You have Eros for your writing, passionate love, an intimate relationship with it. It is a part of you, no?

Yes, it is. One can have Eros for their relationship or for a special class of experience. They can have it for a hobby though those usually need to be freed even more than they are like one person’s experience with role playing. You can have Eros with a figure of divinity, or what you feel is an especially inspired philosophy or spiritual creed. But you can’t artificially create it, just like you can’t artificially create your own blood. What’s needed is recognition, and then finding a balance in life that lets the Eros flow naturally and with real strength.

We’ve had a few players who get judged because their characters do horrible things, but they are really lovely people out of character. John Wayne was considered a tough guy in the movies, but his real life nature was that of a gentle natured pacifist. The need to create a dark drama can arise from a need for catharsis. I have heard the question asked, “What do the good know but what the evil teach them?” A good catharsis could be considered the equivalent of a spiritual orgasm, but done unskilfully, it has similarly unsatisfactory outcomes.

Then some World of Warcraft (WoW) players are suffering from over stimulation. It must get painful for them. I have seen evidence of it. They become over dependant on that simple activity, and relate to people both in the game world and out of it in an awkward way. But this is usually not the case for WoW players, even enthusiastic ones, just as it is usually not the case that an alcohol drinker is automatically a drunken lout.

Slaying people in WoW is no different than me wanting to crash cars in a game. Yes, it’s just cathartic release. You cut loose for a while until you go do something you really believe in more.

Interesting thing, alcohol doesn’t actually alter the personality. They have even studied these effects under functional MRI. When drunk, the mind narrows its focus to the things it has trained itself to see as key, the most important. In the height of passionate love, and when doing something you love passionately, the mind behaves the same way. When my wife is a bit buzzed she gets a bit more talkative and thinky, because she values sharing ideas and practicing reason though she would likely overlook things that she doesn’t feel she can deal with. Anyone else want to tell us about what they are like when a bit intoxicated? As for myself, I become less talkative and more sense oriented. I can just sit and watch birds and listen to dogs bark.

I’ve never been intoxicated, but I imagine I would get just tired and flushed. Fatigue has a comparable effect. How do you behave when tired?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~