The construction of communication begins with a sensation, a feeling or an experience; then whatever biases, previous experiences and emotional attachments shape the energy generated by that experience to then be translated into thoughts using whatever language we've happened to be exposed to. Then, it gets really crazy. Whomever we've been speaking to, then filters, subconsciously, what we've said using their own biases, previous experiences and emotional attachments to translate the words we've chosen into energy (a thought, or new belief) that is usually completely different from the sensation or belief we began with, and had wanted to share.[I heard an expert on ancient Sanskrit texts speak the other day about how careful we must be to take responsibility for what we hear. He told us we did not have permission to quote him, we only had permission to say, "I heard Salvatore Zambito say..." because he had been confronted so many times with accusations of things he hadn't said, but had only been heard saying.]
An example:
My father used to encourage myself and my sister in making difficult moral choices by telling us, "The right thing is usually the thing that's hard to do." However, my sister and I had both, somewhere along the line, developed the belief pattern that we were undeserving of certain things, and that pleasure and joy were not intended for us. Thus, we translated my father's advice into the belief that the thing that is hard to do is the right thing to do.
One of the results of this, is that I've developed a very hard time reading fiction. Fiction to me, has felt like a waste of time, a luxury I can't afford, decadent and useless. I do, however, LOVE to read. I love to read books that inform me. Stories of made up people make me anxious, and it has felt to me, only a step or two above reality T.V.
Cut now, to the chase: I'm reading Mists of Avalon, the Arthurian myth. And it's great. But it is not of my own accord. The Mists is required reading for a course called, Dance of Consciousness, and at first I was wondering, "Why in the world are we reading THIS," but I'm beginning to see through self-awareness as I read, how my consciousness is altered. And although, I had taken great pride in my aversion to fiction, thinking myself too sophisticated for make-believe stories, (I remember laying at the beach with a friend who was reading the Gossip Girls series, while I read about the contributions of quantum physics to medicine in The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton (a phenomenal read that changed the course of my life, by the way)) I find myself now, unable to put the Mists down.
I think, it has something to do with the book being required of me- my own value in education, trust in my professor, and my work ethic are all working against my aversion to fiction and, lo and behold- it has lead to my appreciate of it!
I have been reading for about a week now, and am about 250 pages deep. The first night I read, I was up until 2 in the morning- without having noticed it (and my friends have nicknamed me grandma for my early sleeping schedule!). Despite my usual habit of having background music play while I work, I felt compelled (after discussing with a friend the effects of multitasking on the brain) to read in silence, which, after several minutes of reading, was suddenly filled with the voice of my imagination, narrating the scenes, hearing the sounds of the story; it wasn't silent anymore.
And as I read the words that echo feminist thought twisted with white-supremacist tradition, the words whose shadows fall over centuries of telling and retelling, I could see the words' foreshadows into their future- my present moment, and the truths of this mythical world supposed to have existed millennia ago, seem to be true for me, now, too.
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