The Flock of Thought

 

Me, Julian, and his great-grandfather, Dr. Wade Ash

I. Standing Apart from Thought

I wrote about consciousness yesterday, but today I want to look at it more carefully. Without using a filter to explain why, I’ll simply say: I understand consciousness best when I let it stand alone—apart from thought.

And because of this open-minded understanding, I can imagine living forever, eternally conscious, but quite forgetful.

II. Dream-Lives and Their Wisdom

My nocturnal dreams have given me this idea. Last night, I was busy—getting ready to open a car lot in a town I made up in my mind. I was going to be selling old classic cars. I recall a yellow ’55 Chevy and a turquoise ’52 Chevy. There were other nice cars too, but I’ve forgotten most of the details.

The “dealership” was unusual. It was set on a bit of a hill, with tall pines all around. The road frontage was short—just a sliver of access. Ed Stewart (a current Lowe’s lumber DS) was working with me. I’d asked him to move the turquoise ’52 Chevy to the very corner of the lot—our big attention-grabber. Even now, I think that was a good call.

Ed came down the hill, a little too fast. He went right past me—nearly hit me—and then crashed into a nearby building, flipping the Chevy upside down. I ran over to him. My first concern was whether or not he was okay; but then my thoughts turned to the car.

There were subtler details too. As is often the case in my dreams, I was either in my underwear or maybe even naked at one point—naked and embarrassed, which is a recurring theme for me.

So, why mention these details here?

Because in that dream, I simply wasn’t living this life. The part I played was completely unlike the one I play in this “reality.” In dreams, I’m sometimes married to someone other than Susan. I live in different houses. I have different careers. Seldom do I waste a night of sleep cloning this life within it. I take full advantage of a wild imagination and become someone else entirely.

If I ever looked in a mirror during one of these dreams, I imagine I’d see someone different than the person who stares back at me in waking life.

III. Consciousness Without Familiar Data

This feels important to me—an example of consciousness without familiar data. In dreams, I have unique experiences that don’t correspond to my waking life. I am fully conscious in them, yet it’s no trouble at all to forget who I think I am while having one.

Not only have I been married to someone other than my wife in dreams, I completely forget the wife I had before I fell asleep. I think this is important. It’s why I believe forgetting is part of life eternal.

This is why I mention Dorothy so often.

IV. Dorothy and the Mirror of Memory

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wakes at the very end. She looks around and recognizes characters from Oz—but they are already shedding their old wardrobes. The dream is fading, becoming layered beneath what she calls “reality.”

This scene explains, to me, how dreams and memory might be layers of the same whole. I can easily imagine “waking up” from this life and eventually saying, “You won’t believe the dream I just had.”

Dorothy, at first, was convinced that Oz was real. “Doesn’t anyone believe me?” she asked.

We never saw the sequel. But if there had been one, maybe we’d find Dorothy at age fifty, with grown children gathered around her dinner table. One might say, “Mom, tell us about Oz.”

And maybe she’d wave it off:
“Oh goodness, no. That was just a feverish dream I had when I was a girl. I really can’t remember it now—not much, anyway. It was very strange.”

And if you can imagine that scene, then you can imagine why I believe consciousness and memory are independent of each other.

V. Which Version Wakes Up?

We talk about life after death—about living on. But if that’s true, what version of us awakens?

Consider my father-in-law, Dr. Wade Ash. His mind deteriorated beyond recognition before he died. A learned professor, teacher, civil servant, father, husband, deacon, and principal—his life was full. But in the end, the man we loved was not the man he had been.

We honored him with a sweet service. Since then, what remains of his legacy has been poured over, codified, sifted through, and distributed among his loved ones.

So again, I ask: Which version of Dr. Ash would have awakened in his new, astral body?

If he awakened in the state he died, he’d be lost—confused, unaware of the incredible story he left behind. If he awakened in his forties, he’d be sharp, yes—but he wouldn’t yet hold that old-man wisdom.

I no longer believe it’s either of those options.

VI. The Nature of Thought and Memory

It was hard for me to accept at first, but I don’t believe thoughts and memories bond permanently to consciousness. I do believe both continue, in their way—but I see them as things: subject to renovation, repurposing, reworking.

They are things that can be divided like the spoils of any life-story—handed down, preserved in containers.

Not everyone likes this idea.

But imagine someone bound to a wheelchair, unable to feed or bathe himself. Now imagine that same person awakening without those limitations. Wouldn’t it be a kindness for him to forget?

What of the tortured and beaten? Shouldn’t they be allowed to forget too?

VII. The Flock of Thought

This is what I believe:

Consciousness is one continuous event. It doesn’t need to carry every thought and memory—because it contains all of them, without loss of identity. It is expanding with the universe, and it always will.

Thoughts and memories? They flock. They swirl and appear in the sky for a while, like birds. One thought flies away. Another joins. The flock looks like a black cloud for a time, and then—as I age—it thins.

If I share a thought, it may fly away from me and become part of another’s flock. If I share a memory, it may settle in someone else’s sky. These thoughts and memories don’t die. They occur, and they escape.

To remember is when a former thought rejoins the pattern.
To forget is when a thought escapes the flock.

We’re aware of this, but rarely do we speak of it in relation to the Hereafter.

We say, “It occurred to me.”
And I see it as a flock—
the same flock that flies forever in the great Akashic Cloud.

This is how I understand thoughts and memories.
But this is not consciousness.

VIII. The Cause and the Cloud

Consciousness is universal. It’s what bodies and brains depend on.

A heart, for instance, has a healthy rhythm—and it depends on consciousness to remember that rhythm. But a brain does not require thought to function in this way.

Bodies are flasks. Temporary. Capable of aliveness only because of consciousness.

Thoughts and memories are sticky things that attach themselves to bodies, affecting the brain in the process. They come and go—rearranged, shared, and released. Like breath.
Inhale, exhale. Rearranged. Moved on.

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IX. Therefore, in Conclusion:

Bodies are born, and bodies die.
Consciousness is one event—and it is eternal.
Thoughts are things.
Affected by whomever they occur to.
Held in the eternal Akashic Record, forever increasing the knowledge of the Whole.

And the expansion of the Absolute All is not a mystery.

The mystery is this: only goodness survives.

We see it when a wound heals.
When a species evolves.
More than the Lewisian moral code, this Goodness-Code is proof enough for me that a Loving God is that which expands—physically, spiritually, in knowledge, and in kindness.

Consciousness is The Cause through which Love increases—faster than the speed of light, in all directions, forever.

Aslan is on the move, and the sleigh of evil is getting stuck.

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X. In Flight Again

Where is Dr. Ash?

My memory of him just occurred to me—proving that some of the thoughts from his flock have joined me. I don’t have his whole flock by any means. I don’t recall skinny-dipping in Wimpy’s Lake. But that memory is out there, somewhere—flittering around in its scattered way, with the most beautiful wings of pure, imperishable blackness.

Waiting for another body to occur to—
or another youthful plunge—
under other skies,
by other lakes—
unforgotten until in flight again.
But never dying.

Eternal Life
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