#3amt

There comes a time in our life where we want to do something, but we’re afraid to do it because we’ve convinced ourselves the most probable outcome, to fail. This goes for my current situation. Although I tell myself it will fail, I whisper myself to try. What’s important is doing what you want because you simply want it. You don’t want to fail nor end up disappointed. You want what you want. 

Paracosms: How I interact with dreams is rather odd. Simply put, I don't have dreams. Well, I probably do, but they're all erased by the time I wake. The only dream I remember recurred several times. But my memory's gone fuzzy on the subject through the years, so the only image I'm able to recall involves a towering red I-beam structure that stands almost as a sentinel amidst stormy skies. What went on atop it or what significance it holds is beyond me. Dreams have always intrigued me though, and I regard them almost as deathly visions (or in uglier sounding but more precise words, visions we see when we approach death). I can only imagine that the reason I am so interested in psychedelic experiences is because they mirror that dreamlike state. In essence, I wish so long to be compensated for years of lost fantasy.

Lunar-Rental-Suite: dreams are an endless source of inspiration and fascination. somewhat like you, many times i forget the dreams i had upon waking and am just left with a faint odd feeling. But i believe we all dream, many times a night. some people just have very distinct and separate mind frames so that when awake they’re unable to access or remember their dream state, and vice versa. I like how you view dreams, though. it has been said by some that sleep is akin to practicing death. or as edgar allan poe once said, “Sleep… those little slices of Death”

Paracosms: Yeah, I'm sure I do in fact dream since I wake sometimes with odd sensations and flickering imagery that is, regrettably, too blurred for me to derive from. I am inclined to think that our mental state inside a dream is one of near perfection (as with death) because a sense of physical attachment goes out the window as we immerse ourselves in an almost pure state of thought.

Lunar-Rental-Suite: That is true. The images and feelings in a dream are sometimes closer to the truth than what we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe or block out in reality. Other times, they can just be an unsettling mix of fears and fragments of our past and foreseeable future.

Paracosms: How about you? Tell me about your experiences with dreams.

Lunar-Rental-Suite: In some ways, similar to yours in that I rarely remember them. My sleep consists of waking up at regular intervals from slightly disconcerting scenes echoing with a cacophony of familiar sounds. I don’t see faces in dreams, but I’m somehow able to know who the person is by picking up on their essence. Usually I’m left grasping at fading wisps of a dream and the faint ringing of the last few notes of a song, mostly indistinguishable. but lately, I’ve just become content with enjoying the strange mood I’m left in post-sleep. There are many dreams I’d rather not remember anyway.

Paracosms: I feel like there's a certain mental resignation I experience after waking from a vivid dream. I usually let it all melt away as I drift off again and that cleansing second slumber is something that's almost divine in its emptiness. Something my mother just said also made me think. She was napping in our workroom when I asked her why she wouldn't just go to bed, and she responded that she liked feeling the presence of her children while she slept.(although her wording was much less eloquent). Although this might be more in tune with the topic of connections that are deeper than being merely emotional or physical in nature A.K.A. love (maybe? I haven't yet thought too much on the topic), I thought it an interesting anecdote to mirror your description of how you can recognize people by their essence.

What exactly is the human mind?

Is the mind based on reactions?  How we react to different events in our life is what steadily builds up who we are as people and pieces together an identity of reactions.  It is not, in fact, what we do of our own accord that solidifies our psyche but how outside events ellicit certain reactions from us.  If you think about it, this is how we learn.  Our past mistakes are what guide us to make the decisions we do in the present, but it's our interpretation of what happens to us (in other words, our reaction) that determines whether something is beneficial or detrimental.  With this in mind, I feel like being innovative and creative and a true individual is a rather lost cause.  With such an inundation of...just...things in our lives (as well as the constant flooding of media/cultural material in general), can we really generate things that are "new"?  After all, anything we think is new is most likely just an amalgamation of the past and what we've done before. 

I'm not saying this is bad, because this is essentially how we invent things.  We come up with inventions to solve problems we have/have had.  What I'm more worried about are the cultural implications.  How can art or music be truly original when all work is loosely "inspired" by something else?  I guess this applies mostly to subject matter because conceptual art to challenge foundations/definitions of art itself is still very much alive (but enough of this rambling).

What I wonder about is not necessarily why we do this compilatory exercise with our brains, but how we can somehow delve into the core of our minds to see who we truly are as human beings.  It almost seems paradoxical that the only way to do so would be to either isolate someone from any and all influence or to strip the mental foundations away until only a raw processing machine is left.  After all, it seems like both those cases would have a hard time even existing (not to mention the moral issues surrounding things like this)

Or maybe self-reflection would provide the best insight into our natural thoughts, but that itself is like dealing with an unstable/biased narrator.  So I wonder when we are most honest with ourselves.  How can we destroy the longstanding image we think we hold for ourselves as well as the conditioned decision-making mind we have compiled and trained through experience?

I stumbled upon the quote "It is when we are in pain that we are the most alive" and I came to the realization that pain is one of the most basic human experiences.  It is also, when present, the forefront of our though.  Physical pain can make us forget anything else going on (might this be the inspiration for self-harm as well as withdrawal symptoms as fuel for addiction?)

So how can we harness "pain" and use it to strip us bare of our psyche?  We can't just administer it.  We have to let it slowly wash away preconceptions while at the same time not alloying any outside influence to inspire a reaction that would taint the purge.  Simultaneous sustained meditation and fasting seems like the best course of action since it allows us to isolate ourselves from anything else going on and to let that void in our stomach work.

Now that I look at it, it seems like what I'm discussing is ego death, but that involves forfeiting one's idea of importance.  That may be the case, but I feel like the raw human mind wouldn't formulate that sort of mentality seeing as doing so would require preexisting abstract knowledge about one's own self and the role in the world.