Juan Apolinario C. Reyes
I had shared this before in FB. Some 25 years ago, I started writing a dream journal. Each day that I had a dream, I would make it a point to write it down as soon as I got to my desk in the faculty room.
If experience builds character, then my devotion to this dream journal strongly shaped mine. Its truly amazing how something as strange as keeping a dream journal can shape one's character dramatically. Some looks at reality and wishes for an alternative state of being which is all imagination. I, on the other hand, looked into my dreams when asleep and when I woke up, I saw reality as clear as pristine water. In ancient times, society would have taken me to be a shaman.
I am no longer as dutiful about keeping a dream journal as before. But I am cultivating a new habit now which is to read people's posts here in FB. Here from FB, I can see clearly that our minds have a life of its own. Some people imagine they react objectively to an external stimulus. But what they do not know is their minds act pretty much the same way in any sort of environment. Their minds have a particular landscape such that any ball thrown into it rolls straight down to a particular valley. They do not see it that way, of course, but I do. I keep a mind-journal and I track the workings of their mind.
There is a downside to this habit, the habit to be introspective. One becomes just a mind. One loses emotions. If he has emotions, he is emotive only for things of the mind. Three years ago, I approached my father in the house terrace. I said to him straight on that since he was already an old man, its only fitting that I prepare for his funeral. I asked for his permission to make him a funerary urn.
He said yes.
I made him one, its made from paper mache. Today this container keeps a lock of his hair. Some of my friends shudders at the thought that I did that to my father. Well, that is precisely what a man is capable of doing when he is just a mind.
I had shared this before in FB. Some 25 years ago, I started writing a dream journal. Each day that I had a dream, I would make it a point to write it down as soon as I got to my desk in the faculty room.
If experience builds character, then my devotion to this dream journal strongly shaped mine. Its truly amazing how something as strange as keeping a dream journal can shape one's character dramatically. Some looks at reality and wishes for an alternative state of being which is all imagination. I, on the other hand, looked into my dreams when asleep and when I woke up, I saw reality as clear as pristine water. In ancient times, society would have taken me to be a shaman.
I am no longer as dutiful about keeping a dream journal as before. But I am cultivating a new habit now which is to read people's posts here in FB. Here from FB, I can see clearly that our minds have a life of its own. Some people imagine they react objectively to an external stimulus. But what they do not know is their minds act pretty much the same way in any sort of environment. Their minds have a particular landscape such that any ball thrown into it rolls straight down to a particular valley. They do not see it that way, of course, but I do. I keep a mind-journal and I track the workings of their mind.
There is a downside to this habit, the habit to be introspective. One becomes just a mind. One loses emotions. If he has emotions, he is emotive only for things of the mind. Three years ago, I approached my father in the house terrace. I said to him straight on that since he was already an old man, its only fitting that I prepare for his funeral. I asked for his permission to make him a funerary urn.
He said yes.
I made him one, its made from paper mache. Today this container keeps a lock of his hair. Some of my friends shudders at the thought that I did that to my father. Well, that is precisely what a man is capable of doing when he is just a mind.