I'm interested for the moment in understanding this sentence from chapter 9:
Whether a mental picture which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on how it relates itself to the content of all my other mental pictures and also to my idiosyncrasies of feeling.
My example is this. I am invited to play football.
This is the mental picture which enters my mind: guys playing with a ball on a green field. How does this relates itself to the content of all my other mental pictures and also to my idiosyncrasies of feeling?
As I already experienced the activity of playing football in the past, there are quite a few of mental pictures and feelings formed about this. My father laughing at the way I play football. My clumsiness to move the ball in the right direction. Fear of being the laughing stock of the rest of the guys. Feeling a stranger to this kind of team spirit, as I resent the machismo of football teams. So the simple and pure activity of playing football is not given to me. The mental image of a possible action is validated by an entire range of elements (mostly emotional, in this case).
Comments
Nice description of experience. Based on the uncomfortable feeling generated by your past experience, I would suspect you wouldn't play. Of course these feelings could be over ridden by an ideal that may spring into your mind, like you want to make some new friends. I think what is important is that we are conscious of the factor that determines the decision. Then we can evaluate it.
It sounds like you became conscious of the images that were causing the feeling by looking within. Why am I feeling this way? For a long time I had an irrational fear of my child dying causing me to be over protective. I thought it was normal until I had a second child and didn't have that fear. After many years I recognized I had associated someone elses death with my first child. After that when I get the feeling I recognize I am still fearing the death of the other and not my son. This allows me to mourn that death rather than exhibiting irrational behavior toward my son. I correctly matched the pain trauma with the actual event.
Yes, a bit of introspection and Mystery elucidated. Thank you for sharing your interesting experience as well.
I was trying to understand the characterological predisposition, and it just passed through my mind this example. On the next page after the quoted sentence, there's an example with taking a walk in the next 30 minutes, which made things a bit clearer. I'll give it a thought these days and maybe post some more ideas.