Differing thoughts were vying with each other to obtain mastery over my mind – they weren’t just vying, they were fighting tooth and nail. They were clubbing each other senseless to get the advantage! Each thought did whatever it could to get to the top of the shit pile, but then – moments after – it was immediately pulled back down into the seething mire and attacked viciously by all the other thoughts trying to gain ascendency. I found myself utterly appalled by what I saw. They were the lowest of the low, I realized. This was the basest form of existence that there could ever be – nothing could as vile as this. Each thought was as vile as the next one; there was nothing to choose between them, nothing at all. I had never in all my life seen anything as sickeningly repulsive as this, I thought to myself. This was truly an abomination. And yet these were my thoughts. This filthy contaminated nest of writhing worms was nothing other than my very own mind, revealed to me as it was in this terrible moment of clarity.

I wanted to partake in the essence of life but I could not. I was not permitted. That was an experience I would never be allowed to know. My mind was on a short leash and every time I moved even the shortest distance I felt myself being yanked back, gasping painfully for breath. Choking. Feeling that I was about to black out. I was being punished, I realized. I had committed a mind-crime and this was my punishment. I could not remember what the mind-crime had been but I knew that it had been heinous in the extreme.

I was getting confused about what I was doing and why. What was life, I wondered? How did it work? Was life some kind of a thing where you had to do some kind of a special thing and then when you did that special thing some other thing happened? I had a vague memory of this being the case. It had worked something like that. It was the sort of thing where you had to do a thing so that another thing could happen, and then when the other thing happened you had to do the next thing after that. Or was that wrong, I wondered? Am I remembering it wrong? Was life actually some other sort of a thing entirely, some sort of a thing that I had yet to understand properly? Maybe I had always been looking in the wrong direction. But if so, what was the right direction?

My thoughts were vying for my attention, each one pulling me in a different direction – one pulling me here, the other there. They were vying for mastery, yet none could retain the advantage. None of the thoughts made sense – they were the vilest of the vile, the filthiest vilest form of low-life you could ever imagine. They were garbage thoughts and they pulling me under. They were competing for the prize and the prize was my mind, my awareness. I was aware of the seething horror that was surrounding me on all sides with hallucinatory clarity but could do nothing to free myself from it. I was the passive host and they were the virulent parasites.

What was life about, I wondered? What was the best way to live it? Were some ways of living life the wrong ways? What were the consequences of living life in the wrong way rather than the right way? What was the best way to make sure that you didn’t go down the wrong path and as a result get involved in all sorts of terrible things that you never should have got involved in? Is it wrong to think in this way? Are thoughts real? Are evil spirits real? Is it possible to become an evil spirit and then spend eternity in hell, without really meaning to do this? These were some of the thoughts that were going through my head….