Many is the time when my mind has tried to trick me out of my sense of poise and self-mastery. I know I have choice, whether to indulge in it or to say No fucking thanks, I think I will have my head back to myself. These days I’m more likely to say No thanks. Yet my mind, like a desperate crocodile, keeps wanting to close in on its prey. It keeps trying to trap me in its jaws. In order for that to occur, it is I who must do the snapping and gnashing of those giant teeth, for my mind can do nothing but tempt me to take action on its behalf. It tries to convince me that I need the meal… even though it is my very self which I would be swallowing.
It seems that I am both the puppet master and the puppet, both the aggressor and the victim, in a psychological war of schizophrenic proportions.
My mind would have me chomp, like that crocodile. It seems eager to create a separation between unified things, to divide this into this or that. It would not be content doing nothing. Perhaps it is bored by the thought of Ever-lasting Well-Being. It seems to have no taste for Oneness. And so it would divide us, divide you and me. It seems to want to put you over there and me over here, and declare that this distance produces some sort of reason for discord.
My mind’s games can be so tempting. These mental wraiths, these ghostly figures, cry for me to re-animate them. They want me to lend my own physical life force towards bringing them to life. Their names are Drama, Suspicion, Fear, and Conflict. Without me, they are nothing but thought forms without a home. They belong in the ether, ignored and unclaimed. Yet with my help, they can effectively bomb the present moment with their agents of sadness. Sometimes, like a fool, I have been their servant and hand in this process.
Sometimes the creature from the blue lagoon appears to emerge out from nowhere, calling me to play out its crusade of enmity. It wishes for me to take its bait, slimy and fishy and shadowy. Though the truth of its existence is questionable, the consequence of my actions, were I to listen to it, are very real.
Each day there are numerous chances to choose whether to take the bait, or to decline. Sometimes I wish I could shake off this menace, but I cannot for long. Soon a fiendish voice will offer its solicitations of madness.
There are so many dark marshes and Transylvania-like estates that, like the sounds of the trees through whispering winds, call to me until the hairs on my neck stand up. They say, “Pick up this sword! Fight this demon! You’re not safe! You must strike!” If I give in, the peace and tranquility of calm skies above me turn dark and violent. Majesty, wonder, beauty, and life become distorted reflections on disfigured glass. All is war.
Why does it sometime seem that peace and tranquility and calm skies and doing nothing, that enjoying eternal wholeness can seem so… blank? Why is it that, in comparison, the braggadocio of self-inflicted drama seems so damn tempting?
I know that I have complete power over my own actions. Doing nothing is the solution. I shall do my best to stand calm in the face of whatever this ghostly ne’er-do-well dishes out at me. I am getting better at knowing its games. I can feel its presence. I recognize its stink.
I will stand calm, and I will bide my time. And when the time comes, I will surrender to a God of love and light, and I will stand in the Truth.
A truth my ghastly mind cannot see.