Day 44: As if I Were Dreaming
Tuesday, October 6
I hiked around the smooth red canyons south of Moab this morning. It was near the Hole in the Rock house. It was much needed down time.
I found a nice smooth area to sit for awhile, to think. There was a trickling stream of water running down a narrow crevice in the rocks. It flowed into a small pool, then from there it continued to flow down and into an area where it seemed to disappear. I shimmied my way up into the area as high as I felt practically safe. It wasn't too steep or perilous by any means, but it did take some effort to climb to where I found myself. Hand holds had been worn out of the rock to aid in lifting oneself upward into the area.
I closed my eyes and leaned back. Because this is a common experience I'd share something with you, and really I only do because I think these experiences are overlooked too often. They testify of the ever curious human condition, which, I think often times in our immediate awareness become calloused under the constant strain of everyday worries. Essentially we forget how unique our position in this world is.
Often times when I close my eyes for periods of time and I'm not particularly sleeping, meditating maybe, it gets to a point where I feel as though I could be watching a movie. Lights and images flash and morph around on the inside of the eyelids. Colored orbs drift and transform into images that I, in my peculiar state begin to recognize. Connections begin to take place. Symbols are observed, sometimes causing me to remember people or places that I've know or been to, which then in turn continue the ever evolving light show on the inside of my eyelids.
Sometimes I can begin to take hold of how the images form and shift. Utilizing some cognitive ability, wholly mysterious to me, but at the same time intuitive and clear, I start to create.
Then, thinking about this whole process in the midst of creation, it begins to baffle my mind. Thereupon I lose focus and control ceases.
You could say that the lights are remnants of external light that are still being processed by the eye. We all know how we continue to see a bright light such as the sun if we look at it and then look away. But I'd like to illustrate this imaginary creation process.
Even while writing this post, I've been looking at this bright screen on my phone. I then close my eyes, take the phone away, and for a few moments I continue to have the light of the phone outlined in my mind, or my eyes, I guess.
But before that light fades I think of a symbol. Such as the number 8, and the light that was left over in my eyes after I had closed them slowly morphs into the infinity sign. I think of a triangle, and it turns into a triangle. I think of face. This one is a little more difficult because it is a much more complex structure but it can be done. This one can be somewhat disconcerting though, because the nature of the morphing light can conjure up odd, disfigured, possibly demonic like expressions before you can focus it into a regular face of a person that you might even recognize.
Sometimes it's easier to do this than other times but it is a reality, one of which baffles my understanding.
Light from the exterior world bounces off physical objects and hits your eye sending impulses to your brain that tell you, supposedly, what is actually before you. But then that reality, that light remains if only vaguely in your eyes, or your minds eye for a time, thereupon what ever you are, can begin to transform the vestigial light into what ever you think. This is reversing the seeing process. This is, in some ethereal, yet real way creating with light. It's a very vivid way of seeing that whatever you think can become a reality, if only in the mind.
Sometimes in the midst of this light show images that I had not intended on thinking come into view and then even rarer still, they begin, by no apparent conscious thought of my own, to play out vivid scenes, more than just vague colors and blobs, nearly as if I were dreaming, but fully awake.
It is in the conscious observation of these scenes that I am filled with childlike awe and pure joy.
I will end on that note. Nothing else I experienced that day was as interesting as my brief hike into the mountains.
Goodnight.