In Vacant or in Pensive Mood
Sometimes it feels like the bottom falls out on my thoughts.
Its usually at night and I’m always alone when it happens. My mind begins to wander and I hear a sound. The sound may startle me or maybe it is only mildly concerning, but most notably, I know it came from something outside of me. I did not produce the sound, I merely noticed it.
From there, I may have no trouble moving on with my day, if it weren’t night. At night, all that needs to be done is that I need to sleep. In order to not enter a nightmare, I need for my final thoughts before sleep to be pleasant and inviting. So I attempt to orient my thinking toward pleasant and inviting things. But it doesn’t just flip over. Its almost as if there is something questioning me, or taunting me. Something that wants to torture me and keep my attention on everything unpleasant. I beg and plead with it until finally I convince it to end the reel of terror.
I usually catch my thoughts wondering, “If don’t have control here, then who does?” Where thoughts hint at the dilemma, sounds make it salient. Where does sound come from? Where do thoughts come from? Do we make them, or like sound, do they come from somewhere else? If so, where? If we are to be sure of this idea of “oneness” how can things be separate from me in this way? How is it that I can receive sounds, smells, and other sensations from what seems to be the external world if I am told there is nothing external to me?
I am consciousness. I am the medium within which all events occur. I am not the body, but I sense this world through the body. While I inhabit this body, I sense the world in the way in which I treat this body. The things I think are also informed by my sensory organs. I’ve been taking philosophy classes once again. Islamic Philosophy and the other is about the Mystical Roots of Astrology. Why am I guided to learn more about these obscure topics that people think are bullshit? Why does my mind love philosophy so much that I feel like I can’t get enough. There aren’t enough hours in the day to live and also study everything I want to learn. But I know that I must do both. I am not wealthy enough to sit and think. I also believe that part of the practice is experiencing life. That is what we are here to do, we are here to feel and think and touch and smell. Why? Who knows?
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
