Originally Posted by
courage2 
I didn't see this until Deliza quoted it. I'd add, look inside myself. I wouldn't even call it a moral inventory. Just an inward examination of the moral center.
A few nights ago I had an experience between waking and sleeping. I was exploring the inside of my skull, particularly that part that often seems buzzing and heavy like lead. It was a gigantic terrain, with strange pockets that unfolded like the pockets in a shoe bag. When I got to the base of the skull I started climbing, and the terrain kept going up and up and spreading out, practically unrolling in front of me both higher and wider, all black and flat, like a football field in the dead of night.
Ever since then I've had the strangest sensation of mental emptiness. I feel like I scooped out my brain. I know I can still think because I can communicate, but my mind is absent and when I close my eyes I have little self-perception. I feel no desire, and no strong consciousness of passing time or place. No depression or torpor either. Just blank.
Weirdness. Just sharing
I quit drinking using the techniques espoused by Rational Recovery, which basically says that we are of two brains, an animal brain that keeps us alive by making sure we breathe, eat, and stay warm and safe, and our higher level thinking human brain. The animal brain is basically operating out of sight, processing stimuli a third of a second faster than our human brain does. (In RR thinking, alcoholism is caused by a chemical or neural rewiring in our brains that make our animal brains think we need alcohol to survive, just like food. Hence, it is constantly sending sometimes subtle, sometimes overt messages to our human brain to drink.) What really fascinates me is that gray area where information is handed off and deliberated between our two brains. Perhaps, this is what causes our various mental states.
Gilmer, maybe your edginess is being caused by too much information being relayed from your animal brain to your higher brain. Or maybe it is sending conflicting information to it, and your higher level brain is scrambling around trying to figure out what information is important, and what can be safely disregarded. Hence, you feel that your mind is constantly racing, and it is unsettling.
Courage, perhaps you have inadvertently discovered this realm, where you are simply watching information being shared between your brains in a non judgmental way. More likely, you are operating in a hereto unrecognizable part of your human brain, a zen state usually obtainable only by psychedelics or Ram Dass level meditation. Your thinking implies a third eye view of brain functioning, as though you are watching yourself from above. It doesn't seem to be freaking you out, so I say run with it for a bit. But what do I know? I work in a grocery store.
Del, that sux big time and I'm very sorry. Hang in there and don't chuck it all away in frustration. It won't do you any good jumping off the ladder you are trying to climb. You could really hurt yourself.
Carlos, bring a little warm weather up with you please. It's been nothing but rainy and cool for days in Pennsylvania. Talk about June gloom.
Have a good day all!