Where Am I?

I was digging into some old documents and found the following rambling:

I started thinking, I don't know why, about how the ancient Egyptians preserved the heart but threw away the brain (after extracting it through the nose) because they thought the heart was the center of being, the residence of thought, feeling, self, the soul.

And I thought about how I feel my thoughts coming from my head, somewhere behind my eyes, and conveniently located near my mouth so that they can be informed and shared by/with the world around me.  But I wondered, is that just a culturally created perception behavior? Could I recenter that sense of self so that it felt like the focus of my being was in my chest cavity instead?  I tried, and I found that I could.

Then I wondered, should something as precious to me as my essential and unique personhood be located in such a conspicuous place?  Maybe I should hide it somewhere.  Somewhere seemingly innocuous and inconspicuous.  Like, not my little toe, but the one next to it, on my left foot.  Could I reach inside and refocus myself such that the core of my soul settled in a toe?  I tried, and I found that I could.

So now when I'm feeling shy of people around me, maybe I can try to be braver and more openly friendly with the thought that while I interact with them, they may think they know where the real me is at, but little do they suspect that I've hidden my true self in my appendix, or a bicuspid.

I think... that I think too much.

5/26/2011