Cluttered Minds

Painted Rocks, Arizona--2014

I’ve written a blog every day since returning home two weeks ago but this morning my mind was a blank.  Is the human mind ever blank?  I doubt it.  My mind was full this morning, full of the issues of a restless night, thoughts of meeting with Vernon for breakfast and dealing with what he described as his depression and his fear of death, prompting me to think of my own; thinking too, about what I might do today  My mind was not blank, it was crammed with so many wandering thoughts (and tasks) that I could not focus on any single thought.

There are no blank minds.  To the contrary, people are burdened by cluttered minds rather than empty ones.  Bombarded each new day with a thousand and one inputs,  the media, the cell phone, Emails, etc., it is a wonder that any of us are able to function at all with sound minds.

With the continuous influx of information, trifling or serious, important or unimportant, personal or impersonal, real or imagined pulsating in our heads every conscious moment and perhaps even in our unconscious states, we become captives in our own minds.  Even when we make a conscious effort to focus in on one thing we find it impossible to do so.  The mind, though small, has so many functions that must go on simultaneously that it does not have the option to choose any one specific thing and we cannot make it do so.

“Singleness of mind” is not possible.