Chasing Dreams

Our conscious hours are so filled with existing and coping with reality that we ignore the underlying patterns of mind. We read, we converse, we cook, or eat, or watch TV.  We distract ourselves from our own being. Only in dreams do the elements combine in diverse ways to give presence to new thoughts. But for most of us, these thoughts vanish again in the bright glare of living.

Triviality

Alone
now as always
fighting new and menacing demons
wearing their black cloaks
and carrying winter scythes,
Alone
while battling petty minds
sweating stuff that is so small
not even a magnifier could find
its worth.

Annie Elliott

The subconscious behaves like an abstract mathematical construct. As in mathematics, where the ordinals are abstract concepts when unspecified until we give them specific form, such as two pens or three oranges, so too are our ideas like life or death or love. We can specify specific instances but in our subconscious being they are complete abstractions that can only present themselves to our conscious selves as concrete representations, such as the image of a broken car, or a pen that will not write, or an empty, dark room. This may be death of a life, or death of a relationship, or leaving a home that is loved.

Like the Fourier representation of a waveform, the components seethe in the brain like separate harmonics that can come together to build something new. Our mental knowledge is fragmented into tiny components joined by some algorithm of mind or memory. The elements are almost like coherent or entangled quantum waveforms. It is the conscious expression of them that 'collapses the waveform'.

The artist may seize these elements and recombine them as a new picture, a poem, an architectural construct, or a new mathematical theorem. But their underlying components are mere abstractions, and conscious striving to grab them leaves us but grasping air.

Finality – Buddhism vs. Jehovah's Witnesses

Finality

We will not speak of parting,
for I will be where you are
as you will ever be with me,
I will carry every day
with the haunting memory
of every thing you said and did
every dream we ever held
and every moment lived.

by Annie Elliott

Today, Edwin is at a Buddhist meditation day in Cambridge contemplating eternity, while we were visited by two Jehovah's Witnesses. Bible Ann, as we call her, is in a sad way with advanced Parkinsonism, to the point where she can barely walk. She prefers bare feet to feel the ground, even in this cold, damp weather, to help coordinate her movements. She stands for some moments before her legs suddenly begin to move, and has great difficulty with the small steps to our house. We have known her for many years, and she comes as a friend, but still displays her literature, and her mind remains clear as ever. "They say there are two types of cancer," she tells me. "Lion or pussy cat. Which is yours?"

"I think mine is more like a panther," I suggest, "it sneaked up unseen in the night."

Even at this late stage of existence, she argues her case that the believers will be segregated before God to rule earth from her heaven, whilst we will be left cursed below. "Only a few people are rulers. Since Jesus resurrects people to heavenly life so that they can rule over the earth, we would expect those chosen to be few." She is even able to count the exact number entering her heaven – 144,000. Their site suggests there are already 137,000 witnesses living in the UK, so I guess they must be filling up.

Returning from his day of meditation, Edwin attempts to enlighten us in the way of Buddhism, and the Four Nobel Truths. He describes it as very cultish, with cold people who wear it like a cloak. unlike Japanese Buddhism whose practitioners are born into it as a natural skin. There is no such thing as truth, just mindfulness, meditation, and reduction of suffering, so Cambridge Buddhists completely different from London, or Tibetan. The Buddhist must always ask questions, but without hope. There is no after life, one can only achieve enlightenment.

In dealing with suffering, he quoted the example of being shot by an arrow. To ease suffering, one must deal with consequences such as by removing the arrow; contemplating why one was struck just adds to this suffering.