Beware of the Sensory Deception
When something pleases our senses, we have the impression that it's "good". This can apply from something sounding good to our ears or psyche, something looking good to our eyes or psyche, something smelling or tasting good. The pleasurable allure draws us in, and then we take it into ourselves.
pixabay
I've been covering some herbs used for medicinal purposes in the past few weeks. Herbs can have benefits, but also drawbacks. Recently I experience some drawbacks after not doing my research and simply eating a plant that smelled good. I was fooled by the pleasure-trap and olfactory affinity that made me think it was safe to just eat a bunch of it.
A while ago I warmed up some a chickpea curry leftover that I like. I had recently gone to the medicinal herb garden in the area to grab some herbs. One of these was Lemon Balm. Lemon balm smells really good. It has a nice lemon scent to it. So I took a bunch of leaves, chopped them up, and put them in my pot that was heating up my food.
I thought it would be fine to eat, because it smelled so great. I knew it was used to make teas with, and thought there wouldn't be any issues. But I was wrong.
After a few hours, my eyes started to hurt. It was really weird. There sore and aching. I though I was just tired and went to nap. But lying down seemed to make it worse. I slept for an hour and it was a bit worse, still pain in my eyes. Then I had diarrhea. I realized then that something was wrong, and that my sore eyes weren't just a fluke. I felt nauseous and dizzy.
Laying in bed, I decided to look up Lemon Balm on webmd with my phone to see what the side effects were. Lo and behold, the answer!
It said Lemon Balm was likely safe in small amounts. I though I had taken a small amount, but eating about 20 leaves probably isn't small in retrospect :/
Then webmed said:
When taken by mouth, lemon balm can cause some side effects including increased appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, dizziness, and wheezing.
Well. Here we have it. Obviously I had taken to much orally in my food. I had nausea and dizziness. I didn't vomit, as I took some activated charcoal after a few trips to the toilet. But I expected diarrhea to be listed as a side effect but it wasn't. There was also no mention of sore eyes. But I've never had that issue before, so I know it was from the lemon balm.
I think I was eventually going to do a post on lemon balm before this happened, but I hadn't gotten around to that plant yet in my pictures. Too bad, as I could have avoided some pain and suffering yesterday. I'll know from now on to check out what a plant's issues are before eating it, even if it smell great! The plants seems to have a lot of good uses, but I think it may be from extracts such as tea or other sources, and not the whole leaf being eaten.
I was fooled by my senses, deceived into thinking the good smell meant a good plant to eat. I won't make that mistake again! (I hope).
On another note...
We can be easily fooled by our senses into thinking something is good for us. The appearances are especially deceiving. Things look good and we trust them. If we see someone doing a good deed, we automatically think they are good. Yet, we don't know what they really do as a whole being.
Many leaders and popular personalities can have dark machinations in their lives, yet we only see the publicly exposed appearance they show us to win us over. Pedophilia of the elite is in many countries, yet people don't know about it. All we see is the facade, and don't see past the pleasing appearances that we're exposed to. We trust too easily, just like my trust for lemon balm that backfired.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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You do a very good job extrapolating knowledge from one field to another.
A few days ago I saw a post of @erh.germany that left me thinking precisely what you say, she spoke about freedom but as a feeling, as if it were a sensation. About feeling free, contrary to what is commonly said about being free.
Many people, trusting their feelings, believe they are free because they feel free, when they are not, or believe they live in a democracy, because they feel it, and not because it is so, or as you say, they trust in certain people who transmit the feeling of being trustworthy, but who really are not.
The sensations are often deceptive.
Yup, feelings easily deceive. Too much trust in feelings all around the world, as people are deceived by the appearances of things appearing good, feeling good, they don't look behind he curtain to see the horror shit show :/
You can totally see reality - and all the shit - and still have the feeling of freedom. It does not contradict itself. It depends on the person who feels and thinks.
:)
@vieira: You are always free when you have moments of physical freedom. You are standing by the sea and nobody prevents you from swimming. You get on your bike and ride down a slope at full speed. You go into the forest and scream loudly. These are physical sensations of freedom. You are not thinking: Oh, I am so free. You feel it.
These moments of freedom are only distinguished by other moments of lack of freedom. If everyone were free to race down the hill all day long, to scream in the forest, that would be quite pointless, wouldn't it?
I can feel free precisely because of such moments and see freedom in the fact that I am carrying out my duties, which I inevitably have. Without considering myself a prisoner. Without a certain amount of unfreedom I would probably not know what freedom is.
There is a difference between asking "how do you define freedom?" and "when do you feel free? Neither the one nor the other must be supported by illusions, but it can. Neither the feeling nor the mind has the upper hand, but only the one who takes on this topic and is either realistic or unrealistic.
Not only sensations are deceptive but thoughts as well.
You're right. Although we must differentiate between "think", "feel", and finally, "be". When we feel that we are free and we are not, or when we feel that we are not free and we are free, in both cases we are deceived by the sensations and by the thoughts, therefore we should not place them in opposite places.
We can think that something is true, we can feel that something is true, however, it may not be true.
I don't place the mind over the sensations, because the sensations ultimately start from the mind, it is there where we decide what it is to feel free, or painful, or happy, etc. When we receive a blow to the arm, it's not the arm itself that interprets the blow as painful, but the mind.
But the sensations are often deceptive, not because they are inferior to the insights/intellections, or because they are deceptive per se, but because many people often forget that the sensations are emotional and subjective in nature, contrary to the intellections that are rational and objective in nature.
So, someone who gets the most out of their sensations, let's say someone properly sensitive, knows when he feels free. Someone who gets the most out of their intellections, let's say someone properly intelligent, knows when he is free.
We must understand then that sensations are true, only with respect to us, that is, they are opinions, not because we feel that someone or something is of such or such a form, this is it.
I think that it's about balance; we must be honest with what we feel, because we are obviously interested in our opinion, but we must also be honest with respect to the intellect, because we are obviously interested in the truth.
Yes, thank you for bringing that on.
Let us talk about "being free". Let us say that I am kidnapped and imprisoned, while I am starved and ill-treated. Then I would clearly not be free. My physical radius would be limited to my prison cell, I could not go out when I wanted, my existence would be cut short by human closeness.
Let's say I live in a country that limits travel. I live under a regime that is poorly run and that is very hard for me to work and earn money, but not impossible. Then I would be unfree as far as leaving the country is concerned and restricted in my self-fulfilment in terms of earning my living. But I could move freely in the country and choose my fellow human beings with whom I have relationships. How I think about this situation has a big influence on my feeling of freedom. People think and feel very differently about this form of existence. Some people can hardly stand it, others make full use of their existing leeway. If I walk around under such circumstances with the thoughts that I am an unfree, enslaved person, this has almost nothing to do with my real situation any more, because my thoughts judge predominantly negatively about my overall situation. I spend half my life suffering from the kind of lack of freedom I am exposed to, forgetting that I could very well have used free space. But when I am dominated by being exposed to a permanent threat that could occur at any moment, it has nothing to do with my being free. If fear engulfs me that I could be attacked or shot at any moment, this has nothing to do with the fact that I am not free, but with my mental condition. I can only be free if I am not afraid of death and therefore intend to spend the life I have in a free spirit. For this I do not need permission from anyone except my own.
Which I don't mean to say that would be easy; I think it's truly difficult. But at all times and under all circumstances, people's lives were arduous and dangerous.
I would have to be completely deprived of my physical freedom to say that I am not free. But as long as I can choose friends, the place in the city where I live, negotiate my working hours and my salary, remain realistic about what works and what doesn't work, I have a creative freedom about my life. I may be poor and unhappy with what an activity brings to my table. I may see how others are rich. I may witness the downfall of my country, I may feel deep misfortune. Up to the border of my country I am reasonably free. From the border I am not free. At the border there is objective non-freedom, within the radius there is subjective freedom.
Apart from that: when I choose with whom I prefer to be with: someone who fancies himself mentally and emotionally free (although he is not) or someone who constantly feels trapped and overwhelmed, I have a clear answer to that.
You cannot separate "being free" from thoughts and feelings about freedom, it always amounts to a circular conclusion.
I think that everyone is always in some degree free, this because they can decide how to react to their environment, and everyone is always in some degree unfree, this because their environment influences it.
In the case that you tell me, the environment that exists is not one of freedom, because when we speak of "the government allows me", then we are not talking about popular will, but about the government's will, that is, power does not reside in people but in the rulers, and people can only do what the government allows them to do.
On the one hand, there will be people who agree with the government's will, and therefore believe that they are free, these people will feel free, however, the feelings will deceive them because when they act in a way that the government does not like, then they will realize that they were not free, but they only had permits.
It's as if I lived in a totalitarian dictatorship; the government persecutes the dissidents, but since I am not a dissident I believe that I am free, however, when I begin to disagree with the government, then they persecute me and I will realize that I never lived in an environment of freedom.
On the other hand, as we always decide how to react, we always have the ability to be free, but as you say;
A statement with which I totally agree, and in fact, I would add more, not only fear, but also anger, pleasure, even happiness, all these emotions and feelings, eliminate our freedom when we allow ourselves to be clouded by them, when we don't control them but they control us.
And here we have a magnificent example of how sensations can be deceptive; I may be afraid of a situation, because I believe there is a danger that does not really exist, in a way that I invent a dangerous situation where there is not. The deception of the sensations is that they are created by us, and if we believe in a deception, for example, that a situation is dangerous, then I will begin to feel as if this situation is dangerous.
A couple can break because one believes that the other deceived, and even though that never happened, the deceived creates in itself a feeling of misery.
I would say, in effect, as I said before, that the sensations are of a subjective nature, that is, they are created by us, only by us, therefore, they are not reliable with respect to the facts, but they are reliable only with respect to our opinion. Therefore, we must separate the "being free" from the "feeling free", because the sensations are created by us, and therefore, are in our domain, we can change them without changing the circumstances or facts.
As I do not want to fill the comment section I just voted your comment and stay good with it. Could have formulated another long answer but leave it up to our next conversation.
Take care,
E.
p.s. forgot the vote:)
When we trust we learn who to trust and who not to. Yes we sometimes get burned or our sensory is affected as was your with the lemon balm. You trusted that it would be good without reading further. But those mistakes of too much trust create wisdom. We learn and grow from these experiences and hopefully re molded into a better person of character who can help others and the world. Blind trust is not a bad thing if we learn from it. Thanks @krnel
Hehe, well blind trust help us learn not to blindly trust :P and then we are wiser indeed ;)
A good cautionary post. Even in reading your many posts, I know that I will need to dig for more information on consumption, and start at the lower end and test my way up as I am sensitive to many things.
I hope you are feeling somewhat better now.
Thanks ;) It sucked at the time for sure. Herbs that aren't simply for food, that have medicinal value, are to be used with caution indeed :)
What an experience! Thanx for sharing it.
A good deed is a good deed. It can be appreciated at the moment of its creation to the one who commits it. Whether a good deed conceals a bad person is not to be said, because he does good things in addition to bad things.
How do you even want to say what someone is for a person "as a whole"? Is someone bad as a whole because he once started a crime? Is he to be blamed for a crime all his life? Probably not, the case law is quite clear.
Every act, every omission, every moment stands for itself. Which label you give to someone else shouldn't be the deciding factor for looking at him fixed in his full existence. After all, you know from yourself that you are not a bad person per se, even if you have bad moments. You wouldn't want your wife or your son or your boyfriend to be angry with you for ten years because you made a mistake. You would like to be rehabilitated if you had to answer for an irresponsibility and had to bear the consequences.
Interestingly enough, people get better when you believe in them and trust them because it awakens the better half. In this way, something can fulfill itself that was perhaps very weak before: self-confidence. But when I permanently mistrust a person, usually accusing him of bad intentions, I not only influence my own nerve costume, but also his negatively.
That you took Lemon balm is too funny! I also think it smells very good. Your experiment made you wiser. The plant "punished" you as long as you had to endure the consequence of its substances in your metabolism. But it wouldn't condemn you for years. Maybe we should be more like plants? Just kidding. :)