119_Analysis Notes – 10/22/2020
I would like to pause a moment and consider our subject’s vision thus far. The human brain often resists change because it must first admit the failings of its current moment. It is human nature to want more, to strive for a better existence. However, we also have the innate primal drive to stay secure. To motivate the forward progress, we must admit we have not been safe. We must acknowledge that what we once defined as our safety was an illusion, and this can bring down an already precarious house of cards.
Many people surrender to these primal mechanisms, but our subject’s advantage is her willingness to see her flaws. While her insight might appear to be the thing driving her low self-esteem, it is the result. Often, we want to comfort people who are finally seeing the truth of their limitations, but comfort is not growth. There must be enough fortitude within the individual to perceive that opportunity lies in acknowledging what is, not what we wish it would be.
Her honesty in this quest is inspiring, though she misses vital points within the lessons simply because she cannot comprehend them. While growth is the goal of self-evaluation, we are still bound to the consciousness of what we are evaluating. She can know she wants more, but she can not yet comprehend what is available because it is new. Life is not a thing we create from our perception of it. It is a thing we discover through exploration. Every shift we experience in life comes through the discovery of new possibilities. The same is true of our subject. She doesn’t even know what to wish for because she doesn’t know it exists.
As her grandfathers speak to her of protection and guidance, all she sees is her resistance to it. She doesn’t see the underlying message. She doesn’t realize they are telling her that she is never alone. She faces each lesson isolated and reaching to find the strength to understand, but there is an underlying confirmation bias of isolation. She does not connect with the support encircling her, the love surrounding her, the arms waiting to hold her. She cannot see what has never existed for her. It is so foreign that she doesn’t know how to accept the help they offer.
The moment a threat is perceived, the subject forgets her support. She is alone again, calculating what she must do to survive. It is what she has always done. She must now discover what it means to have faith, to believe in support and protection. The concept that the world must take from her to relieve their suffering is a subtle yet poignant revelation of her inner dialog. Her perception of the world is that she is its sacrificial lamb. Maybe it is the stories of saviors like Jesus making the ultimate sacrifice for the betterment of humanity, or the lowly place of a servant starving in a palace filled with riches. Either way, the definition of “good” in her world is intimately interlaced with “self-sacrifice.”
It seems an admirable goal, sometimes the only thing one has to offer when living in poverty, but it has no end and no real honor. What difference does it make? If she dies taking on the sins of humanity, what has that done for humanity? At this moment, she must learn to save herself, or better yet, let her grandfathers do it.
Our subject faces a choice. She can believe what her eyes see, the apparitions of her consciousness playing out the confirmation bias of her survival or she can grab hold of the small bit of faith she has that the grandfathers are real and try trusting them. Technically, we could suggest neither are real. There is no physical evidence that the couple exists. There is also no physical evidence that the grandfathers exist. They are both conjectures of one mind. Why, then, are they so drastically different? If they come from but one neural network, why do they present as entirely different perspectives of one reality? Why does inspiration exist at all?