The Mind's Price

Everything I feel towards myself is an act of a builder, is an act of a moulder. For instance, if I feel terrible towards myself, I am in some way or another, acting upon myself with those thoughts. The same is true for anyone.

The image you have about yourself is not exactly who you are. For instance, all those thoughts you have about yourself, they are a loose and scattered image of who you are. You, the thinker and feeler, have the ability to do what you will to those ideas of yourself. You can build yourself into a superhero, you can tear yourself down into a nobody, but whatever you decide to do, you are doing this within a very complex and crowded world, mind and reality. There are many areas to make many mistakes, but either way, you are going to make a mistake in some instance or another, and thus, you will be made to feel guilty, terrible, inadequate, ill, or whatever it is that you feel at the moment you discover a shortcoming.

What I mean to say is that there is not a person or a single being in all of existence that will not come to discover that it was incorrect, it was wrong, it was not doing what it should do attain this or that. So, to become aware of this very obvious inevitable defeat, you must learn how to not only cope with this very real reality, but you must also learn how to pick yourself up again and keep going, even when the going seems utterly worthless and terrible. Because just as something “seems” to be, it never truly is as what it appears. Nothing is truly as it appears or seems to be, and that can either create an extreme terror in your mind, or act as a sober reality of the “is” that we exist within. There is always going to be a type of existence that curts your expectation.

One thing I have noticed is that everyone has a kind of expectation. When we arrive to a place, we have a certain expectation of what we are to discover there. One thing for certain is that expectations are just as complex from the internal perspective as they are in the external. When two of these very complex things come together, it is as if you are fitting one very infinite puzzle piece into another more infinite puzzle piece. The process of coming into a clean, pristine and snug fit is an effort that takes more than an infinite process of perception, effort, and change. We are here for only a few several years, and of those few years, you will have only a certain degree of conscious awareness coupled with a good working body. Within that short frame of existence, you are distracted with all sorts of input, whether it’s social, work related, or mundane aspects of life.

Between those lines, you are tasked with a monstrous goal of understanding life and remaining in a state that is “good” and to define what “good” means all while remaining alive and well. You have to find someone, something, some memory, some feeling that makes sense to the unique “you” and then somehow feel certain that this is what you want, or is it? Then again, there is so much distracting you, is it the distraction you want or is it the focus on this or that? What is distraction anyway? All of these things are present in your mind in some form or another, and yet, remaining calm is still one of the greatest struggles people fight with. Why would anyone want to remain calm when there are seemingly more pressing “things” that you could focus your attention to?

The cure to fixing this terrible question, the one burning in your mind, it’s simple. You must find acceptance of your smallness, your fallibleness, and then you can begin moving on. You can begin the process of internal discovery. To know where your soul, heart, and mind are, and where they feel “good” within, is by taking a close look in the mirror and recognizing it. Who are you really? And if so, are you sure that this thing you observe is really you? You may never really know, you may never know for certain. But to be certain of your existence is certainly a short sell for what you have gained so far in your “understanding” of life. You are a living, breathing, delicate organism strapped to a planet, so how can you ever put a great effort into crystallizing the idea of “who” you are? Information will come knocking on your door in a form of perception, and it’s more wild than the wildest wild card. Your wildest existence will come back to knock on that door, and you may not agree with the fluid perception. These things will either shatter this crystallization that you hold within your soft mind. You can do two things with these perceptions. Either put all your time and energy into rebuilding what you thought you were against the tides of new perception, building this castle up with what little you have left with this biological life, or you can let go of this “idea” you have within your mind and keep changing, growing, and morphing into something.

These kind of strategies bring about two polar opposites of mental states. The first brings a comfort of mind, the other brings about a discomfort of mind. Your mind is very real, and so all the things you feel are very real, but either way, the reality outside of your mind will never cease to exist, regardless the realness of your mind. You can fight the infinite, or you can grow with it. Your discomfort is equal to the dice you roll at the beginning of every game, it is the discomfort you have not knowing what will come next in the “shuffle” option, with a blind date, with all things that are unknown and strange. We might want to retire the unknown and strange, but it will either come back with a deadly venom, undesired and unpredictable, or it will give you life, and shock your soul to its core. Your heart will come back beating its drum, or cease to exist.

But, just as someone might want to find comfort within their mind, they cannot find comfort in something that is personal, held in the mind as “mine”. What is “you”? And if you are certain of this thing, then why do you fight anything that says that you are not? Are you sure it is an attack on “you” or are you the beast that fights the world around you in defence of the possession you hold within your mind? You posses a precious thing, this identity, but why?

Many folks tell me that they try to relax, to get away from it all and find some kind of entertainment. They want to sit down, kick back, and find something they “enjoy”. Why is it that we all have made up our minds on what we “enjoy” but cannot begin to explore concepts, potentials, “what if’s” and maybe’s? Every idea, every thought, everything that exists within the mind is like a court, a room, a space. When the mind is comfortable, all things have come to believe that it has found its niche, or the thing that works. When someone, something, or anything that comes into this space, which will happen inevitability, it threatens the personal perceived “niche” and is attacked with the motivation of the initial environment. It is attacked to recreate the niche. This mentality can begin a death spiral. Validations stack upon one another in effort to preserve a place of comfort. As good a strategy that this might feel, it creates a vacuum of “good” and in some way or another, the infinite perception of reality will break these efforts in the grand hall of time.

Effort can go to great lengths to preserve what you at some point or another had hoped was “best” or “good” might come later to find that something far more “grand” exists beyond the scope of your mind, of your perception. And so, becoming comfortable in the realm of time is beyond the greatest betrayal to the mode of life itself, and while simultaneously, a venomous temptation. No season lasts for very long, and nor can comfort. All things move on, whether it is liked or not, you can choose to be the victim of the onward march of time, or have learned to exist within it. One way or another, it will always be a wild ride.