Other people’s minds can be rather dangerous places, can’t they? They can be frightening. Unless – like me – you’re a Mind Dweller. If you’re a Mind Dweller like me then other people’s minds are our habitat of choice, of course. ‘Nothing is real,’ you say, but maybe some stuff is. Maybe the bad things are real. Maybe all the nice stuff is ‘feel-good fantasy; and the dark side is where it’s at. I don’t know if you’ve ever challenged the Inner Demon that everyone else in the world is simply too afraid to challenge, but if you have then you know this isn’t particularly wise! If you have then you will know that the best thing is not to do this. You’d know this very well. Yes indeed my friends – the moral of the story is to make very sure that challenging the ‘demon within’ is the one thing you never do. Not ever. Don’t poke the bear. Leave it alone and maybe it’ll never even know you’re there. If you’re lucky it’ll never know that you’re there. Maybe it’s sleeping. You better hope that it’s sleeping.

The cry of the despairing ego is a very terrible thing to hear, so I have been told. A very terrible thing. It’s tragic in the extreme, as you might imagine, but at the same time it’s sumptuously rich comedy, the sort of sumptuously rich comedy that would give any of us a deeply satisfying belly laugh. ‘Places to go, things to do’, you cry out gaily, ready for anything life can throw at you. Or so you imagine, at any rate. So you imagine…

You like to imagine you’re ready of course but the truth is that you’re not. You’ve never been less ready. You’re the Mind Dweller, doing your thing, trying your best to hang in there, feeding on the negative emotions, stirring them up whenever you can. Sneakily engineering situations that will be to your advantage. You are subtly guiding your host, manipulating it, make it think that it’s having such a great time. You’re moulding it to your will, hoodwinking it. You’re the system, distorting everything you meet. It’s always been you. You’d distort the whole universe if you could. You’d distort it and warp it and turn it into a hideous mockery of all that is good and true. You’d make a nightmare of it – you’d make a nightmare of it and then you’d get trapped in that nightmare because that’s the way it always happens…

That’s the cry of the despairing ego you just heard there! It’ll haunt you. It’ll haunt you until your dying day. Once you’ve heard it you can never unhear it, you see. ‘Who was that ego?’ you wonder, ‘what was its story and what was the hideous fate that it had somehow glimpsed, right there at the end, right there at the very end of all things?’ These and many other questions are racing through your brain and it’s only natural that they should do so, of course. You want to learn, even though you also want to stay ignorant. Even though you’re actually committed to staying ignorant. You want to stay ignorant no matter what. I respect you for that, you see – you’re dedicated to discovering the truth and yet at the same time you’re determined to ignore it at any cost. We’re such conflicted creatures, you see – we don’t know what we’re doing and we’re determined to keep it that way…

Image credit – deviantart.com