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.  

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.

The Concept and Portrayal of an All-Knowing God

I have always been a seeker of beautiful ideas. In grade one, inspired by the thrill of something otherworldly, I approached my teacher at recess to express my concern that there needed to be “more mystery in the classroom”. I remember those words exactly. She was baffled but did not discourage me from creating a mystery of my own for the other kids to experience. I hid under the table of the playhouse kitchen set-up and cut out paper “footprints”. Then, before the students got back to the room, I arranged them in a line that wandered the room. Naturally the kids were very excited and intrigued by this mystery. What did it mean? My teacher almost desperately asked me to produce an answer, some kind of plot or point to it all, but I felt my job was done. I wouldn’t admit to the other children that I had done it, and enjoyed the chatter of speculation buzzing over the next few days.

Over years I explored many faiths and philosophies, but when I sensed my belief was not genuine, that there was some deal-breaker within the ideology that I could not accept, I would move on. Often my greatest point of contention was with the portrayal of a God who possessed infinite knowledge and power, yet sounded like a slightly cranky old man.

Or worse, a dictator.

Or a cult-leader who professed unconditional compassion for all his followers while beating them in the back room for daring to look him in the eye.

It is said in Abrahamic religions that God created humans in his own image. That being so, would he not find it an abomination that a single one should be cast aside or eternally damned, as they are symbols of God himself? Even if these strange small beings all inhabit an uncanny valley when compared to him.

And to convince human minds with threats and force might make people appease him with claims of their belief — but no one can be bullied into genuine love. Only submission.

That said, the mysteries of what powers may lie behind the scenes of the observable universe will always intrigue me. Personally, I think they are best left as mysteries — paper footprints across a grade one classroom.

[Prose]

She cleared off her writing desk, jaw clenched with effort, and resented that she should feel so at odds with everything. 

“What of the future?” her mind groaned anxiously again. 

“Oh, what of it?” she bickered with herself. “That old man? The future, as far as one can foresee, is but the withered end, where all dreams dry up under hungering winds of remembering. The future longs for old ways passed by and lacks all forward drive.”

She felt some cruelty in her judgment, but tempered it with a tithing of pity. 

“Only the present moves. It deserves our full focus if we’re to care about navigating it at all.” 

Satisfied, she sat deliberately, her desk more enticing now by being bare. 

“Tomorrow is silent, only capable of eternal submission. Now is the place from which to rule.” 

She set out a book and leafed it to a blank page, then inked a fountain pen with measured movements. All the while she listened carefully to stray thoughts and fragments of feeling. These vagrants rolled through her as morning fog in hilly pastures, so she noted each expression and let them pass.

“Would thee fight flame with a knife?” she wrote neatly, then sighed a blade-crossed breath. 

Self-governance required both the servant and the queen, she thought and nodded once, a bow and an order given simultaneously. Then she pursed her lips and gently turned the still-wet page.

The Secret Life of Stones

She told me that stones lived,
crept, and even flew,
just slower than our imagined 
rate of time.

Years later I understood
how to love a river rock
like a bird, for time pulled
hard upon my beloved, until 
we were distant in the same room. 
Her breath became one unending 
syllable of a phrase I’d never hear
completed. 

“Ahhhhhhh,” she breathed,  
and if time ran fast enough for stones to fly,
she would say, “I love you.” 

I had faith enough to love
her and this life she now lived, 
a love undeserving of pity
from those who never knew
the secret life of stones. 

I came to move slower, too. 
“Ahhhhhhh,” I breathed gently,
my shoulder pressed upon hers,
too scared
to refrain from finishing the phrase, 
after a while:  
“I love you.” 

Then, last night some urban creature
dug up the fallow flower bed
outside our front window. 
When I drew aside the drapes
in acceptance of another day
behind us, I wondered
about the torn earth -- would time heal
this like a scraped knee?

I set the question free, turning away
from the living land.
The garden had only a minor wound,
and the stones of the walkway 
leading from the door
were full of thoughts and dreams 
as always.

My beloved was breathing, “Ahhhhhheeeeeeeeee....” 

I love you. 

Potential is the Secret to Joy

Do not look with wonder at the masters of crafts or sciences; admire instead the natural imagination of a child to sees potential in anything. If you can realize the potential of the present moment and truly connect with that feeling, you have recaptured the spirit of a child who so naturally explores their imagination to the fullest, in joy and wonder and laughter.

Of Meaning and Existential Crisis

Meaning has no place in thoughts of the future, but only in how you think of the now.

This is my answer to all you existentially-minded souls, all who just seek a reason… All who have feared an empty, bleak future.

Care about something and feel the meaning of that, here in the now.

That’s all there is to it. You can only feel meaning in the present moment. So reflect on what you do care about, let yourself truly feel, and go from there.

The Only Time You Have Is Now

This New Year’s Eve, as many people are thinking of the future, I would like to share my belief that the present moment is the only place in which growth, change, and experience can take place. Only by focusing on becoming a better person right now, this second, and each passing moment, can you truly be who you wish to become. In fact, there really is no “becoming” — just being your best self right now. It all happens here. I also feel we must free ourselves from the oppression of our own negativity. This can only be done in the present moment, by refusing to fear the future, by being open to ideas that challenge your own, and by embracing your own power to create your own peace and joy. I have tried to convey this message in a poetic voice, set to some music I recently wrote. I hope it can be of inspiration or encouragement to someone as we enter 2022 ❤

Otherworldly

Lately I have been working on my purpose in life by examining my true nature — which is being someone who sees the world in soul terms. I believe in the power of the imagination and that the physical world — the world beyond the Self — is the unknown, the esoteric Otherness. In keeping with this idea I created a song called “Otherworldly”, with vocals and lyrics by me.

 

I am also interested in a new therapeutic approach to anxiety and the emptiness of depression. It seeks to honour our power to create experiences and learn about ourselves — the only thing we can truly know.

Through our imagination we can “build out of nothing” like the gods.