Posts Tagged ‘mind’
This Moment, Anyway
Sometimes I find myself surprised by the dichotomies I come to realize about myself. I don’t know why it should surprise me. I have been known to express a belief that all things are balanced with a polar opposite, in one way or another. When I become aware of it within my own personality or behavior, why does it surprise me? Go figure. As I write this, I am feeling a new awareness about the different ways I actually do live in the moment, regardless my more obvious pattern of usually allowing myself to be more focused on either my past, or the future.
One easily recognizable aspect of this part of me which resides in the moment, is related to my writing. I really struggle to comfortably write for publication deadlines that are months or years into the future. Heck, even emails leave my computer with me wanting them to be read as fast as they arrive at their destination. It’s not that I produce anything that is particularly time sensitive; no, it’s more that my having created some message at a particular moment in time is most closely associated with my mind at that moment. Maybe that reveals something about me. Does my mind really change all that much that the things I write about might not stand the test of time? Probably not. I’ll rack that one up to the possibility of a lack of confidence.
Yesterday, I spent some time engaged in projects in the garage that likely spawned some of the thinking about how I behave more in the moment than I am aware. I make all these attempts, year after year, to arrange things in an organized manner to facilitate a logical and efficient future use. All for naught. For the most part, I don’t retain any functional recollection of the places I store things, or for that matter, even remember what the things are that I have. When I set about tending to some chore, I take on whatever task appears before me with whatever tool I can locate in the moment. Rarely, if ever, do I benefit from some plan I had in mind at some motivated, constructive phase of my past.
So, in a way, I am both organized, and randomly spontaneous all at the same time.
Expand Awareness
Our incredible brain machine is on my mind. Thinking about our thinking can get pretty tricky and sort of convoluted. It’s like getting in an argument with someone you live with and instead of arguing about the original point that triggered the debate, you find yourself fighting over the mechanics of the argument. Or like trying to make up a game in the neighborhood and spending the whole time arguing over what the rules will be and never getting around to actually playing the game.
There is an article from June of 2008 in The New Yorker that I was pointed to online. Fascinating. It is 8 pages long, so if you are interested in reading it, and I highly recommend it, then be prepared to sit down and read a chapter of a book. It is worth it. Among very many things covered in the article, there is a reference to how our minds are able to assemble an image from incomplete data. We do it unconsciously. I expect everyone, including myself, takes this for granted, but think about it! The author uses the example of viewing a dog through a picket fence where our eyes are only able to perceive separated slices of the animal, yet our mind is able to conjure a fully intact dog and visualize what the animal looks like. Our brain processes it for us without needing to think about it.
I am reminded of a scene from the documentary/drama “What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole” where they claim the first time a native tribe witnessed an ocean-crossing vessel on their horizon of the sea, they didn’t “see” it because they had no reference of what it could be, so it just didn’t compute. I found it hard to accept at the time, but now I can understand what was being portrayed. Having no concept of what that ship was, no reference of having stood on one or walked around one to know how big it is, that image on the horizon must have made no sense at all. The mind couldn’t process that unconscious step of forming the image.
At the same time, it occurs to me that our minds are pretty adept at conjuring up threats that don’t actually exist. Many of the fears and phobias our mind conjures up are figments of imagination. The monster under the bed or the boogie man in the darkness. The spinning view of vertigo for someone uncomfortable with heights. Or, as the article graphically presents, the itching that has no source.
Also from the article, consider how the multitude of sensors of our skin can ignore the collar on our neck all day long, but when a thread pokes out of the tag, it has us scratching and fussing to fix it. The skin works with the brain. But sometimes, as the article reveals, the brain takes initiative to control without bothering to get input from the skin.
When we are adept enough, or introspective enough, it is a spectacular refinement to unravel the unconscious acrobatics that occur in our minds and harness the power for personal gain: optimal health of mind, body, and spirit. You might even call it, achieving a bit of enlightenment.
Expand your awareness. Think about it!
Purposeless Randomosity
Happy September!
Do not expect to find any answers in this post. But feel free to wallow in questions that hold little in the way of purpose…
Why aren’t there weeds in the woods?
Is it possible to yawn during an angry tantrum?
Would rock ‘n’ roll music have evolved if the only instruments that existed to this day were the same ones used in classical orchestral music?
Courtesy my friend David P.: Someday, will there be an implant that allows humans to capture an image that we see through our eyes so we can take pictures without having to dig out our camera?
How would your performance at your day job be affected by having a stadium of 80,000 people watching you and the job limited to 90 minutes to complete, while the spectators cheered and jeered?
How come we still call professional sports, “sport”, when it’s become so much like work for the millionaires participating in it?
How does Lindsey Buckingham, guitarist/singer with the band Fleetwood Mac, elicit all those notes and sounds out of his guitars with that finger picking style at the speeds he does?
Do scientists get embarrassed to release reports of studies they have done that come to conclusions that are absolutely common sense obvious to all the rest of us?
Is anyone surprised when damages from disasters reach higher dollar amounts than ever before?
What if people bought artist’s work while they are still alive instead of waiting until they die?
What would it be like if everyone always smiled a genuine smile, all the time – even when it didn’t feel genuine?
Is it possible to look deeply into someone’s eyes and not really see them?
What would it be like if you had to teach someone how to be you and describe how and why you do everything the way you do?
Being *this* John W. Hays is a lot like being different than just being the same as what it would be like if I were being unlike how it is when I become aware I am being more like what it’s like when I am being like what all the other John W. Hays named individuals would be like were they to suddenly take stock in what being *this* John W. Hays would be like in any other shoes than mine, if you know what I mean.
Let it Rain
Finally, we are being blessed by the first enchanting rumbles of thunder as spring rotates into place here in my homeland. I can’t wait to find out if we will enjoy any dramatic weather in Nepal in April. I am preparing for anything and everything. If I can muster the mysterious power of mental influence, I will see what I can bring about by dwelling on nothing too serious or uncomfortable. I’ve really been wondering lately about the power of influence of our minds.
Recently, the thought passed through my mind that I did not suffer a cold this winter. I let that thought slip by unspoken, admittedly due to a superstition that saying something–acknowledging it–would lead to, …well, …you know: getting a cold! Why, then, did I suddenly let the words fly when the thought came to me a second time in the car the other night? I had no conscious reason for these thoughts in the first place, nor any explanation for why I ended up saying it out loud.
I woke up Sunday morning with a sore throat that had me feeling just a bit off and by the evening was struggling with a tickle in my throat and stuffiness in my nose that really hassled my attempts to fall asleep. It continued to progress to an overall feeling of cruddiness with stinging eyes that have me just wanting to snuggle under the covers and sleep for days. So, which came first here, the chicken or the egg?
Is it possible that deep within my essence I sensed what was coming, long before my mind became fully aware? My body knew what was happening before my mind did? That would explain why the thoughts seemed so out of context to me. Or is the onset of illness simply a result of me thinking about it and my body following the path I was paving? If the mind can control the body, I’m sure not displaying the necessary discipline to redirect this now. All day I’ve been floundering back and forth with trying to talk myself, right-quick, back to optimal health and then whimpering that I want to just allow myself to feel all the yuck and stay in bed! My poor body seems to be following both messages equally well and it is no wonder I feel so crazy sometimes.
I’m using this as a reminder to be sure to pack as many little medicine cabinet comforts, the ones I rarely-if-ever turn to normally, in order to be prepared for anything that my mind conjures up while wandering around in the Himalayan wonderland of Nepal.
The duality within me truly believes in the power of the mind to influence the processes and functions of the body, while at the same time, doubts that my little mind is enlightened enough to wield such otherworldly power. Just the kind of thing worthy of pondering in long hours of trudging uphill on unpaved foot paths in the thin air of the world’s highest mountains, don’t you think?
Rain, or shine.
Relative Something 