I wasn’t sure what to post today — more about my past year’s experience? Or something about my present move?

Then I read Joanna’s recent insightful-as-usual comment and I knew. In it, she quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”  Thank you, sister. See, I was concerned about moving back to Cambria. Not only back to Cambria, but into the same exact house (it came available the very week I was looking for a place to rent). Was it kismet? Or was I repeating myself, my life? On the eve of moving day, I dreamt that I was driving a car and it was stuck in reverse. It kept moving backward until it plunged off of a cliff and into the ocean (I survived). Yep, a fear of living in the repeat zone.

For some reason, my graduate thesis on consciousness came to mind. Basically, it was a comparative study between Western Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Eastern Philosophy.

According to psychologist William James, one characteristic of thought, or consciousness, is that “thought is in constant change.” James believed that no thought or state of mind can identically recur, because conscious states are affected and shaped by our experiences which change moment to moment. A state of mind or thought, once gone cannot be had again. “It is out of the question that any total brain-state can identically recur…no point of the brain can ever be twice in the same condition. That would be as improbable a consequence as that in the sea a wave-crest should never come twice at the same point of space.”

Scientist Susan Greenfield asserted that we never have the same consciousness on two separate occasions. “On no two occasions would the same number of neurons be excited to exactly the same extent in exactly the same way.” Associations are many and influenced by other transient factors such as fatigue, temperature, hormones…there could not be a reproducible conscious state from one individual moment to the next.

Buddhist philosophy describes consciousness as an empty form and formless continuum which cannot descend or ascend into the same consciousness twice. Consciousness is not the same for two consecutive moments; it remains in a flux of arising and disappearing.

Not mentioned in my thesis but for Pete’s sake, even Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544 b.c. said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Therefore, to get this post out tonight (hump day due date)…let’s simplify this verbosity:

Fear not!  It is impossible to exist in a repeat zone. We can only move forward (never straight)…!

“And it’s hard to explain how I feel
It won’t go in words but I know that it’s real
I can be moving or I can be still
But still is still moving me
Still is still moving to me”.    — Willie Nelson

“It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
And I’m feeling good.” — Nina Simone