On MIND

What is on your mind?

The question asked while opening this app, and I have to confess the first answer is myelin sheath, a protective layer of fatty tissue that surrounds the axons of nerve cells of the brain, allowing electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along the nerves. This thin membrane isn't a subject unless you have taken human biology or psychology classes. Or if you have been unfortunate enough to develop a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in which case it may start to melt. What happens if this occurs? Several unpredictable consequences from small to life-changing depending on biology.

I was fifteen in an advanced psychology class in high school, and this was the one subject that piqued my interest, mostly because of the unknown outcomes and real-world examples. The one circumstance I remember is a man who at 106 degrees Fahrenheit had the majority of his myelin sheath melted away, and after he recovered ceased to have any memory of past events, or thought of future events. But, for some odd reasons could play the piano with the best of the best. He became a Beethoven and a Mozart overnight. All I remember is him at the piano playing anything requested by the analyst in the room. For reasons I may never know this particular case stuck in my memory. Throughout life, this one memory would pop up out of thin air.

It's been a while since the myelin sheath vision has crept in but today was one of those days. Why? Why has this one memory decided to hang onto all the trillions of thoughts that have flowed through my mind? I think it has to do with what I remember, this British gentleman living his life and within a week having no recollection of any of it. But put in front of a piano evolved into a master of ceremonies, accomplishing a musical gift some have spent a lifetime pursuing, sacrificing, and even obsessing over. This class was in the spring of 1992. I think what allowed this observation to have some effect on my conscious psyche was how few answers all the experts had. All the testing, theories, ideas, and observations, yet no answer. I wanted to know why the focus of this situation was a solid explanation, and what the importance of knowing was going to accomplish. Once it is gone it is gone.

At the time the 15-year-old me was more concerned with questions not scientific but more inquisitive about what we couldn't know from the short VHS tape attempting to explain with a nice scientific definition. Did it matter, the findings of the why, sadly I didn't think it was. I was more curious about how little we know about the brain, but also how little we know about the working anatomy of the human body. I know some will disagree with all the advances in the medical field, but what do we really know?

I figured this individual couldn't feel any sorrow, joy, or other complex emotions because he was completely unaware of anything but playing the piano in the moment. It makes me think about the situation of my own experiences in life, the unknown, and the impossible ability to understand at the moment they were happening in real life at a real time how they were exactly where they were supposed to be. I seldom find my mind in the thought of the past. It wasn't always this way, it took a lot of cosmic pieces to fall exactly where needed to even begin to know why, why all the pieces, perspectives, and personal validated memories had kept me far away from any wisdom of resulting in a higher knowledge. Higher knowledge, what is that? A part of it is the experience of the divine, along with an inner curiosity that cannot be quenched no matter what one gives it. I have never attempted to even try to explain it with words, to me words only make me feel more tongue-tied with thought.

I've read other authors explain in words with a natural flow I could only wish for. Giordano Bruno, Jung, J Campbell, Hypatia, and even my own teacher. David Bentley Hart, Steiner, Bob Brier, Damian Echols, and hundreds of other people with the ability to put into words what I cannot.

The hundreds of authors here, when writing reminds me of an inexhaustible fountain of bliss, flooding, flowing, from the generating energy that surrounds them. AI makes it even more tempting to try to unwrap the experiences and work over the past ten years and make some sense of it. Maybe now isn't the best time to grapple with all the unknown and understand right now, maybe instead at a moment when it is meant to come.

So why worry about it in this moment? The gentleman who no longer has a myelin sheath doesn't have such thoughts, and never will. Forever living moment by moment placed in front of a piano and played as if it is extended from his spirit. That is easy for my mind to comprehend, and possibly that is all I can take on in the moment. Many curiosities float in and out of mind, and recently they cannot connect with most human knowledge that is in books or academics. The difference between then and now is the source, other people, and a real conversation that is deficient due to the land I am currently living on.

It's the human connection, the understanding of certain gnosis that can only grow with others, the crucial human connections of insight and wisdom that can only come from that exact thing. Bodies in each other's company, in the same room, without worrying about conversing about the experiences each has had.