I can tell you one thing. Tell me what you think your state of mind is and tell me what your experience is, and I can tell you why you are confused. People’s perception of their personal state of mind/being often doesn’t agree with their perception of their circumstances. But bottom line, your circumstances are reflective of the truth of your being.

It takes great wisdom to get passed the me/thee barrier. I find I can often very freely define my relationship to another, sometimes very quickly, and the funny thing is it has little to do with them.

We create a lot of who we are. The thou I perceive is, but (fill in the blank). I don’t perceive you. I perceive me. Whatever I decide you are, that’s how I will act. It is much more functional to decide that people are peaceful even if they are not. Because you are in that state, you will deal with the negative person much better.

In so doing, it evokes that from them in most of the cases and so will they with you. They likely are in a dysfunctional state in general and very afraid. Try to fix them, and of course you will draw their anger.

Example: Protests against injustice. The oppressor cannot hear when we expostulate in rage. Nor can they hear when we repress the rage. They only hear when we are at peace with the issues at hand, within and without. One of my tasks at demonstrations was to seek out the hot heads, disarm them. Very important task. You know it, but in so doing its teachings reach far and wide.

You have to have clarity to have clarity. Have to have understanding to have understanding. You have to have the conditions for the result to have the result. Have to have the conditions for a state of being to actually have that state of being. If you have the conditions for a fight, but say you want peace, you will have a fight no matter what you say.

Honey, if that gun is in my face you better believe it, and I have been there too. That is gut level survival at work. It too is a great teacher. Yes, I can kill. There can be no other way, but people say they want to be empowered. There is really only one way to be empowered. Be the power you would have.

An emotional moment from my past, if you care to hear. My father was on a drunken bender and yelling at my mother. I have always had a sense for emotional exchanges, so although I found my fathers state of being at that time an imposition, my instincts said just watch. I always monitor peoples emotions very closely, because in the end they are that persons reality. Well, he threatened to break my mothers fingers for some random reason. It occurred to me he was quite preoccupied and I could reach his gun cabinet. At the time I felt that he had gone too far, and would not have him threatening my mother who is an innocent in a lot of ways, but again my instinct spoke. I have always had this sense that told me roughly “strike when the iron is hot”, and something was not right. Strangely, my lamb of a mother seemed to have my father cowed. She wasn’t in her right mind or possessed of any of her former intellectual faculties, but my father was actually afraid of her. Needless to say no ones fingers were broken and no one was shot. The bloodthirsty drama all played out to a meaningless end. But my reason for sharing this is, as dramatic as my story might be, every dark emotional episode echoes this at least in spirit if not in literal circumstances. With awareness, no darkness need cripple you.

I would come to know endless reams of this sort of darkness, to the point they became mundane. But when my friend says she could kill, I think people should think carefully about what she says. She’s not being threatening. Threats are for the weak. Her life experience has just put her very much in touch with things that other people may never directly confront, and they didn’t corrupt her. They purified her. When you can confront that in life, then a smile, a generous act, kind words, they all have a new meaning and can in no way be an encumbrance.

I sometimes joke with my wife that my affectionate behaviour is actually a grim evil. We both have a laugh, but there is meaning to my silliness. If you look for external justification for what you feel, you will live the life of a lunatic. You will forever be waiting to live, and hateful of those others who have accepted the gift even just a bit more fully than you have.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~