My mind was entertaining me with ego-stories. You’re this ego and this rotten thing has just happened and you feel really bad about it, my mind told me brightly, and I slipped obligingly into role. I always slip obligingly into role. Then quick as a flash my mind spun me another one: You’re this ego and this super-cool thing has just happened and you feel really good about it. And then: You’re this ego and you’ve just made a very bad mistake and there’s nothing you can do to fix it and you hate yourself so much for screwing up in this unforgivable way that you want to punish yourself over and over again. You want to hurt yourself real bad. Because you hate and despise yourself so much. And then your mind tells you the story about how an especially bad thing is about to happen and how there’s nothing you can do anything about it and you’re haunted by the sheer terror of it, by the sheer terror of the bad thing happening. It’s such a bad thing that you can’t bear to think about it but at the same time you can’t stop thinking about it – you’re thinking about it all the time. There are lots and lots of other stories that your mind keeps telling you but they’re all pretty much the same. When you’ve heard one you’ve heard them all! You get to know these stories like you know the back of your hand – it’s all super-familiar territory. Yes, yes, yes, I say to myself, I know this one alright. Do I ever know it! I’ve been here millions upon millions of times – I’ve worn deep grooves into the concrete floor at this stage. Deep, deep grooves. It’s like the marble steps leading up to a ancient place of worship where pilgrims have been coming daily in their droves for a thousand years. You know the way the steps get gently worn down by the never-ending river of feet – well, that’s what my inner territory is like. That’s what it’s like in my mind. It’s like an ancient site where pilgrims come to worship and I am the most faithful pilgrim, the most devout worshipper, of them all. Yet it’s not God I’m worshipping. I think we can all be clear on that score – God doesn’t come into it. It’s like some kind of a sick joke really isn’t it? It’s an obscenity, a perversity, and it’s not that I don’t know it either. I’m well aware of that. I can’t help knowing it at this stage – I’ve had my nose rubbed in it enough times. Like a puppy that never learns. I mean – it’s not exactly hard to see is it? It’s kind of staring you in the face. If it were a dog it’d bite you, as the man says. It’d have your arm off in flash. It’d have your arm off and then it would come back for the rest of you, its jaws slavering. But we keep coming back for more, don’t we? That’s the whole point about it I suppose – that we can’t get enough pain, that we keep on coming back for more….
