Beautiful post, Guy. You really have a knack for seamlessly weaving so many perspectives. Just lovely. I am reminded of that saying, "Denial will save you in one context and kill you off in the next. "Everything - even lying to ourselves - has its place.
"Denial will save you in one context and kill you off in the next".
Yes, this is a big part of the problem of what I have come to call 'The truth trap.' To become inflexible with something true and then inappropriately applying that outside the context within which it was true, either in space or time. It is part of my active practice of learning 'appropriate eccentric action'.
I am curious about the context within which you quote that. A quick search didn't find anything.
You know what's funny, Guy? I assumed that was a well-known quote. It was my Aunt Elise (an extraordinary person is many respects and a major influence in my life) who said it and it struck me as true. (She was referring at the time to my mother, not being keen to take allopathic medicines after being diagnosed with cancer. My mother was known for under-reacting to alarming situations, and my aunt was commenting on that being a survival skill that was essential in her childhood, but was an obstacle in this circumstance.)I always remembered it, and certain things (like your post) would bring it to the surface. So I guess it was my Aunt quoting herself! Probably because she was so important to me, I attributed this particular statement to near universal status. Huh.
Guy...this was perfectly what I needed to read tonight. I started reading this post when it came through (I got the email real-time). I was at work and only had time to read the first paragraph. I've had it up on my screen of endless tabs (🙈), and after I finished writing today, I had the time and space to read it.
So good.
"In a very real way, the truth of this can be inferred by what all our authorities, health, social, economic, government, religious, and often even spiritual guides say overtly or covertly: ‘You aren’t safe, your body is untrustworthy, your ability to understand is limited and unreliable, we will save you, we have the expertise, trust us.’"
I LITERALLY was just having this conversation with a friend on the way home today. We were discussing the ways we plant seeds in an effort to help others see what is happening all around us.
I was explaining that we can have all the research, evidence, etc, but ultimately, some people do not have faith in themselves. They lack inherent trust in the strength of their own mind's ability to interpret and process. And their body's ability to support, heal, and change.
It is a systematic conditioning that, to some extent, most everyone must work to overcome A belief that they are incapable in some way. In the mind, and perhaps more so in the body. Our entire medical system depends on this belief. Or lack of belief. Adherence to this structural weakness is what stands in our way.
Wow, I love how this has been a great synchronicity for you! ❤️❤️
"I was explaining that we can have all the research, evidence, etc, but ultimately, some people do not have faith in themselves. They lack inherent trust in the strength of their own mind's ability to interpret and process. And their body's ability to support, heal, and change." This is a great nuance to my understanding, an enrichment of what I have attributed to curiosity or its lack. Your comment here has resonated the awareness that curiosity will struggle to exist, or be nonexistent, in people who lack enough faith in their ability to process what asking may reveal! Thank you, this is a powerful insight for me.
"It is a systematic conditioning that, to some extent, most everyone must work to overcome A belief that they are incapable in some way. In the mind, and perhaps more so in the body. Our entire medical system depends on this belief. Or lack of belief. Adherence to this structural weakness is what stands in our way." This comes as a synchronicity for me, tonight. I finally finished Anneke's interview. Now, if she isn't an example of being conditioned and then waking up from it!!! We have all been conditioned to put our authority outside of ourselves, with varying degrees from ritual satanic rites of torture and sexual abuse, to the school house lies and media predictive programming and propaganda. (And Anneke's subtle argument around that is fascinating and likely connects with the ACE studies.)
An interesting question is: how have some of us managed to by-pass that or work ourselves out of that? The human being is so amazing, so resilient and so stuck!
Thank you for reading and, again, it is wonderful that you had with it such a resonant synchronicity!
I'll listen to your playlist, Guy, while staining my porch. I always find your writing elucidating. Lucid. Lucid-making. Etymology of Lucifer? Intriguing.
I posted on Kathleen's stack that I thought this fit well with hers. I'm not sure if we can avoid the car, the elephant, and save ourselves. There are cars I've faced head-on and another elephant I'm about to bow to instead of averting. The parable is promoting fear, imo. The elephant is God, is Truth, and we'll be okay. You were okay. The thrown student was okay. Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo.
Hola, Tereza. I am thinking of an elaboration on this essay. Despite your recommendation 'Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo'. I'm not rethinking it, I don't think. ;-) I had a friend ask a couple of questions and make a comment that has suggested to me that I go madly off in an odd direction initiated by the essay and his questions. I'm thinking I *may* quote your recommendation, so long as that is okay with you. (And if you have any other insights or questions, too, that may help furhter/deepen the elucidation. Perhaps. LoL! Life does have a wicked sense of humour.)
My sister made an interesting comment about the bike accident I'll be chewing on that may come to play, as well.
Play at will, Guy ;-) I ignore my own advice all the time--I'm always rethinking what the lesson was! Here's what came up for me with the car, the elephant: I often have people warning me to jump to the side. Someone else can expose the CIA plant. Someone else can profile the pychopath dad. Someone else can point out the ways that the Bible endorses land theft and slavery.
At least, they say, take some precautions, write under a pseudonym, don't let people know where you live. But I take the opposite approach. As the Course says, "In my defenselessness, my safety lies." As soon as I think something I do or don't do will protect me, I've conceded that this is reality, not a dream. And if it's reality, nothing I do will protect me because either God is Evil or Evil is God--those are the only two alternatives.
Maybe that will be my topic today. So many to choose from! So many lessons to rethink!
And interesting that you mention about precautions or step aside! OMG, for the first time someone said that to me openly. 'Aren't you afraid you might get targeted, killed?' He was blunt. And I was delighted to see that I was not.
This is a dream, and our 'objective' mechanism of seeing that it isn't objective! LoL!
And this is a great great synchronicity with Michael Stone's talk 'This Is It', about a famous Chan (Chinese Zen) story and poem that was elucidated by Shunryu Suzuki. From your comment you may enjoy it. I've transcribed Shunryu Suzuki's poem comment on the story. Earlier this year and by 'accident' found the oddly clunky Apple podcast mechanism repeating it. Perhaps fortuitously.
Here is the koan story of Yunyan's instruction to Dongshan (Tozan), the day Dongshan was to leave his sensei to live his own life, and not to see his master again.
Story:
When Dongshan was ready to leave his teacher Yunyan, Dongshan asked, “Later on, if someone asks me if I can depict your reality, or your teaching, how shall I reply?”
Yunyan paused, and then said, “Just this is it.”
When he heard that, Dongshan sank into thought. And Yunyan said, “You are in charge of this great matter. You are to [must] be most thoroughgoing.”
Dongshan left Yunyan and was still perplexed; he didn’t quite get it. As he proceeded he was wading across a stream, and seeing his reflection in the water, he had some understanding. He looked down in the stream and saw something, and then he wrote this poem:
“Just don’t seek from others or you’ll be far estranged from yourself.
Now I go on alone,
and wow, everywhere I meet it.
It now is me; I now am not it.
One awakes to understand in this way to merge with suchness.”
Now for Suzuki's comment as poem, which is lovely.
Do not try to see objective world
You which is given as an object to see
Is quite different from you yourself.
I am going my own way
And I meet my self
Which includes everything I meet
I am not something which I can see as an object.
When you understand self, which includes everything,
"Fear is never justified in any form." The only difference in how I live, based on questioning the reality of the world, is to live without fear and see what happens. So far, so good. Apparently it's not fear that's kept me safe.
To revisit your childhood incident, I have a friend who lives in a tent and gets around on his bike. He doesn't like the term homeless. A year ago he was in a horrific accident where he was run over by a long commercial truck. He had no memory of it but thought it must have been their fault, targeting him, and that he should sue. I offered to look into it and he sent me the police report. What I was able to figure out is that a steep dip for a driveway on the sidewalk threw him BETWEEN the wheels of the truck, and that the driver noticing from his side mirror and swerving probably saved his life.
If there was a split-second decision you made not to turn, you don't know the alternative. In the parallel universe, the car may have hit you at an angle and pushed you under it. What we know for certain is that you, the miraculous and insightful Guy, is here among the living. I suspect that every decision you've made leading up to this point has been the right one ;-)
Yes, here I am. And the here I am is also not who I am. Too funny.
Fear, within which I lived up until relatively recently did not keep me safe. The covidian age was my wake up out of fear. Is that the *real* wake up? Curious.
Now, I am joyfully alive, whatever that means. Life really has a wicked sense of humour.
I hope you had a great time staining the porch! An activity, with painting, that I've enjoyed as a great pacifier closed with a feeling of completion. Lovely. And with that curious playlist! Even more lovely, lol! imo. All's good.
"Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo". Yes! And this has me RotFL., because *what* exactly is the lesson?! OMG, I have no idea. And with that an idea for the next (or future) post.
So glad that this was provocative. And 'excellent' is nice, too. Thank you for reading and commenting.
An excellent essay and a good explanation of why most people see a world in which reality plays a minor or nonexistent part. Our subconscious wishful thinking will cause us to act in a manner that will make others ask, “What were you thinking?” The answer is that we were not thinking; some unknown part of us was doing the thinking. Humans are strange in that we can convince ourselves of just about anything we want to believe. Part one was the wind up; part two hit the strike zone.
Gracias. Yes, we think we are in 'control' and are anxious most of the time because unconsciously we know that we aren't. An interesting human challenge.
Aug 5, 2023·edited Aug 5, 2023Liked by Guy Duperreault
This is beautiful Guy. 🙏🌹
I left off at Freud's theory being distorted to blaim his patients subconscious (will pick back up in a bit). It reminded me of a few things. First , I had a therapist couple who I took family photos for. When I mentioned my son is autistic the man said thats because you didn't love him enough. I was floored. No mother could love her son more than me. My mother in law said I was spoiling Daniel with love to which I smiled and continued lavishing love and attention on him. My brother in law said Daniel would grow up to develop Oedipus complex because we looked eachother with such love and I showered him with affection.
The problem I see with blaiming one thing for all cases of abuse is, nothing is 100%. SIDS from vaccines also presents as shaken baby syndrome. Does that mean all babies with vaccine injury are abused by their parents shaken into brain damage? What we know as cancer has many causes.
I believe one of the main problems with new philosophies and theories is, the person proposing them attributes 100% of all people are sick because of their theory, dismissing all other theories. If they presented it as an additional cause of mental or physical disease it might be more accurate and accepted.
Yes, that crazy practice of blaming the mother for autism! OMG, I didn't know that was still out there. I am so sorry to hear that you actually experienced it. (I suspect my mother may have as well, as my 2nd youngest sister didn't speak until she was five and our grandmother wanted her shipped into a 'nut' house, which our mother refused to do.)
Yes, absolutely regarding what seems to be a control-freakish need for many (the traumatised?) humans to categorise everything and attribute everything to a single ostensibly controllable or definable 'thing'. (I've been having that discussion recently about the ambivalent long term effectiveness of healing cleanse or purifying diets with a one size fits all for all time. A truth trap if every there was one. For example, I've met long term vegans who became very ill with their raw diets that had originlly given them new life and wound up reviving themselves when the incorporated some kind of meat protein back into their diet. And, of course, the same in the opposite direction!)
Great comment, HH. Singularity of idea is the hallmark of spiritual blindness and easily becomes agression, anger, resentment and the ability to hurt and kill others.
There is a great poem by W Blake that cautions against that. He wrote in the 1700s, so 'singular vision' is not new, either!
Now I fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
‘Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold always. May God us keep
From single vision & Newton’s sleep!
Some years ago (OMG, 11 years ago!) I wrote my own poem that looks at this. Perhaps you will enjoy it :
Newton's Figs.
I know, I know, I've bleated this blah blah before.
Your eyeballs roll backwards yet again.
No more will I pray to reason's god
for a chink in its armour through which
we can squeeze the motes of living unpredictability.
A lot of this lying to ourselves reminds me of what Ian McGilchrist writes in his books about damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. The split brain experiments are especially spooky!
It's not just damage, but a society that rewards linear logic, which the left brain is a master at, even if it's untrue whether due to ignorance or wishful thinking.
From chapter 4 of Ian McGilchrist 's book The Matter with Things:
"One related difference between right and left prefrontal cortex activation is that the left dominates where belief bias points to the correct conclusion, and, by contrast, the right dominates where it does not.260 Belief bias is in fact generally associated with the left hemisphere, not with the right hemisphere.261 I"
Also chapter 4
"To put it crudely, the right hemisphere is our bullshit detector. It is better at avoiding nonsense when asked to believe it, but it is also better at avoiding falling prey to local prejudice and just dismissing rational argument because the argument does not happen to agree with that prejudice"
I also read part 1 of this article and laughed at the story of how it was believed that the guru stopped the rain. I used to be fascinated about supernatural powers, psychokinesis, etc. I wanted to believe. At the time, I felt like I was the blind one because many others in the group I studied with were able to see these things, yet I did not. It wasn't until I asked to be included in such an event that I realized that it was a sort of mass hypnosis that even the guru fell for.
“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.” - Robert Anton Wilson
Beautiful post, Guy. You really have a knack for seamlessly weaving so many perspectives. Just lovely. I am reminded of that saying, "Denial will save you in one context and kill you off in the next. "Everything - even lying to ourselves - has its place.
Thank you for this.
Hello, Kathleen. Hola.
"Denial will save you in one context and kill you off in the next".
Yes, this is a big part of the problem of what I have come to call 'The truth trap.' To become inflexible with something true and then inappropriately applying that outside the context within which it was true, either in space or time. It is part of my active practice of learning 'appropriate eccentric action'.
I am curious about the context within which you quote that. A quick search didn't find anything.
I am glad that this resonated with you.
You know what's funny, Guy? I assumed that was a well-known quote. It was my Aunt Elise (an extraordinary person is many respects and a major influence in my life) who said it and it struck me as true. (She was referring at the time to my mother, not being keen to take allopathic medicines after being diagnosed with cancer. My mother was known for under-reacting to alarming situations, and my aunt was commenting on that being a survival skill that was essential in her childhood, but was an obstacle in this circumstance.)I always remembered it, and certain things (like your post) would bring it to the surface. So I guess it was my Aunt quoting herself! Probably because she was so important to me, I attributed this particular statement to near universal status. Huh.
Love that, Kathleen. Your aunt sounds like she might have been a 'true' stoic. Wonderful.
Gracias.
Guy...this was perfectly what I needed to read tonight. I started reading this post when it came through (I got the email real-time). I was at work and only had time to read the first paragraph. I've had it up on my screen of endless tabs (🙈), and after I finished writing today, I had the time and space to read it.
So good.
"In a very real way, the truth of this can be inferred by what all our authorities, health, social, economic, government, religious, and often even spiritual guides say overtly or covertly: ‘You aren’t safe, your body is untrustworthy, your ability to understand is limited and unreliable, we will save you, we have the expertise, trust us.’"
I LITERALLY was just having this conversation with a friend on the way home today. We were discussing the ways we plant seeds in an effort to help others see what is happening all around us.
I was explaining that we can have all the research, evidence, etc, but ultimately, some people do not have faith in themselves. They lack inherent trust in the strength of their own mind's ability to interpret and process. And their body's ability to support, heal, and change.
It is a systematic conditioning that, to some extent, most everyone must work to overcome A belief that they are incapable in some way. In the mind, and perhaps more so in the body. Our entire medical system depends on this belief. Or lack of belief. Adherence to this structural weakness is what stands in our way.
Seeing things exactly as they are.
This requires faith in one's self.
Beautiful essay.
Thank you.
Wow, I love how this has been a great synchronicity for you! ❤️❤️
"I was explaining that we can have all the research, evidence, etc, but ultimately, some people do not have faith in themselves. They lack inherent trust in the strength of their own mind's ability to interpret and process. And their body's ability to support, heal, and change." This is a great nuance to my understanding, an enrichment of what I have attributed to curiosity or its lack. Your comment here has resonated the awareness that curiosity will struggle to exist, or be nonexistent, in people who lack enough faith in their ability to process what asking may reveal! Thank you, this is a powerful insight for me.
"It is a systematic conditioning that, to some extent, most everyone must work to overcome A belief that they are incapable in some way. In the mind, and perhaps more so in the body. Our entire medical system depends on this belief. Or lack of belief. Adherence to this structural weakness is what stands in our way." This comes as a synchronicity for me, tonight. I finally finished Anneke's interview. Now, if she isn't an example of being conditioned and then waking up from it!!! We have all been conditioned to put our authority outside of ourselves, with varying degrees from ritual satanic rites of torture and sexual abuse, to the school house lies and media predictive programming and propaganda. (And Anneke's subtle argument around that is fascinating and likely connects with the ACE studies.)
An interesting question is: how have some of us managed to by-pass that or work ourselves out of that? The human being is so amazing, so resilient and so stuck!
Thank you for reading and, again, it is wonderful that you had with it such a resonant synchronicity!
Good night.
🙏❤️🧘🏿♀️🙌🧘🏿♀️❤️🙏
I'll listen to your playlist, Guy, while staining my porch. I always find your writing elucidating. Lucid. Lucid-making. Etymology of Lucifer? Intriguing.
I posted on Kathleen's stack that I thought this fit well with hers. I'm not sure if we can avoid the car, the elephant, and save ourselves. There are cars I've faced head-on and another elephant I'm about to bow to instead of averting. The parable is promoting fear, imo. The elephant is God, is Truth, and we'll be okay. You were okay. The thrown student was okay. Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo.
Excellent, provocative post.
Hola, Tereza. I am thinking of an elaboration on this essay. Despite your recommendation 'Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo'. I'm not rethinking it, I don't think. ;-) I had a friend ask a couple of questions and make a comment that has suggested to me that I go madly off in an odd direction initiated by the essay and his questions. I'm thinking I *may* quote your recommendation, so long as that is okay with you. (And if you have any other insights or questions, too, that may help furhter/deepen the elucidation. Perhaps. LoL! Life does have a wicked sense of humour.)
My sister made an interesting comment about the bike accident I'll be chewing on that may come to play, as well.
All the best.
Play at will, Guy ;-) I ignore my own advice all the time--I'm always rethinking what the lesson was! Here's what came up for me with the car, the elephant: I often have people warning me to jump to the side. Someone else can expose the CIA plant. Someone else can profile the pychopath dad. Someone else can point out the ways that the Bible endorses land theft and slavery.
At least, they say, take some precautions, write under a pseudonym, don't let people know where you live. But I take the opposite approach. As the Course says, "In my defenselessness, my safety lies." As soon as I think something I do or don't do will protect me, I've conceded that this is reality, not a dream. And if it's reality, nothing I do will protect me because either God is Evil or Evil is God--those are the only two alternatives.
Maybe that will be my topic today. So many to choose from! So many lessons to rethink!
This is a great addendum/comment! Love it.
And interesting that you mention about precautions or step aside! OMG, for the first time someone said that to me openly. 'Aren't you afraid you might get targeted, killed?' He was blunt. And I was delighted to see that I was not.
This is a dream, and our 'objective' mechanism of seeing that it isn't objective! LoL!
And this is a great great synchronicity with Michael Stone's talk 'This Is It', about a famous Chan (Chinese Zen) story and poem that was elucidated by Shunryu Suzuki. From your comment you may enjoy it. I've transcribed Shunryu Suzuki's poem comment on the story. Earlier this year and by 'accident' found the oddly clunky Apple podcast mechanism repeating it. Perhaps fortuitously.
Here is the koan story of Yunyan's instruction to Dongshan (Tozan), the day Dongshan was to leave his sensei to live his own life, and not to see his master again.
Story:
When Dongshan was ready to leave his teacher Yunyan, Dongshan asked, “Later on, if someone asks me if I can depict your reality, or your teaching, how shall I reply?”
Yunyan paused, and then said, “Just this is it.”
When he heard that, Dongshan sank into thought. And Yunyan said, “You are in charge of this great matter. You are to [must] be most thoroughgoing.”
Dongshan left Yunyan and was still perplexed; he didn’t quite get it. As he proceeded he was wading across a stream, and seeing his reflection in the water, he had some understanding. He looked down in the stream and saw something, and then he wrote this poem:
“Just don’t seek from others or you’ll be far estranged from yourself.
Now I go on alone,
and wow, everywhere I meet it.
It now is me; I now am not it.
One awakes to understand in this way to merge with suchness.”
Now for Suzuki's comment as poem, which is lovely.
Do not try to see objective world
You which is given as an object to see
Is quite different from you yourself.
I am going my own way
And I meet my self
Which includes everything I meet
I am not something which I can see as an object.
When you understand self, which includes everything,
You have your own true way.
Here is the podcast, if you are intererested.
https://podcasts.apple.com/mx/podcast/awake-in-the-world-podcast/id923427517?i=1000346873392
The story part begins around 11:11 of the podcast.
"Fear is never justified in any form." The only difference in how I live, based on questioning the reality of the world, is to live without fear and see what happens. So far, so good. Apparently it's not fear that's kept me safe.
To revisit your childhood incident, I have a friend who lives in a tent and gets around on his bike. He doesn't like the term homeless. A year ago he was in a horrific accident where he was run over by a long commercial truck. He had no memory of it but thought it must have been their fault, targeting him, and that he should sue. I offered to look into it and he sent me the police report. What I was able to figure out is that a steep dip for a driveway on the sidewalk threw him BETWEEN the wheels of the truck, and that the driver noticing from his side mirror and swerving probably saved his life.
If there was a split-second decision you made not to turn, you don't know the alternative. In the parallel universe, the car may have hit you at an angle and pushed you under it. What we know for certain is that you, the miraculous and insightful Guy, is here among the living. I suspect that every decision you've made leading up to this point has been the right one ;-)
LOL!
Yes, here I am. And the here I am is also not who I am. Too funny.
Fear, within which I lived up until relatively recently did not keep me safe. The covidian age was my wake up out of fear. Is that the *real* wake up? Curious.
Now, I am joyfully alive, whatever that means. Life really has a wicked sense of humour.
I hope you had a great time staining the porch! An activity, with painting, that I've enjoyed as a great pacifier closed with a feeling of completion. Lovely. And with that curious playlist! Even more lovely, lol! imo. All's good.
"Don't rethink what the lesson was, imo". Yes! And this has me RotFL., because *what* exactly is the lesson?! OMG, I have no idea. And with that an idea for the next (or future) post.
So glad that this was provocative. And 'excellent' is nice, too. Thank you for reading and commenting.
All the best,
🙏❤️🧘🏿♀️🙌🧘🏿♀️❤️🙏
An excellent essay and a good explanation of why most people see a world in which reality plays a minor or nonexistent part. Our subconscious wishful thinking will cause us to act in a manner that will make others ask, “What were you thinking?” The answer is that we were not thinking; some unknown part of us was doing the thinking. Humans are strange in that we can convince ourselves of just about anything we want to believe. Part one was the wind up; part two hit the strike zone.
Hola, Carl.
Gracias. Yes, we think we are in 'control' and are anxious most of the time because unconsciously we know that we aren't. An interesting human challenge.
All the best.
This is beautiful Guy. 🙏🌹
I left off at Freud's theory being distorted to blaim his patients subconscious (will pick back up in a bit). It reminded me of a few things. First , I had a therapist couple who I took family photos for. When I mentioned my son is autistic the man said thats because you didn't love him enough. I was floored. No mother could love her son more than me. My mother in law said I was spoiling Daniel with love to which I smiled and continued lavishing love and attention on him. My brother in law said Daniel would grow up to develop Oedipus complex because we looked eachother with such love and I showered him with affection.
The problem I see with blaiming one thing for all cases of abuse is, nothing is 100%. SIDS from vaccines also presents as shaken baby syndrome. Does that mean all babies with vaccine injury are abused by their parents shaken into brain damage? What we know as cancer has many causes.
I believe one of the main problems with new philosophies and theories is, the person proposing them attributes 100% of all people are sick because of their theory, dismissing all other theories. If they presented it as an additional cause of mental or physical disease it might be more accurate and accepted.
I have to come back to this
Duty calls
Peace joy to you
Thank you.
Yes, that crazy practice of blaming the mother for autism! OMG, I didn't know that was still out there. I am so sorry to hear that you actually experienced it. (I suspect my mother may have as well, as my 2nd youngest sister didn't speak until she was five and our grandmother wanted her shipped into a 'nut' house, which our mother refused to do.)
Yes, absolutely regarding what seems to be a control-freakish need for many (the traumatised?) humans to categorise everything and attribute everything to a single ostensibly controllable or definable 'thing'. (I've been having that discussion recently about the ambivalent long term effectiveness of healing cleanse or purifying diets with a one size fits all for all time. A truth trap if every there was one. For example, I've met long term vegans who became very ill with their raw diets that had originlly given them new life and wound up reviving themselves when the incorporated some kind of meat protein back into their diet. And, of course, the same in the opposite direction!)
Great comment, HH. Singularity of idea is the hallmark of spiritual blindness and easily becomes agression, anger, resentment and the ability to hurt and kill others.
There is a great poem by W Blake that cautions against that. He wrote in the 1700s, so 'singular vision' is not new, either!
Now I fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
‘Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold always. May God us keep
From single vision & Newton’s sleep!
Some years ago (OMG, 11 years ago!) I wrote my own poem that looks at this. Perhaps you will enjoy it :
Newton's Figs.
I know, I know, I've bleated this blah blah before.
Your eyeballs roll backwards yet again.
No more will I pray to reason's god
for a chink in its armour through which
we can squeeze the motes of living unpredictability.
The strength to be still,
the courage to mute unsounded truths
that ache with a heart's loss,
not to the flatulent many,
but to the miasma of a squared world
well rested in Newton's figs.
Thank you for distilling it so perfectly!
I love your poem. Thank you for sharing it.
The years fly by...
🙏❤🌹
Da nada. Namaste.
🙏❤️🧘🏿♀️🙌🧘🏿♀️❤️🙏
A lot of this lying to ourselves reminds me of what Ian McGilchrist writes in his books about damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. The split brain experiments are especially spooky!
It's not just damage, but a society that rewards linear logic, which the left brain is a master at, even if it's untrue whether due to ignorance or wishful thinking.
From chapter 4 of Ian McGilchrist 's book The Matter with Things:
"One related difference between right and left prefrontal cortex activation is that the left dominates where belief bias points to the correct conclusion, and, by contrast, the right dominates where it does not.260 Belief bias is in fact generally associated with the left hemisphere, not with the right hemisphere.261 I"
Also chapter 4
"To put it crudely, the right hemisphere is our bullshit detector. It is better at avoiding nonsense when asked to believe it, but it is also better at avoiding falling prey to local prejudice and just dismissing rational argument because the argument does not happen to agree with that prejudice"
I also read part 1 of this article and laughed at the story of how it was believed that the guru stopped the rain. I used to be fascinated about supernatural powers, psychokinesis, etc. I wanted to believe. At the time, I felt like I was the blind one because many others in the group I studied with were able to see these things, yet I did not. It wasn't until I asked to be included in such an event that I realized that it was a sort of mass hypnosis that even the guru fell for.
“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.” - Robert Anton Wilson