A saltlick for humans?
| Our bodies give us lots of survival tips and commands.
Hunger after all is just the body saying you better eat now. Tiredness, the command to
rest or sleep. But what of our minds? What basic survival needs do our minds have and how are they expressed? Hard to say, isn’t it? We can talk of faltering concentration, headaches, or excessive emotion (anger, despair, frivolity, depression). Certainly such mental behavior can be interpreted as the mind saying, "Something’s out of balance here. Time to sleep for a while." We can even go farther and see that at least some "mental illnesses" are indications of profound mental imbalance. The mind is trying to tell us something, trying to get us to do something. Is it possible that one thing the mind in duress is saying is, "Give me mind food. I’m hungry"? And we don’t listen, because we don’t know what mind food might be. What--and where--are the saltlicks for humans?  Every
society offers various kinds of respite, from simple recreation (games, sports, vacations,
hobbies) to the serious performances and rituals of art and religion. Which is all to the
good.But is it possible that in giving us such choices, society also limits us, puts blinders on us, so to speak? We accept these socially approved recreations and modes of respite, but we fail to consider the possible existence of other modes, which may in fact contain the very "food" the mind is asking for. Maybe there are other things we can do, mental exercises, which this civilization based on logic and science chooses mostly to ignore. What if there exist mental saltlicks, some small, some not so small, some perhaps as big as Ayers Rock? Back to Saltlick Contents |