One mind Aphantasia

except for most people

What did I relearn new this week?

We each have one mind.

We generally collapse the tangible with the intangible.

Aphantasia is a superpower.

We regard our experience and view of life as normal. We surround ourselves with others who believe and feel the same. We cannot see or speak of the same thing but only about it. When the way life appears through a filter of something is wrong or missing with me, you, or them, we tend to succumb to the narrative. Empathy or denial are both reactions. The filter of how I see the world and everything in it is perfect, just the way it is. I do not do well with victim conversations or those who live and prove their lives from that conviction. I live inside concepts, think, and breathe them. In contrast, 98% of the world lives in their picture memories from the past and visualized imagined pictures of the future, solidifying their assertions and beliefs.  

When I road test an insight, the old road is new, too.

One mind plugged into the Universe or offline, running on identity power, is all we've got.

Is it possible to download new mindsets while plugged into the Universe?

I enjoy the reset that kicks in every morning when I wake up.

The tangible, what fits in a wheelbarrow, what you or I can touch, can be solved immediately or quickly without even noticing the issue. Artists and craftspeople love working with their hands! When you cannot solve a problem soon, it is likely intangible; it isn't sensible, we cannot touch, see, or hear it, and the intangible requires time. Not making a distinction between the tangible and intangible, collapsing the two, like language tends to do, makes for undue angst or giving up on a solution altogether.

I stopped viewing a two-minds theory this week. I had made my ego stronger by attempting to find ways to eliminate it. "Resistance is futile." and "What you resist persists." It is still true! One mind running either offline or tapped into the Universal Mind triggered a level of contentment and peace I'd lost to the struggle.  

"Every this goes with every that. Without others there is no self, and without somewhere else there is no here, so that—in this sense—self is other and here is there." - Alan Watts.

Other metaphors appeared. I see the egoic mind as a cloud or three drifting across the sky on a clear day, the sky being the mind. Sometimes, the cloud rises and grows to darkness, thunder, and lightning, and I've enjoyed the energy so much that I drag it around while complaining about getting wet. The ego is like a ripple or a wave on the water. Once aboard a submarine, we were hundreds of feet below a hurricane. The waves were deep enough to rock the boat, and most of the crew was seasick. Sick of ego when it runs and churns on its own. It is a wonderfully clear day.

So, we have one mind used in two ways. Old data or real-time, online data. A SOUL with a mind, not a mind with a soul. What is your identity?

Some thoughts come and go, others we jump on and buy as real, some argue against, and all are our thoughts. Are there any new ones?

Imaginary problems are never solvable. Are there any other kind? It's nice having the superpower aphantasia. My imagination doesn't have pictures, only concepts, and word files.

Growing up, I heard two lessons: "What you like least in others, you like least in yourself." or "Remember, wherever you point a finger, there are three pointing back at you." The rule works regardless of which finger you choose. When I was given the single IQ salute as a teen, laughing at Dad's inside joke did not go over well. Yes, I was laughing at them.

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Hermann Hesse.

"Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture. The 'nice' peanut butter is layered thicker the higher the degree of culture. The lower you go the more true honesty you find. What we like least in others we like least in ourselves." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Second was "The way to get what you want is to want what you got." Aphantasia makes this easier to grok. Pictures in your mind's eye must mess with what you want somehow. I replay quotes over and over. Do picture thinkers play the same images over and over?

Struggling with what I didn't like about me fed a belief that there was a me I had little or no control over and a me that watched it happen. Eventually, I realized that what I liked in others was in me, too. Was that the me I could control or the other? Was attempting to 'control' the wrong lever and dial to play with?

I discovered that the teachers I liked made getting an A and learning what they taught easier and effortless. I noticed days when everything was beautiful, and what I needed and wanted appeared over and gone in a flash. The times and things I did not like or failed to appreciate seemed to last forever or were present everywhere I looked. Bringing all the love and appreciation I could muster to the issue or circumstance reduced the angst, but when I learned everything worked to my ultimate advantage when you love and appreciate it totally, ease and grace were my best friends. When we discover something about ourselves, we can believe everybody else already knows that. I'm afraid it is not true.

I called the still, small voice, even before school, following the breadcrumbs. I broke my mind up with characters others spoke about as well. The still voice is often too quiet to be heard over the din of the three stooges' routine: lizard brain, monkey mind, and ego. I played around with a subconscious elephant and a conscious ant, attempting to get the elephant to go and do my bidding. Viewing Self as the plane, my personal mind, the three stooges, was willing to pilot the plane. Reckless at best. Following the suggestions of the still, small voice, following the breadcrumbs has always succeeded in landing the plane perfectly.

Most people got a different set of lessons than I did. While I learned that my ego sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own, my successes also had a pin prick associated with them. Every one of them was not of my doing but was through me. Every win [as defined by the world] plus a buck twenty-five wouldn't buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper afterward. I had an insight yesterday that with my ease of access to Presence and all the Graces associated with it, I have hidden the doors, for the most part, from people.

No metaphor, no allegory, no symbol, no analogy, no picture, no image, no comparison, no distinction, no parallel, no correlation, no aphorism is necessary or present inside NOT KNOWING. All creation and invention begins in NOT KNOWING, a blank canvas. The space for possibility is NOT KNOWING. The sound of silence is, I don't know.

Change your mind, and your behavior will follow.

Listen to the small voice within, follow its suggestion, and effortlessness results.

"At the mountain of God, Horeb,

Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter.

Then the LORD said to him,

"Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;

the LORD will be passing by."

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains

and crushing rocks before the LORD—

but the LORD was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake—

but the LORD was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake there was fire—

but the LORD was not in the fire.

After the fire there was a still small voice.

When he heard this,

Elijah hid his face in his cloak

and went and stood at the entrance of the cave." - 1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-13a.

You do not need an armageddon to hear the still, small voice.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." - Carl Jung.

The solution is all of us.