All This

Look around you. While scanning, understand that if you were a person who had suddenly time traveled from 5,000 years ago to now, you would not recognize much of anything, and what you saw–ALL THIS– would not even roughly lend itself to being categorized. There would be no names inside your cave-person’s head for most things.

Scan and look at the depth of your understanding that is dynamically at work making ALL THIS mean something. Scan and realize that every data point that is processed by your nervous system is, well, processed! Every aspect of ALL THIS has a counterpart inside your brain that is handling and literally creating an inner representation of the external world, point by point by point. Scan and appreciate the immensely complex operation that is your nervous system.

Appreciate the speed of your processing, the detail, and the layer upon layer of definitions within definitions. Talk to yourself about ALL THIS and how it is entirely inside your living, electrochemical patterns. See if you can come to believe/know, at least intellectually, that the world is as your operations are–that what appears all around is actually an inner reality.

Ask Yourself,

Is this my mind I see? Is ALL THIS my construction?

What would a cave person see in my world?

I know that persons with deep psychological problems can hallucinate and delude to such degrees that their worlds are almost wholly inner derived, but how is mine any different?  Have I cast a spell upon myself?

If my “spell” partially dissolved, and my computer monitor was suddenly a completely unknown artifact to me, but everything else in my room was familiar, how far out of my seat would I jump back from this strange “thing?” Why can’t I pay attention to and deeply know about my participation in ALL THIS?

How is it that I cannot stop creating ALL THIS?

What would I be without reality-structuring words and emotions running through my head? Would there even be a me if I could drop all categories? Is “I” a category?

What is the difference between seeing something in a dream and perceiving something while awake? Is either more effortless? During either, do I have any greater sense of authorship? Is my life and ALL THIS a concoction by some neuro-machinery that underlies my consciousness? Where am I during any aspect of the creation of ALL THIS?

Given that I necessarily and absolutely am involved in the tiniest nuances of my experiences, how is it that I feel so disconnected from any authorship of the world around me? Why doesn’t it feel like I am participating with and dramatically influencing perception? Why don’t I take pride in my ability to make sense of ALL THIS?

Really now, who am I? My nervous system? The activities of my nervous system? The activities of my nervous system that I put into the “consciousness” category? What?

If I were something completely without qualities, something beyond ALL THIS, and if I knew this deeply, would it then feel odd to note the absence of a sense of participation with the naming of the world? Since it is my experience that everything is basically automated, what else IS there for me to be?

What is the value of all these concepts to me if I turn out to be beyond concepts? If virtually all my experiences tell me that I am not in the least associated with ALL THIS in that I have no conscious sense of authorship, then why am I so convinced I am the author of some of ALL THIS? Can I have my cake and eat it too?

Am I both the observer and the observed…..or beyond?