Colette Obrien

Following up on yesterday’s post about intimacy is the old; if a tree falls in the forest conundrum.   If no one hears it, did it fall? If no one sees me do I exist?

At around 2 years old children must work through the developmental issue–the conundrum– of whether they’re special or not; whether they exist as a unique entity.  Every other sentence, is “look at me . . .” As parents, it’s exhausting however, if the child isn’t adequately reflected he turns inward to see himself- and like Narcissus in Greek Mythology, he’s forced to hold up his own mirror to realize his existence. He now lives in his own eyes but lacks an ability to see others.

If the child is seen by his parents the conundrum is resolved in an ability to know he’s the only one, but he’s not the only one who’s the only one.

Held in solitary confinement or being stranded alone on a desert island, will drive anyone mad. The ego cannot hold  it’s grip on reality without support from the environment. Like the child unreflected, the solitary human will turn to the unconscious for validation which is the definition of madness; the boundary between the ego consciousness and the vastness of the collective unconscious is broken and the ego is drowned in archetypal images.

Psychological existence is dependent on visibility. If, like the tree that falls in the forest, he falls and no one hears him, he doesn’t exist–to himself.  And since no one else is there to see him fall, to anyone else either.

Whether physical existence is dependent on visibility is a question for tomorrow.

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In-to-me-see. To see and be seen is the single most important psychological imperative.  Studies of infants in orphanages where they’re fed, warm and dry but not held– not seen–show that most of those infants will die. Severly abused children survive because they’re seen; the psyche doesn’t distinguish good attention from bad attention.

Do the stars care that I gaze at them in wonder?  If everything changes when it’s being observed, what does that say about the star’s recognition of the attention given by almost 7 billion humans, not to mention all the other beings that turn their attention to them each night?

Cat’s eyes light up in the darkness, like star-light they project into the void.  What do they see that we do not?

If eyes are windows into the soul, it is no wonder humans have gazed into the great eye of the sky and imagined gods and goddesses,  universal-mind, the infinite, the creator, the over-soul.

Like the cat, maybe we see many things held in that great infinite space, but without the ability to register our usual perceptions of light and form to give it meaning, we catch a glimpse and call it wonder, or awe, or mystery.

 That felt experience has made believers of humanity for millenia; believers of life outside our usual ability to perceive where the imagination and faith reign supreme and meaning beyond the mandane is found. 

Wonder

I do.

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The cultivation of peace is at the center of psychological and spiritual practices that strive for growth.  Defined by Webster as; serenity; calm; quiet; tranquility; harmony, we tend to assume that means a cessation of thought.

But if you’ve ever tried to still your mind you will have discovered you could not.  This failure causes most of us to believe something is  wrong with us. Whether it was in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep or in a meditation or yoga class or at  school or work when you were “supposed” to be quiet, you will have discovered the mind is NEVER still. It’s not just you; you’re not broken, but life can best be described as a state of perpetual motion. Physics has proven that all matter is in motion, and though we’re unable to see a rock moving, we now know that it is.

So if peace isn’t an absence of thought, what is it? The answer to discovering a peaceful state is in the last word of the dictionary definition; harmony which is an absence of conflict. Since I cannot stop my mind from thinking, and would not wish to for it would mean I was no longer alive, my thinking must become harmonious.

A mindful practice is one in which one watches their thoughts. Have you ever just watched and not been drawn in? If drawn in you will discover tension as at the heart of most of our thinking whether it’s problem solving, worrying, regretting, etc. In other words; most thinking is conflictual by nature. Does that mean harmonious thinking is not possible?

Not at all, just unusual. When we’re able to watch our thoughts without being drawn in to the conflict, harmony is the result.  Accept everything, reject nothing, and the mind is at peace.

Oblivion derives from the latin, to forget, and is defined by Webster as the condition or fact of being forgotten.   To obliterate is to erase, leave no trace, destroy. Today it is often used to describe a place or a state of being. 

The idea that there is a place called oblivion is so radical to any thinking being it’s shocking to discover how prevalent it is in common conversation.  I would like to see this place. Is it like the image above? Has anyone ever been there?  Like heaven and hell the assumption is that these are actual physical places. Oblivion then would be a place of forgetfullness where memory is erased, but is memory any more real than a place called oblivion? Memory is an idea; an experience of the mind describing something or someone that is or was at one time Real. But memory itself is an abstraction not unlike the abstraction of nothingness, of not-being.

Current physics refuses the concept that something can be and then not be.  What is-is. What isn’t-isn’t.  Though it changes shape, all matter always was and will always be.  Life on planet earth was at one time star-stuff.  The original matter that was the star was something else before. Does that mean that the star is now in oblivion? If everything that ever was still exists in some form what difference does it make if it is remembered by the human mind?

The important thing is that it still exists;  the atom that became a star that became my cat, that will become part of a tree.  All one flow of energy in a constant stream of creative bliss; the music of the spheres.  And my little human life? What will it become and where will what I call ‘me’ go?  Certainly not to oblivion, and probably not to heaven or hell either.

A question for next time; does thought have matter?