Oz: I am Oz -- the Great and Powerful. Who are you? Who are you?!
Dorothy: If you please, I am Dorothy -- the small and meek. We've come to ask --
Oz: SILENCE!
Dorothy: Oh, Oh, Jiminy Crickets!
Oz: The Great and Powerful Oz knows why you have come. Step forward, Tin Man.
Tin Man: Uahh.
Oz: You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!
Tin Man: Oooohhh. Uh, yes, yes sir. Yyyes, your Honor. You see, awhile back we were walking down the yellow brick road and --
Oz: QUIET!!!
Tin Man: Oooohhhhhh!
Oz: And you, Scarecrow, have the effrontery to ask for a brain! You billowing bale of bovine fodder!!
Scarecrow: Thanks, your Honor -- I mean, your Excellency -- I mean, your Wizardry.
Oz: ENOUGH! And you, Lion. Well?!!
[The Cowardly Lion faints]
An audio rendering of this column:
For most of us, and I must surmise because I only know my own experience, when we begin to explore our minds, our subjective awareness, it can be as frightening as it was for the quartet who approached the Great Wizard.
We don’t understand this great beast that exists in the shadows — that seems to watch over everything we do. That is a part of us, yet isn’t — at least from the perspective of our walking-around objective awareness. Our minds can seem to be the source of great inner conflict between what we do and what we think. We really don’t understand what our mind is or how it works. What is real and what is ‘just’ our imagination. Philosophers, psychologists and pundits have long considered and debated what exists beyond the grey matter of our brains. Is it a collection of passed down animal instincts from our so-called physical evolution? Is it our ‘subconscious’ developed through nature and nurture in the years of our childhood? Is it Freud’s Id, Ego and SuperEgo?
So to begin our discussion, allow me to share my first real ‘recognition’ of my own subjective awareness in which I discovered that there appeared to be some aspect of myself of which I was previously unaware.
I had a prior indication that there was something more going on through my teenage and young adult ‘trips’ using LSD, including the infamous “Owsley” version of orange sunshine that made the rounds in the 1970’s. I professed for many years afterwards that everyone should do acid at least once. There were things I learned about myself and my mind that stayed with me throughout adulthood. Mostly that things were not as black and white with the world and our awareness as we might think. It definitely left an indelible mark on me as I continued to move through my life.
Also beginning as a teenager, I have smoked marijuana my whole life. I definitely preferred it to drinking as a recreational tool. I refuse to call it a ‘drug’ — that designation has been propagandized to death, and I am not a ‘druggie’. Tool is a more appropriate designation, and I have used it as such to offer myself grounding and peace in a world that was decidely jarring to my psyche, health and well-being.
I have never been a morning smoker. “Wake and Bake” was just as jarring to me as not smoking at all. My preference has generally been to smoke in the late afternoon, evening or nighttime as a calm-down from my corporate life as an IT engineer, much like others may like an alcoholic beverage. I have since retired, but continue using marijuana for, in my case, the obvious benefits that I have found it offers me in well-being and relaxation.
I also credit marijuana with allowing me a greater connection to my subjective self. However, it has been in the last 15 years that my recognition and exploration of my subjective mind has made the greatest strides, and it was not related to the use of these mind-altering tools.
That began one day around 2007. Let me preface this also by sharing what I knew about my own mind, and what my experience had been to that point. I always assumed that what I experienced must be the same as what everyone else experiences. That these properties of my own mind were not unique to me — that they happened to everyone in the same way. I now know that is not the case, but I didn’t at the time.
The first thing is that I always had music playing in my head. Always. Not a moment of my waking life was without a musical backdrop. People call them earbugs, but for me, it was constant, even into my dream states. Having always been a music aficionado, it did not surprise me. My musical tastes were eclectic and diverse. And I enjoyed playing complicated and difficult songs note for note in my head when I was unable to listen to music from a device. So some of it was voluntary, but most of the time, the music plays whether I am consciously choosing it or not. Involuntarily, it would often take the form of something I had objectively listened to recently. I learned that unless I wanted “Rage Against The Machine” playing in my head for the next 4 days, that I should be choosy about what I listen to.
Diverse forms of music such as Mahavishnu Orchestra or King Crimson were quite acceptable, and I could play their most challenging songs in my mind note for note. If I had become a musician, my ability to memorize and reproduce music would have been unparalleled. It hasn’t all been fun though. When I became sick in 2022 and couldn’t sleep for almost a week, it became torment because I couldn’t shut up the music, and my body and brain cried out for rest. Other than that I have come to accept it as part of myself and my subjective mind.
The second thing that became apparent to me after the turn of the century is that I had a ‘companion’ in my head. I don’t remember exactly when it started, but there was a voice that was always speaking. For the most part I ignored it. It’s not like it was whispering in my ear, or telling me to do things. It was just a voice, speaking. Little if any of it made sense or seemed important.
If I paid attention to it, I could sometimes lead it by putting together sentences in my mind, like something flowing to me where I formed the words and sentences while giving inflection to the speech. It just sounded like me — like I was doing it. But it never really made any sense or seemed important. Again, I just thought it was the same for everyone and they just dealt with it however they could. But it did not seem particularly relevant or noteworthy. It just was what it was.
Until that day in 2007. I had started my own IT business a few years earlier. I was as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. My office was the basement floor of my home. I had my computer, multiple monitors, my file server in the closet. My business was all two of us. I had one employee who did service calls strictly, as I did also. But I was responsible for every other aspect of the business — accounting, ordering, billing, payables, as well as primary responsibility for over 20 companies’ networks, which I managed remotely from my workstation. Everything that needed to be done on these business networks was done from there except the things which required an on-site visit. I worked from about 6am often to about 10pm. I needed help, but I was too busy to figure out how to get help. It was madness, but I was good at it. I used to say I was the best in the world at what I did, like it was imprinted in my DNA.
I had to teach myself how to focus so completely on my tasks that I could move quickly. Because of the nature of the business and computer systems at the time, maintenance required a series of steps that I would have to lay out, and then do over and over again for every server and/or workstation I was responsible for, some 25 servers and around 200 workstations. I had to do it perfectly, and everything had to be completed in succession. That meant switching window to window to window, connection to connection, and required razor-sharp attention and incredible focus. There was no room for errors or losing track. And I was always working against the clock.
This particular day was just as busy as most. Now this voice in my head that I mentioned earlier had taken to, around this time, an ongoing monotonous drone. I used to liken it to the moment I sat down at my workstation, as if this person in my head opened the newspaper or a magazine and just began reading out loud. On and on, the voice spoke in nonsense. Not gibberish, but it may as well have been.
And on this day as the morning gave way to afternoon, I was embroiled in one of my usual series of tasks. I was running updates on remote systems and shuffling windows on and off my screen in succession as I made my way through the processes. I was pushing my abilities to do so very aggressively. The ‘voice’ had been quite consistent throughout, but it seemed to be getting louder and louder, and it finally reached a fevered pitch where it was becoming a distraction. I tried to settle myself but I was really becoming dismayed by this point. I didn’t know what the voice was, and I was powerless to stop it. Finally in frustration, I slammed down my mouse on the desk, pushed my chair away, and threw up my hands in the air as I loudly yelled out “WHAT? WHAT? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT?”
What happened next is something I’ll always remember.
The ‘voice’ fell silent. A few moments passed and then I heard clearly and concisely the voice, but this time in a whisper.
It said, “shhhhh, he’s listening.”
I think I was so astounded that I literally laughed out loud. And then I sat there dumbfounded as the silence returned. Although the voice returned, it was never in the same manner. I had to ‘learn how’ to listen.
Almost from that moment on, the ‘voice’ became not a nuisance, not a trick of the mind, not something to be ignored, but a partner.
It was still a couple more years before my life took a turn toward embracing spiritual or mystical matters, but I believe that this incident is when I made my first steps in recognizing my subjective awareness.
In Part 2, I will begin discussing what I have learned since, and how I now regard what had previously been my ‘Wizard behind the curtain.’
Looking forward to part 2. 😀
Sweet Jesus brother, reading this means that I am not alone. I also had a voice in my head, for as long as I can remember, that would try to warn me, or give me advice, and I would always shut down, thinking it was just my imagination(had I chosen to listen I would've avoided a lot of issues in my life, live and learn I guess). It wasn't until I started meditating that I came to understand it was not my imagination and had a similar experience as you did when they said you were listening. My experience was more like the voice had gotten out of jail, started yelling that he was finally free. Since then my inner chatter has turned into a partner that I work with and I most certainly take the advice that is offered.