dualism

“Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain. This concept entails that our mind has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal attribute.”

http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/dualism.htm

“We cannot find peace when the mind rages war against the heart, when we fight with our thoughts the pull of our love.”

― Dragos Bratasanu, The Pursuit of Dreams: Claim Your Power, Follow Your Heart, and Fulfill Your Destiny

The relation between reason and passion has fascinated philosophers for centuries. After Plato and Aristotle, western literature often treated reason as being opposed to emotion. This is the so called dilemma between “the head” (rationality) and “the heart” (emotion). Though, the exact relationship between reason and emotion remains a mystery, our daily experience leaves little doubt that both emotion and reason impact our decision making to a great extent. Decision making is often referred to as a process in which a choice is made after reflection about consequences of that choice.

Frontiers | Follow the heart or the head? The interactive influence model of emotion and cognition | Psychology (frontiersin.org)

Listen to the compass of your heart. All you need lies within you.

Mary Anne Radmacher

My absence to this liminality I call my blog has taken its toll, and the need to write the dualism from my heart and brain has surfaced with the need for fresh air.

Somehow, this journey towards my healing is interconnected with the masses of water that I keep being drawn towards. The water is becoming clearer, though. The muddy mess I started out from drowning in at the start of this liminal space three years ago is almost a distant memory now. But of course the absolute determination on finding lighthearted, happy and carefree, clearer waters with new, fresh memories has almost made me taste the sand between my teeth again. And I did not even enter the ocean…..

The morning is heavy with opportunity and the humid air clings promisingly on my damp skin. My prince gives me a strong, warm and loving hug and kiss. No hesitation, no holding back. It leaves me breathless. I feel like a princess, looking down from her balcony at the breathtaking sunrise over the ocean below. The tears in my eyes I quickly wipe away before my prince, the knight in shining armor, can notice. They are tears of joy. I cannot believe that love can be bestowed so freely and easily. Nobody has ever treated me like a princess before. Wanted me, and only me. I am dumbstruck. Numb.

Seven carefree days filled with laughter and banter and companionship and like-mindedness, the experience of absolute bliss: fit for a princess.

AND THEN IT ENDED. Reason happened. The heart and its emotions lost: rationality and the strength of the (realistic) brain won.

There are no princes and princesses, only frogs that become kings for a while. We are all searching for love in the wrong places.

As I think back now, I wish I had swum in that great expanse of water…. dived into the salty ocean that I am actually so afraid of. If I had only allowed the waves to have overwhelmed me and pushed my skin onto the bottom of the ocean and had allowed for its force to have rolled me head first into the sand: back to reality! If only I had not listened to my fragile heart, it would still be intact.

Goodbye my fair prince, my king. You have a piece of my stupid, broken heart in your beautiful brain.

I will dive into that ocean head first the next chance I am given in life, and undertake to fully allow myself to taste the bittersweet, salty, beautiful ocean with its hard sand grinding between my teeth. I know now that life is cruel and beautiful simultaneously: even with princes and kings in it.

“I am”… I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair

“I am”… I cried “I am”… said I
And I am lost and I can’t
Even say why
Leavin’ me lonely still

Did you ever read about a frog
Who dreamed of bein’ a king
And then became one
Well except for the names
And a few other changes
If you talk about me
The story’s the same one

But I got an emptiness deep inside
And I’ve tried
But it won’t let me go

–Neil Diamond