Cranial Caucus
Don Ray
Copyright 2016
Self-awareness,
thoughts arising from within the self, objective-external sensory inputs, the
self’s filtering and perception of those external inputs, dictated-genetically
programmed thoughts and behaviors, randomly firing neurons and synapses,
reactions and automatic responses, and somewhere in that cacophony, the
whispering of the Holy Spirit?!
Good grief, can
consciousness really be so complicated?!
And I’ve not even yet invoked the mysterious subconscious!
Maybe we should
introduce a few possessing spirits while we’re at it!….and let’s not leave out
addictions, lusts, and hungers, with their concomitant ability to deftly weave
our rationalizations of our irrational behaviors.
As I sit in these
woods I see the diamond rainbows of morning dew, but did I have any
choice about seeing that? On this sunny
morning after cleansing rain, did I choose to come to this glade?…or did
a committee of arguing genes, instincts, and environmental influences pull my
marionette strings and clumsily walk me over there this morning? And why does it seem so important to ask that
question? Whatever the validity of the
answer arrived at today, will it still hold true if someday my aging brain
finds itself wracked with the Alzheimer’s disease that possessed my father for
so many decades?
Can freewill find
any place in that crowded room of instincts, reactions, and God knows what
spirits, all yelling for attention like mad traders on a commodities trading
floor? From inside this personal asylum
is it even possible to answer the question?…..for won’t the answers be dictated by
the same mob of subconscious miscreants that so enthusiastically stoke my
fears, lusts, cravings, and delusions?
I should make
haste to apologize to the poor soul reading this rambling diatribe, for perhaps
they were not yet afflicted with these nagging questions about the nature of
their consciousness. Surely most people
do not waste time and energy with such insoluble dilemmas, nor would I council
such fruitless undertaking. But for this
moment, as external sensory inputs tell me sun’s warmth has begun to penetrate
my jacket and a squirrel’s sensory inputs tell him a large and perplexed creature
blocks his path to his breakfast nook, I (whatever “I” may mean) proceed to
take a poll of those motives unconscious, spirits holy or otherwise, and
thoughts programmed and reactionary, to query the nature of consciousness and
freewill, if in fact either exists as anything more than convincing illusion of
synapses’ prestidigitations.
This query may be
short lived though, as my programmed awareness that I have not yet had
breakfast has made a motion to adjourn the proceedings and said programmed
awareness is effectively lobbying the cabal of easily swayed delegates in the
raucous convention of my mind.
The “I”, a most
ineffective chairperson of this unwieldy assembly, seeks to counter hunger’s
compelling arguments by invoking conscious awareness of the passing
hummingbird, the robin’s melody, and the cooing doves. After all, “I” retain veto power in these
deliberations!….don’t “I”? “But the
rock on which you-we-I sit is hard and uncomfortable!” and “You’ll be
late to work!” second and third hunger’s motion. And I find the end result of my morning
caucus seems to be a yet further diminished authority of “I” in the quorum of
behavioral legislators. But “I” think
that in some matters “I” still retain some executive power. Don’t “I” appoint the sergeant at arms, who
makes at last some perfunctory effort at denying entry to the proceedings to
some of the more unsavory characters with credentials of dubious source? And “I” do select most of the members of the
executive council of priorities, values, ethics, and principles that wield no
insignificant sway over the bills and resolutions brought to open debate.
Of course backroom
caucuses of furtive neuroses and insurgent emotions will always plot their
coups. But on this morning “I”, as
chairperson, chose to invite feathered symphony to address the assembly of
consciousness, “my” meditative gavel momentarily quieted the unruly parliament
to hear the honored guests, and “I” even managed to briefly table Hunger’s
motion to adjourn to breakfast. Those executive accomplishments of freewill,
delusional or otherwise, will do nicely for this morning.
Copyright 2007
Don Ray
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