Thursday, January 7, 2016

Is self-repression a boon?

It was 8 A.M and he hardly able to opened his eyes. Everything around was soporific even his own scent. His tired body revolted against his somatic neural firings not wanting to move. Consistent firings allowed him to make his way out of the room to start his day. Seems the TV was left on from yesterday,  and as he looked, a glamorous scene was making its way into his eyes, and he just felt that he shouldn’t give in, but should make his preparations to leave. He looked through the window and saw his neighbors leaving for their annual vacation. Three years ago, he had very different dreams but he used to avoid them since he always felt that they were out of reach.

He remembered his friend promised to send him some words of depth he read in a book some days ago. As he picked his phone to check it, a message was there from his friend. It was a quote:

“We  change  these  heavily  emotional  perceptions precisely  because  we  need  to  move  about  in  the  world  with  some kind  of  equanimity,  some  kind  of  strength  and  directness;  we  can't keep  gaping  with  our  heart  in  our  mouth,  greedily  sucking up  with our  eyes  everything  great  and  powerful  that  strikes  us.  The  great boon  of  repression  is  that  it  makes  it  possible  to  live  decisively  in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so  full  of beauty,  majesty,  and  terror that  if animals  perceived  it all they would be paralyzed to act.”


He found himself stuck as he was staring at these words not knowing who said it and under what circumstances. He filtered it using his understanding on some notions he read recently on neurological matters. Isn’t it our limbic brain that is greatly influenced by emotion, and if we allow it to feed from all these wonders around us, we shall find ourselves trying to satiate what could never be satiated, but is the endeavor of trying to satisfy this seemingly endless chasm the path to experience inner salvation, but it seems that digging deeper to find out the end is just a very perilous adventure not knowing if one shall be able to find a way out or it shall be a curse of living in that misery. Many people are struck by this curse of oblivion. Things appear so wonderful and promise wholeness but the degree of emptiness they create is mind confounding. Then seems it is true that repressing such wonders do indeed allow us to gain equanimity and directness since we are taking control of ourselves and by that, current science says that when we go against our basic desires, we are actually enhancing the capacity of our neocortex, which allows us to do decision making and execute matters after analyzing them rationally. But does our capacity of repression end? Does it make us beings that lack emotions since we act to inhibit every incoming wonder? The feeling of being torn apart might lie in the very existence of this conflicting happenings in our brains. They seem that they are conflicting but for sure there must be neural projections travelling towards each other, but they might not be projections of congruency but those trying to compete and inhibit each other.


After a long stare, he nodded with wonder and murmured to himself “I really don’t know”

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