Personal Examples of Nonrational Experiences

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Introduction to Nonrational Experiences

In the preceding dialog,⁠ “Entertaining Nonrational Experiences,” I explained the difference between “rational,” “irrational,” and “nonrational,” and I assigned a specific meaning to “nonrational” as being a third kind of state — the natural state of a trained mind — rather than its common meaning that simply marks the absence of rationality.

I pointed out that while rational and irrational are two endpoints of a continuum, the nonrational is something totally different. It is a state in which our imperiences and our process of apperceiving them into our understanding as experiences can both remain relatively unmolested by pre-existing ideas of a rigid axiomatic understanding⁠, which I call a cognitive frame, and which restricts what is acceptable for thinking, and what is not, based upon commonly-held ‘obvious’ truths that we are enculturated into, inculcated with, and to which we add our own self-derived understandings of our world.

This collection of stories will recount certain events in my life in which I was repeatedly confronted by a feminine presence, sometimes physically manifested, and sometimes other than physically manifested — which, in each case, was an event that changed, or marked a change, in my trajectory in life in an unexpected way. I have selected these events because I feel they will illustrate what I want you to see.