Another world, another planet – what would it be like, what would it be like? Do aliens exist? Can flying saucers be real? Can dreams be true? I had just joined the creative writing group and I was full of enthusiasm, full of inspiration. I could feel the creative juices flowing already. Suppose you were the ego-construct – what would happen then? Suppose you were the ego-construct, what would that be like, what would that be like? My mind kept slipping gears, like the broken-down machine that it was. It cranked out a stream of well-worn opinions by rote, and then went back to the beginning of the sequence and started all over again. My mind was trying to communicate but it couldn’t. My mind was trying to communicate but it wasn’t. My mind wasn’t communicating – it was asserting its inbuilt biases, as usual. It was acting out its prejudices. Then it slipped gears again and went back to its constant pointless speculations – ‘what would it be like, what would it be like?’ It asked. I was trapped in my dysfunctional mind and there was no escape – all I could do was keep on going from one thing to another, half believing what I was saying, half believing what I was thinking, and half not believing as well. I was going through the motions. I was in the creative writing class and the creative juices were flowing. They were flowing freely. The topic was – ‘Suppose you were the ego-construct, what would you do then? What would be your favourite things to do?’ The ideas were flowing freely. ‘What would it be like, what would it be like?’ My mind was asking. What would it be like? It was yapping like a small dog. It was barking like a sea lion. It was grinding its gears. It was going through its well-rehearsed routines. It was hogging the limelight. It was enunciating its jaded opinions tirelessly. It was spinning away into the void like a Catherine wheel. It was spinning and spinning and so was I. I couldn’t stop spinning. I was dizzy with it. My mind was a wheel of death and I knew that I would never escape it. Suppose you were trapped in your own mind, I wrote. Suppose you couldn’t ever escape. What would that be like? What would that be like? Suppose you were the ego-construct and didn’t know it? What would that be like, what would that be like? I was in the flow but I was getting nowhere as usual. I was getting nowhere in a hurry. I was spinning around on the spot. I was telling stories to myself that only I could ever understand. I was chuckling away softly to myself about them, but not at all in a good way…