Woke up- no- correction- found myself awake this morning very early, unable to sleep- my mind having a mind of its own! In fact it seemed as though I slept very little during the night. My body wanted to sleep and in fact one part of my mind seemed to be wishing that the active part of my mind would quiet down so that we could all go back to sleep! But that did not happen. So I surrendered to the part that was awake and my body begrudgingly followed along. We got up (me, my body and the various conscious and semi-conscious parts of my mind), grabbed a copy of "A Course in Miracles" that was by the bed, threw on some clothes and made my way into the living room. The sound of birds outside was irresistible- they've been drowned out by the air conditioner for months and was probably the most compelling reason to remove the pillow covering my head (the last ditch effort to go back to sleep) and get up and enjoy the sound and see what else was waiting for me in the early morning hours.
All of this led me to thinking about the activity, the creativity and the expansiveness of the mind. My intuitive sense tells me that it has infinite potential, literally, but we are so used to be confined in a body that we automatically throw confines around the mind as well because we don't know how NOT to. My friend Will said years ago that we live on an addictive plane- we have gravity pulling us down at all times. That stayed with me. As I lay in bed this morning I was aware of some tendency to move toward fear in my mental body and a lesson from ACIM came to me. Simply, "There is nothing to fear." I allowed myself to rest in that awareness for a little while, observing my thoughts before I got up. The body is not confined by the mind. I know that as I sit in this chair and I write, and I close my eyes and I listen. There are trucks in the distance, dogs, birds, cars, the movement of the air.
Where does my mind go when I sleep? If it does not sleep when I sleep (which it clearly does not!) then does it die when my body dies? It seems highly unlikely. But it will no longer be trapped by the body, by gravitational forces that want to limit it and rein it in. The mind has a compulsion to create and in line with the tendencies of this plane it also can be drawn in to addictive patterns- those tape loops that keep us away in the middle of the night. Some of it I think is biological- like the addictive pull of the computer which I believe is a factor of frequency. How often I sit down at the computer with the intention of either performing a simple task (checking email, sending a message, looking up an address) or beginning a creative project (writing, creating a brochure) and I find myself wasting absurd amounts of time due to distraction and attraction of varying sorts- but I think they all come down to a frequency, or frequencies, that pull at various parts of the brain-mind-body. It is interesting to see the shift from creativity to stagnancy that can occur in a short space of time.
The ability to create is fascinating. The mind uses the body to express itself. Yesterday I read a quote about the challenges of an untrained mind and what a powerful tool a well-trained mind is. When I got up and turned my computer on this morning, thinking about the creative potential of the mind, the confines and the expansiveness, I was met with this beautiful video. The music was composed and sung by my friend Christine Ghezzo. I felt it was the perfect expression of all that I had been thinking about, a perfect example of the mind's urge for creative expression and one of the billions of forms that takes.
No comments:
Post a Comment