Surely, this is normal.
It is, isn’t it?

To begin with, I am not an morning person AT. ALL. I also do not work outside the home.
And, my children are older and in school.  So, I do have the luxury that I am aware others do not, of waking up around 9:30 a.m. or so and taking my time, for better or for worse, to slowly ease into the world.  This ritual is facilitated by many, many, cups of coffee.

(Well , by that I really mean a whole pot of coffee, at the very least).

And since I’ve got the itch to make things again, I found this morning that continuing a knitting project while sipping my warm and dark cure for grogginess was what I needed to get me going.

And this is where my mind ambled…..

“What did the philosophers and writers and artists of yore do to support themselves whenever they weren’t philosophizing and writing and painting?  I’m talking about the people who became known forevermore as the “great thinkers’ and the “great artists”.  What were their “day jobs”?  I must look into this.  I’m curious.  I can’t imagine that anyone was paying them to sit around and do what they did.  I doubt that much has changed in attitudes about that sort of work over the ages.  Artists were paid, maybe, by commissions from the Church or from Royalty…but in between gigs?”

Then, because I had a news program going on my phone whilst knitting and sipping, and because they were addressing the Noble Prize and some scientists’ achievements in studying bacteria, and because they were showing pictures of bacteria and cells under a microscope…..

“I find it extremely interesting how the tiniest organisms on Earth, and the tiniest brain systems in our head, are so visually similar to the massive systems of stars and galaxies in the universe.”

Which somehow led me to remembering what my my father, never a particularly religious person, likes to say from time to time….

“God is Gravity”.

And this sparked a thought about religious beliefs…

“I always hear from religious and spiritual people that we are here on Earth to learn lessons.  That God has a greater plan and that there’s a reason for everything.
Some even say that we choose our lives before we’re even born.  Or that God does.
As if Life on Earth is some sort of amusement ride.  As if Life on Earth is a product in a gigantic universal vending machine from which we choose to sample.

And if it’s the case that humans simply have to have Faith, that we simply have to believe in an afterlife or in a higher power, does that mean that our own brains are what control our lives? I mean, that certainly seems to be the implication.

Like, if you believe in Heaven and in God then you will most definitely go there and see Him.  But if you don’t, then you truly DIE – as in, completely cease to exist anywhere anymore. No passing Stop and moving on. You chose one ride and now it’s over.

Bill Hick’s quote about Life being just a ride pops into my grey matter…

‘You are what you eat’ as the saying goes….
You are also what you believe ??

If our brains are so powerful that all we have to do is believe in something, then is it maybe the case that we are actually God?? (Wasn’t there someone famous who expressed that idea?).

Sometimes I see the proclamations about saviors in my mind’s eye as Tinkerbell saying the magic words and sprinkling around some pixie dust….

I mean, I certainly don’t feel like God.  Or a god. Trust me, things would be a whole lot different if that were the case! I know I haven’t seen any sort of magic in my life that makes everything okay….Well, with the exception of wine. Or chocolate. Or cold, wet dog noses.  Or a baby’s laugh. Or good music. Or a cat’s purring in my ear. (And I can just hear my husband whispering…”Or ME purring in your ear, right?”…ha!)
BUT none of that sort of magic makes your problems stop.  Doesn’t cure your ailment, whether it’s financial or physical. The objective world remains the same.

But I won’t say I haven’t seen or experienced things that resembled miracles….

Hmnnn…… They say ‘God is One’, ‘We are all part of God’, “Connectivity is what is important to humans’, ‘Treat others as you would have yourself treated’, ‘We are all brothers and sisters’, etc……

Try substituting “Mind” for “God” and for “Humans”….
Why is it that neurons and cells and bacteria and synapses resemble a snapshot that Hubble takes out in space?
Are we really parts of the whole? Parts of one Big Power??

Is this how prayer is supposed to work? Everyone thinking and hoping for the same thing continually or at once?
But then why is it that so many people who are sick, who do have Faith, and have devout friends and family praying for them in large numbers, nevertheless die from their disease? Why do some make it and some don’t? Why is it that a missing child for whom many people pray to be found safe and sound…isn’t??

Does this go back to the idea of the giant vending machine in the sky? That existences are truly planned out before birth, as some believe? That our experiences here are simply parts of the whole Deluxe or Prime or Individual or Wild Card Life Packages that we CHOSE???  Like, somehow YOU picked “The Wild Card Life Package” that resulted in you ending up homeless just so you could feel what it’s like and to learn something from it. Or maybe the “Deluxe Package” in which you go from rags (with all it’s struggles and pain) to riches (with everything which that implies to you.)?
I think that maybe the idea of reincarnation fits in here somewhere….”

And then I realized that I’d had enough coffee to wake me up, and that I wanted to write this down, and that I need to go out to see my dad today.

And I wondered, “Is this what other people think about as they go on with their day too? Is this a normal train of thought”?

What sort of thoughts bounce about your skull as you make your way through the day?