Penelope
weak force testosterone
The short answer:
I think therefore I am.
(back to that, later)
& & &
You ever play around with a Weegee Board as a kid?
Ever figure out how it worked?
I did.
& & &
"Who is Penny sweet on?" Julianne asks.
The sliding pointer whirls a couple times around the board and stops at the letter D.
No. Please, no.
I say to myself.
Four sets of fingers touch the slider, rapt anticipation on everyone's faces, except my own. The slider stops at letter A.
No. No. No. No. No.
My face turns red.
Everyone giggles as the slider quickly stops at N, then back to N, then finally - painfully - at Y.
I cringe.
But I quickly recover.
"Who is Julianne sweet on?"
I ask. And the slider starts whirling.
(Payback.)
& & &
The Weegee plumbed my subconscious.
I was determined next time to beat the thing. And I did.
By force of will, I could shut down access to my subconscious.
Later I discovered I could will the pointer anywhere I wanted it to go, almost all the time.
"Who is Julianne sweet on?"
The pointer whirls and spells out A-L-I-C-E then C-O-O-P-E-R, a rock-n-roller I knew Julianne detested.
Ha. Ha.
I secretly smirk.
I had gained control of my subconscious by an act of will, where everyone else touching the Weegee pointer is, each, still victim to her (or his) own subconscious.
But "playing god" becomes tiresome, and I put the Weegee Board away and move on to other amusements.
& & &
Jump to the year 2002, West Wing of the White House:
A morning in the autumn. Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, and Dick Chaney meet to talk together, informally around the table, after breakfast. It is not a formal, procedural get-together like a Cabinet meeting. It is easy-going and offhand. They use each other's first names.
The conversation is thus a little bit like a group prayer-meeting. A little bit like a session with a Weegee Board.
This morning's topic is Iraq. They are trying to decide whether to invade or not.
Who's position, do you suppose, wins out?
(Who do you think has the strongest Will in the room?)
& & &
This, too, is what is both powerful and dangerous about Religion.
Religion's primary appeal is to a person's Subconscious. Usually the person with the strongest Will in the room ... wins out.
If that's the Preacher or Sensei or Rabbi or Priest or Spiritual Guide (by whatever name), that usually is for the best. That person has training in the art of navigating the Subconscious. And, if their heart is in the right place and their Will is stronger than any other member of their congregation, more good than bad usually comes from this situation.
(But not always.)
& & &
As a kid, watching my parents meditate, I asked them to teach me how to Meditate.
(How to relax, and to turn off Attachment to Things which I have, and to turn off Desire for Things which I don't have.)
In adolescence, my Christian friends taught me how to Pray.
(How to relax, and to stop listening to what I Want and to start listening to what Thou Wants.)
So I have had some experience with both of these traditional techniques for divining the will of the Divine.
& & &
Both Meditation and Prayer had been effective ways to shut down my everyday Ego. Turn off the "I" voice for a little while, and listen for other voices inside me to speak up. The neat trick about Meditation and Prayer, is that the process turns off the Ego without opening the door to the Id. Meditation and Prayer keep the door to the Id soundly closed.
That, in turn, opens up the door to the Superego. The Superego is the psyche's stand-in for "everybody else," for society, for one's network of relationships. In that sense, for one's conscience. For one's higher or better self.
It is a little tryst with ... everyone but me.
& & &
Meditation and Prayer exist within this closed world ... home to the psyche - a place called the Subconscious.
The Subconscious is also the place where a person dreams (but, in dreams, the Id is instead let loose). A dream - the brain-waves of REM, rapid-eye-movement - is a spontaneous, chaotic flow of symbolic imagery. A dream will appear irrational, but contains within itself an occult rationality - meant to heal all that day's nicks and bruises to the psyche.
Meditation and Prayer, though, have instead a certain overt clarity to them. Not an irrational-seeming miasma. Meditation and Prayer, each, are like "lucid dreaming" - except that the Id is entirely locked out.
Locked out, too, is the Divine.
(Divine = Transcendental Emptiness or God or whatever.)
And, given that this is a closed ecosystem, the Subconscious, with only two doors ... it is like there is a clear Plexiglas dome over the top of it, a skylight. The Divine is up there knocking, but is unable to gain direct entrance. The Divine can only hope - given the free will of the individual - that the psyche's stand-in for, and interpreter of, the Divine will do the right thing. That the Superego will tell the psyche,
"Do what's best for everybody involved."
But since the Divine does allow the psyche its free will, there will be no guarantee of this. No guarantee that the 'best for everybody' will in fact occur.
& & &
So here is the flaw.
(The flaw with Meditation and Prayer.)
Remember the Weegee Board?
The Will can override the natural workings of the Subconscious. The Ego can trick the Superego into going its (the ego's) egocentric way. The Superego then can, confidently (but blindly), trust that the action the real person is now taking in the real world is a Righteous action.
But a Righteous action, while usually an act of Good Conscience, is sometimes just this ... instead, an act of Strong Will.
(The Ego gets its way, disguised as an act of Superego. The action, in bitter truth, is an act of severe Bad Conscience.)
The human Subconscious, by its nature, is a flawed decision-making mechanism.
(Likewise flawed are Meditation and Prayer, as principal sub-leasers of the Subconscious.)
( ... a Weegee Board decision-making system ... )
& & &
{continued next post}
I think therefore I am.
(back to that, later)
& & &
You ever play around with a Weegee Board as a kid?
Ever figure out how it worked?
I did.
& & &
"Who is Penny sweet on?" Julianne asks.
The sliding pointer whirls a couple times around the board and stops at the letter D.
No. Please, no.
I say to myself.
Four sets of fingers touch the slider, rapt anticipation on everyone's faces, except my own. The slider stops at letter A.
No. No. No. No. No.
My face turns red.
Everyone giggles as the slider quickly stops at N, then back to N, then finally - painfully - at Y.
I cringe.
But I quickly recover.
"Who is Julianne sweet on?"
I ask. And the slider starts whirling.
(Payback.)
& & &
The Weegee plumbed my subconscious.
I was determined next time to beat the thing. And I did.
By force of will, I could shut down access to my subconscious.
Later I discovered I could will the pointer anywhere I wanted it to go, almost all the time.
"Who is Julianne sweet on?"
The pointer whirls and spells out A-L-I-C-E then C-O-O-P-E-R, a rock-n-roller I knew Julianne detested.
Ha. Ha.
I secretly smirk.
I had gained control of my subconscious by an act of will, where everyone else touching the Weegee pointer is, each, still victim to her (or his) own subconscious.
But "playing god" becomes tiresome, and I put the Weegee Board away and move on to other amusements.
& & &
Jump to the year 2002, West Wing of the White House:
A morning in the autumn. Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, and Dick Chaney meet to talk together, informally around the table, after breakfast. It is not a formal, procedural get-together like a Cabinet meeting. It is easy-going and offhand. They use each other's first names.
The conversation is thus a little bit like a group prayer-meeting. A little bit like a session with a Weegee Board.
This morning's topic is Iraq. They are trying to decide whether to invade or not.
Who's position, do you suppose, wins out?
(Who do you think has the strongest Will in the room?)
& & &
This, too, is what is both powerful and dangerous about Religion.
Religion's primary appeal is to a person's Subconscious. Usually the person with the strongest Will in the room ... wins out.
If that's the Preacher or Sensei or Rabbi or Priest or Spiritual Guide (by whatever name), that usually is for the best. That person has training in the art of navigating the Subconscious. And, if their heart is in the right place and their Will is stronger than any other member of their congregation, more good than bad usually comes from this situation.
(But not always.)
& & &
As a kid, watching my parents meditate, I asked them to teach me how to Meditate.
(How to relax, and to turn off Attachment to Things which I have, and to turn off Desire for Things which I don't have.)
In adolescence, my Christian friends taught me how to Pray.
(How to relax, and to stop listening to what I Want and to start listening to what Thou Wants.)
So I have had some experience with both of these traditional techniques for divining the will of the Divine.
& & &
Both Meditation and Prayer had been effective ways to shut down my everyday Ego. Turn off the "I" voice for a little while, and listen for other voices inside me to speak up. The neat trick about Meditation and Prayer, is that the process turns off the Ego without opening the door to the Id. Meditation and Prayer keep the door to the Id soundly closed.
That, in turn, opens up the door to the Superego. The Superego is the psyche's stand-in for "everybody else," for society, for one's network of relationships. In that sense, for one's conscience. For one's higher or better self.
It is a little tryst with ... everyone but me.
& & &
Meditation and Prayer exist within this closed world ... home to the psyche - a place called the Subconscious.
The Subconscious is also the place where a person dreams (but, in dreams, the Id is instead let loose). A dream - the brain-waves of REM, rapid-eye-movement - is a spontaneous, chaotic flow of symbolic imagery. A dream will appear irrational, but contains within itself an occult rationality - meant to heal all that day's nicks and bruises to the psyche.
Meditation and Prayer, though, have instead a certain overt clarity to them. Not an irrational-seeming miasma. Meditation and Prayer, each, are like "lucid dreaming" - except that the Id is entirely locked out.
Locked out, too, is the Divine.
(Divine = Transcendental Emptiness or God or whatever.)
And, given that this is a closed ecosystem, the Subconscious, with only two doors ... it is like there is a clear Plexiglas dome over the top of it, a skylight. The Divine is up there knocking, but is unable to gain direct entrance. The Divine can only hope - given the free will of the individual - that the psyche's stand-in for, and interpreter of, the Divine will do the right thing. That the Superego will tell the psyche,
"Do what's best for everybody involved."
But since the Divine does allow the psyche its free will, there will be no guarantee of this. No guarantee that the 'best for everybody' will in fact occur.
& & &
So here is the flaw.
(The flaw with Meditation and Prayer.)
Remember the Weegee Board?
The Will can override the natural workings of the Subconscious. The Ego can trick the Superego into going its (the ego's) egocentric way. The Superego then can, confidently (but blindly), trust that the action the real person is now taking in the real world is a Righteous action.
But a Righteous action, while usually an act of Good Conscience, is sometimes just this ... instead, an act of Strong Will.
(The Ego gets its way, disguised as an act of Superego. The action, in bitter truth, is an act of severe Bad Conscience.)
The human Subconscious, by its nature, is a flawed decision-making mechanism.
(Likewise flawed are Meditation and Prayer, as principal sub-leasers of the Subconscious.)
( ... a Weegee Board decision-making system ... )
& & &
{continued next post}
