Seeing Beyond Either/Or

If an Either/Or scenario causes you stress

it may be because the scenario is not Either Or,

rather, that you are seeing only in Black and White

and feel the limits of your vision.

The feeling and intuition that one's own vision

is limited, incomplete, less than one would expect

can be the true cause of the stress, anxiety, or discomfort felt.

To offer a basic example:

"Or", is most commonly used as if it were mutually exclusive

when, in fact, it is not.  That is,

the question, "would you like the apple or the orange?" includes the responses,

"both, please" and, "neither, thank you" in addition to 

"the apple, please" or, "the orange, please".

Oscillating between scenario A and scenario B is not bad.

Both must be examined and assessed for their merits and demerits.

However, to stop there -- to perceive only A and B, or to use a better metaphor,

0 and 1 -- is to fail to see the infinite space between A and B,

the infinite numbers which are themselves possibilities, between 0 and 1.

The intellectual response to the perception of unfavorably limited options

is to squint the mind's eye and seek subtlety, nuance.  Sometimes this requires populating

the space between the clearly visible with the content of one's imagination:

imagine scenarios, however absurd, and see what comes of them; 

hypothesize and consider the results of your hypothesis as thoroughly as you can;

cast a premise into the unknown and watch it blossom there into who knows what

as you shower it with the attention of your mind and the light of your purpose;

and so forth.  In short, recruit your creativity to bend the rules, make unconventional connections

which themselves serve as the parameters and building blocks of new and very possible scenarios that were not so evident at the incipience, when only A and B appeared as options

to the mind's eye.

Not all possibilities produced by your imagination and premises and hypotheses

will be feasible, realistic, desirable solutions.  They may not even be solutions.

But the practice of Seeing with the richness of your own Wealth of Knowledge

(intellect + intelligence in all its modalities)

is worthwhile.  It will evolve.  You will become better and better at it

and you will become a masters at it.  And it is a skill that you can apply

to just about field of inquiry, life scenario (internal, external, or otherwise).  

Indeed, seeing The Truth as a composite of:

1) the External Truth known as Reality

and Physical laws interconnecting her parts;

2) the Intra-Truth, known in the West as the Self

and the Spiritual laws connecting the Self;

3) the Inter-Truth, connecting the complexes of External Truth

and Internal-Truth via the deeds of, specifically, Human Beings,

which possess the energies of intent, purpose, and so forth

which, themselves, unite features of the Extra- and Intra- Truths

resulting in Culture and possessing a direction (a purpose as Heidegger might put it).

Seeing The Truth thus should console us.  It is not all ours.  It lives on its own and I do not believe it has any designs on destroying anything that does not seek to destroy it (being that it is, or can be interpreted as, a Life Form or a higher order than the Human Being, em si.)