The Ladder of Conceptualisation: Letting the Imagined Die
Reflection on a meditation from Chicago
Yoo,
How’s life?? Let me know - it’s been a while fr
Reading this, you’ll:
Learn a key meditation practice
See how it fits into letting go of unhelpful tendencies
Get a look at my experience with it
Quick Definition First!
The ladder of conceptualisation is the way each concept stacks on simpler, foundational ideas to make sense. It’s like a hierarchy where basic perceptions build up to more complex ideas.
For example, when we see a table:
At the most basic level, we start with what’s seen—just visual perception.
Next, we notice colours and shapes in that perception.
Moving up, we identify materials like wood.
Finally, with all these elements combined, we label it as a table.
Each layer (seen, colours and shapes, wood, table) depends on understanding the one before it. Moving up the ladder, our concepts get more detailed, transforming raw sensory input into complex understanding.
How to Climb the Ladder: Labelling the Raw Parts
To loosen our attachment to these labels, we can practise just labelling the raw, rudimentary parts of experience—things like sensation, thought, heard—without diving into the specifics. By breaking things down to their simplest form, we start to see how our more detailed concepts are just built on basic elements. This process of labelling helps loosen our belief that the more complex concepts exist ‘out there’ rather than as a thought. Instead of seeing a complex narrative, we’re just noticing raw sensations.
Realising Everything Is Just an Idea
So, now, as I climb this ladder, I’m realising that everything I thought was “real” is just an idea (spoiler - there are no things that exist independent of our perception of them). All these stories about who I am, what life is supposed to be, what I’ve been through—they’re just layers of thought. Letting go of them is like dying—not physically (although it is a very somatic process, with burps and face contortions) but letting a part of me fade out, a part I used to believe was solid. It’s an unsettling and kind of sad process, like realising Santa doesn’t exist (but 1000X more intense).
Playing the Game of Labelling
This process is like a game—seeing everything that comes up without judgement. When a sensation or a thought arises, I just label it. It’s simply “sensation” or “thought” without worrying about the deeper meaning. For example, “I’ll never be happy” can just be a thought. It’s like going from “bicycle” or “laptop” to just “metal” or “wood.” When I start seeing things this way, they lose their old meaning. They’re just thoughts, not reality.
Finding Freedom in Simplicity
Labelling experience at this basic level—sensation, thought, feeling—feels like peeling back layers to a simpler, clearer way of seeing. I get the wonder of a child seeing a stream for the first time, not even knowing there were even questions to ask, let alone answers to find. I remember what it felt like to just be, without having to interpret everything or build up this massive identity around myself.
Letting go like this takes courage because it means saying goodbye to what I think the past and future mean. But with each story I drop, there’s this lightness, a feeling of freedom I haven’t felt in a long time. Freedom isn’t about adding more to my life—it’s about letting things fall away.
How to climb the ladder yourself?
This video! Thank you @Roger Thisdell
Peace
Lex