A dream answered the immortal question

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We're always asking "what if I had done it differently, knowing what I know now?" While Dr. Hurd already gave a great response on the piece--you wouldn't have, because you wouldn't have known better, unless it happened--I had a dream answer the question even further for me last night. I had unfortunately another dream where I was in high school...I don't remember exactly what happened but nothing different happened compared to how things originally went.

It gives me a sign that maybe it's "just meant to happen that way", y'know?

Welcome to life; learn it, live it!

My advice for people who live in torment over past choices is this.

Carefully relive the experience but ask yourself, "If I had to do this over again WITHOUT the benefit of what I now know, would I have been inclined to make a different choice?"

Most every time, the answer is "no." When we make a bad choice (especially one with painful consequences), it seems like the right thing to do at the time. We let the pain of the consequences evolve into guilt over the choice we made...as if we knew better but deliberately made the bad choice when in fact we did what seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.

Doctor,
You might want to check out P.D. Ouspensky "The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin".
It used to be one of my fav books. Although I read it decades ago, and forget much of the plot.....it is, as I recall, about a man who consults a wizard with a problem. His problem is that he is obsessed with a "mistake" he made in the past, and wants to go back and change everything. As he sees it, this mistake is the reason his life went off-track. In order to get his life back on-track, he must go back and fix the mistake.

The wizard informs him that it won't do a bit of good, because even if he goes back with the knowledge he presently has----going back in time, will enable him to reconnect with the original circumstances which will prove overwhelming and overriding to whatever he now knows. He will, in effect, repeat everything exactly as before.

Ivan argues with the wizard and says....no, no....if I can only go back, my life will be fixed because I will do so and so. The wizard says, no you are wrong. What I'm telling you is true. But.......it can be easily arranged. Just remember what I told you.

So the wizard sends Ivan back in time, and everything happens exactly as the wizard says. Ivan finds himself uncontrollably repeating his previous error.

But I think after going back and repeating his original "mistake"....he has a sense of peace about his life. Knowing that living with his mistake is actually a good thing. And that his life could, in fact, be no other way.

Very cool book.

Or you can just trust in metaphysics. You DID do it differently, this aspect of you simply isn't the one cognitive of any of those other different ways you did it. This is the dimension of reality where you chose the way you remember choosing. Considering other ways you might have acted is the same as recalling the other ways you DID act in those other dimensions that instantly split off and are formed every time every little tiny thing could have been different. All states of possible existence concurrently exist. Your consciousness is simply opening the particular schrodinger's box that contains that version of cat status.

^^
That's a very interesting post, Crassus. Could you translate it into Aspie language so we understand what you're talking about? I get the general idea though.

If you could elaborate or give a link it would be helpful.