What constitutes profundity?

Profoundness in feeling, thought, action, speech, relation, experience, what is it that makes something distinctly profound?

Discuss.

I think it differs for everyone. I am reminded of Ricky Fitts from American Beauty who found extreme beauty and profundity in a plastic bag flying in the wind. For me, I will sometimes get a feeling that a certain moment is special and profound, and it usually happens when I am at a decisive moment in my life.

I remember when I decided to switch majors once while watching some ducks play around in the river. One duck was behind its friends, so I created a metaphor that it didn't matter where these ducks were along the long, winding river of life because their position in the river is arbitrary. So even if it took me extra time to complete school, my happiness was more important. I had another profound moment the other month when I randomly stumbled on some arrays of solar panels and realized that working in clean energy is the right path for me.

Being well-timed is an important condition for profundity in my opinion. We can walk through an art museum filled with art that is extremely deep and applicable to the human condition but not feel moved by any of it and feel more emotion when looking at a child smiling with their parent. I actually had this exact experience in a museum in France; I found the tourists there far more interesting than the actual artwork because they were real people with real concerns versus inanimate artwork.

However, sometimes the art speaks to us more depending on the time in our life. It seems to me that anything can be profound in the right context.

Profound is that which has been discovered by a professional expert.

Now seriously. Profound is something which contains the seeds of its own destruction/transcendence.

It is when a person feels a very strong sense of participation with an event/object.
Profoundness isn't intrinsic in the object, its perception is therefore a psychological event.
I think it's something like perceiving the right metaphor (as RAM reported) in the external world to unlock some sort of latent subconscious/unconscious content within the conscious mind.

Your sovereignty Casts Judgment on it to be Profound .

It's a measure of our ability to bypass the mundane-transducing filters of our dysfunctional neural system

Then it's infinite in a grain of sand...and all that jazz

The fact that drugs can have a profound effect on profundity makes me think that it is largely a psychological/nuerochemical event. There are of course things that are truly profound at least on a relative level to our lives and happiness, but with the absurd level of profundity while under the influence of certain drugs, it makes the whole process of assigning profundity suspect.

Or maybe it's that everything is profound, and drugs just show us that.

I'm sure that in some way this is true, but with all things being relative, profundity would be meaningless with all things carrying the same level of profundity.

For instance, if there is such a thing as the big bang or a creation moment, this moment would be what all profundity is derived from and all things would carry a portion of this greatest profound moment. If the snarled thread in my shirt carries an equal profundity as the big bang, then it is by default the only thing in the universe that matters.

This depends on something I will call The Theory of Conservation of Profundity; Profundity cannot be created or destroyed, but is only transferred or borrowed from previous profundity.

So, considering all possibilities, the snarled thread in my shirt could carry the same profundity as the big bang but this would mean that profundity is either manufactured by conscious beings such as ourselves and/or intrinsic to the situation.

The final possibility is that profundity is entirely within our heads. We project profundity onto things, time, experience, ideas, etc. as some sort of coping mechanism or as a way of giving important thoughts priority over other inconsequential thoughts.

Imagine a dewdrops web extending across silver blue blades of grass.
Each dewdrop is an aperture of the Self through which itself is seen.
To the degree the Self is seen in all beings the profound has been found.
The sense of the profound depends on the extent to which one sees how each event, each thing, is connected to every other event, every other thing. The deeper one's comprehension of the interconnectiveness of everything - upon that rests the experience of the profound.

It is the perception of meaning that is inexplicable yet somehow understandable. It usually reflects various aspects of one's life (including our emotions) or even existence as a whole in it's undefinable tenor. It is sort of like a vague realization of the hitherto unidentified complexity, interelatedness and pertinence of various forms and processes in life.

Apart from this I think universecannon has it on point with it being a thought that bypassed the mundane-transducing filters of our dysfunctional neural system. lol.

The utter absence of shallowness?



JBArk

When something makes me think of a concept in a way that has not previously occurred to me and it alters my thought process.

... and it can be as deep or as ridiculous/ plain ol' silly as can be

Actually I remember seeing a lecture by a drug researcher (I think it was about LSD) on YT, where exactly this was part of the topic. As it seems there is a very special mechanism in the brain that is responsible to give us the feeling of something being "profound" and needing attention. It gets usually activated seldomly. So he explained how LSD changes the neuro functioning so that all the time this mechanism gets activated or something like that. So that all the time, eg. when looking at a flower, or the wall, etc, you think this is something deep and profound and you are in awe.

I found that rather interesting.

Edit:
Found it. Was a lecture by David Nichols and part of it was about the "locus coeruleus".
I mean this lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJtdZUy1LYE at about 30Mins.

There is a study linking increased profundity to shrooms as well but I can't find anything on it. Also, my partner seems to get none of the increased profundity on any drug but functions just fine with her sober profundity. But she has virtually no spiritual side, so this makes me question whether the mechanism that she's missing for profundity is some survival/coping mechanism that is a remnant of our genetic past that is no longer necessary and now just weighs us down with irrational thoughts. There is someone out there that has coined the term "the god Gene" and I think this may apply to the spiritual sort of profundity.