Okay, so this "Chapel Perilous" thing. Explain it, please.

[*GrumpButt*]

Oh ok.

Thanks

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Concept one: "I am a smart person who makes rational choices that betters my life."

Concept two: "I willingly partake in smoking, which has been proven to shorten and diminish the quality of my life" (if you're not a smoker, substitute a comparable self-destructive behavior).


Try to think about both thoughts simultaneously, without justifying, blaming, or otherwise ducking out of it.


Now, imagine that weird, uncomfortable feeling you get multiplied by about x10²³.  That's Chapel Perilous.


[Edit for exponential math geekery]

A mole of confusion?

[LMNO]

Concept one: "I am a smart person who makes rational choices that betters my life."

Concept two: "I willingly partake in smoking, which has been proven to shorten and diminish the quality of my life" (if you're not a smoker, substitute a comparable self-destructive behavior).


Try to think about both thoughts simultaneously, without justifying, blaming, or otherwise ducking out of it.


Now, imagine that weird, uncomfortable feeling you get multiplied by about x10²³.  That's Chapel Perilous.


[Edit for exponential math geekery]

A mole of confusion?

Indeed: Because one's clarity gets spotty.

[Adios]

Concept one: "I am a smart person who makes rational choices that betters my life."

Concept two: "I willingly partake in smoking, which has been proven to shorten and diminish the quality of my life" (if you're not a smoker, substitute a comparable self-destructive behavior).


Try to think about both thoughts simultaneously, without justifying, blaming, or otherwise ducking out of it.


Now, imagine that weird, uncomfortable feeling you get multiplied by about x10²³.  That's Chapel Perilous.


[Edit for exponential math geekery]

Sure fucker. Everybody always goes after the smokers.  

[LMNO]

You guys are just the easiest targets, is all.

Hell, I could use my drinking habits as an example.  But that might make me feel uncomfortable.

[Adios]

You guys are just the easiest targets, is all.

Hell, I could use my drinking habits as an example.  But that might make me feel uncomfortable.

[Luna]

I keep hearing that smoking will take years off the end of my life...

And I see my grandmother...  I only can get down to see her once a year, and every year, she's more lost.  I'm not sure she knew who I was half the time I was there last year, and, according to my uncle, she may not know who we are when we visit this year, at all, assuming she knows we're there at all.

If it didn't make my breath and clothes smell like ash, I'd be tempted.

[Suu]

It just sounds like a paradox, to me.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It just sounds like a paradox, to me.

Chapel Perilous or the smoking question?


For CP, its more about the psychological effect of a major paradox between what you believe and what reality might toss you.

/tangent/
RAW does expand well beyond what I've done... for example, in a major visit to Chapel Perilous, individuals often come out the other side and claim to have experienced help from some 'external entity'. He points to guys like Crowley and his experience with AWISS, Moses and his burning bush, Phillip K Dick and his experiences that led to the novel VALIS, Harvy the Pooka and his own experience with Aliens from Sirius. (Or if we go back to the idea of the Monomyth with the Skywalkers, Luke has the 'voices' of Obi-wan and Yoda) He also tends toward pointing to people through the centuries that claimed they God or the Guardian Angels spoke to them. He gets into a whole tangent pointing to the similarities between people that have claimed a visit from Mary and people that have claimed a visit by Aliens... leading one to think that maybe those are 'masks' for the Thing.

In the end, he tends toward the idea that all of these are manifestations of the subconscious trying to steer you through the chapel.
/end tangent/

[Luna]

So...  to boil it down to really simple...

You have a concept in your head.  (Matter is mostly empty space, so most objects are not REAL.)

Something happens which proves your concept is wrong.  (TGRR gently strokes your skull with the barstool.)

You now get to decide if your concept is really REAL, or if the "something" didn't happen, not REALLY.  You either decide to accept the new reality (if it raises a lump on your skull, it's solid enough), ignore the incident and embrace a new delusion (it was really the testosterone flying from TGRR's head that caused you to swoon and bump your head), or sit there, holding your aching skull, rocking back and forth, trying to reconcile two impossible to reconcile things.

Do I have it?

[LMNO]

Pretty much, except it's not just, "Oh, two contradictory ideas are in my head." You're missing the sheer existential terror (as in, fear for your very existence) that goes along with it. It's beyond the realm of intellect, this goes subverbal and subconscious. It's similar to a biosurvival threat, but there's no tiger to run away from.

[Jenne]

I like this thread.  And I feel I have been at the doorway of the Chapel Perilous way to fucking often in the last 9 years or so. 

I also feel like I've finally started to accept I am a DOKTOR rather than a FALSE SLACKER...I just have yet to fully accept this fate. 

My time will come, however.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

I keep hearing that smoking will take years off the end of my life...

And I see my grandmother...  I only can get down to see her once a year, and every year, she's more lost.  I'm not sure she knew who I was half the time I was there last year, and, according to my uncle, she may not know who we are when we visit this year, at all, assuming she knows we're there at all.

If it didn't make my breath and clothes smell like ash, I'd be tempted.

Kurt Vonnegut sued Pall Mall cigarettes later in his life for not killing him quick enough.

[Luna]

Pretty much, except it's not just, "Oh, two contradictory ideas are in my head." You're missing the sheer existential terror (as in, fear for your very existence) that goes along with it. It's beyond the realm of intellect, this goes subverbal and subconscious. It's similar to a biosurvival threat, but there's no tiger to run away from.

I kinda thought I hit that point with TGRR skullsmacking you with a barstool.   

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Ok, what I'm getting about this is that it's a kind of crisis where everything you thought turns out to be wrong and the experience is intense enough to make people hallucinate guiding spirits and the like, but wikipedia has it that it's not being sure about the spirit itself, whether it's "real" or hallucination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapel_perilous