Habitual states of mind accustom you to different modes of life. It seems obvious, but this is far from being self-evident. When we become accustomed to our own states, especially when they neatly correspond to the demands of our environment, we don't notice that these are actually rather specific states that allow you to adjust to a particular environment. We had adapted and the circle around us has been closed to other states of mind.
Those who need to cope with violence daily often immerse themselves in a psychology of violence, so that when the crunchpoint comes, their psychological states are already perfectly attuned to combat. Not everybody has to do this, but if they must, there would be nothing worse than having a mismatched psychological state for the job.
When I was being attacked at work those many years ago, I gradually learned to move closer to states of mind that enabled me to cope with the psychological violence. I had already been experiencing that violence at home, in the years prior to the workplace situation, but I had never really taken those particular attacks seriously. When the attacks come from a family member, you don't necessarily think of them as violence. But that perspective changes when the hostilities come from outsiders. Then, stupid, docile ignorance gives way to a dawning self-awareness along with sudden recognition of what has taken place all along.
When one is reliant on the higher mind alone, like working solely with colour vision, one does not see things. One has to change from cones to rods -- from colorful excitement to sombre black and white vision. Then one perceives that there are attacks and there are non-attacks. One puts aside the self-consoling emotion that there are just different levels of unfortunate 'misunderstandings'. Discernment kicks with infrared vision and one sees things one had never seen before.
That was my original shamanic initiation, in straightfoward terms. That when I learned that in fact allowing the negative emotions to come to the fore was necessary for survival. It's the negativity of vision that gives you your infrared, so you start to see what was there all along more clearly.
The lesson to keep aware of one's negativity and not to see all things in bubbly colour has stayed with me ever since this time. To stay alert, every so often I immerse myself in knowledge of disgusting things. Sometimes these things are just other people. Sometimes they are myself.
True story.
Those who need to cope with violence daily often immerse themselves in a psychology of violence, so that when the crunchpoint comes, their psychological states are already perfectly attuned to combat. Not everybody has to do this, but if they must, there would be nothing worse than having a mismatched psychological state for the job.
When I was being attacked at work those many years ago, I gradually learned to move closer to states of mind that enabled me to cope with the psychological violence. I had already been experiencing that violence at home, in the years prior to the workplace situation, but I had never really taken those particular attacks seriously. When the attacks come from a family member, you don't necessarily think of them as violence. But that perspective changes when the hostilities come from outsiders. Then, stupid, docile ignorance gives way to a dawning self-awareness along with sudden recognition of what has taken place all along.
When one is reliant on the higher mind alone, like working solely with colour vision, one does not see things. One has to change from cones to rods -- from colorful excitement to sombre black and white vision. Then one perceives that there are attacks and there are non-attacks. One puts aside the self-consoling emotion that there are just different levels of unfortunate 'misunderstandings'. Discernment kicks with infrared vision and one sees things one had never seen before.
That was my original shamanic initiation, in straightfoward terms. That when I learned that in fact allowing the negative emotions to come to the fore was necessary for survival. It's the negativity of vision that gives you your infrared, so you start to see what was there all along more clearly.
The lesson to keep aware of one's negativity and not to see all things in bubbly colour has stayed with me ever since this time. To stay alert, every so often I immerse myself in knowledge of disgusting things. Sometimes these things are just other people. Sometimes they are myself.
True story.
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