For a while now, the main theme of my writing has been the topic of childhood, reminiscing on primary joys, memories, shapings. Prior to this period, I mainly toyed with concepts of love, not its central idea, or any theories of my own, rather just concrete experiences. I spent a lot of time reflecting on the actions of other people and how they have affected me, how they continue to do so. Steering away from the behaviors of others, this transition aims to focus on self reflection: my being, the extent of my consciousness. I recently discovered a video, “The Neuroscience of Consciousness”, where Professor Anil Seth discusses the millions of fleeting entities that enter our consciousness at each given moment, and the roughly forty of which are able to be perceived. While my goal is not to overestimate the capacity of my consciousness, I feel empowered to try to expand that number–even just a bit– maybe to fifty or sixty. How many things am I missing out on– things I notice, but don’t pay attention to?
A recent fear of mine actually has centered around this idea of things, thoughts, escaping me. At times, I find myself imagining a past scenario, realizing it, and then forcing it to disappear. Or, I start to visualize a new scenario, one that has not yet come into fruition, and then pause, deliberately causing it to evaporate before it can take on a larger form. I am scared to admit that there are things I have forgotten, things that I probably did not mean to forget, possibly which then meant more to me than they do now. I am scared of a brand new idea, one I really care for, and then to watch it go to waste– in a wet, soggy dump with all my other thoughts. Even a journal can’t store my memories; they merely sit, dwell and slowly fade into an element on a desk or shelf. I guess you could say that this cherishing of my internal monologue correlates to thinking highly of myself.
Stephen Hawking also said, “although my body is very limited, my mind is free to explore the universe”, so maybe my fear is rational... and our monologues are worth cherishing.
It is also possible that the sudden embarking on a journey of self-discovery has something to do with the fact that I’m reading a Castaneda book, “A Separate Reality”. The book centers around Carlos himself engaging in an apprenticeship with Don Juan, a wise former sorcerer. He battles encounters with mushrooms and various ways of smoking, entering hallucinogenic states and dealing with the depths of his own consciousness. With Don Juan as a teacher, he works, pretty laboriously, on molding his current perceptive mechanism into one that more-so aligns with Don Juan’s. Here, I will summarize three things that stuck with me:
“It is up to us as single individuals to oppose the forces of our lives”.
“Will, on the other hand, has to do with astonishing feats that defy our common sense”.
“When a man embarks on the paths of sorcery he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been forever left behind; that knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive”.
To dissect (1), I feel as though mostly everyone is born with some overt sense of rebellion, some notion to make sense of the world as your own. Self expression, evident in antagonizing your parents, friends, just society in general–your style, the way you cut your hair. I think as time goes on, and adulthood emerges, we are sort of subtly encouraged to assimilate, to understand why the system works the way it does and why it couldn’t work in any other way. I like the idea of a lifelong rebellion.
(2) The concept of will very rarely crosses my mind; it isn’t something I give much form to. I like Castaneda’s depiction of it as a physical, bodily sensation, instead of as a personality trait. Will is not something that is characterized in a person who is stubborn or confident, but more similar to a gut-feeling that comes around once in a while, surpassing the common sense aspect, the compass of logic.
The third observation settles in the most heavily with me; it sounds very familiar. I remember distinctly when I entered my first new frame of consciousness, when I stepped out of myself for the first time. Possibly, it could be described as the first time that I felt a desperate need to associate with humanity itself, and to find solidarity in the human species as a whole. To feel, as though, the general human struggle is universal–that we all practice adapting to death.
When one day, the mind is having a conversation and preparing a punchline or associating one thing with another and then, all of the sudden, it is–just–silent.