You have people and the identities that exist between them which can at least appear to behave independently of the people involved. We mostly don’t even take much conscious notice of those identities or entities that serve us while we go about our normal non distressed life. We may perceive a sense of guidance when we are trying to navigate a complex social situation. A guidance that isn’t obviously inherent to our experience nor is it obviously being provided by the other party involved, but we just tend to accept it and go with the flow. These processes that seem to have an existence transcendent of each individual don’t disturb us too much, so we generally pay them no mind.

Beginners luck? Yes. The perception of beginners luck which gave rise to “god loves a fool.”

Then we have those things that form our collective boogie men, and we all recognize these entities. We even anchor the experience to the same event, if not the same cause, as if we sense that there was something there to be afraid of even if we couldn’t agree on what.

Giving personalities and semi-personalities to some of our actions actually seems to help predict them more easily than using strict reason. And a better predictive model isn’t bad science necessarily is it?

And trusting ourselves can be difficult when we see Jack the Ripper inside. Exactly.

Now mostly our lives play out between these two psychological or psycho-spiritual ecosystems, and we tend to favour those that permit us to stay in our comfort zone. We develop whole elaborate systems of behaviour to ward off the “devil”, even if we don’t believe in any such thing as a theistic devil. But our rituals of structured consciousness, do they always work? Anyone have a flawless track record of regulating their own experience?

There is a reason. The reality these habits or practices or rituals seek to control transcends individual experience. It arises from a nature that secondarily gave rise to humanity, and our regulation rituals often rely on assumptions of rejection, editing, denial of the reality our consciousness arises from. How is that supposed to be effective really?

It just builds up the stress in the long run. Leading us even out of the territory of the Jungian shadow, which is often itself still life affirmative, and into a region beyond even those two.

Now each of these domains of experience, those that present themselves to our immediate sensory consciousness, and those that seem to present only a shadow of perception… Can we really say that our everyday waking subjective experience is more real than our dreaming experience?

Well, yes. Yes? Through persistence and comparison. I’m not certain how that works, so I will work from my own experience. Perhaps we can find common ground.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~