Suppose you enter a dark cave.
It’s a long, large, hollow cavern.
No sight of the tunnel,
It’s completely dark.

I don’t know whether you’ll realize it at that moment or not,
but the cave inside—
the entire cavern, the whole capacious space—
is lined with reflective mirrors.

Those mirrors represent you.
Your accumulated experiences.
Your fears. Your hopes.
Your optimism. Your despair.

The success you’ve had in relationships,
the failures too—
or what ever you think they are.

Your schoolboy nature.
Your friends.
Your background.
Your society.
Your books.
The norms and mores you live by.

The fact that you walk on one side of the road,
drive on the other.
How colors interact with each other.
Why you shouldn’t go near a tiger.

All of these are etched in those mirrors.

And the cave—
it’s a flexible object,
changing shape with mind tectonics.

You don’t know how the mirrors are lined up,
they just flowed in there in the river of time,
old near new, greed near generosity.

Then, you switch on a torch—
the pure white light
of primal thought.

It sears forth, reflects across curves,
shifting on the walls,
like a sinuous whimsical dragon.

As it travels forth,
Each mirror taints and
ravages the light with its own character.

The light sneaks on,
and on,
and on—
reflecting for millions of miles
within that singular cave.

Then it comes back to you,
In an instant,
For a thought is faster than light.

It is not the same.
It has changed.
Gilted.
Coloured by your past,
Glinted by your future.

And when the thought returns,
it shape shifts as another mirror in the cave,
ready to reflect the next light.

Some thoughts are shaped by the world,
But most by mere thought.

There are millions,
and millions,
and millions of mirrors in the abdomen of the cave—
and more as you keep thinking.

So what is thought?

It’s that light.
The one you switch on
in the cave of your mind.
The rays of your mind.
That whimsical sinuous, mercurial dragon.

Can you choose when to switch on the light?
Can you direct the ray to the right mirrors of the cave—
magically knowing the state of mind that lies there?
Can you manage the sift of your cave?

Can you be aware that the ray that returns
is biased by the plasma walls that shaped it?

Then, in an incandescent moment you realise,
you are the cave and the cave is you.
Then, can your cave, know your cave?

I know not.
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PS: Heavily influenced by J Krishnamurti.