Two Hundred and Six

We keep returning to the same places, thinking the same things.  Sometimes we think they’re questions to which we seek answers, and sometimes we think they are the answers.

Mystics accept that reality is a mystery that seems infinite while we are finite, but those we called religious couldn’t accept that we don’t know, and may never know, what reality is.  They pretended to know that not only is reality a thing, just as we are, but a thing we can know, just as we know ourselves (which leaves unanswered the question of how well we know ourselves).  

We are, or were, predators by nature.  Therefore we used to think, if we thought at all, that might makes right.  We went to war with people who gave different names to the things they called reality.  But we are no longer as nature made us.  We are no longer animals, guided by instinct.  Neither are we humans, guided by reason.  We are chimeras, the stuff of dreams.

Our wise men have said we move through life as dreamers do, not knowing we’re in a dream; or as fish do, not knowing they’re in water.  I'm sure fish know they're in water, even though they don't know what water is.  When I dream, I always know I’m dreaming.  When I’m awake, I feel as though I’m moving through something like water, that slows me down.  It's the dreams of those around me, who move through their lives and mine as sleepwalkers do.