Trippy

Instructions for seeing the back of your own head:

1. Find a simple stick about a foot long.
2. Push it a bit into the ground so it stands on its own.
3. Study the stick from a standing position.
4. Lay down next to the stick and put your eye as close to it as you can, still facing up.
5. Study the stick from this new position.

This process is the same as stopping and letting your self take another step forward, so that you see the back of your own head (which is impossible).

This is what happens when I take metaphor a step beyond the normal literary or comparative application. It means doing something out of the ordinary, something no one would do on purpose (except me, I guess) in order to develop a metaphor for something that's hard to think about, like looking at the back of your own head (in real life, not in a mirror), or infinity, or enlightenment. There are things going on all around me I was never aware of before I started hanging out with all you other stoners- I mean, Zen practitioners, and this is my way of packaging them so I can examine them and poke them with a stick.

I was at work a few hours ago, doing maintenance on my machine. I was doing the Samu part, which involved solvent and rags and sweaty rubber gloves. I knew that when I finished, I could go home a couple hours early and dash to the computer to talk to the people in my head (that's you) so I was working along at a good clip, being all efficient and cleaning every part in the same order, not really thinking about anything- you know, absorbed in my work. Then I realized, with a bit of bewilderment, that there was a conversation going on in my head between an elderly Nazi prison camp guard and a tribunal judge. You may have heard about this guy almost getting deported to Germany from America a day or so ago. Well, he was pleading his case in court, IN MY HEAD, and I wasn't in charge of the dialogue.

WTF?

Of course, the same thing happens in dreams, no big deal. But it took me a minute to put that together. What stuck with me was the fact that there was thinking going on while I was awake, to which I became consciously privy after it was already going on for a while. That still weirds me out a bit when I think about it too hard.

I know this is normal, but I have never picked it apart (or poked it with a stick) before, and being Buddhist kinda shines a new light on it.

The point is, while mindlessly (mindfully?) doing my work, I walked up behind myself and looked at the back of my own head. It still freaks me out.