A Mindless Experiment

A day of mindlessness isn't as easy as one would think. What makes it so ironic is that I had to awake and in those first blinks I had to be very mindful of what I had planned for the day, I had to force my mind to let go, and that was only the first minute of the new day. To be mindless one must already have a knapsack full of habits, full of comfortable routines, full of structure that you or others have already put into place. For without all these built-in paths and well-worn trails, one would awake to a world demanding thought and consideration from the very first blink of the eyes. I kept thinking, and like a mosquito, I would slap at the very thought of thought and hurriedly follow the familiar paths, and my first prayer became the Lord's Prayer repeated again and again, for the numbing rote of it caused my normal consideration of each word to be instead a gong of sound, the words became like meaningless notes resonating from the gong, meaningless for a reasoning mind, yet meaningful to the mind entering a meditative state. Hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... and the sound and the vibrations and the meaninglessness of the uttered sound soon startled me when it became a sacred chant that revealed the uttered word, as though the repetition somehow worked like a can opener to cut its way around 'hallowed' until like a punctured can of coffee releasing a wonderful whiff of aroma -- 'hallowed ... hallowed ... hallowed' released a most fragrant sound that was more sacred than even my reading of that word. The essence of 'hallowed' was finally released to me and it was not my mind that was jolted, but my nose! In the still darken predawn chapel I smelled a bouquet of flowers where when the first light of day revealed not a blossom. Well, that was but the first hour of my mindless day today, I now feel too tired to put into words the rest of the day, for I'm cheating while writing all this, I fear this makes my experiment not very scientific, and right now just a candle before me burning and the dancing flame is calling me to dispense with this mindfulness. And I will.