LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN

I think a lot. I don't mean I allow my mind to rattle on in obsessive tangents. That is stream of consciousness, not conscientiousness. Trust me. I have struggled with each and know the difference. 

I speculate that most people in modern societies have minds like a James Joyce novel, without the classical education. Minds like puddings composed of TV, social media, telephone conversations and texts, all slathered over wanted and unwanted memories of their personal pasts.  JPEG's, GIF's, You Tube videos, all jumbled together. And driving down any street confirms my suspicion. 

I meditate ever day and have found this practice very useful. The meditation time itself is not the most useful aspect of meditating. Actually, meditation is pushing aside stream of consciousness in favor of surrendering the mind to its own white noise without attention. It is wakeful sleep. If deep enough, it is wakeful sleep without the dreams. This sounds like hooey unless you have developed a meditation practice for a while. 

The benefit of this kind of daily practice is the ability to better harness the mind, that ongoing stream of thought and psychic reaction to physical reality. Maybe it is comparable to diverting part of a river into a channel which drives a mill or an electric turbine. The river (stream of consciousness) is still running to the sea, but that diverted channel provides power for intentional use. 

Many of today's self-help movements are based in a concept of channeling "positive thinking" for individual monetary gain. That basically means capitalizing whatever conscientiousness you achieve through their methodologies. It's the well-worn Tony Robbins model: Become a superhuman and then exploit your environment and its inhabitants for personal gain to become a model of success and to aspire to liberate all fellow human beings from doing what they are doing the wrong way. Now that's hooey! Just like the Christian missionaries who decimated native cultures in the name of  profiteering civilizations, today's gurus are primarily in it for themselves. Some declare this openly. Most do not.

Meditation helped me to look behind the curtain of my own stream of consciousness. There I found some mental processes that needed correcting. Starting the conscious correction of those mental habits redirected my energies in life. I became less resentful of my circumstances and began to accept my place in The Universe, which began to expand before me as a shared experience with all forms of life and forms of being/becoming, even those yet undiscovered/unrevealed. In other words, The Universe is certainly not all about me in the least. A certain amount of relief comes with that realization. It is also somewhat frightening. 

When I listen to the thoughts of various philosophers and pundits now, I am reminded of something that stunned me when I first heard it. It has stuck with me for almost 40 years. A lover of mine said off the top of his head, "When I am on the subway, I imagine everyone naked." I asked him to elaborate. He gave me an amazing array of examples of people whom he remembered from his daily subway trips. They were male, female, young, old, fat, thin. 

That same person has demonstrated a special energy, impressive success and lust for life over the decades. I cannot help but think some of that was related to his natural ability to see all of humanity naked on a subway. I can relate to a degree.  Pulling back my own mental curtain gave me the ability to look behind the mental curtains of others. The more economical term "insight" refers to this process, I suppose.

Pulling back the curtain is just one step. Ongoing study of what is important in life is another. The concept of study is eroding in this digital age. Study is a long and often tedious process. It does not require academic degrees or high IQ. In fact, one advantage of the digital age is its open pathway to more human knowledge than ever before available. Working out a path of study is the hard part for the curious mind. The distractions are endless. For example, I personally consider videos of Dame Edna Everage mentally akin to crack cocaine.

Study is the application of my conscientious mind. I do it to be and become better as a living creature. I do not mean better in a moral sense. I mean it in the sense of accepting all it means to be human in a vast universe while trying to see how I can develop my mind and behavior in the time I have. I seek to live with less stress and more vulnerability. A nifty trick, if accomplished. 

My conscientious mind struggles with questions. What depth of character and generosity can I develop while attending to my own inevitable needs? Where will I discover the line between my quantity of life and quality of life? How will my individual journey diverge from my shared journey with those whom I love? Will I be aware of it? Will I have a choice? 

Our materialistic media can be used as a drug for dulling the recognition of our true place in a vast universe. Digital technology, totally dependent on an ample supply of possibly unsustainable electric power, is the delivery method of this potent narcotic. Looking behind that curtain for content which addresses the essence of the actual human experience can be both frustrating and unnerving. But I believe it is the best use of all those electrons, generated at such a great cost to the planet.