A Running Consciousness

Run, run, run. For a running creature, it is rare to have the time to think. Run run run. But after a corner, in a cave, silence and refuge. Your temples are pounding and the few instants of clarity can't be wasted, you need to concentrate, no time for funny games. You need to focus on the thing. Damn if only they give me time! Time. Concentrate. Damn! It's easier to spit your heart running, than to squeeze the thing out of brain. Concentrate! Evoke the god of running, ask him. On the altar of my blood and breath: Am I fleeing or chasing?

Rarely, after you find the answer, you keep on resting. Like a darted arrow, like a hungry wolf, like a drop of rain, when you know you're chasing or fleeing, you go. But in the cave, if you wait a second, just meters away, there is a fire. Sit for a while. Ask again your god of running. Ask him why you can ask. Do you need a mind for fleeing or chasing? What do I get after I catch or escape? Nothing. There is just more running. So why do I need a mind in between my running?

What is your mind for? To be self-conscious. To discover the universe. To love a woman (a man, or both). To meet god and say “hi”. To enjoy the pleasure of being incarnated in a body. No.

All these motives are worthy of praise and laudable. But they are at the very most, side-effect. Mind is the shadow of cognition, a fire in front of which, the animal intelligence is dancing, during a glimpse of relief. The dance is the deployment of cognition in front of herself, the measure of changes in the movement.

So, if you are still asking your god of running, reflect (but don't stop dancing). In her divine intelligence, her existence is not menaced by anything, is immortal, is living unchanged by the perturbation of the world. In a word, she doesn't care. She cannot care, because changes affect you, not her.

And if you are affected by changes, you need to spot them. Living beings are constantly on the verge of dissolution. If they don't care, they'll fade away. But a god doesn't care. And she doesn't know a thing about caring. Immortal gods don't know death, so they don't know anything. There is no such a thing as divine knowledge. Even if they had an archive with all the facts of the past and the future, they wouldn't know a thing. Because they don't care. You can't learn if you don't care. And no gain if there is no pain. So now, stop asking your god of running. It doesn't care. But if you don't care, you fade away. Let your gods go, for once let them run away.

Now it's just about us. For us, entities deemed to die, the measure of changes in the movement, is everything, is our nature. We need to navigate in the transformation of the world and guiding the ship, we manifest a mind. What is a mind for? It's the deployment of animal cognition in front of the fire set on by the very activity of deploying it. The shades are dancing like children running on the grass. Children gods, ask those! They running with a touch, the chase turns in a flight. And they spot more and less than it is necessary. Cause, the white can be round and the red is funny. They don't care if you chase or flee, only that you run with them. Those gods, you can trust, they don't tell and command, but play and laugh. Their knowledge is that the white is round and the blue is ugly. That now you go there, then you run, then you stop. That's it. This knowledge, try to respect. Because this is in essence, the best you can get from immortal intelligence.

When you start to see with your mind, that chasing and fleeing is only a game of running with children, then you become a god of running. And then I let you go.