Wisdom of Dune

This month I have spent many waking hours immersed in the world of Dune. While 2 hrs and 46 min long Dune: Part Two was every bit magnificent and heart thumping, it wasn’t enough. I have been re-reading Dune to spend more time in this desert wasteland. While doing so, I have re-discovered some nuggets of wisdom, that are guiding me through my personal sandstorms at the moment.

This Bene Gesserit axiom about stress…

The mind can go either direction under stress - toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hypesconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.

This first law of Mentat…

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

From Lady Jessica’s thoughts on waiting…

You can wait just so long. Then the dreariness of the waiting overcomes you.

We know the need for cautious waiting, there’s the core of our frustration. We know also the harm that waiting extended too long can do us. We lose our sense of purpose if the waiting’s prolonged.

And this last one is not from the book but said by Leto I Atreides in the 1984 adaptation of Dune.

Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

I have found a vast treasure of wisdom on the pages of Dune and it only gets better on a re-read. When I first read the book this quote hit me like a surge of Spice Melange and its transformative powers.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

And it still does not fail to have its effect on me. In the time of need these words let me ride my own metaphorical sandworm.