The Phenomenal Life-Mind
A manifesto for daydreaming out the window and other fantastical phenomena.
The Ghost called Life-Mind
I am not a philosopher or theorist of any kind. I am an individual who reads books, and who, like many, imagines scenarios outside of car windows. I hold many qualities I see as common: becoming agitated by circumstances out of my control, enjoying fiction and fantasy, and above all else, liking to be free and comfortable- whatever that means.
I have not historically been inclined to deep internal processing- for much of my life, I have gotten off at the first bus stop and proceeded no further. For example, I wore the same large hoodies to cover up my body for years and, when questioned, replied that I was just more comfortable this way. When confronted about why on earth I was so cranky, I would just reply, I’m tired. These examples are numerous and varied. Despite my theoretical desire, I would not become a marine biologist because I lacked the fundamental energy to apply myself to empirical science. I would not become an animation director because I lacked the energy to make a feature film and organize the labor of others. I would arrive and stay late at parties, driven by an unconscious desire to be seen and manifest as some ideal version of myself. When I wasn’t acknowledged as this ideal, instead manifesting in a way that was cringe and out of my fantasy's iron grip, I would withdraw. I behaved in reactionary ways while holding firm to (just as reactionary) "objective" truths about the world. Like, there is no God. Smoking weed is bad. Vocabulary is important. And so on.
Most acute and distracting were the beliefs that, I am ‘X’ kind of person, until I decided (upon reading a book or watching a movie) that, no no, I am actually ‘Y’ kind of person and this revelation necessitated new decorations, new books, a new hobby, a new attitude, etc.
My many bus rides were brief. I’d hop off at the first stop, simply climb onto the next bus, and strap in.
Living this way would not have resulted in any special disaster, I think. I have always been on an adventure, and the stroke I would undergo at twenty-seven along with the new trajectory it caused, is just an extension of this. But this change was so dramatic that I have needed to give it priority of thought.
In essence, my stroke demanded that I use non-rational imaginative processes to animate my body out of paralysis. In doing so, many things were rendered unreal by the sheer realness of the embodied process of moving my frozen limbs from some beyond realm.
As I possessed my own arm, bent my toes, or ambled down the hospital hallways, my prior identity which was constructed through tutored mechanisms of culture, and my worldview based on book learning, finally began to yield to direct lived experience and attunement with the emotional and phenomenal life-mind; in other words, with direct experience, emotion, and intuition. Finally, I began ignoring the first bus stop of construct and would stay on the ride to an embraced mystery destination that could just be called life.
Before I can clearly state the new worldview this event has given me, I must first explain the event in detail.
The stroke itself was caused by a cavernous malformation, or cavernoma, in the right hemisphere by the basal ganglia— this is a fancy way of saying I had a hole in my brain and one evening, the tangle of blood vessels inside it decided to fully hemorrhage.
When I felt the stroke come on, manifested as a strong dizziness and full left side numbness, I simply stumbled to my car and drove out of the rural hills where I lived to the hospital in town.
I have recounted some of the emotional details of becoming paralyzed in the ER, but it is the mechanism by which I emerged from paralysis that is of relevance here.
As I lay in the hospital bed after my craniotomy, somewhere in a blur of drugs and inflammation, I can only describe my cognitive state as one of absolute clarity. In a magic period of time that was incalculable, but was in reality, maybe 24-48 hours, my cognition was pure and unloaded. Each thought cracked out like a bullet. Love and jokes came freely and imaginary creatures entered the room via my imagination in full HD detail.
In this temporary delightful state, I felt no distress at seeing my left arm propped up on a pillow not connected to my brain anymore. With my focus on it, it simply felt like, and did, nothing.
Likely because I had just graduated with a degree in animation and had taught it for six years, my intuitive first response to my paralysis was to animate.
In my mind's eye, I envisioned a three-dimensional ghost hand and then moved it slowly into my own hand, possessing it. Then, remembering the sensation of moving, I squeezed the ghost hand in my mind and my own arm moved.
It was not a large movement, in fact, it was more of a small twitch. My arm still couldn’t feel the texture of the pillow underneath and my fingers remained limp. But in this single instant of animated possession, I felt my brain “find” my arm. That presence, a flash through the paralysis, allowed me to get started on regaining motor control before the physical therapists came to see me.1
I used this technique over and over during rehab, crafting hand gestures in my head before moving them into my fingers to slowly and stiffly make the peace sign, flash the middle finger, and make devil horns.
When I told my therapists about what I had been doing, I was fearful they wouldn’t believe me, but to my surprise they encouraged me, saying that imagination was a great way to help move my body.
This nonchalance in the face of what I viewed as a miracle akin to witchcraft was explained when I googled the phenomena months later and found that what I was describing had a name.
Motor Imagery is the mental practice of using visualization to simulate movement in the mind to potentially activate motor centers in the body, and from my vantage point, it is inseparable from animation.
In fact, I have never gone back to the definition of animation as a time-based medium by which movement needs to be broken into frames. Frames are just another construct.
Instead, animation is an embodied process in which the animator first generates a gesture in their mind before using their conscious willpower to imbue material with the gesture. This gesture can be broken up into smaller movements (poses to be captured by a camera), or occur in real time. This makes animation distinct from film, but identical to puppetry. They form what I call the possessive arts. In the case of motor recovery, animation functions as the use of conscious facilities to move the material of your own body through willed gestures instead of unconscious motor processes.
The ghost I made in my mind to animate my body soon developed, over a period of days, into a full entity which I began to move everywhere. I was able to calm flashes behind my eyelids by moving the ghost to the very top of my skull where it would hover over my brain and dampen the activity there. I moved this ghost of life-mind through all parts of my body to better reintegrate them into my mental map, most of which is now back under my unconscious control once more. But during these acute days of possession-based movement, when I would exhaust myself and sleep most of the hospital days away, I had incredible dreams about the ghost and would draw them upon waking.
My body was a heavy stone giant, but the ghost of the life-mind was small and light, able to animate the giant solely by means of vigor and play. The two were in a necessary relationship but operated under two distinct fields of governance.
The dreams continued at night what my cognition animated during the day.
It is with this undeniable experience of an actual life force contained within my body, and its direct use to animate my body back to some new sense of “returned”, that I underwent a paradigm shift that has radiated outward to my entire life- from clothes, to relationships, to learning, and self.
So now, even though I am not a philosopher or academic, I will embrace the deep inheritance of writing and list my conclusions of the phenomenal life-mind.
They will likely not form a consistent logical whole, but they are life affirming, and generous to people. It is the joy and dignity of life that drives them. They are not objective reality. I cannot claim any such thing. But they are the gifts given to me by the ghost called life-mind who moved me through my stroke and lives more quietly in residence today. It is only right to record them here and reckon with their applied meaning as I live the ride of life.
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They will, throughout time, be published as separate essays then linked here as single pieces in this introduction.
Macro Theories break down at the level of the individual. (Coming Soon)
Spirit and Soul make the Life-Mind. (Coming Soon)
Spatial positions create meaning. (Coming Soon)
The mind is not mechanistic and cannot fully create your reality. (Coming Soon)
Our world is made up of unknown potentials and boundaries which we do not know until we hit them. (Coming Soon)
Morbid Charisma: Fiction is a depth-layer inside reality. (Coming Soon)
Maladaptive Daydreaming: Fiction is a depth-layer inside reality. (Coming Soon)
The aura and power of the scholastic book fair and other childhood becomings (Coming soon)
In the United States healthcare system, insurance must approve all physical, occupational, and speech therapies. In over-filled and understaffed hospitals, wait times can be long.
lovely illustrations