Powers of the mind

Ok, I know I promised EE that I would go into a bit of detail about why I am like the way I am, or rather, how I managed to acquired this kind of knowledge at a relatively young age.

Let's see, all my life, I've always done what I could to learn what I could from everyone I came into contact with on a daily basis. Up until the 2nd year in the Army, as I would lay in bed readying my mind of sleep, I would review what I did that day and ask myself what three things I was able to learn. For some odd reason, that always calmed my mind, that I was reassuring myself that I was still learning and progressing.

As to the inner peace thing, well, I'm not quite like that all the time, but it's hard to tell what exactly I am other then quiet most times. I keep to myself a lot, just observing what's going on around me, learning what I can from the natural world. Some interpret that quietness as being shy, others intelligence and still others the creepy loner. Everyone's entitled to their opinion and they'll always see what they want to see. Of course, doesn't help matters any that I can usually guess what people are expecting to see and I magnify those traits.

I guess you could say that's part of my defense mechanism, show people what they expect to see and they'll leave me alone. I like to have fun, sort of like the telephone game, show different extreme sides of my personality to different people and watch 'em talk to each other about me and get confused that they're talking about the same person but yet they aren't. I can tell this comes from growing up in a tiny town where everyone knew everyone else's business.

As for how I did attain that "inner peace", I did a quite a bit of self study on philosophy at the age where impressions take hold very readily. I've always been on a quest to not necessarily know myself as to understand myself. I'll probably have to check out my mother's library now to find my copies of the I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Art of Peace and a great deal of my other philosophy books. All these little fable stories I usually leave in various blog comments I picked up reading Bits and Pieces published by the Economic Press.

I also began to self teach myself meditation, although I wish I had proper training and/or a master to learn from, for I began to attain levels that began to frighten myself. I could slow my respiration and heart rate to the point that would have medical personnel panicking, astral projection in dreams I could visit places I'd never been to before and when I get there I know the area already. With a very calm mind, I've seen glimpses of my future, some say deja' vu is just a trick of the mind but not when you've read passages in books that are first published months after. In college I experimented with manipulating the air around me into a thermal shield that wouldn't let scalding hot nor freezing cold reach my skin, being able stand under a steady stream of either without feeling heat or cold.

I've never explored all this with greater depth. Most times I just wondered about my sanity or the fact that great power comes with great responsibility. All I know is, I'm here on this earth for a reason, where I go or what I do is for a purpose that I won't always know why until many years later.