Just Jumping In

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.