So many pivotal moments in my life have occurred while I was supposed to be sleeping, but was instead lying awake, alone, thinking.
When I was very young, I was endlessly frustrated and confused by the fact that I could know how only my own body felt, feel only what it was feeling, and know only what I was thinking. I thought that any consciousness that existed just had to be connected in some way. None of my teachers or my family could answer any of my questions about this in any sort of satisfactory way. They didn’t even seem to take my questions seriously. I distinctly recall lying awake in bed one night, frustrated to the point of tears that I could not directly feel what others felt or think any one else’s thoughts. I kept going over an over this apparent paradox in my mind. It just seemed so wrong. I decided, in that moment, that this had to mean that all of the other people were not real, they were only my perceptions. As my perception was limited to my own being only, I must be the only being that was truly real.
I began to develop an entire theology that night, wherein I was the center of the universe, perhaps the only consciousness that existed in the universe, and the other people, animals and things around me were little more than cardboard stand-ups, like the paper dolls or stage backdrops, completely one-dimensional and only visible from my perspective, and when I was not looking, they ceased to exist. They were mere props, placed there to teach, test, entertain, or take care of me. I was sure that my physical body was real, that that was the real me, but that perhaps my body existed in a small pocket of actual space surrounded by nothingness. Nothing I was perceiving was actually real. When the concept of a god was explained to me at preschool, I felt that it must be a god must be who set up and controlled the shadow box for me. I wondered if I, too was a god, perhaps in training. Or perhaps I was the only god, and I had set the illusion up for myself and somehow made myself forget. That seemed to me the most likely.
I saw life as a dream. I often confused my actual dreams with reality. I was never quite sure which one was real, or even if either one was really real. Honestly, I saw them both as equally valid experiences of reality. Of course, I didn’t quite believe in reality, but saw it as an illusion. As a lifelong lucid dreamer, dreams wherein I could fly and control my reality completely often seemed the more valid reality to me, a child who believed that I was a god. It seems that my capacity for abstract thought somewhat preceded the full development of my empathy, and its absence bothered me tremendously. I noticed and obsessed over my own lack of empathy.
I remember the exact moment when I shifted from this view of myself as a deity at the center of the universe. I was about 5 years old, and my father was explaining explicitly how something I had done affected him on an emotional level and at some point in our conversation it clicked that he was actually having an experience of the world from a unique perspective just like I was. He was a real person, too. It felt like the world tilted on its axis. I literally felt the ground shift under me. All of a sudden it was like I was seeing in full-color 3D after a life lived in washed-out 2D. The horizon seemed to recede like a shockwave travelling away from me, it was like the earth flattened out and I could see for miles. It felt like suddenly everything in the world had its own consciousness and it's own divinity. Suddenly I was an animist. It was so intense. I can remember reflecting on that idea (also while lying in bed at night), and feeling so joyful that I was not alone. I also remember standing in the hallway at my school at lunch break, kids running and walking all around me, and feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the fact that everyone around me was having a complex and unique experience of the world, all in the same space.
It continued to bother me, though, then and for years afterwards, that I could not directly experience the consciousness of others. I had a definite idea that consciousness was not a physical thing, and therefore there could be no real physical barrier between my consciousness and someone else’s. We should be connected. I used to try and try to get inside another person or animal or thing’s experience and I can recall being frustrated to tears on many occasions that I could not do it.
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The summer after fifth grade, I lived with my Dad for the summer-something I had never done before. This gave me an opportunity to step out of my regular routine for more than just a few days at a time, and I looked back on it as an outsider would. Late… well, early one morning, I had another epiphany.
I was lying there, wallowing in hormonal angst, body tense with frustration, as I did many nights, when suddenly it was like I was looking down at my body from above. I realized that that unhappy person I thought I had been for most of my young life was not me. That person was not even real, it was just a story. My essential self was not connected to those negative emotions in any way. I was the awareness behind that, observing all of it. Suddenly, they had no control over me, and I let go of them. I was just me… the essential me: my consciousness, or soul, as I called it then. I felt like I had been touched by god, and I felt this incredible sense of connection to the entire universe that has stayed with me to this day.
The next day was a Saturday, and I spent it out of doors in a small green vale filled with oaks, manzanitas and lots of lush green poison oak. It was all so beautiful, so crystal clear and radiant-so much so that I felt like my heart was singing. It was, again, as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes, and I was seeing the world for the first time. I remember sitting with a new friend that I had met that afternoon, a little boy who was content to just sit there quietly with me, in the middle of a huge patch of poison oak (we were immune to it, but none of the other neighborhood kids were), and we peeled some of the bark from a manzanita, revealing the wet, sweet-smelling bright green cambium beneath. It was breathtaking. We stayed in the same spot all afternoon, talking little, watching the birds, the insects, the movement of the trees and tall grasses in the wind, and the kids playing further down the valley. I remember exactly how it smelled-of damp earth, decomposing oak leaves, green grasses and poison oak in the warm sun, whiffs of chalk, manzanita, and something spicy… maybe a bay laurel somewhere in the valley. We stayed in that same spot until the crickets started chirping and the streetlights came on. I remember noticing for maybe the first time the smell of dusk-the cooling soil puts out a different smell that is absolutely delicious. I would have stayed there all night if I hadn’t had to be home by dark to eat dinner. Later that summer, I took to sneaking out so I could listen to and smell the night in that valley.
That day another idea grabbed my attention. Not only was my essential being separate from the façade that the world called by my name, but such a hidden essential being existed inside of every person. I wondered long and hard if there was such and essential being inside of every animal or even inside of plants. I was sure that it must be so, and that this being must be god. That we were all connected, all a part of god, and hence all a part of each other. Every particle in the universe. I remember looking at my new friend and feeling almost delirious at this thought. I guess I never was much good at accepting the Christian dogma they tried to feed me, or even at being a monotheist.
The next day my friend was not home (probably was at church), so I decided to go for a walk by myself. He lived at the top of a very steep hill, so I ran all the way to the bottom. Then I ran clear across town and back, up and down hills and through neighborhoods. I had discovered the previous summer that I could edit out the pain, clear my mind of all thoughts, and experience nothing but my breathing, the movement of my body, and the surface I was running on (prompted by a line from the book The Princess Bride). Now I made the connection that like the emotional pain that I had been in, my physical pain was also not a part of who I was. It was exhilarating. I felt like I had a new capacity to enjoy every minute of every day, and my capacity for joy was unlimited. It was, without a doubt, the best summer of my childhood.
I was so young, though, and not completely in control of my state of mind. Hormones were beginning to influence my emotions and thinking more and more. It is clear, however, that my emotional well-being improved dramatically that summer. When I returned to school for sixth grade, I felt so different. I was no longer insecure. Of course I slipped into some of the same behavior patterns again, especially with my mother, and with a few kids with whom I had pre-existing adversarial relationships. I still lost my temper sometimes, but I had changed. People did notice. By the end of the year, I had friends in my class, something that had almost never happened before. I was invited to classmates’ birthday parties, and girls wanted to talk to me on the phone and have me over for sleepovers. I was fascinated and so eager to get glimpses of the real people inside all of these girls I had seen as mere props so many years before.
I had always wondered if perception or consciousness could travel from one being to another. The idea had been a fixation of mine since that long ago time when I’d worked out my own personal theology, and when learned about reincarnation in junior high, I was sure that this must be the answer. There were definitely far too many souls in the history of the world to fit into the Bible’s heaven. There must be an essential being (I thought of it as a soul) inside of every living thing, and as I learned more about the beliefs of Hindus, the more I felt validated in my instinctual beliefs. I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation or even individual souls any more, but at the time it was yet another epiphany.
I am, in a way, very grateful that I had such severe onset insomnia. I was blessed to have all those hours lying awake and alone in the dark, letting my thoughts run wild. I’d paint mental pictures, create sculptures, build buildings, make up stories, ponder the nature of god and the universe, wonder at the nature of physical and spiritual beings, and question the meaning of life. I should think that not many children have that much time in the absence of any distractions.
2010-01-10
tiny philosopher
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