Dysautonomia of the Mind

With mental health issues becoming more and more common and concerning, how the mind functions requires our fullest attention. 

Just as your heart beats without you and your lungs pull air on their own, though you can take control of your breathing as you wish, your brain is always producing thought whether you are consciously thinking or not. 

Your dreams don’t feel like you thought them up because you didn’t — your brain was thinking on its own. Your brain is a shark, swimming for a living; in sensory deprivation the brain quickly creates hallucinations in order to continue to experience stimulation where none exists. Your brain is always thinking in the background, even if you cannot perceive those thoughts. 

What your brain thinks all on its own is undoubtedly crucial to understanding one’s mental health. But how do we learn to hear our brain’s automatic thoughts, or at least shift them in the right direction?

Dysautonomia, a physical condition affecting the things your body is supposed to do on its own, such as breathing, digesting, and maintaining blood pressure, has been found to be linked to several mental health conditions, such as autism and ADHD. I myself happen to have dysautonomia and ADHD with suspected autism. It occurs to me that perhaps some symptoms of mental health problems are in fact a kind of dysautonomia of the mind. When you are depressed or anxious, your brain appears to be producing negative thoughts on its own, without being caused by outside circumstances. Could this model of thought and mental health be the key to finding new modalities of healing? I think it’s worth looking into. 

You Are A Human Breathing

You cannot claim to value life itself, the sacredness of all that happens without a person’s deliberate action or intervention, while simultaneously judging a person’s worth by the merits of their efforts. 

If you need to earn a living, your life has been given no value of its own. If life is what you make of it, you have tossed aside the stunning mystery of being alive in the first place. 

You are not a breath-winner. Your body largely runs itself, and your efforts will never eclipse the value of your heart beating for you. Without your body’s autonomic functions, you would have no chance to achieve anything of your own will. Your achievements are secondary. 

Perhaps they don’t matter at all. 

We inhabit ancient buildings, these bodies. We do not really know how to use them and this alone shows that our bodies are separate from ourselves. Your cells know precisely how to grow teeth and have done it before and seemingly could do it again — but you don’t know how. You couldn’t grow yourself a new tooth on purpose no matter how deeply you understood why your body does what it does. 

Our bodies might as well be alien craft that we try (and fail) to make full use of. If ever there was a mind that could take control of the body’s autonomic functions, tweak parameters for optimization in different circumstances, and truly lay claim to having first willed its consciousness into physical form, such a mind would be simultaneously both the creator and the created. This pair, working as intended, feed into one another endlessly to fuel perpetual progress — though it could also be viewed as play. 

The brain has a fundamental operating system, something acting as the code for experiencing thoughts. The operating system is not composed of thoughts or consciousness itself, but instead the kinds of pre-thoughts required in order to think and to perceive one’s own thinking. Thus it becomes apparent that the brain is separate from the phenomenon of consciousness. A mind capable of changing its own operating system would be a fully integrated brain and mind, one that is both the programmer and the user all at once. Again, the possibilities of such mastery of one’s grey matter are remarkable. Such a person might cease to feel antagonism from her environment, from other people, or even from gods. Such a person would be complete in herself and able to navigate most concerns by adapting to the needs of the moment. 

Such a person might be capable of so-called achievements that we would envy. But I think that if this person spent all their years in pursuit of no particular goal, just play — this would not be a waste of time and potential. To play one’s life with the pleasure of a musician in eternal improvisation is the treasure of life. Meanwhile the individual melodies need not be judged, since they are technically of no value at all. 

Your value is not in being a bread-winner, and you are not a breath-winner either. You are a human breathing. This alone is the measure of your value and I find it worthy of having faith in, for it lays to rest one’s struggle for achievements. 

You may then rest assured in your greatness, and play with life instead of trying to survive it.  

Algonquin Park Wildlife Adventure! Highlight Reel

Please enjoy this compilation of wildlife sighted in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, during March 2024.

There is no creed that makes pain less painful

All that exists owes its life to all that is no more. Each passing moment is a martyr for the next, just as pain is our debt to joy. There’s no wisdom or faith that makes pain less painful. It must hurt if anything is to matter: your life depends on it.

So stop. Your sorrow chases you: turn toward it. Watch it catch up. It will not pounce and end you. You will not lose more than you already have.

Grief is your mother. Let her feed you, for grief is the food your soul was made to eat. It digests pain into life itself. Your soul knows how to break pain down into its parts, which are the same nutrients that combine to make purpose and awe and laughter. You don’t have to do anything, just as your stomach knows what to do with meat and potatoes. Turnips have birthed poetry — consciousness — war crimes — human drama. Pain birthed the chance at eking out a living at all.

Stop starving yourself. This hunger strike never prevented the bad things from happening, and your numbness slips into dissolution as you cease to exist.

So greet your sorrow. Make room for it at your table. Accept the dish it offers and break bread for you both.

Grief is here. Grief, your mother who loved you. Eat, weep, and see tomorrow. Nourished, you will survive; one day you will have enough strength to give as thanks.

Tell me something about yourself that you are proud of

In my journey of teaching myself to compose music using Studio One and a keyboard controller, I really only have two songs that I am proud of. This one is my favourite because I achieved what I intended to achieve — I made a song that I would want to listen to.

If you’d like to support me, a like on the video on Youtube would be appreciated ❤

Poem: The Mind Wanders

Your body is a space suit;
your mind is the universe;
and you are a nomad.

No hope of survival lies
out of touch
from your body’s biological airlock, 
but your mind is another story. 

The moment your brain bloomed
its first coherent thought, aware,
your mind broke
free from its mechanisms, escaped
a life of vehicular computation, and became
you: an opened portal.

You are a particle collider
but made of thoughts and dreams;
you are a deep space telescope that curves 
imagination into a lens, at will.

You are a peculiar force of freedom calculating 
towards infinity, trying 
to find a limit as imagination multiplies. 

Home and world are packed
into greymatter sacks, and your mind wanders,
literally, through its self-created
door: the glittering potential of being
you.

On your journeys, the less you carry
insofar as facts, the better. Nomads make
do in every circumstance imagined
with few hard truths, improvising
solutions anew as if creating
its tools from loss and hope, 
vacuum and pressure.

So you are free; you may go
wherever your creativity conjures 
as no mission was ever issued
alongside your life. Simply persist 
and make camp with meaning. Make 
meals with meaning. Make
meaning from hardship, make
meaning from triumph. Make 
meaning in any way you can,
lest you grow weary of exploring
the wild beauty of all you are,
and close that door forever.

A Letter From The Universe

To An Old Soul;

You are not being punished. Admittedly this place will hurt you. However, we expect you will find ways to make it better — not just for your own comfort’s sake, but to help others who also live here. 

Time is still precious, of course, but here you must give nearly all of yours as dues for daring to exist in the first place. Breathing is still free but very little else in terms of your bodily requirements. Do you begin to understand? Here, you will feel you ought not to exist. The one thing you are surely innocent of causing — the fact you have a body and mind — will be considered suspect. You are leasing your life, in a sense, and you will likely have to leverage most of your life’s hours just to afford it. 

You will be taught much — oh, so much! — but not how to cope with the strain and pain of your labour; not how to feel as though you and everyone else deserve to be here. It will be tempting to sleep or otherwise distract your mind from the absurdity of this place. It will get into you like a chill at night. If you remember this message, you must reject everything this place has ever told you and hold fast to what feels only obvious in your heart. 

You may come to feel that nothing matters at all, since life is treated like a crime. People all around you will feel this too, even if they do not know that the world at large is a parody of worthwhile existence. We cannot guarantee you will remember this message, dear soul. We pray you will seek meaning, and perhaps even come to realize that by seeking “meaning” you are asking for a reason to go on living instead of finding a way out. 

You want a reason for going through the effort and the pain. Pet possibilities — like gods and mystical answers — may not satisfy you. In this case you must choose to create your own feeling that life is worth it, because you know it is. You know that if life were valued here the way you feel it ought to be, it would be beautiful, remarkable, perfect. 

That means you know that life is worth it. 

We hope you will go forth on a mission of life-cherishing. There will be no shortage of other souls who need help cherishing their own lives, and we hope you will be moved to aid them. You may try to change the world if you wish. But your own mind’s freedom is your utmost responsibility. Do not be deceived and do not behave as if you believe the absurdities of a worthless life. Stand out in radical devotion to your worth, and the worth of all Being. 

We will meet again. Be brave — in this life and the eternal thereafters.

Wildlife Adventure! October 2023

We have just arrived home from our autumnal Algonquin Park adventure! Here’s the highlights, set to a song I composed called “When All Is Won”.

But first: my funny woodcock video is making people smile lately. Enjoy!

Poetry: In the Cracks

a random poem that spilled onto the page just now.

*

People who fit into the cracks
don’t get there by falling —
they slide, duck, and twist,
slick as shadows,
as they’ve always admired
tree roots for their secrets.
Jeweled branches that reach
above ground into sky praise
themselves too much. They’re too loud,
too brash, too selfish, always
in the way of someone else.

Those who fit into the cracks
can be but a blur of light, barely seen,
the way curls of smoke
are scarves for air.
These souls smooth
themselves into a second skin
over wounds and ugliness, hoping
to be unnoticed,
like a stitch that holds
a despairing heart together.

Those who fit into the cracks
become what is needed
in the manner of an underling,
a servant quick to please,
or a mother-goddess tending
her young;
the same thing, sometimes.

And those that notice
the wisp of a quiet girl hidden
in the cracks
might see a frightened deer
or the bravery of star-birth.
She doesn’t mind
which you choose;
she’s busy knitting
purpose into the lost,
and perhaps, looking
to see where she fits
into the cracks of you.

Algonquin Park Wildlife Highlights — June 2023

A video compliation of some of our best wildlife viewings during our Algonquin adventure. Music by me.