What If?

Since that last post, started on Thursday but not completed until today (Sunday), I've had the wonderful opportunity to spend each of those nights more awake than asleep, quietly (mostly) following my stream of consciousness. Among the islands in that stream were the island of peaceful meditation with healing light, the island of anxiety about how crappy I'd feel the next day, the continent of contemplation about the nature of dedication to a hopeless and ridiculous project, the islet of don't believe in that continent, and the lovely tropical motu of What If. My favorite dwelling place. Trade winds. Soft sand and turquoise waters. And endless possible variations on perceived reality, where nothing is sacred but everything is.

What if... what seemed like inspiration and now feels stupid by the light of day really were inspiration? And, if so, inspired by whom or what?

What if... time really is not a continuum, if past, present, future is a human construct to make sense, with our limited vision, of a moment in which all exists at once?

What if...other civilizations, if we're to call them that, do exist, but we don't perceive them because they aren't physical in the way we experience physical? Might the universe(s) not well be populated by many kinds of sentience, not necessarily in any life form or beings as we perceive them?

What if... the miracles and visions of our ancient prophets, seers, visionaries, and divinities are all true and all nothing like we perceive them? Like time, humanity must make sense of what it can't explain, and so the "chariots of the gods" become the wheel within a wheel, an alien implantation a virgin birth, beaming up an ascension? Is it any less miraculous? If a caterpillar can "die" and morph into a butterfly or moth, might not apparent miracles be as mundane in parallel dimensions overlapping this one?

What if... there really are "things" in the closet, under the bed, in the basement, in the dark? What if children really do retain a bit of a pre-birth consciousness (not exactly Wordsworthian, but) that enables a kind of perception of the invisible that age diminishes as we grow to be more of the world.

What if... all the stories of alien visitation are not only true, but only part of the truth. Is it even possible we are alone in this vast cosmos?

What if... an entire civilization lives on a "planet" that is some sub-atomic particle in a toenail, its entire history, from inception to destruction, in our perception of time, lasting as long as that bit of nail takes to grow and get clipped?

What if... insomnia really does create insanity in an otherwise sane person?