Here is where things get tricky. Our heart can seem to go where we don’t want it to, no? Our heart wants what it wants, goes where it goes of its own accord, yes?

It can go to those painful memories. Or so it would seem. There is a deeper way than that. Shall we go there?

People chicken out of exploring those dark stains on their heart, those feelings that hurt. Strange thing though, they hurt when we visualize them as being individual incidences. When we see them as self-contained realities, they look very scary, seem very real, and we hate to believe that those ugly things are real. So much so that we seek every path for escapism, from shallow spirituality, to drugs, to fad entertainments.

But it is an illusion. Yes, you are right. When you willingly go into the dark but keep control of your attention, you realize that that darkness was only as real as your point of view was fixed at that time. And I am not saying you have to fix it by thinking happy thoughts while you remember the bad things. Has that even worked for anyone? Just looking at the dark part of your awareness itself will show it to be a piecemeal thing, spotty and incoherent at best.

Example, let’s say you had a bad relationship. We all have had something of the kind, something we just didn’t see as going right or being fair, and while we are focused entirely on that it seems completely real. It’s easy to convince ourselves that it is a real crisis, no?

But what happens when you look at a different bad relationship? Not a good relationship, I mean a bad one. When we compare good to bad we just convince ourselves the bad is more real. But let’s say a bad relationship with a buddy versus a bad relationship with your significant other? What happens when you compare those? Don’t incorporate it into your social imagination?

If you keep your attention focused, you get a situation where the individual things lose meaning. This is why people generalize instead. It lets them stay convinced that those things really were bad. They are invested in seeing things that way. They want to, because it is incorporated into their big picture of their life and the world. If you discover the dark isn’t dark, then what?

You realize you are living in the light? Ideally yes, but mostly people say “Oh my god! My life is coming to an end!” and run right back into a shady spot in their imagination. People get really afraid when they see god.

I don’t believe we are born that way. I think that is a learned fear. It is a learned fear. Learned fear of the living mind, learned fear of the real self, or they make up some mumbo jumbo that makes them not responsible for change.

Or they say God, I wish this or that. God just may give you your wish. God always gives you your wish. People often don’t wish for good things. They just want to be normal, so they are. They just want to be like their friends, so they are. They don’t want to be responsible for change, so they’re not. There is a lot of freedom, and people use their freedom to deny themselves freedom. They imagine a world where they don’t really exist, and everything else is real and more powerful than them. You create reflexively. To be alive is to leave an event footprint. You can’t avoid it, but what you create is mostly up to your imagination.

There is a reason for all this questioning and deconstruction of how people see the world. It restores your genuine freedom. Whatever you want to be, do the same thing that the world does with you, imagine it, convince yourself of it. But remember, it won’t happen any faster than you are willing and able to have it happen. Just as it takes time to really lead you to believe something, to convince you of something, it likewise takes time to imprint this on the world. And just like you ignore someone who doesn’t seem to really mean what they say or know what they want, if you don’t persist and hold fast to your vision of your inner truth, your genuine desire, the world will ignore you too. It’s not unfair. You aren’t being picked on any more than you are picking on the person you ignored. We all have important things to do, and we do them when we finally commit to it.

Tell your own story. It’s what I intend to do also. It’s what we are all meant to do.

It’s nice to share stories. Yes. It’s nice and even necessary, vital. We do it instinctively. It’s why we have a shared reality in the first place.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~