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 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.
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.
But you trained it into oblivion, you gave it a desk job without even knowing it, as if it were meant to live out its years quietly until retirement. You’ve grounded yourself with it, too.
Every maybe, every worry, every opinion and self-doubt and belief, is a backwards glance to your childhood ventures, when you leapt off couches to see if you could fly.
But perhaps it’s not so far a leap to reclaim your adventure again.
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Everything we think that is not factual is imaginary — and surprisingly little is factual. Simple experiential observations, just as “it is raining” are facts, as are statements which logically and semantically prove themselves. However, theories and hearsay and assumptions, as well as your beliefs, your opinions, and your judgments — these are all imaginary.
What this leads to is the realization that your emotions and happiness in life are almost entirely based on our imagination — making our ability to “dreamcraft” our life more obviously within our own power.
Lately I have been working on my purpose in life by examining my true nature — which is being someone who sees the world in soul terms. I believe in the power of the imagination and that the physical world — the world beyond the Self — is the unknown, the esoteric Otherness. In keeping with this idea I created a song called “Otherworldly”, with vocals and lyrics by me.
I am also interested in a new therapeutic approach to anxiety and the emptiness of depression. It seeks to honour our power to create experiences and learn about ourselves — the only thing we can truly know.
Through our imagination we can “build out of nothing” like the gods.
“You are it,” the world said, and so you thought you were playing tag. It was your turn in this life to rush out to find meaning and truth.
But after a time, you felt you had failed the game, for nothing surrendered to your touch and became captured; you never hit upon a truth that chased you instead.
Then, at last, your glittering consciousness wondered about the game, and you thought you had the rules all wrong, so you considered what else the world’s words could mean.
“You are it,” you said aloud, and felt perhaps you were all there was to seek; you were it; for all the meaning and beauty of the world was created within you. You were the awareness and the creator of all the truth that could ever be found.
Theoretical physicists agree on one thing at least: that, given infinite space (an infinite universe or multiverse), or infinite time, everything happens. It’s beautifully simple logic, but beyond that, physicists imply agreement with Pablo Picasso when he said, “Everything you can imagine is real.”
I have written at length about why our imagination is not mere flight of fantasy but actually a direct sense of potential. However, when everything possible truly happens, everything we call good and everything we call bad, what are we to make of it? The universe is neutral at heart (if it has one), yet we humans, the expression of the universe looking upon itself, sure as hell aren’t.
Any meaning we find is entirely self-created, and I feel justified in saying that this is our role — to create meaning out of Nothing. Ostensibly, matter and energy leapt out of Nothing, too. I believe the only thing that can exist and yet be “nothing” is potential. Potential is the answer to this riddle: “What ceases to exist once it becomes real?”
Since I believe time is largely an illusion of human perception, I think that not only does everything happen, but everything we can imagine is happening simultaneously. Everything we call good and everything we call bad is happening right now, all at once. And yet, again, I have not decided what to make of that. What does that really mean to me?
Another thing I have been thinking about is the concept of meta-consciousness, otherwise called awareness, but I find my own term more descriptive. I have been thinking about and examining my own consciousness (the only consciousness, after all, that is available for me to examine) since I was a young child. I remember being about 5 years old and trying to explain how weird it was that everyone only saw through their own eyes (and experienced the world only through their own consciousness). I didn’t have the words to say it properly, and my thoughts ran further than what I said at the time: “Everybody’s playing a different movie…in every house there is a different movie playing…and I can’t see those other movies in those other houses.”
Which brings me to an interesting point. You see, I have long maintained that I don’t think in words — and I don’t think in images either. I have a crazy memory; I can remember what I was thinking when I was about 2 and being potty-trained. But I know that these were largely wordless thoughts, simply because I didn’t have many words back then. I actually think that this is not unusual, and that if people paid attention they might realize they don’t precisely think in words or images either.
I describe my thoughts as being “abstractions”, feelings of logical connections between abstract concepts, with an illustration occasionally thrown in. When I practice meta-consciousness (when I am paying attention to my consciousness itself), I notice that when I want to mentally “write out” my thoughts, it takes an annoying long time to form a sentence, and that sentence seems to be an echo of the thought itself, which already flashed by at the speed of light. And perhaps this is why I tire of speaking in general — I get annoyed by how long speech takes, when my actual thought processes are so much faster.
I find this exploration of consciousness very interesting and perhaps valuable, because our consciousness is EVERYTHING. All that we can experience, all that we can sense, even all that we can know — it all is filtered through our consciousness first. Thus we create our worlds; thus we each own the capacity to be gods of our own perceptions.
I have come to think that potential, a concept which I have been contemplating for years, can be thought of as the ultimate Everything-and-Nothing, the All-That-Is, which is commonly referred to as God.
This idea of God is not a religious one. It is not our own best guess at what a person with superpowers would be like. For these sorts of gods, one might as well believe in the Avengers — they are defined by human ideas of personhood and are really no different than the superheroes of our favourite stories.
In my cosmology, God is simply everything that is possible, in a singularity of infinite Oneness. However, God is not a Self the way people are. God is not a being with a defined personality and consciousness who experiences things and reacts to them. God, rather, IS all the things, and space and time and everything.
But again, God is not a Self or a person. For to be a Self is to be contained and limited — to be set apart from the universe as a whole. Without the defining edge between yourself and the world, you would be God. And your edges are really your limits, the things that you are not. Your limitations ought to be valued, then, if you value your Self at all.
In fact, it is these limitations of Selfhood that allow for people to experience things. Only Selves experience anything, for to transcend Self is to BE everything. You see, experience requires change, such as time or circumstance. And in my cosmology, God transcends time and circumstance and physicality altogether. Moreover, God is the very thing we are experiencing — no matter what that is.
To be everything, God must ultimately be morally neutral in our human eyes. Morality is entirely created by Selves — and there is nothing wrong with that as long as you understand what that means. It means we are each free to pursue our own sense of morality: ideally what we experience and feel as being right and sacred with respect to our understanding of our authentic Selfhood. We will each have different ideas, and that is no trouble ultimately because God contains it all and is entirely neutral. Naturally, God is not a judge.
We people and everything we experience are God’s potential made “manifest” through the simple fact that we are experiencing it. By our own experience of ourselves and the world, we play out God’s imagination. Selves experience what God dreams into being, and there is value in this.
It matters what we genuinely believe and value and call sacred. It matters because we are experiencing God and Self at once, only Selves can create a sense of meaning to it all. It doesn’t really matter what you value — it matters that you value it, and bring meaning to it, and ideally this is done with careful attention to Self understanding.
Self understanding is the discovery of one’s authenticity. What you truly value is what has not been forced on you, or the result of certain insecurities and fears. What you truly value may not be what you have been taught to value. Be honest with yourself, and as you grow in awareness, allow for changes in your values too. Finding your authentic Self is not really the end goal of life; nor is it a race to the finish line. However, it is vital that you continue to learn and experience who you are. At the very least, you will find that knowing yourself allows you to create less suffering for yourself!
And now for something completely different: a bunny wearing a hat.
Silliness is more than not taking things too seriously; it is the awareness that we create our own experience. It is to decide to take the world on your own terms for a moment. The practice of silliness is indeed a spiritual thing, more so even than laughter, which is generally a result of forces beyond yourself. Silliness, on the other hand, is a self-constructed experience of controlling one’s reality. It shows how you can change not only your mood but your entire perception of the world as you see fit. Practicing silliness with an awareness of its power boosts one’s confidence in one’s own ability to manage one’s soul and one’s experience of life itself. Indeed, some of the greatest minds and deepest hearts are seen at their best when practicing silliness.
We are not alienated from the spiritual world. The truth is, it is the physical world that is hidden from us, and the material world is actually what is most esoteric.
Everything we experience comes to us from the mind. If you believe that mind (or soul) is immaterial, that the thoughts in your mind are not entirely made of physical matter such as atoms, then it follows that everything you can experience is also immaterial, since we do not experience or sense anything directly. The physical world is processed, rendered, and presented to us through the apparatus of the mind. Everything we see or feel or otherwise sense is a production of the mind. It is an immaterial representation of the material world.
Thus, we in fact only perceive an immaterial world — made of the same “stuff” as the spiritual world. Our senses are more closely related to the spiritual realm than the physical realm! Whatever the physical world is like, we have never perceived it; we have always perceived a “spiritual representation” of material things.
So the physical world is actually hidden from us and therefore is deeply esoteric, whereas the spiritual world is our ordinary, mundane, daily experience.
This is what I call a “retrograde perspective” (see here for more discussion of this term). It directly opposes what we commonly think about the physical and spiritual dichotomy. And it is a completely valid, yet opposite, way of understanding our experience as human beings.
If the physical world is actually hidden and esoteric, everything we experience being immaterial, then the spiritual world is the most intimate and ordinary experience we can have.
You can give up the desire to have extraordinary or sacred experiences without turning your back on spirituality. Spirituality ought not be mere thrill-seeking but a deep hue that paints your perspective of mundane experience. When you approach spirituality as a hidden and rarely-seen thing, you intentionally alienate yourself from it. At first, this viewpoint might make spirituality seem more exciting and attractive, but a steady stream of rare and extraordinary experiences is inherently unobtainable, leading to disappointment and a weakening of faith in one’s entire spiritual belief system.
But if you let spirituality be ordinary, contained even in the most mundane events, your faith will be supported on a moment-to-moment basis.
And it is inevitable that blind faith serves an unseen master, whose goals are both unknown and foreign to you. Taking the perspective of the immaterial as ordinary experience solves this too. Your faith in spirit need not be blind at all, but the actual mechanism by which you see.
Dreamcraft 