Sometimes (most of the time, I suppose), my decision-making process is a blend of logic and intuition. Doing it that way just feels right to me, and when I stop to think about it, I can find good reasons for it.
Sometimes, logic conflicts with intuition, and I feel like doing something that doesn't entirely make sense, or the course that makes sense just doesn't feel right to me. There have been times in my life when in such situations, I would let logic prevail. At other stages of my life, I followed my impulses, acted intuitively whether logic approved or not.
Experience taught me that neither logic nor intuition was a flawless guide alone, but when both were urging me the same way, things usually turned out well in the end. So, as long as logic agrees with intuition, I can act decisively. I could, however, bog down in indecision and dither interminably if I didn't have a way to break those stalemates when logic and intuition disagree.
I break such stalemates with oracles. Professionally, they are my stock in trade. Personally, they are my trusted guides and friends... ...well, maybe not. I think of them more as connections with, or channels to, a source of guidance. Anyhow, as long as I keep in mind some basic rules in how and when to use them, they don't steer me wrong.
Four decades ago, when I started using oracles, before I learned the hows, whens and whys, I got some anomalous answers, some indecipherable ones, and some that were simply wrong. Then, somewhere, I found this: "The first time you ask the oracle, it tells the truth. The second time, it tells a lie. The third time, it gives you a riddle." After I quit asking the same question over and over, the answers I received became dependably accurate.
The next important step for me, in learning to use oracles in beneficial ways, was the discovery that accurate info is not necessarily all there is to making beneficial decisions. If one asks the wrong questions, accurate answers are of no use. I had a decision today that involved me and another person. I did not have information to support a judgment on whether my proposed action would be beneficial or harmful.
It is the kind of question that I would answer with either a pendulum if one was handy, or with a coin flip otherwise. My pendulum has gone missing -- I suspect kittens. Recently, I have been using a D6, a six-sided die, for those questions, because Doug keeps several handy here for his D&D sessions. Odd is yes, no is even, and a die can give nuanced answers a coin can't.
First, I asked if it was in my best interest to do the thing I was thinking of doing. YES
Then, I asked if it was in the other person's best interest. I did not ask if the other person would be pleased about it or approve. I wanted to know if the other person would be benefited or possibly harmed. The answer was, my plan was NOT in her best interest.
Then, as usual in cases of such a "tie", I asked if it was in the overall cosmic best interest to do it. NO.
I'm not doing it, of course. That's where the wisdom comes in: putting general, global, cosmic interests ahead of my own or any individual's. It is no more wise, in my far from humble opinion, to put one person's interests above another one's, not even my own. But it is unfailingly wise to put everyone's interests ahead of anyone's, even my own.
Topic shift:
I really like the new wood stove. We kindled a few fires on cold nights starting the first week after we got it installed. Spring and fall, when we don't need a fire all the time, are the hardest times in using a wood stove. It is much easier to keep a fire going than to ignite one with cold wood. Kindling a fire was complicated by the discovery that the new kittens had adopted our box of newspapers as their litter box. Most junk mail is too glossy to make good fire starters, so we were having for a while to be creative about kindling.
The current fire has been going for... close to a week, I guess. It burns at a low level, uses fuel sparingly, and keeps me warm. Temps outside have been in the forties (F) and I have easily been able to keep indoor temps in the sixties by closing the draft all the way and putting only one layer of wood in the bottom of the fire box. I'll let you know later how it does when it is below zero outside, the fire box is fully loaded and the draft open, and I'm trying to maintain a temperature differential of eighty degrees or so.
If I lived in a warmer climate, I'd go naked a lot. My mother made me uncomfortable about clothes when I was a little kid. First, she put me into some frocks that were uncomfortable in and of themselves. On "special" occasions or for school, she took me out of my comfortable coveralls and jeans and made me wear dresses, then placed me under dire injunctions about keeping my legs together and my underwear under cover. Whatever I wore, I was always made anxious lest I tear something, get my clothes dirty or -- horrors! -- permanently stained.
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