Does Consciousness Have a 'Color'? Astrology Says Yes. Check your Mercury.
Mercury+Mind+The Tao=Optimal Being
You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers—you’ve been missed. My bio is here
“Real silence is explosive, it is not the dead state of mind that spiritual seekers think. This is volcanic in its nature; it’s bubbling all the time—the energy, the life—that is its quality.” —U.G. Krishnamurti
THE INTERESTING THING about thinking about the mind and the thoughts that the mind seemingly ‘generates’ is that you can never escape the hall of mirrors that thinking about thoughts leaves behind. Thought starts thinking about thought, and then there’s a thought thinking about how you’re thinking about thought. If you’re persistent with your inquiry, you realize that what we call thoughts and thinking are simply an energetic ‘movement’ within nature, of which we’re each a ‘part’ or ‘node.’
In other words, it’s nature’s movement—ultimately. A movement without any particular meaning—at least as humans would attribute it. It’s a non-movement for movement’s sake. It’s like that koan about origins, from the English writer Terry Pratchett, who wrote: “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
As soon as you start some sort of ‘practice’ that is supposed to help quell or mellow natural movement of the mind (or deliver you to some place that is empty or absent) you’re launched down a path of more and more seemingly refined or finessed thoughts—what I call hybrid thoughts. The phenomenological sense is the same, though—suddenly, the physical organism is forced to participate in the conjuring of ‘something spiritual’ or the preference for the ‘peaceful’ or—unintentionally—the ‘agitated’.
The idealized state or condition is imagined by the mind and then thoughts begin to weave together a sense that either one is failing—because the thought process seems to be in rebellion—or, perhaps, a seeming settledness does occur. The body becomes still, with its breathing slowed. This condition one interprets as peace or ‘silence.’ The mind then equates this with the ‘spiritual.’
If agitated, meditative traditions declare that this is an important phenomenon to register, as you are seeing the ‘neurotic’ nature of the mind. Well, OK, that’s fine—but I have known and experienced and ‘seen’ the anxiety-ridden character of the mind ever since I started thinking. As a kid, I would lay in bed at night and wonder at the wonder of thought. And how it never stopped until I went to sleep where, once again, it would resume under the guise of imagination and the gauzy realm of dreams. So, ultimately, that pre-sleep mind isn’t ‘going anywhere’—it’s not ‘going away.’
Stories we tell ourselves are intriguing because they seem to give meaning to the urge to create meaning. Another version of thought, thinking about thinking. If you think about it, every time thought is involved with anything in your life, you are wanting something—either worrying about losing something or anxious about getting something. All stories have a coming or going baseline. Always the churning of desire with thought, which rides like a tiny tyrant atop the force of desire. This points to something about what we call desire; but again, I consider this just another version of movement within nature.
Even when your life might feel settled, secure, on an even keel—thought begins to ramp up some issue or problem that might occur (or not). The slightest flickering of a thought is enough to set the wheels turning, disrupting whatever momentary ‘happiness’ was in place. Nature seems to love ‘shit stirring’ (as my grandmother used to call the human need for drama.) It’s as if nature becomes bored and wants something to happen. It’s funny. It’s weird—and disconcerting. What the hell is going on?