The Black Hole of the Mind

The brain is an odd thing. It can take visual information in, recognize it as a certain type of data, interpret it, and then stop.

I went to the Northwestern Health Sciences University website's Continuing Ed page to check out my class listing, and found it on the calendar page. After I noted that it was listed and that the dates were correct, I moved on. A couple of days later, late in the evening, something clicked in my head. Did I really see what I thought I saw? I went back to the website and there it was, the tuition for my class listed at twice the actual rate. It had taken that long for the information to register.

I've done it, we've all done it; read several paragraphs of a book and had no idea what I've read. Drive somewhere and have no recollection of how you got there.

Being present is a many layered phenomenon. There's being physically in the room. There's directing your sensory organs toward the environment. There's turning them on. There is even the act of performing the motions of engaging with the environment. All these things can happen and still, we are not there. We are not present.

Presence is like.....a distillation. A star, collapsing down to a point of infinite density. It is the moment where an alchemical melding takes place, and all things come together to make gold.