.

a connection to nature, i can see that

Are you an artist/writer/creator?

I sometimes feel like this when I'm making art or enjoying other people's art (but not as deeply as I'd like to feel it- when I was younger I used to get frustrated that I couldn't "enter into" the things that I liked. It sounds like what you experience is what I wished I could do)

In my teens and early twenties, I actually fancied myself a very unconventional poet more than anything else. I was fascinated by word salads, automatic writing, and French post-structuralism.

I love music from the depths of my soul. Used to spend hours twiddling synthesizer knobs and building layered sounds, but never had enough discipline of practice to become able to realize the musical structures I was hearing in my head. Maybe in a different life I could have. My mom became a really good violinist late in life, and said it was all because she finally learned how to practice effectively.

As a child I produced nothing but circular scrawls until age 5, when I suddenly made a mural of two dinosaurs. Then I went through a phase of making drawings that were whole stories, with events unfolding as I drew them. (Incidentally, it seems to me that some cave paintings were constructed similarly to that, just with more skill.) Have not done much with visual arts in later life.

Oh yes, and for the last four years, my favorite thing has been writing a philosophy blog... And I guess for 40 years, my two jobs -- as an editor/abstractor and as a programmer/data modeler -- probably should count as somewhat creative, even though it's not the world-changing poetic conjuration I once dreamed of.

Last edited by notSpock on 01 Jul 2023, 1:10 am, edited 2 times in total.

I just read the "Mind Without Boundaries" post and thread. That very much fits me, too.

Reminds me of the book Castaway, where Lucy Irvine writes about entering a nameless state during her forays into the jungle. I have had that distinct feeling of being mutually absorbed by my environment, the river stones that I am standing on feeling me... that kind of thing but it's really something that happens in crowded places, for me, rather than quiet ones. I feel very insubstantial in crowds, parties and markets, which can be very floaty and pleasant

that happens to me when i read books. its like i am really experiencing the events in the story.