Play-Socrates-to-Yourself

Investigate, observe, study, question.  These are the first steps.

 Learn to leap above the raging battle.  Don’t be fooled into thinking you have the ordinary ability to immediately stop or alter passions, once they are loosed.  Do not ignore the potential use of the independent mind to separate oneself from oneself.

Such a use of the mind can serve as a curious aid to the development of consciousness.   It can impassionately investigate and question Horizontal affairs that stir up individual feelings.  This mental operation can stand aside from your induced dreams and nightmares, and throw such a cold, hard light on them as to cause their retreat. 

Remember, both the mind and feelings must be similarly identified for you to be captured.  Struggling to keep one of the two from total sleep will halt identification.  Put more simply; it takes them both to suffer adequately. 

This attempt could be considered the struggle to play-Socrates-to-oneself.  Can you hear me?  Your feelings are so dependent on so many unpredictable forces, that they can change before your notice, and ordinarily, beyond your immediate control… (just like the students questioned by Socrates). 

J.