navigating confusion

Summary: "If you find yourself confused and going nowhere, try reminding yourself of big truths, composing a list of questions, and find definitions."
This theory depends heavily on a previous one "up/down decisions" from Jun 20-27
The main example in this theory is my confusion about the elements of the human mind, specifically regarding emotion, logic, goals, etc.

I see the gigantic realm of information, principles, truth, etc as a huge pryamid. There is raw data on the bottom, where you directly see truth, and there are big summaries, guiding principles, and the most important facts on the top. It's a pryamid because a few principles 'sit ontop' of larger amounts of information which they describe. In the realm of science, we could say that raw data = an apple falls when you let it go, a rock falls when you let it go, etc so principle: = all objects fall when you drop them.
Or with a more abstract topic: humans contain memory, principles, goals, abilities, etc. All these things are not related to eachother very strongly. The bigger idea is this: humans are arrays of widely varying properties and assets.

So when we might find ourselves confused about a certain idea, we're talking about a part of the pyramid. We can try to understand it in one of two ways, either from the top, or from the bottom.

Top down:
Remind yourself of all the biggest principles that you know. Primarily for me, because I am confused about theology and perception issues, I remind myself that God exists, that he is bigger, stronger, smarter, more holy, etc than me, anyone else, and the entire world. He has a plan for the universe and for me, he loves me more than I can imagine, he created the world, etc.
With your focus up on top, less important issues (like the properties of the human emotional system) come into greater clarity. Reminding myself of God, I remember why he created humans, and then I see how he might have made humans to fufill his purposes.
In the case of human emotional systems, God made humans to enjoy and glorify him. So humans should be able to know with logic that he exists, but a stronger element is our experience of him. Logic is a little more of an attachement to enjoying God, like music and relationships, rather than the primary thing.
I have still used logic to find this principle, I still use logic to reduplicate evidence that God exists, I still use logic to find some dashingly amazing things about God, but 'higher up' on the pryamid is enjoying God.

Bottom up:
If you're trying to find a principle or a piece of evidence, you can also look at things 'below' that principle, and average/summarize them to find your answer. Most of the time you don't know for certain every element that goes into the single answer you're looking for, neither will you know if some of the possible elements don't fit at all, but exploring possibilites should help.
If I want to find a summary of the human system, I could look at what elements might be included in the human system. Let's try the main categories within a human. Normally people use three thing like soul, mind, and body for instance. But there are many other terms too. Let's list some:
will, mind, body, brain, spirit, emotions, heart, imagination, concious, subconcious, id, soul, reason, charachter, ...
Many of these could be synonyms, but we list them all anyway because this is a non-linear, non-logical, general approach.
Instead of just possible options, you can also use the raw information from your perceptions. For instance I thought: what causes me to do most everyday things? how do I think when experiencing emotion? and honestly, I didn't come up with much clear reasoning. This tells me that there is a huge subconcious archive of learned reactions and principles that I don't see everyday. Plus I bet there's some near-concious super general logical reasoning that I could probably flesh-out if I wanted to, but I wouldn't bother.

Find definitions:
The key to understanding concepts rarely lies in computational bulk, large spatial models, big linear time sequences, or anything like that. If you find properties like 'who created this?' or 'what is it made of?' or 'what was this made for?', things make much more sense. For instance, when I was trying to understand emotion, I asked questions like:
what causes emotions? what are they made of? how should we use them? what is their purpose? are there multiple categories of emotions (like spontaneous versus developed)? how are they expressed?
Do not try to understand something using only a few angles. I would call these angles 'dimensions'. So, here are some dimensions to look at ideas with:
categories - look at the terms used in an idea and see if some are synonyms, if some are more specific types while others are general labels.
causality - what causes these things?
purpose - why was it created?
material - what is a term made of? is it spoken word? is it an idea in the head only? is it an emotion? is it a decision?
direct object - who or what is this directed towards? who is it meant to govern?

Just keep asking questions, keep your mind cold and open. If it's going nowhere, remind yourself of truh, ask questions, and look for purpose.