With perception abilities, like empathy (perceiving emotions), telepathy (perceiving thoughts), communicating with your subconscious (perceiving internal messages), or remote viewing (perceiving foreign locations) - the question almost always arises: How do you know what you’re perceiving is real?

How do you know you’re perceiving someone’s emotions correctly and not just making it up?  Their thoughts?  How do you know that when you communicate with your subconscious, that you’re actually accomplishing something?  How do you know you’re actually perceiving something accurately?

For certain situations, it’s pretty easy to test.  If you’re remote viewing a location, and you want to know how well you did, then go to the location and check it out.  Or if your friend is trying to telepathically send you an image, then look at the image afterwards and see how close you got.  Easy :-).

However, with a lot of “real world” applications, it becomes a lot harder.  If I read someone’s emotions, how can I tell that I’m really doing it?  If I’m reading a complete stranger, then it’s not like I’m going to ask them afterwards how close I got.  Or even reading friends - it can be pretty awkward to approach them and ask, “are you feeling confusion over whether you should continue your relationship, or call it quits?”  So how do I know that I’m reading someone accurately?

Or if I’m communicating with my subconscious… how can I honestly tell that what I’m receiving is accurate?  How can I tell it isn’t just my imagination?  I mean - it IS all in my head - by definition!  A challenging situation.

The answer is: I don’t know, especially at first.

As a follow up question: if I don’t know whether I’m doing it correctly, how do I even know if I’m doing anything at all?  Maybe I’m just psychotic?  I mean… if I can’t know whether what I’m doing is real, then it’s pointless.

My response is: Well, that’s fair… at first.  Keep your skepticism on high when you first start - I completely agree.

However :-).  We can be smart about things.  We can stay flexible, be skeptical, but still play along and see what happens.  And that’s the attitude I encourage.  Be skeptical - but don’t let that skepticism turn into cynicism.  Keep trying new things, keep experimenting and having fun, keep doubting and questioning.

If you maintain this attitude of having an open, playful, and skeptical mind, then you will succeed.  If you turn off your skepticism, then it’s possible that you will delude yourself at some point.  So skepticism serves us well.  If you turn off your open mindedness, then the skepticism will overtake you and you’ll develop cynicism.  With this attitude, it’s very possible you’ll do something amazing, but completely ignore it.  So open mindedness is very important too.  Therefore, the goal is to maintain a healthy balance between the two extremes.  The middle path.

Let me relate to you what has happened to me over the years.  I first started getting into empathy and communicating with my subconscious back when I was 17 years old (I’m now 24).  I can remember feeling unsure of whether it was working at all.  I can remember specific situations where my subconscious told me something that wasn’t true, and I questioned if I was wasting my time completely.  Did my subconscious actually not know?  Or was it my fault - and I was bad at communicating?  Or was I just crazy?  I really didn’t know the answer.

I would go a few weeks, attempting to communicate, and eventually getting pissed and giving up for another few weeks.  Then a day would come by where I would think out of the blue, “Man, I haven’t really tried talking to my subconscious in a while… I should really start doing that again.”  So I would give it another shot.  Over time, I gradually became more and more confident, and the messages started getting more and more clear.  I’m at the point right now where I can clearly distinguish between my own thoughts, and the messages from my subconscious mind.  I can easy dictate a conversation, with close to zero effort.

At this point, how do I know that it’s real?  I just know.  I’ve developed a feel for it.  It’s sort of like asking a baseball player: how do you know when to swing the bat?  Well… they just know.  They don’t have a formula in their head… it’s a feeling they’ve developed over time.  They know.  The same is true for me at this point.

With the subconscious, my confidence slowly grew over time.  However, with empathy, my confidence was pretty high at the beginning.

I believe that everyone is naturally empathetic, and it’s inside all of us… it’s just a matter of tapping into the right feeling, and then developing it to be more accurate and specific.  Sort of like hearing.  We all hear.  But musicians will develop their hearing to the point of picking out certain notes and frequencies, different layers and instruments.  We all have a natural empathetic sense - and if we exercise it, we can become much more accurate with it, extracting emotions and watching them interact with each other.

I’ve always been confident of my empathic ability, because I can just see it.  I honestly can’t think of a time when I read a situation incorrectly.  Like I said - with empathy, it’s something we all have.  Even when I was bad at empathy, I still read things correctly - I just read them with less detail, and couldn’t piece it together as well.

How do I know when I read something if I’m correct?  Well, I make predictions based on what I read.  For example, if I read that a girl is starting to think sweet thoughts about me, then I will predict that she will attempt to ask me out on a date in the near future.  However, if I read that she isn’t the sort of girl to ask a guy out on a date, then I will predict that she will have her friends ask me about her, so she can get a feel of the situation.  And if I know that I’ll reject the idea of a date, then I can see how she’ll emotionally respond to this, and what her reaction will be.  I can see that she will reason that we just need to spend some time together in social situations… so I can see that she will attempt to set up social situations where we hang out.  And I can keep going further into the future, predicting my emotions, and sensing how she will react to them.  I can make an entire timeline for the next couple months.

Now - I see all of this about a week before it even begins.  How do I know how accurate my empathy is?  I watch and see how accurate my predictions become.  And if I have 100% accuracy, then I can be confident that my empathetic perception is real and accurate.

If I test my empathy with predictions every now and then, I can get a sense for how accurate it is.  Then when I read a situation that I can’t test, I can still be confident that my empathetic perception is correct.  I might not be able to test that specific situation, but why doubt it?  I’ve proven myself credible.  So I trust in my ability.

Overall, it can be a little hard to trust in these strange abilities at first.  So don’t.  Keep that skepticism high, but also keep an open mind.  Over time, things will start to add up, and you’ll develop the confidence through seeing the results.  It might not be 100% accurate, but if it’s accurate sometimes, and the accuracy keeps improving, and you can FEEL the improvement, then you’re on your way.  Eventually you’ll reach a point where you can be confident in your abilities, because you’ve proven them to yourself.  Until that time comes, have fun, and do your best :-).

So last Friday was a big day in my lottery world.  The drawing meant a lot for two main reasons: 1. I had been meditating on schedule for 3 weeks, putting a total of 4 hours and 13 minutes towards intending on winning.  2.  I was at $0 profit, so if I didn’t win anything, then I would officially be going into lottery-debt.

The results were: ZERO NUMBERS CORRECT.  Oi!

So that pissed me off :-).

I was bummed out all of Friday, and I was thinking to myself how crazy I was for trying to win the lottery, and how silly the whole goal is in general.  When I went to sleep on Friday, I was debating whether to keep the project going or not.

Saturday night I came to one important realization though.  The project isn’t silly :-).  I have won the lottery in the past, and my logic up until this point has been very strong.  I have evidence to support my beliefs - I’m not just plucking things out of the air.  I’ve beaten the odds.  I’ve proven modern statistics wrong already.  I accomplished 1 in 43,000 in the first 5 drawings.  So I still have another 42,947 losses before the statistics balance out.  Until that point arrives - I am beating the mathematical odds.

Sunday night I came to an even better realization.  I realize that I’ve been taking this project too seriously.  It used to be fun.  I used to be excited to just play and see the results.  But now when I check my numbers, I just prepare myself to be frustrated and pissed off.  So I want to take the next two weeks as a break (while waiting for the jackpot to reach $45mil), and just try to relax and not be so serious.

Also, I think that intention manifestation - as presented by popular sources - is bullshit.  I don’t think that those who teach the popular view of intention manifestation are purposely misleading people.  I think that we saw some strange shit, and we were too quick to try and explain it.  We wanted to show everyone the weird things we experienced, and when everyone else demanded an explanation, we felt obligated to give one.  I now believe the correct response should have been: “I don’t know how it works, but it’s pretty weird, huh?” :-).

We always have to be careful with our minds.  When we want to believe something we are in a very dangerous position of altering our perception in order to see what we want to see.  The second we let our guard down is the second a false belief sneaks in under the guise of truth.  Everything must be questioned.  The jeweler doesn’t appraise rocks in bulk… each one is put under the magnifying glass, and judged individually.  I feel as though intention manifestation is a box of rocks.  It’s time to pull out every idea - one by one - and figure out exactly where the gemstones are hiding.  And have fun in the process :-).

I get a lot of e-mails. I read them all, and I always feel bad when I don’t reply to one. So I’m going to reply to some of the shorter ones here.

Hi Sean,
I’ve read your blogpost about extending your blog to a community website
this morning. I’ve been thinking about this a while and came up with the following
idea.

…

My idea was to let everybody create their own blog inside of your
community, where they can express themselves and write about weird
stuff, experiences, etc. To an initial post, one must be able to write a
response (again, cf. youtube) in one’s own blog.

This is now kept very short, but can be developed to a whole
community-system. I like the idea and it may serve ALW’s purpose.

Finally, I want to thank you for your blog as it contains some valuable
thinking.

See you,
kiepmad

That is an interesting idea that I may use at some point. I thought about doing something similar back when PsiPog was active, but never got around to it. I like the idea of people talking about weird experiences they’ve had in one central location, because that makes it easy to start categorizing and studying phenomenon - seeing when two people experience the same thing, and they couldn’t have influenced each other - etc. Good idea… I may do this one day…

Hi Sean.I have a question that i really want answered.here it goes:
when your trying for an OBE do u have to try to leave your body,or does it happen by itself?if you answered it would be highly appriciated.
Thanks,Ian

Some OBEs happen completely by accident and you don’t have to try at all. However, if you want to induce an OBE, then you will have to put forth some effort. The effort is usually in the form of progressive relaxation (meditation) technique. You can find some how-to information on both PsiPog.net and in the How-To category on this site.

Or… you might be asking: do you have to try and leave your body after the progressive relaxation? Meaning - after all that stuff, and you are on the border-line… do you have to actually TRY to leave at that moment? The answer to this is: usually no. Sometimes yes. But most of the time (especially when you’re first starting out), you’ll almost “stumble” upon the right state of mind, and find yourself out of body. A lot of my OBEs I didn’t even realize I was out of my body at first. I certainly was trying to have OBEs, but I wasn’t specifically trying at that exact moment, so I wasn’t expecting it. (Hopefully that makes sense :-P).

So I remember that post you wrote a while back about how you were waiting around to win the lottery to start doing all the things you really wanted with your life. I think SteveP’s current article jives pretty well with what you were writing about…

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/08/a-better-life/

Enjoy, if you haven’t already seen it.

-Fred

Thanks for the link :-). That is a pretty good article. Honestly, I’m sort of sour on the whole “personal development” scene lately… I don’t know. Part of me just thinks it’s all bullshit :-). However, the link is helpful, so thanks for sharing :-).

Hey Sean,
This is Maila (pronounced My-lah), aka Mari, from your ALW site (BTW you did pronounce it correctly in the video, yay you ). I have an acquaintance who recently started broadcasting a show on Blog Talk Radio (don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it). I thought almost immediately of how cool it would be to be able to talk “on air” in real time with you and other members of ALW about , well, whatever the varied topic du jour. Thought you might be interested in checking it out so I figured I’d pass it on:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/faq.aspx

Later,
~Maila

That’s an interesting idea. We used to use Skype back in the PsiPog days, with some of the moderators, and chatters. It was fun :-). It reminds me of Coast-to-Coast-AM. It’s actually a really cool idea now that I’ve sat and thought about it some more :-P. This is another idea I will have to keep in my head. Thanks :-).

Hi Sean!

Im a big fan of u!!!
I like very much PsiPog and ALittleWeird!!!
I read every day your blog!!!

But… i need a little help…

I know u say that telekinesis is real… in ur blog… many times…
but… i need to make this question direct to you… by this email…
and i want a sincere reply…
because im trying 6 months… and nothing…
now… i dont know if this is real and keep trying… or if this is a bullshit and give up…

Telekinesis is real???
If is… can u tell me some tips?

Tks in adv.

Ur big fan…
Frank

TK is real. However - that doesn’t mean you should keep trying the same thing for 6 months! If it’s been 6 months, and you’ve been trying the same thing with no results, then it might be time to try something new. I’ve never been particularly great at TK - I recommend reading articles by JoeT and Float on upconline.net. We tested JoeT’s skills using the geiger counter, and he’s definitely legit. We didn’t test Float, but I’ve known him for a long time, and I personally trust him. So track those guys down - they definitely have more experience at TK than I do.

ok sean, i thought you’d find this interesting.

in pychcology (a cource in our highschool), our class tryed to learn to read these little cards with stars and circles on them and send them to each other telepathicly and the to best two people would do it together at the end of class in front of everyone. unforunately im not in my telepathic buddy’s class but if i was we totaly would have stomped everyone into the ground and won.) anyways i just thought you’d find it pretty awsome that we actually got a chance to show off our telepathy skills in front of everyone in school.
your friend,
brad
P.s. did you get arrested for graffitting that sign? lol

Awesome! Sounds like Zener cards :-). Did anyone in your class have a significant performance? And no, I didn’t get arrested - actually we cheated and digitally altered the video to make it look like I painted the sign, without actually painting it in real life ;-).

Sean,

How do you think the video board is working out? I will probably get around to posting an actual video once I get settled into my new station in Utah (ugh). I admire the individuals who have been brave enough to post videos of themselves so-far.

I finally graduate out of this crazy school this Thursday. It’s a shame we couldn’t have had a beer together. It would probably have made for some of the most intriguing conversation I have had to date. Oh well, my thoughts flow better through text at any rate.

Ciao,
Myrmior

The video board is slowing down :-P. Partly because I haven’t been participating like I should be. I may post a video this weekend to try and get something rolling. I e-mailed some of the old moderators from PsiPog about the video board, and only stony was available to participate… so that kind of bummed me out a little bit. I was hoping I could attract a few more mods. Oh well.

Yes, a beer would have been interesting :-). However, like you, my thoughts are also better formatted for text :-P. Perhaps we’ll cross paths in the future.

Hi there , i;m from poland and i read all of your articles day by day . YOU MAKE MY WORLD BETTER !
thank You !

Thank YOU! And you’re welcome! I’m honored to have helped in some way. Now stop feeding my ego…!

Hi Sean!
I have 2 very important questions about the sub-c link, but first I have to tell you my philosophy….hopefully I won’t bore you to death but the main idea counts:
… I believe that if you can control your sub-c just like your conscious you can do ANYTHING you can imagine…..since then I read more on the net and that conclusion has grown stronger ……now I’m trying to find a way to control my sub-c but the only idea I have until now is that link…pls tell me what you think about it…..and now the questions:
1 When I read about the link with the sub-c I was very enthusiasmed about the idea and wanted to try…..but last night another thing came to my mind: If I make that link and the sub-c makes a personality of it’s own I won’t be able to get control of it like my conscious…..is it true? If it is then I can’t make that link……and that sucks! :((
2 If hopefully I can still get total control of my sub-c even if it makes a personality of it’s own, will I be able to ask it to make me different (after I make the link) …..I mean stuff like healing or making me stronger( I once read a story about a father who got
the strength to lift a car when it was about to fall on his child…..and I know for sure that the power came from his sub-c after receiving a strong emotion)? And did you ever ask it to change you?
Thanks and I hope you write more about the sub-c on your 2 sites…Bye!

To preface, I have to disagree with your philosophy. However, you might be right, and I might be wrong. But just in general, I don’t subscribe to the theory that controlling the subconscious will allow us to control ANYTHING imaginable. But who knows?

1. The subconscious doesn’t really make a personality of it’s own… I know when I write about my subconscious, a lot of times it seems like it has it’s own personality. Which it does in a sense. But it’s still just an extension of myself. It’s not like another PERSON inside of me. It’s me! Just a different part of me, that my conscious mind doesn’t normally have access to. Don’t worry about “losing control”.

2. Yes… sort of. You can ask your subconscious to change parts of you, and it might comply… however - probably not in the sense that you’re thinking of. I’ve used my subconscious to make more long term changes that took weeks or months to accomplish (like stronger muscles, or different psychological lessons). I’ve had very little success with rapid short term changes. For example, if I told my subconscious, “Send me adrenaline so I can lift a car”, I highly doubt it would work. (Though to be fair, I’ve never tried it :-P.)

As a tip for anyone who sends me an email in the future, the best way to get a reply is to be short and sweet, and not have overly complicated questions. And if you don’t get a reply - ask again in a week! I get a lot of e-mails, and I quickly forget when someone sends me an email unless I reply immediately after reading it the first time (which is rare). So send me another, and keep bugging me until you get a reply. I honestly don’t mind as long as it’s not TOO rapid :-P.

I also hope the authors of the emails that I shared don’t mind that I posted them publicly. If you do mind, then just throw me another email and I’ll edit it out of the post :-).

I’m a big advocate of learning to communicate with your subconscious mind.  How does it work though?  Are we really speaking with our subconscious mind?  How can we test it?  What explanations are there?

I believe our minds have a function to “tune into” a personality.  We can do this in a minor way, by simply asking ourselves, “What would Bethany think about this?”  But we do this in a major way all the time - I believe our current personality is simply a result of this “tuning” process.  When I act things out, I am asking myself the question of, “What would Sean think about this?  How would Sean react?”

Now, you may complain that what I’m describing is very unlikely, because we ARE our personalities.  How is it that we tune into ourselves?  I AM Sean… I don’t ask myself, “What would Sean do?”, I just DO what I want to do.

I disagree.  If I tell myself that I am Sean, then I run into some problems trying to explain some things.  However, if I tell myself that I am something else, and I tune into the Sean personality, then a lot of things make sense.

How does channeling work?  How do people have multiple personalities?  How do we communicate with our subconscious?  If my personality changes over time, am I still me?  Ultimately: who am I?

Have you ever become fed up with your personality?  How can that be?  Who are you at that moment… your personality, or the something that’s fed up?

This idea of tuning into a personality solves a lot of questions.  In channeling, the psychic starts to behave as though they are some other personality.  We can easily see how that’s possible in the theory I’m outlining.  The psychic simply tunes into the desired personality, and acts out whatever that personality decides.

For people with multiple personalities: one explanation is that they can’t lock onto one personality like the rest of us have, and their tuning process is out of control.  They involuntarily jump from personality to personality.

For communicating with the subconscious, I offer a similar explanation.  We build this idea of who and what our subconscious is, and then we tune into that.  The question becomes, “What would my subconscious think about this?”

This explanation offers some solutions to common enigmas.  For example, if I can communicate with my subconscious, and you can communicate with yours… and we both ask our subconscious about something, and they contradict each other… then who is right?  Who is wrong?  What is the explanation for how the subconscious mind can be wrong about something?  In the past, I offered the explanation that there was a miscommunication (which is still possible), but now I offer another explanation as well: we have simply tuned into different personalities, and the personalities disagree.

You may ask: how is it that we receive psychic information from these personalities?  The subconscious is more than just a personality in our head… it can deliver psychic information that can’t be known otherwise.  The same argument holds for channeling.

I offer the explanation: we are psychic.  We already have the information.  We simply need the personality to express the information to ourselves in a format we agree with.  Our beliefs about reality force us to experience the information through the personality instead of experiencing it directly.  After all… why do we ask our subconscious about things?  Because we believe the subconscious knows something we don’t.  We tell ourselves that we can’t possibly know some factoid, so we must experience it through communicating with a personality outside of our own.  We tune into the personality that best represents our definition of what “subconscious” is, and prepare ourselves to receive the information we already know about.

WWJD?  “What would Jesus do?” (for a klondike bar?).  Another example of personality tuning.

Finally, I want to share this link that I’ve had stored away for a long time.  It’s an exercise for “borrowing” someone else’s genius.  Basically, the question becomes, “What would a genius think?”, and develops an exercise for tuning into this genius personality.  http://www.winwenger.com/borrow1.htm

I may write on this topic some more, because I feel as though I’ve just skimmed over it.  Any questions, feel free to ask.

About once every month or two, I have a night where my dreams are exceptionally vivid. Where I attain 100% lucidity, and I see the environment so clearly that I’m in awe of it’s clarity. I just had such a night.

I’m sure there are others out there who have experienced such vividness in dreams, though I suspect it’s somewhat rare. I believe it’s a more “extreme” form of lucid dreaming.

It’s different from an OBE. OBEs have a very unique taste of their own :-P. Perhaps what I’m describing is what people call astral projection? And OBEs are etheric projections? I don’t know.

What I experience does seem real, on some level though. But it’s on the same continuation as dreaming… whereas an OBE is definitely a thing of it’s own. Let’s see if I can map it out…

That’s pretty :-). So anyways… about once every month or two I have an OBE, and once every month or two I have a “hyper”-lucid dream.

It’s the “real”-ness of the experience where things get weird. While experiencing each phenomenon, how “real” it feels is very different, and the types of experiences I have are very different:

1. Laying down in bed. 100% real :-).

2. Trancing. I have definitely experienced a lot of bizarre things here, but most of the time it feels pretty solid. I’d say 95% real here. You can experience hypnagogia here as well, but it’s not especially vivid, and you are clearly rooted in reality.

3. Blackout. Loss of consciousness. Can’t really evaluate this spot :-P.

4. Sleep Paralysis. This is where you return from a blackout, and can’t move your body. There can be some really strange hallucinations here (Old Hag Syndrome). It’s about 70% real.

5. Out of Body Experience. This is where you perceive your consciousness outside of your physical body. There are definitely hallucinations here, but the realness is still high. The experience simply feels real. I’d say it feels 100% real while experiencing it, and 60-70% real after we return to our bodies and reflect on the experience.

6. Light Hallucinations. If you can get to this stage, either by skipping over the blackout, or just waking up afterwards, you’re on your way to a WILD. Hypnagogia takes over, and the experience looks more vivid, but it clearly feels fake. Around 5% real here.

7. Normal Dreams. This is your run of the mill dream. You may experience some precognition, or talking to dead relatives here… which (in my opinion) means that they have some “real”-ness in them. And dreams normally feel real while they are happening, but upon reflection they don’t feel real at all. I’d say feels 80% real at the time, and 15% real after we wake up upon reflection.

8. Lucid Dreams. This is a dream where you are aware that you’re dreaming, while still inside the dream. There are different levels of lucidity… for the average lucid dream, I would say it feels 80-90% real at the time, and maybe 15-30% real after we wake up upon reflection.

9. Hyper-Lucid Dreams (maybe Astral Projection?). This is what I experienced last night, and is somewhat rare. The dream is 100% lucid, and exceptionally vivid. There is detail in everything, and it has crystal clarity. It’s very awe-inspiring to look at and absorb. It feels 100% real at the time, and feels about 40-60% real after we wake up upon reflection.

There we go :-). That’s a pretty good map of the things I’ve experienced, and I hope it paints a clear picture on how the experiences fit together, and how real they feel while they are happening, and after the fact. I’d be interested to know if anyone has experience with astral projection, and can either confirm or deny my relation to them. Comments and questions beloved :-).

So anyways… I got one number correct on the big drawing last Friday.  There were four jackpot winners, who had to split the $330 million dollar prize money.  Pretty good chunk of change right there.

I notice that every time someone wins the jackpot, and it isn’t me, that I get really pissed off :-P.  Usually for about a week.  I don’t mind when nobody wins, because then I can just try again in a few days… but when someone wins, I can’t help but think that they did it correctly, and I didn’t.  So that bugs me.

I’m continuing with my strategy of doing intention manifestation every day, for a set amount of time, and increase the duration by a minute each day.  Today I’m at 10 minutes… tomorrow 11, etc.

I started the lottery project in March, and it’s now September.  I’m at $1 profit.  I’ve destroyed the odds, and I should be in the hole quite a bit of money according to modern statistics.  For example, my dad started in April, and is at -$109 (though he does play a different lottery than I do).  Either way… my results prove that modern statistics is flawed on some level… but I’ve yet to take advantage of it’s flaws to win the jackpot.  (Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “prove”, because people get anal about that.  Oh well, bite me :-P.)

I have no choice but to keep going.  Part of me wishes I would just give up on it, and start focusing on other weird things (OBEs, PK, LDs…), so I would have more to write about :-).  But I can’t.  I know I can win.  It’s just that simple.

Reality, reality.

You know, when I finally do hit the jackpot, it still won’t answer any of my questions :-P.  By that I mean: I’ll be just as clueless as to how I did it as anyone else will be.  I find that funny :-).

I can’t help but think that intention manifestation is also incorrect.  When I think about “The Secret“, my gut tells me there’s a lot of bullshit there.  But I also can’t argue with results… I’ve used intention manifestation techniques to do some weird shit that blew me away.  Hm.

What happens?  A truth is revealed, and then everyone jumps all over it, putting their own spin on it, promoting it as their truth.  Over time it becomes distorted, and the original truth fades out.  I fear that’s what’s happening with intention manifestation.  Too many people thinking about it :-P.  Too many people forming ideas, and not enough raw perception.  I’m guilty as well.

It’s funny how if you think about things a lot, and I mean really think… deep thought, focused, logical thinking… and you really stick to it, and draw wonderful conclusions, and come up with really beautiful and elegant ideas… that eventually you conclude that you think too much.  But you need to think too much to reach that conclusion.

*blinks*