What happens when you create an intersection in this hallway of human experience?

A way through? A way out! Does anyone usually realize they can go some other way than these two?

Mystic or rationalist? No. “What else is true?”

Our nature manifests in a naturally occurring way. In the end, nothing is true, everything is permitted. You cannot do the impossible, but you can do the wildly improbable. But can you do this if you are stuck as a lost lamb in the hall?

If you know where you are, how can you be “lost”? Although you might seem to be “stuck” there. What if we accept that all subjective experience is real, and that it is our responsibility to keep it all in perspective?

We could use it effectively.

Lost could just be discovering something new.

When you are in the hall itself, you never know where you are, only where you are going to eventually be, and you never get there, do you?

Only in a relative sense, I guess. One step at a time. Yes, taking breaks, while you pace up and down the hall, makes it easier to deal with, but doesn’t that just delay the cabin fever that seems to eventually set in?

Yes, it does. I’ve been there. I offer that we will be discovering a world where people accept dreams as reality. Then we can share a great deal more of our personal experience in common than either mysticism or rationalism empowers us to. It may seem like that view is a recipe for self delusion, but I offer that it’s actually the way out of self delusion.

Might we be able to share a dream, then? To both dream the same dream? We already do share the same dream, but we remain blind to it through either seeking education exclusively or liberation exclusively. The life moving through our world does the dreaming, we are just immersed in it, engrossed in it. Right now it’s a nightmare.

What distinguishes a nightmare from a peaceful dream?

Emotional reactiveness, fear. Feeling inadequate. Defensiveness, rejectiveness. Mysticism says reject the world and embrace the soul. Rationalism says reject the soul and embrace material gain. What would the world be if we saw it as having a soul?

Alive. Do we want to sell our dreams? Buy our dreams? Destroy them? The reason our insane suffer so much, is not that they dream, but that they are trying to “wake up.” As Jung said, insanity is a sane response to an insane situation. Would we really live in an insane or inhuman world if we fully embraced the subjectivity of it? Would we be left with any basis of misanthropy? Humanity hating itself?

That would require equanimity, acceptance of all other subjectivity without prejudice or judgement. Deepening awareness of our own well being would also deepen our empathy, and give us a deeper and clearer sense of any illness, physical, mental or social that might be plaguing any part of our community. Have we gained that through rationalism or religion?

I’d argue that prejudice is kind of natural, not to the point of violence but the point of being distrustful of anything different from yourself. At least until you get to know it better. Prejudice is sensible in a “rational” world, and only in a rational world.

That is how one learns how to listen to their instincts. You can’t learn to listen to your instincts. That process just trains you to be deeply ingrained in your habits. You can find more mobility, adaptability. Your instincts are innate and need no special attention.

Pay attention to them then, not ignore or discount them. Ideally, they need no special attention. Ever notice you seem to almost constantly have spontaneous thoughts and imaginings?

Yes! That is what instinct actually is, the rest is learned.

Underneath the level of those spontaneous thoughts and imaginings is a core of emotion, or rather feeling, and your spontaneous mental activity either reflects your frustration at being “well trained”, or it reflects your general emotional tone. It is entirely natural.

So it’s normal to suddenly imagine knocking off the bank mobster style? I would say that your general emotional tone is playful, mischievous and comedic.

Yes, I’d rob the bank for the fun of it, not to hurt anyone. It would be great. But I know that it would be a cruel choice to fake holding a gun at someone. That last is just what happens when your rational mind gets hold of the fantasy and insists on translating it. Notice when you have the bank robbing fantasy you don’t really feel like doing it? Even without moralizing yourself? That is instinct. The rest is training, or torment. Patterns of torment are noise in the dynamic self, like a crystal fracturing.

So if I obsessed about robbing banks that would be the torment? Yes, obsession is torment.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~