“He, like everyone else, […] is exactly where, exactly what, exactly when he is meant to be. It is the Tao.”
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties but that line didn’t hit me until I came across it today. Timing, right? American democracy on the ropes. Millions dead/dying from a global pandemic. The planet gasping for breath. And here I am, exactly where/what/when I was meant to be. Seriously, this is the most peaceful I’ve felt in months.
To some extent we are the sum of our memories. Or it feels that way. But neuroscience tells us that every time a memory is recalled, it is recreated by the brain, slightly different each time it’s retrieved. So, a memory of a memory. Of a memory. Imagine each memory as a photo in a shoebox. Everytime you pull one out, it’s just a little bit different. We’re not bothered by this because we are unaware of the change. We have no memory of the previous version. Neuroscience also tells us we are able to recall only a fraction of our experiences.
My conclusion: We are not our memories.
So who/what am I? Perhaps the most important question one can ask, and that few ever do. Are we our thoughts and feelings? If so, what are we in those rare moments when we are not thinking or feeling? I like Sam Harris’ description of such mental objects as “temporary patterns of energy.”
“Your life began with a kind of singularity. A personal Big Bang. Without warning, you emerged from unconsciousness into a sea of light, color, smell, faces, feelings, and other completely unexpected phenomena, and there was nothing to do but attempt to navigate it. It was the ultimate “cold open” – no context, no explanation, just things happening.”
“You can learn to see that mysteriousness in the world again, on purpose. You can practice looking at what’s in front of you as an infant might see it. It’s all just textures and feelings, that have no real names and carry no explanation. Looking at the world like that comes with a certain kind of relief to the compulsive mapper, because what’s right in front of you is never as busy as the map. […] It comes down to just looking — seeing what’s there, and nothing else, as you once did.”
Nothing Really Has A Name by David Cain
“The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.”
This bit of wisdom is from I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Hindu spiritual teacher who lived in Mumbai. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. What is “the world I can perceive?” All perception — every experience — is via the five senses, so my world is what I can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Right here, right now. And it’s constantly changing. So my world is a tiny sphere of sensations that is unique to me. Everything else is conceptual, existing only in my head.
I don’t remember where I read the phrase, “Consciousness creates reality,” but that seems ever more true as I age. If I look closely enough, most of my problems (worries, anxieties, fears) exist outside my tiny reality sphere.
“The Kekulé Problem” is a 2017 nonfiction essay by writer Cormac McCarthy for the Santa Fe Institute. It was his first published work of nonfiction. He theorizes about the nature of the unconscious mind and its separation from human language. The unconscious, according to McCarthy, “is a machine for operating an animal” and that “all animals have an unconscious.” McCarthy goes on to postulate that language is purely a human cultural creation, and not a biologically determined phenomenon. (Wikipedia)
“You may have read a thousand books and be able to discuss any one of them without remembering a word of the text.”
“The unconscious wants to give guidance to your life in general but it doesn’t care what toothpaste you use.”
“The unconscious seems to know a great deal. What does it know about itself? Does it know that it’s going to die? What does it think about that?”
The essay checked a lot of my boxes: awareness, consciousness, ego, thoughts.