50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...
by Tyler Volk
Tyler Volk’s “Mind Watching” Series Table of Contents
Day 36 - One Humungous Whirlpool
A circular plastic wash basin filled with water served as the container. I wanted to see a whirlpool. For the visualization, first I tried sprinking dried tree litter on the surface. With a stick I swirled the water into a vortex, but the floating fluff was too, well, fluffy. From the pantry I gathered various powders and spices. Finally, curry power worked well enough.
Could one’s inner reality be one humungous whirlpool? After all, we are a system. Personality and character spin as one whole. This psychological whole has numerous larger whirlpools within it, and these could have smaller ones, in a nested hierarchy of whirls. We are like the multiple scales of gyres of atmosphere or ocean. Or a desert plant erupting with clusters of flowers of petals.
A decision to go camping creates sub-decisions within that. A goal to give a public presentation becomes an unconscious tree that generates acorns of thoughts, which I am currently (better) describing as whirlpools. Issues in relating with our outer world can become recurrent problems and therefore semi-permanent whirlpools with sub-whirls. You just have to face problems, solve them, dissolve those whirlpools, and move on (to never-ending others!). But the humungous one remains as the context, as you.
What is conscious and what is unconscious? Do I as consciousness spin upon the surface, like curry powder on water, my spin following the nested hierarchy of psychological vortices set by the deeper basin, the more massive depths of the unconscious?
We go to sleep, then we awake. Consciousness re-starts. It’s as if certain chemical pathways in the parts of the brain whose overall activity was dampened way down during sleep then quite suddenly emerge from an overall holding pattern. Neurons start up at full activity and in morning “where you were at” the evening before re-boots.
Can the surface powder stir itself? Is the inner watcher itself part of that complex, integrated whirlpool, or is it like some “me” that is in some sense, above, and able to record the swirls of consciousness. In this case, that of my experiment, I make a record via photography. In daily life, is it by memory? Who is the one who wakes in night’s middle and watches all the feeder streams of consciousness go in and out with their own contributions to the humungous whirlpool of self?
© 2025 by Tyler Volk
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