Dysautonomia of the Mind

With mental health issues becoming more and more common and concerning, how the mind functions requires our fullest attention. 

Just as your heart beats without you and your lungs pull air on their own, though you can take control of your breathing as you wish, your brain is always producing thought whether you are consciously thinking or not. 

Your dreams don’t feel like you thought them up because you didn’t — your brain was thinking on its own. Your brain is a shark, swimming for a living; in sensory deprivation the brain quickly creates hallucinations in order to continue to experience stimulation where none exists. Your brain is always thinking in the background, even if you cannot perceive those thoughts. 

What your brain thinks all on its own is undoubtedly crucial to understanding one’s mental health. But how do we learn to hear our brain’s automatic thoughts, or at least shift them in the right direction?

Dysautonomia, a physical condition affecting the things your body is supposed to do on its own, such as breathing, digesting, and maintaining blood pressure, has been found to be linked to several mental health conditions, such as autism and ADHD. I myself happen to have dysautonomia and ADHD with suspected autism. It occurs to me that perhaps some symptoms of mental health problems are in fact a kind of dysautonomia of the mind. When you are depressed or anxious, your brain appears to be producing negative thoughts on its own, without being caused by outside circumstances. Could this model of thought and mental health be the key to finding new modalities of healing? I think it’s worth looking into.

You Are A Human Breathing

You cannot claim to value life itself, the sacredness of all that happens without a person’s deliberate action or intervention, while simultaneously judging a person’s worth by the merits of their efforts. 

If you need to earn a living, your life has been given no value of its own. If life is what you make of it, you have tossed aside the stunning mystery of being alive in the first place. 

You are not a breath-winner. Your body largely runs itself, and your efforts will never eclipse the value of your heart beating for you. Without your body’s autonomic functions, you would have no chance to achieve anything of your own will. Your achievements are secondary. 

Perhaps they don’t matter at all. 

We inhabit ancient buildings, these bodies. We do not really know how to use them and this alone shows that our bodies are separate from ourselves. Your cells know precisely how to grow teeth and have done it before and seemingly could do it again — but you don’t know how. You couldn’t grow yourself a new tooth on purpose no matter how deeply you understood why your body does what it does. 

Our bodies might as well be alien craft that we try (and fail) to make full use of. If ever there was a mind that could take control of the body’s autonomic functions, tweak parameters for optimization in different circumstances, and truly lay claim to having first willed its consciousness into physical form, such a mind would be simultaneously both the creator and the created. This pair, working as intended, feed into one another endlessly to fuel perpetual progress — though it could also be viewed as play. 

The brain has a fundamental operating system, something acting as the code for experiencing thoughts. The operating system is not composed of thoughts or consciousness itself, but instead the kinds of pre-thoughts required in order to think and to perceive one’s own thinking. Thus it becomes apparent that the brain is separate from the phenomenon of consciousness. A mind capable of changing its own operating system would be a fully integrated brain and mind, one that is both the programmer and the user all at once. Again, the possibilities of such mastery of one’s grey matter are remarkable. Such a person might cease to feel antagonism from her environment, from other people, or even from gods. Such a person would be complete in herself and able to navigate most concerns by adapting to the needs of the moment. 

Such a person might be capable of so-called achievements that we would envy. But I think that if this person spent all their years in pursuit of no particular goal, just play — this would not be a waste of time and potential. To play one’s life with the pleasure of a musician in eternal improvisation is the treasure of life. Meanwhile the individual melodies need not be judged, since they are technically of no value at all. 

Your value is not in being a bread-winner, and you are not a breath-winner either. You are a human breathing. This alone is the measure of your value and I find it worthy of having faith in, for it lays to rest one’s struggle for achievements. 

You may then rest assured in your greatness, and play with life instead of trying to survive it.  

The Mind Wanders

Your body is a space suit;
your mind is the universe;
and you are a nomad.

No hope of survival lies
out of touch
from your body’s biological airlock, 
but your mind is another story. 

The moment your brain bloomed
its first coherent thought, aware,
your mind broke
free from its mechanisms, escaped
a life of vehicular computation, and became
you: an opened portal.

You are a particle collider
but made of thoughts and dreams;
you are a deep space telescope that curves 
imagination into a lens, at will.

You are a peculiar force of freedom calculating 
towards infinity, trying 
to find a limit as imagination multiplies. 

Home and world are packed
into greymatter sacks, and your mind wanders,
literally, through its self-created
door: the glittering potential of being
you.

On your journeys, the less you carry
insofar as facts, the better. Nomads make
do in every circumstance imagined
with few hard truths, improvising
solutions anew as if creating
its tools from loss and hope, 
vacuum and pressure.

So you are free; you may go
wherever your creativity conjures 
as no mission was ever issued
alongside your life. Simply persist 
and make camp with meaning. Make 
meals with meaning. Make
meaning from hardship, make
meaning from triumph. Make 
meaning in any way you can,
lest you grow weary of exploring
the wild beauty of all you are,
and close that door forever.

A Letter From the Universe

To An Old Soul;

You are not being punished. Admittedly this place will hurt you. However, we expect you will find ways to make it better — not just for your own comfort’s sake, but to help others who also live here.

Time is still precious, of course, but here you must give nearly all of yours as dues for daring to exist in the first place. Breathing is still free but very little else in terms of your bodily requirements. Do you begin to understand? Here, you will feel you ought not to exist. The one thing you are surely innocent of causing — the fact you have a body and mind — will be considered suspect. You are leasing your life, in a sense, and you will likely have to leverage most of your life’s hours just to afford it.

You will be taught much — oh, so much! — but not how to cope with the strain and pain of your labour; not how to feel as though you and everyone else deserve to be here. It will be tempting to sleep or otherwise distract your mind from the absurdity of this place. It will get into you like a chill at night. If you remember this message, you must reject everything this place has ever told you and hold fast to what feels only obvious in your heart.

You may come to feel that nothing matters at all, since life is treated like a crime. People all around you will feel this too, even if they do not know that the world at large is a parody of worthwhile existence. We cannot guarantee you will remember this message, dear soul. We pray you will seek meaning, and perhaps even come to realize that by seeking “meaning” you are asking for a reason to go on living instead of finding a way out.

You want a reason for going through the effort and the pain. Pet possibilities — like gods and mystical answers — may not satisfy you. In this case you must choose to create your own feeling that life is worth it, because you know it is. You know that if life were valued here the way you feel it ought to be, it would be beautiful, remarkable, perfect.

That means you know that life is worth it.

We hope you will go forth on a mission of life-cherishing. There will be no shortage of other souls who need help cherishing their own lives, and we hope you will be moved to aid them. You may try to change the world if you wish. But your own mind’s freedom is your utmost responsibility. Do not be deceived and do not behave as if you believe the absurdities of a worthless life. Stand out in radical devotion to your worth, and the worth of all Being.

We will meet again. Be brave — in this life and the eternal thereafters.

The Concept and Portrayal of an All-Knowing God

I have always been a seeker of beautiful ideas. In grade one, inspired by the thrill of something otherworldly, I approached my teacher at recess to express my concern that there needed to be “more magic in the classroom”. I remember those words exactly. She was baffled but did not discourage me from creating a mystery of my own for the other kids to experience. I hid under the table of the playhouse kitchen set-up and cut out paper “footprints”. Then, before the students got back to the room, I arranged them in a line that wandered the room. Naturally the kids were very excited and intrigued by this mystery. What did it mean? My teacher almost desperately asked me to produce an answer, some kind of plot or point to it all, but I felt my job was done. I wouldn’t admit to the other children that I had done it, and enjoyed the chatter of speculation buzzing over the next few days.

Over years I explored many faiths and philosophies, but when I sensed my belief was not genuine, that there was some deal-breaker within the ideology that I could not accept, I would move on. Often my greatest point of contention was with the portrayal of a God who possessed infinite knowledge and power, yet sounded like a slightly cranky old man.

Or worse, a dictator.

Or a cult-leader who professed unconditional compassion for all his followers while beating them in the back room for daring to look him in the eye.

It is said in Abrahamic religions that God created humans in his own image. That being so, would he not find it an abomination that a single one should be cast aside or eternally damned, as they are symbols of God himself? Even if these strange small beings all inhabit an uncanny valley when compared to him.

And to convince human minds with threats and force might make people appease him with claims of their belief — but no one can be bullied into genuine love. Only submission.

That said, the mysteries of what powers may lie behind the scenes of the observable universe will always intrigue me. Personally, I think they are best left as mysteries — paper footprints across a grade one classroom.

[Poem] A Nomad’s Mind

Her existential crisis,
a late-onset failure to thrive,
found no crumb of meaning
in this hand-to-mouth life. It felt
too similar to the assembly line itself.
To even think 
on it, especially when traveling 
on the streetcar,
or in bed at night,
or at the grocery store --
that was abomination, admitting
to herself that she was but waiting
to die. 

With a practiced breath
she steadied her thoughts. 
In her mind’s eye, she pressed
dawn’s dew from a clump of moss 
and let it drip
onto her tongue, parched
from singing the stars to sleep. 

In the outward world, she exhaled
slowly, swaying
with the streetcar’s pull
toward the factory. She smiled,
her thoughts stretching 
like a cat from sleep, refreshed. 

Wildness had long fled
her flesh, her physical life captured
in a consumerist orbit
around this modern sun-god 
of eternal hungering.
Hers seemed a joyless people,
staid and satisfaction-fearing.
Such people who would desire
to wall up the wind, lest it beguile
a curious mind to feel
a true and natural power. 

Such a world inspired
only emptiness. She survived
because she’d decided 
her mind was a lawless place. 
Within, she found a raw landscape,
hers alone, where a life could be made
idea-foraging,
making camp in a moral debate,
and seeking the fertile fields of soul.

Here her nomadic mind worked 
out her own domestication,
unbound 
and traveling light, cultivating
her existence like an artisan’s craft.

Rivers ran for a living, too.
Stagnation so quickly turned
water to poison. 
All flow and cycles and seasons felt
entropy’s breath at their necks,
and never since stopped
to see if they were still being chased. 
 
The streetcar squealed to her stop. 
Now she’d cross the street and spend 
a twelve-hour shift working
the line, all the while traversing
a rocky steppe of her mindlands,
choosing stones that struck
her heart as treasure.

[Poem] Mongolia Awaits

Were emptiness real,

would I still drift, dream-drawn

to endless steppes of lichen latched

on lonely rock, fearlessly communing

with an existential sky?

For every place is teeming

with spirals of being,

and where I am without void

I find the rite of dancing,

enjoined ecstatically

in the passion of being amongst it all.

Here, sadness has no home,

as I oust my denial of coiling mystery,

and thus crown to glory the Stirrer

of all sightless cycles of existence

everywhere.

[Poem] The Secret Life of Stones

She told me that stones lived,
crept, and even flew,
just slower than our imagined 
rate of time.

Years later I understood
how to love a river rock
like a bird, for time pulled
hard upon my beloved, until 
we were distant in the same room. 
Her breath became one unending 
syllable of a phrase I’d never hear
completed. 

“Ahhhhhhh,” she breathed,  
and if time ran fast enough for stones to fly,
she would say, “I love you.” 

I had faith enough to love
her and this life she now lived, 
a love undeserving of pity
from those who never knew
the secret life of stones. 

I came to move slower, too. 
“Ahhhhhhh,” I breathed gently,
my shoulder pressed upon hers,
too scared
to refrain from finishing the phrase, 
after a while:  
“I love you.” 

Then, last night some urban creature
dug up the fallow flower bed
outside our front window. 
When I drew aside the drapes
in acceptance of another day
behind us, I wondered
about the torn earth -- would time heal
this like a scraped knee?

I set the question free, turning away
from the living land.
The garden had only a minor wound,
and the stones of the walkway 
leading from the door
were full of thoughts and dreams 
as always.

My beloved was breathing, “Ahhhhhheeeeeeeeee....” 

I love you.

The Spirit of Algonquin

At the end of April we went to Algonquin Park and enjoyed a beautiful time of wildlife viewing. It means a lot to me to connect with nature and animals, so when I saw a moose get spooked by a loud truck, I instinctively put out my arm and said, “It’s okay.” The moose had abruptly moved to bolt, but now stopped instead to gaze at me, and then went back to drinking from a little stream. It was an amazing feeling. Here is a video compilation of the trip’s highlights, with music composed by me.