I've been afflicted by a cold the last few days. Unlike other times, when I've been dragged down by its icy grip on my senses, I've decided it isn't too bad - just a minor annoyance. It has allowed me to catch up on my reading, including my continued research into, and application of, sanity.
Reading Korzybski's Science and Sanity, in conjunction with Ellis and Harper's Guide to Rational Living is possibly one of the most rewarding experiences one should ever hope to embark on. After I had been alleviated of most of the overwhelming and debilitating symptoms of depression back in 2005, they returned again in mid-2006 and most recently on/around Christmas 2007. At each juncture, my critical faculties just broke down and were swept away by a tide of irrational emotion that had no basis in reality. Higher-order abstractions seized me with fear and held me in place, immobile and helpless. So it seemed, in the most literal interpretation of the word.
I re-read Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming by O'Connor and Seymour to refamiliarize myself with its concepts and commit myself to achieving what I want to achieve. I still haven't mastered it, but I believe I can apply it to myself quite well, and others with increasing success as days pass by.
Before too long, I would forget to apply certain models and end up more or less where I started. I required more familiarity with what these people were trying to get my head to wrap around most fundamentally. It seemed that Science and Sanity was glue that holds all these concepts together and has produced the most beneficial stage of my personal development thus far: learning to speak the language NLP and REBT have been written with - General Semantics. The wellspring that brought me "the word is not the object spoken about" and "the map is not the territory." In my opinion, if you can reconcile these thoughts and internalize them as your own, I think you have already made half the journey.
It has certainly opened my eyes to how "irrational" the world can make us! I can't wait to see where it takes me, or rather, I take it.