Jenny L. M. (2022-05-06 16:16:28), category: shamanism

Mr Kaaven,

You say that it is a curse being alone. Like what you say about yourself, I’ve been different myself through my entire life so far. I have been mitigating my situation with pretending. From early childhood I realized that my ways wasn’t like the others. I pretended my way to peer acceptance. In retrospect I consider that solution suboptimal. Being part of a group where the others have mindsets that is incompatible with your own mindset is taking a toll. But I was the only person who had the capability to adjust.

I’m not that familiar with science, not to the extent you are, at least. I’m though familiar with the the term “confirmation bias” from my profession, and questioning hypothesis is the main task of my work. I guess that’s sort of a scientific approach. Of course, doing it at work doesn’t mean I’m able to utilize it in another setting. Especially not in a setting which could potentially change my life.

I don’t dare questioning my hypothesis on shamanism, or more correctly, my calling. I’m scared to see it confirmed. Up until now I’ve created all sorts of explanations for what I have experienced. Law of large numbers, law of coincidence, law of luck, law of bad luck/Murphy’s law, law of hope, law of pessimism/optimism and so forth.

As of now I can create an illusion of it being a dream. A reality which doesn’t really exist. I’m writing a lot about it, and by writing it out I’m sort of keeping it under control. It’s just like something prosaic in my diaries.

The coin has two sides, though, and the two faced pleasures of living my current, mundane life really is wearing me out. From what you have said, I obviously have a picture of why, but I still have to ask why you chose to accept your calling.

Forgive me for being blunt, but was your then/now position an obstacle to acceptance of it, or did/does it allow venturing into perspectives like, say, shamanism?

Best regards,


Jenny

Ove (2022-05-19 07:57:21)

I didn’t say it’s a curse to be alone. I said it’s a curse to be different, even if you’re different in ways that are considered “good”. Being different tends to force you to be alone, for various reasons. The prejudices of other people being one of them, the lack of things in common being another. It doesn’t necessarily prevent social interaction, but if you’re around people for the wrong reasons, you’ll still always feel alone inside.

Anyway, it’s not clear what you’re asking. If by “position” you mean beliefs, then of course it was a bit of an obstacle, perhaps still is. If you mean principles, then I was always open to investigating these things (with a healthy dose of skepticism, of course) if I had reason to. I just didn’t have reason. And it might not have done much good if I had tried to investigate it earlier anyway, given that my knowledge was somewhat one-sided (and I knew it).

I think I already mostly answered the question of why I “accepted” the call (to the extent I actually have accepted it, anyway): because I wouldn’t mind a life where I get to help other people, and because not doing it would leave me with the mundane, depressing life I had before. If I refused, I would also have denied and suppressed part of me, and thus probably killed my chance at ever feeling whole and finding my happiness. And, once I started to learn the extent of what I’m being called to do, I realized that if I refused, I would probably also let down a great many people, whose fate might be a bit dark if I refused (I’d rather not go into detail here). Thus, if it was real, I would never be able to forgive myself if I refused. And if it wasn’t real, then nothing would stop me from going back to a regular life later, once I had seen enough to be able to draw such a conclusion. So, a rather easy choice in that regard. And from the point of view of my conscience and my heart, there was really no choice at all.

Now it’s “later”, and I still can’t draw the conclusion that it isn’t real. On the contrary, it does seem to be real, although I don’t quite understand the underlying mechanisms yet. It’s certainly very different to how ordinary physics works, but there’s of course also an interesting interaction with it, which might be interesting to explore once I’m in a position to do so. So I suppose my curiosity could also be considered a reason to investigate these things, if another one was needed. But my main reason is about the meaning of my life. Trying to help people.