The Mind Is Like A Detective
Let the Thought Journeys commence!
Mind as Mediator between Body and Environment, but what is Mind without Body?
Mind wanders around making patterns, creating meaning, interpreting a narrative or “sense” out of its experiences. Senses are the tools of the Observer, of the Detective. But of course people see Mind as a monarch rather than being Body or belonging to Body; Mind tells Body what to do. But that can’t be true. Body informs Mind constantly. Mind interprets experience which is mediated through Body. Body includes Mind. Do we experience “Time” (for example) with Mind? Or with Body? Mind is detached from Time. It only knows Time through Body. What is Mind doing when detached from Body? When detached from Time.
I can answer for Mind as I experience it. It floats. It is a void. I took a journey into Mind without Body and it was like dreaming, but far more detached. It couldn’t fly because there were no physics binding it, or instructing it. When I fly inside of Dream, it is because Dream is tethered to Body. I admit that often when I’m inside of Dream, I don’t fly so much as I exist in air. I’ve disconnected from Body to a greater extent in those moments. There is no friction or Gravity. My invisible “wings” are not pushing against air. It wouldn’t even make sense. I had a Waking Dream where Mind fully disengaged. There was no Gravity. There was no color, no eyes. There was no hint of sound, no ears… There was no Observer besides Mind. Mind existed in an endless array of Void. I was here forever. I was there for a moment. When I came up, I knew I had to revisit the experience. Or state of being? And I knew some of Mind would always be in that place.
I primarily live inside of Dream, with little to no Time present. And the assumption was always that this was just how people existed. Everyone is living in some version of their own Dream and a shared Collective Dream and are assigning concrete meaning and detecting, fighting to make Narrative. And also it doesn’t seem like that’s true either. Why does narrative and linear thought seem to be easy for so many people? Are they not fighting and pushing to either pretend at wakefulness or to stay awake in spite of the narcotic that is Dream and Mind?
The Bicarbonate of History
“Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.
It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history.” — Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
The experiential often exists for its own sake, denying the narrative, denying a landing stage, a point, a final state. Life doesn’t seem to have final states. Death is not even a final state. I suppose one could argue that the consciousness of one body has a final state through the body’s death. But that also doesn’t make sense to me. Time, splitting Time infinitely. Or maybe because that Consciousness gutters out and the person experiencing Consciousness is no longer subjectively available to be aware of its loss, and those experiencing that person’s Consciousness go on experiencing it through various means of subjective impact. The matter that is the Body clearly just changes. If there were only one human left on earth, then it really wouldn’t be much of a narrative final state either as there is no one around to narratively perceive this chapter. A chapter would only make sense to beings like us that think narratively.
Subverting the Narrative
Staying in the experiential, the process, the journey, may be a way in which one subverts Narrative. To varying degrees of deliberation it would seem, dependent on the relationship between Mind and Body. Narrative has a final state it is driving toward. An end. A point. I prefer the journey. The experiential, the process and I struggle with endings.
Do I have a point? If I do, its usually incidental. And that is what you can expect from my writing going forward. I’m tired of waiting ‘til I think I've figured out how to make a point or have an end. This is why I have hundreds of documents and electric notepads full of content and maybe 10 pieces of “completed” published content. I am not gonna wait anymore to polish an ability to command Narrative.
Welcome to Unfinished Thought Journeys.
We will venture into personal journeys as they ebb and flow, drown in endless opinions on life, the mind, politics, all those delicious -ologies, and sink into black holes. We’ll analyze games, film, songs. We will analyze whatever comes to mind. I’ll sing of the ongoing path going backward and forward in time (whatever that is) of chronic pain and mental health struggles. The songs will be angry. The songs will be sad. The songs will be bitter. The songs will also have no mood but the mood of the mind brushing back and forth, being a detective, scrutinizing the self and its experiences. But also how those reflect a larger and more horrifying picture of society. Oh, yes, we will dissect the sicknesses that plague this body we call Society. The dissection never ends either. The will to improve and fix and weave a seamless cloth never stops. We are scouts, not warriors. We are detectives.
To be Continued…
Thank you for stopping by. I intend to publish a lot more than I have been starting with this, the first of my Unfinished Thought Journeys. Stick around for more.
