Aperture

It’s amazing to me to think that we all have such a similar internal experience. It’s mind-boggling to think that each one of us, no matter the background or foreground of our lives, can close our eyes and be bombarded by such a similar narration of thoughts, imaginations, sensations, and world creation. To be so universal, this behavior must have played a massive role in the evolution of humanity, likely of all creatures.

Have you ever just sat and watched these thoughts? It’s fascinating. For me, at first, when I sit and turn my inward gaze onto the narrator it’s as if he quiets immediately in shock. There is this moment of stillness, almost as if the narrator is trying to be as still as possible to avoid detection. Like we are playing a game of hide and seek. 

Slowly though, the movement reemerges. The thoughts begin to stream. The world of self referential creation explodes and the mind, the small self, the “little I” begins to feel a little bit like the aperture of a camera. Moving around, focusing in on these seemingly random thoughts, that don’t even really feel like “mine.” 

Where do they come from? They just seem to appear. Sometimes I can feel them coming in my body before I see or hear them. Sometimes, they only partially form. The inner aperture can focus in on them and bring them directly into the foreground so that they seem to become my whole world, then release them and open back up to the entire field of view. But I don’t seem to control that either.

Somehow, I’m just watching. I’m not doing. In fact, it’s as if doing was inside the joke all along. I’m just here. At least at first glance it feels like I’m here. But if you ask me where, I’ve got nowhere to point to. No clear boundary or reference point. No ground to stand on.

The narrator has grown a bit more quiet now. There are less words and more sensations. But they seem less formed. Less clearly describable. The thoughts are more amorphous. More like dimly lit blobs in my peripheral vision than clear actionable subject/object experiences. As the field becomes more quiet, the ability to describe it diminishes. The narrator seems to merge with the field. There is the inward movement alternating between falling and turning inside out. Almost a simultaneous inward and outward implosion. Fear, that seems unknowable, comes, builds, and releases without full narration or clear imagery. Buzzing fills the ears. Warm red light the eyes. Warmth the skin. Space expands and contracts as if beating to the rhythm of the heart throughout the infinite expansion and contraction of the universe. 

And the bell rings.