Caverns of Mind

Back in my hazy drug days, while I was high on pot, I became aware that my mind was almost uncontrollably flipping between different mental states. It was like the annoying feeling you get when you are watching TV and someone else has the remote. At times I felt as though I was losing control of my mind completely. One time I felt as though my mind was but a candle of awareness burning in the complete darkness. It was a strange feeling, because it felt as though my mind itself was constricted, that there was more to perceive, though not through physical sense, that I could not perceive. I actually started having more and more severe panic attacks because of these kinds of sensations, and the symptoms lasted a long time after I kicked the drug habit.

Through these and other experiences, I was frightened to realize how limited my awareness of reality truly is. Think about it. The extent of your life and who you are is stored in various forms all within this little watery body bag we inhabit. All your thoughts and memories are encapsulated in this fragile chemical electric organ sitting between our ears. If it is destroyed or damaged, your life is destroyed or damaged.

Science has not yet even begun to scratch the surface of its enormous complexity. What vitalizes this mesh of cells? What gives it its capacity to enable human consciousness? They throw around all kinds of complicated scientific gobbledygook to explain it, but the reality is, they haven't got a flipping clue.

There is so much more to reality than the basic physical things we are familiar with. Science points its instruments to the sky to collect gamma rays, theta rays, UV, infrared, microwave, and an assortment of all kinds of radiation in order to glimpse the vastness of the visible universe. Despite all our technology, all we are able to measure are these manifestations in different wavelengths of the same force - electromagnetism. What other *ism's are there that we have not yet discovered. Science says something doesn't exist if we can't measure it or observe it. Man's little scientific scopes and probes are useless if we don't know where to point them, or what to look for.

I once read that some of the first Americans to go into space in a rocket got themselves high above the earth into the heavens above, and as they looked around, they proclaimed "We don't see any God up here." One of my favorite writers, J. Preston Eby, countered their fallacious and pompous arrogance by writing "they didn't see any God because they were on the wrong frequency. God lives in the realm of spirit." God cannot be seen even if you were to travel to the ends of time and space.

Every culture has believed in the "spiritual" realm, albeit with different ideas about it. The basic premise is always the same, that there are unseen higher forces at work in the world that are intimately connected to us and our lives / purposes / destinies.

Our humanistic mindset here in the West has its roots set deeply in Medieval European superstition, or rather in the distancing of ourselves from that dark ignorance, but in so doing, western thought seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Ancient man used to think the seat of God was just above the circle of the earth (some thought the sun was god). Man looked to the heavens as the seat of divine residence or authority. Yet when man shot himself to the sky, he didn't see any divine thrones, so he figured, well, so much for God.

The fool has said in his heart...

The truth is, despite all our "enlightenment," man is as deep in darkness as he ever was, and in the west we have managed to swing ourselves from the depths of one kind of superstition straight into the polar opposite, a position equally as foolish and dangerous.

The mind is a tricky thing. We are bound and limited to what we have experienced, and cannot truly comprehend anything beyond that. If I encounter information pertaining to something I have not experienced, it is automatically related and compared to the information that I have available to me, none of which is guaranteed to be accurate or correct. In fact, my own physical perception automatically distorts reality, filtering it through faulty and unreliable data-gathering channels, and then is further distorted by subconscious analysis in a disorderly associative storage system that sorts and orders and labels everything based upon whatever is already there through very liberal pathways of relationship. The brain is a perfectly imperfect database of knowledge. It is the reason two people can witness the same event and say they saw two different things. Of course, then, when you throw emotion into this already senseless mixture, you add a whole new layer of complexity and irrationality.

I myself have become well aware of how limited I am by my mind. I am aware of what the bible calls the carnal mind. The mind that is composed of and empowered by fleshly tissue. What can the brain do, when it is made only to support a primitive life on this planet?

Man recently has created a nice little dream for himself. He thinks his technology is so great, and will be his own salvation. He dreams of building machines to propel him into the vast reaches beyond.

I was watching the History channel and these physicists were saying how great it would be and how much we really need to reach out and colonize Mars. How it, compared to the other planets around, is hospitable. I got a little ill. I don't see what is so hospitable about living on a rock in space that never gets above -200 degrees, has almost not atmosphere, no water, and no life at all. We can't transform it. We will never "terraform" it. It's a dead rock. How are you going to get ANYONE to want to go live on a dead planet?

Man thinks he can conquer the universe with his puny mind. He surely dreams.

Lately, my own mind has felt like a cavern. I wander around in it, constantly finding bits and pieces of memories here and there. They are all that I am, so I thought.. but also lately I have been feeling a breeze blowing through my little cave, bringing with it new and unfamiliar sensations.

I am realizing that my first impression or opinion about things more often than not is proved to be wrong. I misunderstand, misjudge, miscalculate, and fall short in just about everything. I have underestimated so many people because of the crusty thought barrier that lies in between their soul and mine, that crusty barrier being my own perverse and misguided thoughts.

My mind is truly a cavernous pit of lies, and I have come to realize that everything I think is wrong. My own thoughts deceive me more often than not. I now understand what it means in the Bible, "Be ye transformed by the renovation/renewing of the MIND." "There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end leads only to DEATH."

Wretched man I am, where do I go from here? How can my mind be renewed?


... To be Continued.