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Originally Posted by robert dear mari and bizi, you all have a great dialogue going. thanks for the smile. i've made only a small emendation to a wiki article so far- on the ancient Hebrew word "selah"-but may venture there again sometime if the spirit calls. yes, lots of brain fog; but cutting through it is half the fun! sometimes...eek!... the other half comes from making fog. what is wrong with us, we ask? certainly one state of our existence is predominently dualistic; but not all are. if we were perfectly organized our capacities for love, reason, instinct, and imagination would flourish unhindered, would act in harmony. instead, small decisions acquire a life-or-death magnitude; they exploit our qualms with a serpent-like knowledge of our vulnerability. look how easily we fall back into this "dualism" while trying to escape it. bizi says "living with shades is more living in reality than not" but replaces the old dualism (black/white) with a new one (shaded/not shaded). our minds get really dug in at a basic level. i think several things can help out with this. i like examples from life best: the simplest fables, wisest proverbs, basic stories, folk tales. things that are proven through time to be universally true & form a basis in memory will be drawn upon instinctively in the proportion they are loved and embraced. i learn more from the fox, the chicken, and the farmer than i do from the latest craze in psychobabble or celebrities charming us with their reinventions of the wheel. in any event, mari, i think our goal is to become proficient decision-makers, not perfect ones. the promises we make, the expectations we have, all challenge us in the basic premises we hold about life: do we understand its simple rules? are we equipped to climb the mountain? if not, the "nearer your destination, the more you're slip-slidin' away" kind-of-thing takes control. we trip over the ambiguities until we learn their proper place in the scheme of things; it's all about mental organization to some degree & your friend who suggested the snapping-of-fingers was on to something (behavioral conditioning); and though that particular modus may not play to your hand, it's well within your power to discover one or several or many that do. we'll never understand everything, but we should never be timid about our desire to do so ("If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise" Blake, The Marraige of Heaven and Hell). living in dishonest times only makes the job harder. they say diogenes combed the streets of Athens looking for an honest man, and he probably still is. too many of us are too in love with our own fear to answer the door. not that we need to be purely honest 24/7. that would burn us out. just enough to light the wick, to let our friends know we're here. excuse me for rambling. once i get started...well, i've got to learn more flexibility myself! thanks, all. will try to stop by again. robert. (bizi, i think i opened the chat room, but it seemed empty. is that unusual?)

I hope this alright that I have quoted you here...Robert?
I really like what you have written and wanted to preserve it.
Will you chat with me sometime?
I am here usually in the evenings....
bizi