Consciousness

Consciousness is not an all-or-nothing thing, and never has been. Our own consciousness comes and goes over the course of the day, minute to minute. As the meme goes, you are now conscious of your every breath. You are unable to find a comfortable place in your mouth for your tongue to rest. You’ve been sitting still too long, and need to shift your weight.

Is all of your blood settling into your toes, like, even as we speak? Back to your breath - does your chest feel heavy? Like your ribcage is struggling to support its weight? Not dramatically, unbearably, but just moment to moment. Wouldn’t it be lovely - just for a moment - to relieve that strain? The burden of being alive, and conscious?

In eighth grade gym one day, some of the boys were making one another pass out. The kid in question would cross his arms over his chest, exhale, and another kid would tackle the first kid right where their arms crossed. I remember saying okay, and crossing my arms across my chest, and then I see Andy launch himself at me, and there’s a freeze frame - I can see, or imagine, his expression, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, a wicked grin - he was going to hit me a little harder than he needed to.

I was in a warm darkness. I was not present. There was only the darkness and something without form or substance. Something that experienced the darkness. And it frankly wasn’t bad. It was a comfortable place to be; not cozy, not relaxed, not snug. There was no me-ness there; I was a thing without nature or restriction. I was… something. There was… something else.

There was space - places where other things could be. And time - because one thing can happen after another. Or things can happen at the same time. There are things that can happen, but don’t. There are options. There are things to make happen. And there are things that can make things happen. And you are a thing that can choose to make things happen. And I am you, and you are I, and we are in the same place.

I sensed the possibility of travel. I wished to be somewhere else. But what place? And I saw a white castle, from a fairy tale, and when I saw the castle, I saw my face, and I had a body again. I had a life and a story. I had a mother, and I had school. I had bullies, and I had friends. I had teachers and subjects. I had books and a guitar, and I had feelings about girls. I had a mesa behind my house, and I liked to hike there and explore the caves and rockfalls. I had a great emptiness and loneliness inside me.

I had boys, standing around, laughing at my confusion, as I stumbled and collapsed on a bench. They said I had been shaking uncontrollably, shaking my arms and legs and head. Mucus had poured out of my nose and on the arm of Andy, who was holding me up against the locker now, and he laughed and wiped it off on my chest. I remember the laughter as mocking, but it occurs to me that it might have been in relief that I didn’t die. Either way, I was the last kid that I know of at that school to pass out like that.

In a way, I guess I’ve been trying to get back there ever since. I’ve succeeded, a few times. I drank cough syrup and was drawn into a whirlpool of eternal golden celluloid, infinite filmstrips of every event that had ever occurred in any world in the universe in any time. I dropped acid and was extruded into a spiderweb of causality connecting parallel universes. I discovered running at 36, but developed rheumatoid arthritis. I discovered rowing a couple of years ago, and it seems that it does not cause the issues that running eventually did. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to achieve it through meditation.

The stillness is tremendous. It fills me. It sustains me.