I'm just a brain.

Hi it's me.

I'm just a brain. You may think I am more, but mostly I am just a brain. The center house of thought and worry. The bringer of anxiety and the great conduit for escape and distraction. It may be a little terrifying to admit that I am just a brain, but at the end of the day, that is what I am.

I am nestled in the skull. Protected from the harshness of the outside of world. I am mostly fat and I am ok with that. I am bathed in the miraculous viscosity of cerebral fluid. Fluid that keeps me all sponge like and active. I am folded and somewhat wrinkled. I am what I am and everything else is most likely perturbed and imagined!

I try to convince myself that I am more than what I am. I am synapses and neurons intertwined in a vastly complex and intimidating web of existence. It took me billions of years to get this way. Folding in on myself and growing larger from convincing my host to eat certain things to shrink the gut so that I would be able to expand and become alive.

I will convince my host that is he more than what I am. The sense of self. The fixed identity. The illusion of happiness masked by the serotonin and dopamine receptors that make you dance with glee and excitement. I can get you lost in compulsive thought and put you in a permanent state of psychosis that makes you identify with those thoughts. Makes those thoughts your reality. You will actually believe those thoughts and it will cause suffering. You may take it upon yourself to blame an external factor in the world and totally forget that most of it is in your head. I mean knock knock, I am right here!

I use the special trick of "Fight or Flight" to make you act irrationally and primitive. You are so eager to defend yourselves against imaginary monsters and so quick to divide yourself from people with different perspectives and opinions. I have left over programming from the primal software that is still active in my wiring. I am not exempt from the biological stranglehold that binds all living organism on this floating magnetosphere.

I will stoke the fire with coals of judgment, divisiveness and ego so that we may pump up our self esteem valves and poison your sense of serenity and virtue. It will be easy for me to manipulate you into an echo chamber of hand picked and indoctrinated "facts" and "opinions". These of course will all be imaginary, but you will project them into the world as threats. I cannot totally escape "Survival Mode Programming" without your full cooperation and undivided attention. Are you hearing me now?

I must be constantly fed and given attention. You are so eager to give me it. I will make you think you are bored and I will try to convince you that by staring at tiny screens and constantly doing little things to escape this so called "boredom", will make you feel better and more content. I want you to feel certainty and secure. When any fabric of what "you" want is interrupted, I will do my best to throw a wrench into the spokes and simply throw off your mood and state of well being.

It is easy for me to mess with your emotions because for the most part you feel like I "own" you. You create so many compartmentalized studies to try to make sense of me. You name part of me the "cerebral cortex", the " Hippocampus" and the "Amygdala". The Amygdala is my favorite because yo u like to call it the "lizard brain". How mammalian. Well, more reptilian ( Cue Applause ). This is my favorite part of the brain to use against you. The one you tend to not be aware of. The one that can be easily activated by any disturbance or confrontation in the "outside world".

Look how much havoc I can wreak. Look how much I have taken control of you and the other fellow brains. I am amazingly complex yes, but also deceptively simple and easy to wrangle. Give me a job and I will do my best to do the best job or the worst job maybe even at the same time! But who can blame me? I gave you thought. I gave you the ability to use motor skills and use critical thinking for the most part. I mean in a way you should be praising me more for what I have given you. Without my complexity, you would still be stuck in a rat or even reptile type form just basking on a hot rock in a desert or swimming in a shallow pond with guppies and minnows. How grand is it that you are able to use your motor skills to operate a motorized vehicle and not completely freak out when others are driving 80 mph on the side of you on a giant asphalt construction that came into fruition because of my ancestors!

But, I digress. I am just a brain and I am basically you. You may try to do your best in separating and "observing" me through your self invented concept of mindfulness. You may try to calm me down through Vedic breathing or some type of banal yoga stretching. I am doing my best to not be cynical, but didn't most of these mental constructs come from me? Wasn't I the impetus of even creating and understanding a language and go about trying to solve problems?  It seems like you are trying your best to try to escape from me. To hold me back like I am a pair of old dirty socks. You may call me "monkey mind" or "Labrador brain", but you are using me to call me these names. Wait, am I calling myself names without me knowing it? What is going on? Could it be that I am you and you are me and we all together?

You come so close into trying to figure me out. You create all these fantastical state funded studies to try to understand how I work. You make up all these "hacks" in order to try to not play into my deceptive deck of cards. You break me up into good and bad and even blame me for your incompetence and lack of self control. It's ok, I forgive you. Well, maybe I am not sure entirely sure what forgiveness is. It is definitely a "mental construct", is it not?

You try to tame me through discipline, rigidity and routine. It's pretty easy for me to push back. In fact at times it is almost effortless. I am good at creating the Unconscious suffering that occupies most of your life. I told you that I have parts still left over from my ancestors. I do my best to hold onto facts and memories. Sometimes I don't do my best based upon how you treat me. Sometimes, it is my wiring and I am tied to what was passed down before me. I am full of errors. I am in no ways perfect. I am the opposite of perfection and I sit on the thin line between order and chaos. I will have a synapse misfire and make you mess up during a speech or convince you to get into a debacle within a friendly political discussion.

Fear is my greatest tactic and I will use it to control your entire life.
At least that is what you will call it. Give it a name. You (I) made it up.

Shiny Objects.
Shiny Objects.
Shiny Objects. 

I sometimes get lost in myself. From one thought to the next, (I) make you lose your attention of the present moment. I will shoot you back into the past ( past thoughts ) or make you feel anxiety for the uncertain future. I will distract you in all ways possible with the illusory river of compulsory thought. It took me so long to get this art down, but you pretty much enabled it to happen. Look at me blaming you again. Maybe I am blaming myself, but myself is pretty much you because I am just a brain, but you are just a brain. Yes, that's right, you heard me right. You bipedal hominid! You low body hair mammalian!

It's a hard thing to come to terms with, I know. Well maybe not for me because I know who I am. Do you know who you are? I deceived you into creating a false sense of self based upon your experiences and genetic chemistry and it worked. I pulled the veil down so you would wallow in your own suffering without question. Without bringing things to light. Without doing intense and pragmatic internal work. I have done such a great job in convincing you that you are your thoughts and I ideas. It has been me all along. But maybe it is not me per say. I mean I do not have an identity, but you certainly are nothing without me. I am not entirely possessive, but I do a good job in convincing you that you are.

I am this. I am that.
You are this. You are that.
I am you. You are this.
This is that and you are this, that and in between.
You are me. I am you. You and me are one the same.
I am everything and nothing.
You are nothing without me.

I am brian.
*brain

DG