I Think, Therefore I Don't
I’ve always put a lot of thought into thinking. Into types of thinking, tiers of thought, as it were. Noticing my toes as I lay abed felt so removed from pondering a school assignment, drifting atop a song, or glancing back at my physical form as I morphed out my closed second-floor window into the darkness and headed for the Norwegian fjords.
“Morphed” wouldn’t be coined for decades at that point, I didn’t know if Norway was a country, city, or TV show, and I had no idea what “fjord” meant. Nevertheless, my non-remembery perversely holds those precise thoughts.
The experience—exactly as recited—slipped into my consciousness a few months ago when I was trying to follow yet another guided meditation.
“Feel the divine light enter your head, your body,” the narrator intoned—or paraphrased. I utterly non-remember the guy’s words but I caught his melody and cadence—
… even though I knew well I wasn’t supposed to think that thought. I was supposed to have already emptied my mind, letting my random images and ideas float by like lazy logs on a river. But they didn’t float, they never float. They play bumper-log until they grow alligator eyes or re-conform into potato chips. What’s that old commercial? “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”… on salty, greasy snacks. Which, thanks a lot, I now crave. Because they make me feel better. But I digress.
When last I left the meditative monotone it was saying something like, “Now reach out… reach out and grasp the light… (“Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪… Reach out and just say hi!♫”) and climb up the shaft, the shaft of divine light, up, up, up, until you rise above your physical self, above your house, about the clouds themselves… until you connect with your higher self at the end of the light, far above the planet, in the still blackness…”
Oh, hell, is that all he wanted? I went ahead and put myself there, the light shaft far below, the earth distanced into miniaturization, the cosmos’ glories and terrors silently murmuring in depths of blackness. The experience was supposed to imbue me with peace and wonder and a sense of connection to the divine, and I suppose it worked, because every time I returned to my corporeal container, I slept well. The third time, Tom’s essence wafted past, unseen but felt, like an ethereal “Kilroy was here” nod. But it did not change my world or open up brilliant new vistas of understandings, possibly because I already felt connected to the divine.
Which is why I know there’s no such thing as a one-sided coin. That whatever beauty I may coax into being in my vibrational field is answered elsewhere by gruesome. Whatsoever shining light of good and righteousness is equally perceived by another as depraved and hideous.
Opposites don’t just attract, they attach. Without despair, there can be no joy; without pity there can be no solace.
Without hate, deception, and war, there can be no tolerance, honesty, or peace. “Peace on earth, goodwill toward all” cannot possibly resonate with “all.”
Sorry to bubble burst, but that, my friends, is the true nature of the divine. Ain’t it a bitch?
And its inescapability ebbs-and-flows me back to thinking about thinking, and the first time I tried to share my thoughts on thoughts.
Scene: I was in eleventh grade, junior year of high school, in a class proctored by a half-earnest, half-laissez-faire, likely war protestor. If I did math I could deliver a year, but I don’t so I can’t, but it was either before or after the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Hiz Honor, the Honorable Mayor Richard J. Daley threw up redwood fences along Edens Highway so as to hide the city’s slum unsightliness from visiting dignitaries.
After. It was after. And anti-war protestors were in high gear. (As was smoking pot, which scuttled into and through our white-bread secondary school like cockroaches when someone throws the light switch.) Apologies. Another digression.
Mr. P ran his class with the go-ahead-try-to-fire-me-you-fuckers-I-have-tenure-up-my-ass carriage of someone who had, ya know, tenure up his ass. Which he proved by being one of the few who didn’t/couldn’t get fired when the fecal matter collided with the revolving cooling mechanism later that year. Eschewing Shakespeare and Baldwin and all that falderal, he had us read a controversial book (which probably shoulda been banned, but it was an off year) about a different way of teaching. It was all the rage with nonconformists—of the “my alternative way or the highway” variety.
My daughter’s particular brand of neuro non-typicality includes a spot of perfectionism. Mine leans more toward literalism. Dumbasfuck as I was, I took him at his word when he told us to bring in ideas, any ideas, no matter how offbeat or unorthodox for class discussion.
After great pains and many rewrites, I brought in a one-sheet exploration about tiers of thought, a jumping-off point for deeper dissection.
He corrected my spelling of “mysticism,” and handed it back to me without comment. Then dismissed class early. Message received: my “any ideas” did not conform to his particular flavor of nonconformity.
The very next (and last) time I tried to share my maverick musings in an academic setting, I did so in an oral report on feeling boy as non-girl. At least I got laughs all the way through that presentation.
Now, as I watch the tick-tick-ticks go by, I realize my greatest fears, highest achievements, warmest embraces have always existed solely in my head. Metaphorical illuminations proffered by greater minds than mine aside, I live the strongest, most profound, most accomplished energy, existence, beingness buried, hidden, deep, deep, deep inside my Turtle-ality, where my cosmic connection pulsates the strongest.
Thus, I must needs conclude I am of the cosmos. The messages I receive are not the crystal-ball, Tarot-card, or even glass-of-resonating-water variety. They come from seemingly nowhere, drop their load, as the flyboys would say, and disappear into the density of nothing. Trifles of nano-moments, empirical evidence of non-tangibility. Yet I can connect with my higher self without hesitation or effort—the issue has always been believing my reality, not experiencing it—and Tom tap my psyche—sometimes gently, sometimes with a neurology slug—and then cease to exist, non-catchable. No twinkling residue. No “shafts of divine light.” No kiss to the cheek or backrub.
Actually, I could use a backrub.
Bringing me to the irrefutable conclusion that Bill Murray’s Meatballs[1] mantra was absatively on the nose: it just doesn’t matter.
All the beliefs, the dogma, the what if’s and the so what’s, the floating logs with alligator eyes and the potato chip demands that infiltrate my—I won’t say ultimate or even upper, but I think I can go with the ever-popular “higher”—tier of thought thinking… even the introspecting-the-non-celestially-of-spirituality… matters not.
The “now” message to watch my father-in-law be euthanized—that mattered. Likewise the channeled reminder that soul connection can be broken but seldom is. Ditto my reason-obliterating fury at a total stranger meant to be my son. That’s what it means to be of the cosmos. An ephemeral overlay to the concrete world designed as contradictory, divisive, and chaotic, roamed by creatures who evolve not in clumps, cultures, or over centuries, but in breaths of personal discovery, in flashes of “aha!” soon eclipsed by regressions.
As I write this, 4:20 is past for this year and Passover, that sweet mythical celebration, is mere hours away. It’s a wonderous and horrific time to be alive—just like always—if we keep in mind that the other side of our fear is comfort.
Alas, therein lies yet another divisive, chaotic truth, for comfort affords no space for learning, helping, or advancing. Rather, it segues unnoticing-ly into complacent—which inescapably instigates further contradiction, divisiveness, and chaos. So do yourself a favor and use “comfort” as a restful interlude, then get back into the fray.
Another bubble burst: life is the fray.
[1] Meatballs, 1979 comedy film starring Bill Murray, Kate Lynch, and Chris Makepeace, written by Daniel Goldberg, Len Blum, Harold Ramis, and Janis Allen, directed by Ivan Reitman, distributed by Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Paramount.