Inner padded cell
Tuesday, 14 April 2026; half past dark
Where Descartes’ meditations led him to a distinction between mind and body, mental and physical in that hierarchical order… mine lead me to a distinction between inner and outer worlds/universes/experiences… however one sees the 2 distinct dimensions, environments, realities?
They’re co-dependent, heuristic, my inner learns from the outer, which gives me the tools to inform the outer…
My inner world, where I reside most of the time, is like a padded cell. I bounce around off the walls, ceilings, entertain different thoughts, ideas, whims, notions as they occur… no escape, and, though no consequences it’s still governed by what I hold holy, ethical, always mindful of being the target of whatever deed or words I might offer the other, within, or without, in the outer world…
but it is a voyage of discovery as I surf through each moment in time, unfocused or focused on my self or some abstraction…my awareness seems boundless, I can think to the edge of time or self, heat death to self death…imagine, remember, create events that could, would, might, should, never, possibly, probably, ever…happen, occur, permitted…
There is me, I, mine and there is you, thou and thine…by design they cannot be equal, as my inner world is not yours, as yours is not mine… the balance is in managing the equivalence, adjusting the asymmetry, moment by moment, continuously mindful of the hubris, arrogance, asymmetry I can so easily fall into…
However, there is an untested aspect to inner meditations that is only evident when I have to interface with an other as part of my outer habitat… be it a cat, wife, colleague, dog, etc…
My outer world where my flesh and bones reside, where the consequences of my choices, words, deeds directly impact the quality of my inner world in an asymmetric manner; no escape from the consequences…
I am continuously surprised by the qualitative difference between my inner dialogue and a real-world dialogue in terms of how I respond, moment by moment, to the deeds or words of the other…
I find thoughts coalescing into surprising ‘beliefs’ or ‘facts’ as I respond in agreement or not… how the taking of a position can arise out of opposition or agreement…simply by articulating it in the outer world…
my words create, realities, events, things in both inner and outer; but it is only in the outer that I am held to the realities my words create, as much by myself, as by others…
I hold myself to a standard in the outer world that is partly governed by perceptions of me by the other, the impact of deeds and words of all the others involved in an event…of being mindful of the impact I have on the other…
I admit this is different to the standard I apply to myself in the inner world…