ABSTRACT
It seems that we live in at least two mental worlds: one defined by intense sensory experience, and another more gently crafted by attunement and thought. While we may wish to think of ourselves as residing primarily and maturely amid thought and reflection, a clear-eyed view will reveal that we spend much if not most of our time in the concrete, sensory-dominated world of “how it is”. Indeed this sensory level of experience shades and shapes much of the texture of our emotional lives, but perhaps due to its bedrock nature and profound impact, it may also exert a gravitational pull, easily dismantling the products of thought and our capacities to think back into the basic sensory elements from which they evolve. In this chapter I will attempt to explore some aspects of this to and fro between these two realms of the psyche and the de-animating power of the entropic pull. In addition I will illustrate some countermeasures we may employ to restore and protect the realm of thought. And I will also suggest that the well-attended dream has a role to play both as guide to and emissary between these different realms of the psyche.
