Is this Conscious Suffering / Yes and No?

[beetlemaniac]

Let us repeat that we live inside the Mixtus Orbis, where we find real and imaginary facts and phenomena inextricably intermixed. The difficulty in separating them is due to the fact that the Imaginary resembles the Real in the same way that the space beyond a mirror reflects what is actually present on the facing side. When surrounded by mirrors, we can easily lose all notion of what is real.

Maybe what Bud is trying to highlight is that the reflections we see on our subjective mirrors (meaning that our view of the world is a mirror of ourselves) are the Imaginary perceptions of what we think we are not (inversions), which make up our false personality. But these reflections are also intermixed with Reality. This is what makes discernment a challenge.

I think for me the easiest example is when I look at an attractive woman, and see how they shine with utter beauty and a strong feeling of longing emerges. This image that the woman seems to exude and her attractiveness, denotes a diminished "feminine aspect" of the personality. And I think it's true that, my (false) personality, especially at that moment of meeting an attractive woman, tends to lean strongly towards a "masculine" identity, as my culture dictates. I feel this as a shift in personality into a charming, persuasive, "I." Also, I may not necessarily appear "charming" to that woman, but "I" certainly FEEL that I am having that effect. This is, I think, an example of gross subjectivity, or Imagination.

Even though the Imaginary closely resembles the Real, as in the case of the mirror there is always a difference between them, because the image is inverted with regard to the object: this applies to all sorts of products of the unreal, and puts us on the way to detecting them.

So exclusion would mean to see this image for what it is, an Imaginary phenomena arising from ourselves.

Integration would be basically identifying those images and "implementing" them in our personality.

From that I think that whatever we are attracted to in our external reality, due to the reflections of our false personality, will create a subjective liking or longing for that external reflection. Or instead, a fearful resistance if it's a subjective dislike. To go against these subjective feelings is probably what is conscious suffering. OSIT.

I am trying to teach myself too while writing this down, so whatever I've posted here, I understand none of it :P
Please correct me wherever I falter, thanks!