The Goldfish Bowl

(img:http://www.cityofevanston.org/news/assets/kid%20and%20fish%20bowl.jpg)

From birth to death we inhabit a world we hardly understand save in terms of it's appearances. yet we try to explain it away , and come up with a myriad theories which only scratch the surface . these offer us the illusion that we understand ourselves and existence.

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Such theories may offer us comfort , but we don't even know what "mind" is . some people even use their minds to deny that mind exists . Others seek signs and wonders as proof of the extraordinary , even though the ordinary is extraordinary enough . that we wake up out of the nightly little death called sleep , go to work , eat , plan our lives as best as we can , fall in and out of love , grow old and die - what a weird and wonderful process! How was it designed and why? How could we be talking about design when we don't even know who designed ? how could we , the created , discuss the ways and nature of existence had not some inner or other force created the capacity within us ?

Which begs the question : what are we here FOR?

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Perhaps we're frontier colonists of the material world , part of mind's drive to extend consciousness into ever denser , more individual realms . for since time immemorial and in every culture many have felt that this lovely , yet terrible world is not our true home ; that we have forgotten our origin ; and that we're like GOLDFISH UNABLE TO IMAGINE a universe beyond he bowl , as if water is the only medium we know . to extend the metaphor , or fable : rational goldfish , on the evidence of their senses, deride theories positing the existence of air -- especially if their the top goldfish . they've got it made , and don't want any change in the bowl , unless they control it . mystical goldfish , with weird notions about an invisible otherworldly medium , air , are obviously fantasists .

Then one day , a finger from above stirs the bowl . Inexplicable ripples result . Mystic goldfish report visions of the fish that swims in the air . the top goldfish , fearing loss of prestige and authority, say nothing happened . it was collective hallucination , they say . Anyone talking about it will be punished ,even thrown out of the bowl into the vast unknown . yet the threats , derision and "scientific proof" that the bowl is all whispering of a miracle , of a world beyond . none of the goldfish know what really happened , but before long distorted memory and reports of the alleged event begin to create a new belief system that threatens to turn the bowl upside down .

The human finger that stirred the water in the bowl may have been that of a child . The event may have been casual . perhaps it lasted inly two or three seconds , in human terms . But in goldfish terms, the entire society is destabilized . in goldfish terms , centuries pass . new religions emerge , New social movements . . . new philosophies .


" Come away from the bowl , dear . Leave the fish alone ."
" But i was only playing . I wanted to talk to them . "

 didn't think a goldfish could blow your mind, did you? (img:

http://www.libraryforsales.com/Graphics/inspirational-stories/goldfish_bowl.jpg)