One of my favourite hobbies is to try and understand my place in life through communing with the subconscious.
All will probably have different definitions of that term, so here's mine:
Subconscious territory is that part of inner rumination which is not at the will's immediate beck and call.
As a composer, this terrotory is where the original ideas emerge from to enrich the musical journey, so I try and plug into it (them?) whenever I can. I say 'them' because this territory has no borders, it expands, complexifies and tessellates itself just like the outer world of known galaxies does.
Freedom country, dream-ville, muse to amuse land. No clocks, no guards, no uniforms, no laws, just a deepening infinity of star-studded darkness, fertile with novelty ever as could be.
People have been coming up with tricks and devices to access this 'deep state' since time immemorial, or at least since we started speeding and busying up our existences here on planet earth and started to lose the plot, psychologically.
Meditation in its myriad expressions, self-hypnosis, lucid dreaming all count as methods of 'going dark' (so to speak).
Just as we have recently become aware of just how prolifically strange undersea life can be now we have subs that can go that deep, into such darkness, and this is a great analogy for Theta thought.
The deeper you sink, the more exotic the creatures, so it is when you learn to go spelunking into the unconscious.
I have mixed my metaphors here, yes, guilty! How dare metaphors escape their proscribed boundaries!
Cheeky... stay in line there!
Too many exclamation marks!! Another bad hobbit, yawn...
Puns too, better stop reading at this point, there, a quick click'n'scroll and it's like you never met me, Whew another clueless blatherer avoided!
Still curious where I am going with this then? (Me too!)
So, where were we?
Lets start with Alpha, sometimes linear logic is just plain handy after all. Be sparing as it will deceive you eventually, but for the purposes of this explanation...
Alpha state is usually very ephemeral, but none the worse for it. (Beware of double negatives!)
You're walking down the street, it's a fine day, spring flowers are blooming and a pop of pleasure lights up your brain circuits. Simple, irrational happiness, ranging from a small blip of seeing a colourful bird's wing and registering its beauty, to full-blown cosmic union with all creation epiphanies. (I shoukd hyohenate all those words, but...)
The chief characteristic of Alpha state is you can't plan when it happens. If you try to recreate it artificially, by repeating the circumstances it happened in, mostly it will fail. It doesn't want to be at hour beck and whim, it's not a callout pizza service.
What it is will probably vary more often than not, but certain sensations like snuggling in bed with your partner, gazing at a favourite view or piece of art, inhaling the aroma of a dish redolent with spicy memories, pretty much anything can trigger Alpha states, its almost irrelevant what the key is.
Only fortunate children and sweetly batty old people can make Alpha more than a fleeting experience, but quality beats quantity and a good Alpha moments can change your life, your day, your morning or a meeting. They are always happy and refreshing, the brain feels rinsed out and clear afterwards, better aligned with reality. A feature of brain health, to find spurts of life force invigorating it in this way.
Next comes Beta. This state of mind is often a euphemism for multi-tasking, something the modern world increasingly demands, and if you have a gift for it you will go far in the daily juggle of prioritisng reponsibilities that is the hallmark of most mental activity for most people, most days.
It seems a miracle that we can drive down a road, respond to cues of possible danger, listen to the radio, remember to stop at the vet's for something, and plan dinner at the same time, but we are capable of this, in fact if we have trouble in this quarter we risk being judged as dim, slow on the uptake. Speed and efficiency become the prime concerns as the brain does many layers of stategic calculus simultaneously in order for us to slow before stopping at a red light, remember candles for a birthday cake, and that errand you'd promised you'd do for someone. All brain states have their great pluses, and without a doubt we would miss this capability mightily, were we to lose it.
As usual everything has a shadow side, and Beta state has a big one. Its very addictive, and ignores orders to switch off when needed to.
The more you use it, the more you want to. 'Sure, I can do that, I go right past the place' or 'What's one more guest overnighting on the couch? Or two?' You only know youve gone too far when its far too far, and by then you can become a gibbering idiot trying to keep it all in the air, energies all carefully calibrated to accomplish your list of duties then something unexpected happens that you have to push to the top of the list, (flat tyre, whatever) and like dominoes down the chain there go all your other appointments and now you have to call them and explain and and and...
This is what's awful about too much Beta, it strings you out and you lose perspective,or you build your whole work life around it and then you lose a relative or something as disturbing and you crash because there's no slack, everything depends on things going well and when it doesn't you have to drive your plans -and your brain- harder to cope, aad one day after years of hyper-tension pop goes an artery, or you have a nervous breakdown and get irrational phobias, the list is long, and yet many choose to live life this way. It's temptingly well-rewarded to learn to multi-task, and go faster, faster, faster in search of greater production or higher efficiency, better sales figures, that swimming trophy or whatever youre obsessing on. This is the domain of workaholism, an addiction just as dangerous any any other. Beta state sells itself that it's all you need, (a bigger lie was never told, nor so convincingly!)
If you have a friend or family member you will know of which I speak, they may get lots done, but often whatever enjoyment they had at out-performing palls after a while, and by then everyone who knows you knows the price you can pay for thinking this is what your brain is functionally for all your waking time, after all you're the responsible one and there's always so much that needs doing, isn't there? It never ends... this mentality has infected a lot of the media too, so people babble instead of speak, reply without considering what was just said, and end up looking like chattering robots. Even the weatherman speaks like he's just swallowed a gallon of espresso, or he has 2p seconds and hes paid by the word.
Ok, enough about Beta for now, its exhausting just writing about it!
Whats left? Theta and Delta. As youll see later, Delta defies description, so the rest of this essay will be mostly about Theta, the elusive goddess.
To explain what Theta is not, I'll go non-linear on you and deal with Delta first.
Delta is ego-death, the dream you never remember, though it affected you somehow deeply.
Delta is a cat nap from which you awake feeling like you went for a timeless trip into amnesia.
You don't know if you slept an hour or a day, you were 'gone', no witness, no ego taking notes, total mindwipe.
With Alpha, as in Marcel Proust's bite into a cookie that he turned into a whole book, you remember them usually, not because you try to, just because, and even if you don't, it's not a problem really, they're out of your control to start with, remember? Proust didnt eat the cookie because he wanted a subject for a novel, the experience cut through his mindstuff and was powerful enough for him to want to endlessly eulogise it. No matter if we can't taste it just from reading about it, but we learn from the book what a good Alpha moment can be and do. Go get a cookie! Eureka!
It displaces the thoughts before it, and leaves a trail of crumbs after. Luckily he didnt need to write all his experiences so thoroughly or he would have decimated whole forests for paper.
(I did warn you about possible over-use of puns, didnt I?)
So back to Queen Theta, handmaiden of heaven, the witch at the cave door, the one who holds your hand as you take the down escalator, towards the pressured, darker areas of the mind, where the wild things live...
Delta is home, but you lose all but a tiny wisp that your consciousness experiences there. How big a whisp depends on your relationship with Theta, because when she leaves you have arrived in Delta, so you didn't even hear the door close, you lost your ego, your notepad's on the floor somewhere, and you don't care theres no you any more to bother about that stuff.
This is where identity has melted down into the warm, satisfying chocolate swirl of nothingness that has no taste because there is no you to taste any more.
You're free! So free that there is no you to be free anymore. You're part of it all. It does you a power of good, that's all you know because of how well rested you feel.
So Delta is home and you are home in Delta, whatever fear or concern you had was gently expunged along with all curiosity or desire, all melted into the all, again.
But if it's so blissful, why not remember it?
Thats the question? It is for me, I can't just leave well alone I guess!
See, Theta will stay with you as long as you remain aware of her. She only leaves because you're too tired to hold her hand. So if you want to remember those beings who took you to their bosom of oblivion, if you want, want, want more and more awareness, (which you probably do, but maybe don't know it yet!), then you want to train yourself to remember she's there as long as you can before giving up the ghost.
It can mean the difference between blissing out in healing oblivion, or a new melody to bring back alive.
I hope you have enjoyed my little effort to eff the ineffable, and you will add comments if you please, as or if some of you find such random ramblings worthy of perusal.
(Even with sentence run-on, ellipses and such other bugbears that betray my fumbling with the writer's craft...)