I feel like my body and mind are
becoming more and more empty day by day and I just don't exist like I used
to. I don't know what reality is, but I feel like consciousness is
something that ebbs and flows. And not just within my mind, but through me
and around me. I'm not sure what I am anymore. Am I my body? Or the
thoughts and patterns of thought my brain follows? Am I my choices?
Which choices are real? If I'm simply following an established
pattern without much conscious thought, is it a real choice? If I am
my choices, and only my conscious choices, then am I my
consciousness? If consciousness really does flow, is the
consciousness I am currently experiencing the same as that I felt
yesterday, or even a moment ago? If the consciousness I currently
experience is not the same as that I felt earlier, where did it go?
If it is not the same, is that a form of death? Am I constantly dying
and being reborn in an endless cycle? But ideas like birth and death
don't make sense when flow is constant. If it doesn't start and
doesn't end, then am I eternal?
But maybe consciousness
is less like a river and more like the radiation from the sun, the
source of most of our energy. Perhaps consciousness really does
originate with the sun and as the sun shines, we experience what it
means to live. Just as the light from the sun strikes the Earth and
is redirected in all directions, maybe consciousness is sent off in
all directions. As with light, it has varying degrees of brightness
and intensity. It comes in different frequencies, just as we observe
with color. There are so many possibilities.
Or maybe consciousness
is more like a field or a force like gravity, one which is felt more
strongly around certain clusters of matter, perhaps depending on
their density, or maybe on some other factors. Could it be a
combination of all of these ideas together? The more I learn about
this world I live in, the more I am convinced that it is more
complicated than any of us imagine. We constantly search for patterns
to make sense out of the madness, but are analogies the best we can
do?
No matter what I choose
to believe, I have learned that beliefs have consequences. It doesn't
much matter whether that belief is true or false. Just believing
something can have a physical effect on the material world. That may
sound odd at first, but just think about it for a moment. What belief
out there can have zero effect on your actions, emotions, or
thoughts? When you have a thought, energy is transferred in your
brain. Chemicals are released. Most if not all thoughts lead toward
action of one sort or another – maybe not immediately, but
eventually over time.
Sometimes, a false
belief can have a positive effect on our lives and the lives of those
around us. The truth may hurt more than it helps. Eventually, we seek
to reach the truth, but in order to get to the point where we are
ready to accept and even embrace ultimate truth, we may need to
believe a few falsehoods first. We don't usually do this
intentionally, but I think at a subconscious level at least, we often
do make this choice. Once we are ready, if we ever do reach that
point, we may put aside the self-delusion and embrace a new truth.
Anyway, I'm just
throwing a few thoughts out here to the wind. Eventually, I'd like to
go back and organize my thoughts and write them out properly. But for
now, I'm putting them out there to see if one particular belief of
mine bears fruit. I'll write about the results of some of my
experiments at another time.
