The Tiniest Particle
The Universe In A Grain Sand
Dear Friend,
I’m in Manchester with friends.
This came through on the train on the way:
In your third decade you may think you’re getting old, if you’re me that feeling starts in your twenties. A funny way of talking. If you’re me.
The me. Who’s that?
This me, seems personal, unique. The centre of the universe. Not a centre. The centre. The guy sitting next to me on the train, the people all around, each one a centre of something unique to them.
In the third decade of the story, a thought was passed to me by a psychotherapist. I had hired a therapist. I was paying to encounter her mind. A healed mind. Not perfectly healed, but far enough advanced in the process that she could help me.
Not such bad way of thinking about it. Healed minds influencing one another.
The seed she planted was simply that I was not compelled to think doom laden, pessimistic thoughts. I was a long way off liking who I thought I’d become, but she threw me a life line. I grabbed it and held on with all the strength I could muster.
In the beginning we’re not thinking much. That’s why the smiling baby elevates us. Or why dogs are such great company. Very little mental activity. Just presence. Loving attention.
By the time we’re old enough to drive a car or vote for someone, we’re doing very little else but think. The world we encounter already laid over with a virtual reality produced by our minds.
Technology mimics the minds that produce it.
To choose what we think about is a seed of freedom. The way mango groves prevent erosion, securing biodiversity, seeds of freedom protect us from soul erosion.
Seeds grow.
There’s an image in the I Ching.
A tree growing on a mountain top, must grow slowly. Years pass as its roots grow down into the spaces in the rock. The trunk and branches are modest. If it were to grow too fast, storms will blow it into the valley below.
Slow growing trees deeply rooted, reach to the heavens. Drinking in the magnificent view.
What I’d done to earn my own contempt was a fiction that needed untangling. Don’t you find it strange how little we are taught about our own consciousness? How it’s seen as an outlier? A minority interest, relatively speaking.
The tiny particle of mind that we are aware of is a marvel. One grain out of all grains of sand, in all the deserts, beaches and sea beds of our world. Look what we can do with it.
Diving below the surface of this one grain we encounter a miracle, the infinite creative mind out of which we come. You learn that your creative power is beyond logic. Is unknowable in its entirety. Is the mystery unravelling before you.
At first you learn conjuring tricks. You manifest parking places and jackets. Someone to love. A home. A profession maybe. Art.
Later as you press on you realise that you don’t know who you are and you’re glad of it. You’re getting used to the process of discovery. Not knowing. You encounter fear.
You encounter angels and crazy saints.
You’re annoyed by the tawdry, bland ugliness.
By your own complicity in it.
How hopelessly entangled you are with it.
That’s okay.
The human part is our anchor here. It transforms.
Like the seed, we need roots.
The rocking of this train. Conversations that could be anyone’s.
The ways we love one another.
The ways we judge.
It’s not so important when you withdraw your belief.
That tiny little sliver of doubt is enough.
It takes life times to grow it.
That tree.
A freedom tree.
Growing in you and me.
How long did it take for the mountain to become a grain of sand?
When the grain dissolves
Will it matter?
Our destiny is to go beyond time.
Beyond division.
It will take an eternity.
But eternity is outside of time.
So it will take no time.
It defies logic.
Goes beyond the tiny particle of mind.
See what happens when you drink too much coffee.
Travelling north.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey