I took my mind out of my head and unrolled it on the kitchen table. It just fit. I had been having lots of buzzing, droning thoughts and wanted to take a good look at them. First I stood up and looked and then I sat down. I could see nothing going on in there. All I saw was a pure, little mind, as innocent as the driven snow. (I love a good cliché, don’t you?)
So, confident that I was imagining these pesky little thoughts, I carefully rolled the mind back up and skillfully put it back into my right ear. (I take it out on the left side and replace it on the right. I tend to be compulsive.)
I put the teakettle on and got a cup down from the rack. Should I have tea or coffee? (The mind wanted to know what the body was going to have. By this question, I knew that the buzzing was starting up again.) I told it I would have coffee and a couple of cookies. (I also knew, by answering myself, that the mind had reinstated its bifurcation as if by magic.)
The two-way dialogue was off to the races. I knew that soon I would disappear into the buzz and the emotional brouhahas that would soon begin. I would drink my coffee without tasting it and eat cookies in the same way. So discouraging. (The inner critic had arrived. It looked a little like Roger Ebert. Was it hungry? Maybe that’s how I was gaining all of this weight—by feeding the multitudes, and not in a good way.)
With a total sigh, I resolved to take the mind out and examine it again. This time there were crumbs on the table and the mind recoiled as it touched bits of cookie. It was such a purist.
Nope, there was nothing on the surface of the mind. It was a still pond reflecting my body as clearly as a mirror. I smiled at its ability to do that. What a mind I had, so trusting that it mirrored anything it saw. I bowed to the purity of it and my reflection in it. As I rolled it back up and put it back through the right ear, I hoped things would go differently now.
They didn’t. I could go on, good reporter that I am, to describe how often I do this. Once I went to a shrink and told him how many times a day I was taking my mind out to examine it. He said he knew I was out of my head. He tried to give me medication, but I refused. When the bill came, it was exorbitant and at the bottom he had written a personal note. Patient is just like every other nutcase I have ever treated. What I told her seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
Exactly!