To stay-up-to-mental-speed with the herd, (which, to the few means to “slow down”), you must live a life in your mind in which you are habitually unfaithful to yourself, (as it were). You have a lawful mate: physical reality; and a lover: the mental commentary, and the two combined provide a person with a perfectly ordinary, respectable, and understand-nothing life. The expense of supporting these dual households is such a drain on a person’s energy and attention that there is not enough left over to pay for unnecessary personal activities, such as studying the nature of having thoughts.
A person with a neural paramour lives a life of constant pretense. Their life is a sham; they publicly pledge their fidelity to one, while secretly embracing another. They swear to the liver they’ll be true, then drool over Jim Beam ads.
All routine people say they believe this and that to be so, when in their hearts they know they don’t know. But chin up there ole Bessie and Ferdinand – “A cow’s gotta do what a cow’s gotta do to get by in this world, and what does it cost me in the long run if I look at butter, and agree that it’s cream?! Hey, that’s the way things are here in the herd where we live.”
The cost of keeping two worlds alive in your head: one you know to be real, and all-too-familiar, and one you imagine, but, oooh!, how exciting, is beyond mental calculation. But to an alert ear, sufficient to note, is that it does cost your mental potential every cent it has at every moment you are so engaged.
It is not possible to leave your lawful mate, (reality), and the expense involved in dumping your lover is, for most people – prohibitive. Solution – death?
J.