This thing called ‘life’ has kept me exceptionally busy of late. When this happens the little voice within can’t be heard, drowned out by all the items on the To Do list, all the drama, the concepts running amok.
Early this morning, however, the little voice was heard, lurking as it so often does behind the vague anxiety / fear / discomfort that permeates my early-morning being. But where in the past I’d try to avoid the whole thing (“I’m fucking tired, leave me alone!”), these days I just lay there with it, look at it, inquire into it. Or as Robert Adams, Ramana, and others urged, I simple ask: “To whom do these thoughts come?”
It’s a kind of existential forensics. Up pops a thought like a rabbit from its warren, and I chase it, Alice-like, back down into its hole. Down there in the dark, this morning, came a fun game anyone can play and a mini-epiphany (can they come in sizes?).
All of us like to imagine ourselves as a thinker (actually, we utterly overlook this and simply take it for granted). As you read this, for example, you simply assume that there is a “you” doing something called “reading” and “thinking” about the contents.
Metaphorically, we mistakenly picture an Oz-like me who constantly rummages about in the mental attic pulling up attitudes, memories, emotions, analysis, rumination, etc., etc., all day long, every day.
Only, as has been discussed here ad nauseam, there is no such thing. The thoughts – every one of them – occur spontaneously.
Moreover, if I look closely, I’ll see that it isn’t ME and MY THOUGHTS. The thoughts ARE ME. No thoughts, no me. Which is why, when the deep-sleep machine kicks into gear (i.e. when the brain isn’t dreaming), “I” completely disappear. Gone. No past, no future, no present, nothing. No-thing.
Comes the dawn or the urge to pee or a loud sound and “I awaken” but in truth, first the mental machinery must thrum back to life and the first thoughts emerge and only then do “I” arrive back on the scene. But this is overlooked.
The mini-epiphany?
If we isolate a single thought – “I want to lay down on the couch” – and then further strip away everything but, say, “couch,” what becomes equally clear is that “I” and “couch” are interdependent. There can be no couch (object) without a me to conceptualize it as such (subject). And there can be no me (subject) without a universe of objects to set me apart.
What I mean is, if nothing existed – and I mean nothing – you could not exist. Try to picture it for yourself.
So the simple truth is that I am both subject and object, I am the One, I Am that I Am.
And so are you.
You certainly are The One, dude.
I think that both Descartes and Bono would agree with this post. Ir might confuse a few grammar teachers though, or cause an existential crisis while grading papers.
Ha! The words just keep getting in the way, don’t they? Which makes it difficult for wordsmiths.
Admit it, you just wanted to use “warren” in a sentence!