It’s a full moon today so energy will be high. How fun that it’s also Halloween. How sad that everyone will be stuck inside in front of Zoom screens. Apparently one aspect of a full moon, or at least the affect upon us, is that we revert to our strongest habits. You won’t be able to prove that in a lab so I imagine it’ll be down to some empirical research of sorts to understand that. With us viewing the world and experiences through a presupposed narrative, I assume that empirically our understanding will be deeply flawed. A leap of faith, well it may just be necessary. Regardless I do enjoy trying to understand habits, they seem rather powerful after all.
I’m reading a book at the moment on fear and not in a typical challenge you fears kind of way but more learn to love and see the positives of fear. I’m only a quarter of the way through so I haven’t fully grasped it but there does appear to be some legitimacy in what he says. It’s called Fearvana by Akshay Nanavati if you’re curious. I won’t go into what Fearvana is exactly, mainly because I’ve not read enough that I’ll likely do it a disservice. What made me think about it though was that he mentions something about synapses in our brains which we have developed over a long time. Connections between neural pathways or something like that. Anyway these are the animalistic responses we have to situations, the habitual response we have learnt to make.
It’s another way of looking at how we behave but it’s interesting to think of it that way when observing how we behave and respond, and this can be to anything. Instead of just thinking about how this is habit, looking behind it at the science seems to help understand how malleable our behaviour is. If it’s just connections in our brain which have formed, it also means they can reform. Without saying certain things can be good or bad, we definitely have more and less desirable habits which we decide upon personally. It’s very liberating to realise what they actually are and with the brick wall coming down it also makes them surmountable.
So this full moon, observe yourself. What is it that seems to have been building up this last week especially. How do you find yourself responding to it. Do you recognise anything familiar in your behaviour, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Can you detach yourself from it and see it for what it is. Just that first try will do. Just observe. Don’t judge and don’t box yourself. Step back. Step back from it all.
Observations and Misunderstandings 