What if something was having me find those few words in an old abandoned pocket. What if it is my deep hunch that lays behind all my hunch s, that which I was now this morning beginning to call my hunch hunch. My lucid dreams of the morning were not necessarily rational, there were all sorts of images clear in my memory that really did not make sense to me. But what I did have was feelings of my inflamed hunch presence. The hunch that led me to be here now had given me a hunch punch and I was confronted by a whole new universe of possibilities.
The walk home had me pondering those few words – Find it All in the Shadows – the capitalization of Find, All and Shadows seemed to be an important part of the statement. The capital on the All indicated a large all-ness, my hunch hunch was saying that all of everything everywhere in all time is All. Sort of like the notion of God for those of a religious persuasion think of god as their be all to end all.
For myself I had been brought up in a home that had no connection to the religions that existed in our neighborhood. We enjoyed a gentle and simple loving environment that held no concern for needing to go to church like so many others. We did get sent off to church in the early days as my early school years were in a convent with nuns and a church. Like most other kids I was schooling with, the whole church thing didn't make a lot of sense, we just sat, and kneeled, and stood, and listened following along with all the others in the pews. It didn't affect any deep feelings of connection into me, it was just something I had to do so to not get into trouble. I had the experience of getting hit with a ruler by an old Nun for laughing with another boy while the service was unfolding. If only she knew we were actually joking to each other that the Priest swinging the pot of smoke on a chain might be the Devil. We were only seven years old at the time.
The mind can be a funny and entertaining dimension of experience, and likewise it can be a prison cell of inescapable torture. There are many millions of we all as fellow members of our human family that come to a point in life where the only conclusion is to end it all. Suicide exists as a phenomena that presents both a macabre, frightening point of horror, but also an alluring potential escape and going home sort of possibility.
It is any wonder more of we all don't go mad, as we all do have a mind and it is on, and going, day in day out for the whole of our life adventure. But having said that, when I look at the world, it does, despite the bins being emptied, and the toilets carrying away our waste, our shops stocked and our roads etc being continually built, it does appear to be quite mad. As a matter of fact casual glance of our modern 2020 world would seem to be that we are all attempting a collective suicide. Our collective life scape across the planet has pollution and desecration of nature to the degree that we might begin to compare our world to the bedroom of a junkie. Our addiction to sucking the oil from our planet, her blood maybe; our addiction to consuming a vast smorgasbord of consumables so to satisfy short lived sensory gratifications; our addiction to novelty and righteousness all seem to be the behavior of a junkie.
My walk home was proving to be an amplified version of my trip to area X. On the way up my ponderings were “what might I find”, “what if I am finding that I am just following along behind ghosts of my own making”. Now having found the small phrase the neuron-net of my brain was lit up like a Christmas tree. Part of me was verifying my hunch trail to go there, and with what I had found I now had the feeling that my whole life was different.
As mentioned hunches are strange and funny things, they are nothing actually in themselves but hold some mystical ethereal suggestion that only you can fathom. It is generally pointless sharing ones hunches with others as more often than not the shape and flavor of ones hunches seem to be pointless, off with the fairies drivel for those of an un-like mind.
My going home was now with what I was calling my hunch hunch and although it was really nothing from one perspective, was it simply the entertaining of the mind phantoms of somebody with too much time on their hands, or truly something belonging to the ever present mysterious depth of life and creation. I was fascinated by the amount of mental weight my small journey was creating for myself. Had I been led by some mystical inner something to find a life changing conundrum, or was I just bored and creating more phantasmagoria to pass my days.
There seems to be no escaping the workings of ones own mind. You can not really put your finger on it, and if you actually do it changes into something else.
Like we all I have been with my mind for a life time now and have got used to the continual wonder and ponder that goes on and on and on. I have enjoyed the exploration of those who write about the mechanics and dynamics of the living mind and the study of psychology, the study of wisdom traditions assist to bring some order to the chaos that is sometimes the mind. There are days when one feels at centre and at peace with life and its unfoldings, there are days when the opposite is true. All the while the mind is ticking, ticking, ticking along.
This was one of those times I was feeling both excited to have new possibilities to ponder but also wondering if I was just leading myself along some perpetual trail of excited delusion. All through my life I have enjoyed simply being in the unfolding of my day in a sort of waiting for some new idea to arrive, never knowing how it might arrive, or who might deliver it. But when it came you knew, because all you could excitedly think about for the next while would be the new notion that had arrived. It didn't need to be any thing in particular, just a new notion that I had not encountered before, something new to ponder till I was either bored with it or something even better came along to trump it.
For my whole life this never ending anticipation of something new to ponder or wonder was some thing that of course is completely free, mostly, as sometimes one thing would lead to another and you would be compelled to spend money to get a book about that which was now the new dominance of thought.
My bush walk home was a mind-scape that I was very familiar with, a constant tug of war between my excitedly pondering the possibilities of my growing hunch hunch and the logic that when my rational ponder dominates there is the distinct possibility that I am simply a dreamer lost in my own inner world.
The most useful wisdom tradition that I had found over the years to assist me to maintain a sensible order that allowed me to function in a practical and useful way in life was the Toltec wisdom tradition. It had delivered simple, practical, pragmatic insights which allowed me to walk the edge between my enjoyable entertainment of vivid imagination while remaining grounded with life in general.
I had experienced over the years reading lots of books, sniffing out more and more information about what my mind might be, and how I might get more from it, or get a greater command of its seeming autonomous nature. A perpetual quest to fathom a mystery that I was permanently with day in and day out, but also when I observed the world and all of everything that was coming from it, the mystery I was feeling and wondering into was not really an important part of the program of the life and lives around me. So as deliciously compelling, intriguing, alluring, seducing and limitless as the mystery seemed to be to me, at the same time life and lives about me suggested a pointless futility in following it.
It is these dynamics which are the fabric of ones ongoing mental contentions and are the inner conflict that has for some needing to end it all and hopefully escape the never endingness of it all. But thanks to the Toltec wisdom, I had read much to capture a few words that affected the necessary insight to be the useful balancing agent between my own warring inner contentions.
As simple as it might all seem and this mornings mind-scape of my walk home is a good example of the vivid and real dynamics of mind that can and does negatively affect so many beings. Am I nuts ? or am I on to something mystically amazing. Toltec wisdom suggests that the mystery of the universe is mostly un-knowable, but one is equipped to potentially come to know, and although you can not affect the universe to reveal its mystery what you do have control over is your way of being with the unfolding mystery.
This simple and gentle insight