Meditations on Randomness

I swear i will start writing about other forms of expression, just as soon i get this out of my system...

     Jack Engler asserts that self is “evolving developmentally out of our experience of objects and the kinds of interactions we have with them.” I don’t believe you realize just how true this statement is until you are trying to get your mind to be quiet for meditation. First you clear the immediate mind activity thinking, “Okay I have made reference to the large events or issues of the day. I should be able to go back to my breath now with minimal interruption.” Then there is a second tier of not-quite-so-important information that begins to bubble to the surface of your mind, which you acknowledge and then think, “Okay I have made reference to the medium sized events or issues of the day. I should be able to go back to my breath now with minimal interruption.” So on and so forth until you are acknowledging a small purple flower that you may or may not have seen in your periphery at some point in the day, and wondering if that baby you heard crying in the distance has a single or two-parent household and what impact that may have on the infants life in each circumstance. We really do have each of those sense encounters, whether tiny or large, floating around in our awareness. Sometimes it feels like an assault.

     It isn’t always that chaotic, but many times it is. It causes me to wonder how I am possibly registering so many bits of information at one time, and storing that information somewhere. Then, I feel a little angry because I can remember all of these minute things, but then I often have trouble recalling factual, academic information on command. It seems easier for me to recall my experiential memory than any other kind. I know there must be positive aspects to this, but at times it seems to be a nuisance. I can bring myself back to my breath again and again, but I can’t stop wondering if all those little bits of miscellaneous information are helping or hindering my growth on earth. My mind buzzes frequently with seemingly random events; sometimes these events come together in my mind to show synchronicity on earth. That portion of the random information processing gives me hope because it seems to show some sort of connective order in the universe that I don’t always have strong belief in. Other times all that random information just seems to shuffle around like too many decks of playing cards that are missing members of certain suits. Either way, this has been a focus of mine this week, trying to honor the randomness before coming back to my breath.