With Love, My Subconscious Mediascape

PAR•EI•DO•LIA. (pair-ee-ahy-doh-lee-uh)

noun

the illusory perception of meaningful patterns or images of familiar things in random or amorphous data, as a face seen on the moon.

A "Rorschach test" is the version of this that supposedly reveals psychological truths based on the nature of someone's pareidolistic interpretations... of what would on it's own be objectively empty, meaningless.  Or rather, even if there was something that the average person would see out there (like say "the man in the moon" which has become shared interpretation... so it can't really be unseen.  It becomes part of the collective envisioning.)  even if that is so, collective belief doesn't make it entirely more of a truth than an illusion.

I'm curious about the roots of this type of illusion or deception.  The truth about meaning making.  What it reveals to a restless not-UNconscious but very duped SUBconscious mind.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  If that's true, what kind of journey would I be on with inferior intentions.  😱  there's a line in a song at the end of the album that asks for alien intervention to put my mind at bay and "whisper how to pray..."

*Intentions* are even more important than prayers.  They are the prayers that your dream self makes continuously, whether or not you are aware of it.

Carl Jung was an oneironaut.  He explored the territory of our *collective unconscious*.  The dream world.  THE dream world?  But it is unique for each individual, is it not?  Perhaps.  To some degree.  But it may also be said that each individual is a front runner for a class of similar individuals.  A member of that "archetype" or even just your "astrological sign."  You are a lineage of similarly cast characters dreaming of the future as you!

And yet.  There is no other present tense, there is only NOW, but into the now... have gone so many dream explorers of legacy.

So whether or not they live on in your dreams, and to what degree your intentions live on in your subconscious, in the enacting of your actual emotional life... these are good questions.

I feel like there's a continuum on two or more dimensions from something like... precept to prophecy fulfillment.  It all makes so much sense... logically?  And it wants to make sense *intuitively* which is the verb-language of intention.  If your intentions become your intuition, you can literally live your dreams.  (!!!)  So... however.  the goal here is not as ambitious as turning your dreams into those of heaven, over/through/beyond any bad dream.  But to wake up into the reality that you are awake, conscious, deliberate... but the ease of intuition makes even large-scale challenges feel like your real, deep-set intentions.  

So like.  If my intentions are good, then my intuition receives those wishes, prayers, hope and dreams, and turns them into conscientious activity.  Good things abound!  (Sounds pretty good, right?)

It's not necessarily EASY..... but if you're like me, you don't WANT easy.  Easy is unrealistic.  But we can say that having not just good intentions but THE BEST and *most persistent* of intentions... will make their fulfillment the easiest thing that is yet still possible in this sometimes-hard life.

Life is hard sometimes!  But we can make it easier by understanding ... purifying intentions ... building stronger intuition ... meeting our true emotions ... and allowing them to express themselves.  In whatever mode is available.  With whatever mirror 🪞 whatever oracle is available.  It could be anyone!  Me? You???  

What nobler goal than to feel true emotions with others who are exploring their own emotions/dreams/truth together or in parallel.  (In paralllllel happens to be true anywhere two or more emotions align similarly for any period of time.  Think on this: it happens with or without consciously agreed upon co-existence.  You reading this, and me having wrote this, is a form of parallel emotions.  Mutual empathy is possible whenever we return the favor.  ((And hopefully it is indeed favorable.)) )

Meanwhile there is your unconscious mind and it's shenanigans.  The familiar forms it sees in inkblots, in the moon, in amorphous cumulus clouds, &tc.  These are just samples of the kind of re-interpretation of reality that is promised whenever super-consciousness subsides to sub-conscious-ness.  Ya know what I mean?  There is always some level of meta-processing that is going on.  When it is mutual and good, that is shared emotion.  That familiar other-worldly "yum."  Or when it is less good, maybe bad, but still mutual... we share the weight.  We allow each other access to our insides like keys to locked doors.  We do this for one another.

Admittedly, sometimes... for some of us... some doors go unnoticed or denied.  Never to be opened for any reason.  I don't know what the answer is to situations like this.  I don't know that catharsis is a real solution.  (As I write this, I'm on the train, and my streaming music is choosing to show me some heavy metal/emo/scream-oh.  I am super-privileged NOT to be resonating very strongly with this particular flavor.  But I'm listening anyways.  Noticing this strange tolerance within me.  Hmm.  like... If you need a shoulder to cry on... maybe I can be that.)

Meanwhile.  The ancient form of natural religion for Anthropologically ancient Homos Sapienses was animism or poly-psychism.  You might be familiar with the indigenous existence as seeing absolutely everything in the home of the land as having it's own soul or spirit.  "The rock spirit" ... "tree spirit" as well as of course the "bird spirit" or "fish spirit" or your friend, your brother or sister "Running Deer" 🦌 whose lifeline moves in parallel with the deer spirits and their earthly activity.  Perhaps their constellations, their pareidolistic visitations, signal other-timely meta-physical existences.  Perhaps these alternate dimensions ARE either phantasmal intentions, real-dreams, or both.

But the weird thing about media in this age, far beyond an indigenous tie to the Land, is that we have so many cultural dreams that might not be meant for us.  The book of the collective unconscious (like Carl Jung's Red Book) is getting bigger and bigger, more surreal, absurd and unnecessary.... all of the time.

And if you believe in the power of a mycological Rorschach dream journey... you might be in for a complicated, irreverent, and largely irrelevant trip.  So that when you wake up from that kind of complexity, you find that your emotions and your interpretive readings of the collective dream world even as through "little old me" (or you) would be stretched thin, scattered, torn up a bit.

I've never done mushrooms or any traditional psychedelic drug.  Ritualistic or otherwise.  To be honest, I'm kind of scared about that sort of thing.

But to be honest, I see the evolving media (and AI) landscape as being a new drug.  A new knowledge/information based form of manipulation of our complicated and fragile minds.  There might be the option not to engage in this.  But if you do engage, it could be distracting, diluting... or it could be challenging in a way that might purify / tighten / awaken one's deep-set intentions.

It may be very difficult to activate your conscious intentions when the media dreamscape absorbs your activity into passive, submissive sub-participation.  For better or for worse.

Realistically, below all of the big word philosophy, this is where I'm at creatively these days:  I find myself wanting nothing but positivity.  Re-affirmation.  Love.  In it's simplest of forms.  And I imagine myself creating similar material and distributing openly, just as I consume openly.  Toward this exchange, the split between active or passive is recombined.  So that even anonymously, I am experiencing shared emotions, imagining such a thing is possible, even desirable, and patiently putting my intentions toward this place.  So that I might ... activate the activity eventually?  But really, with no expectations.  No need.  No hurry.  

Just love.  Even if that love appears to be self-indulgent, self-love.  No problem!  Can't get enough.

Thank you, dear reader.  && I hope your dreams are as Deep as your daily intentions are warm and clear, or chaotic and fun if you like!  

-- Aaron and his weird robot brain.  🤖 🧠🌀