CHAPTER 11
Thoughts as Beings
Thoughts are usually treated as something obvious, yet they are not chosen. They arrive. They move. They press toward expression. They are not random. They seek manifestation.
One day in Bushwick, Alex and I were painting. We had taken a small amount of mushrooms and continued working when a strange realization began to emerge. At first it felt subtle, almost peripheral, but gradually it became direct. Thoughts do not simply appear. They strive to manifest. Each one carries a certain momentum, as if pushing toward embodiment. There were many at once, arising simultaneously, overlapping, competing for the chance to take shape. Consciousness revealed itself as a field of selection where only some impulses pass through into reality.
At times the sensation intensified. Each thought felt like a living seed rushing toward realization, while consciousness functioned as a space that receives but cannot hold everything at once. A human, in this sense, can be understood as a realized thought. Each life begins as an impulse that finds expression.
Certain thoughts arrive to certain people at the moment when they can be realized. There is a sense that the larger field of consciousness distributes impulses with precision. It may feel as though a thought is created in the moment, yet everything that surrounds us once existed only as potential. At some point, that potential becomes actual.
This leads back to a fundamental question—what comes first, consciousness or matter? Each person answers it differently, but one thing becomes clear. Humanity lives inside its own ideas. Civilization is a realized thought. The structures that surround us, the systems we move through, the objects we use—all were once only impulses that found expression. Even the image of Steve Jobs on a screen is encountered through layers of thought that have been materialized. This text is read through a system that also began as an idea.
If everything around us is shaped by thought, and a human is also part of that process, then existence begins to appear differently. The world is no longer only a collection of objects. It becomes a field of realized ideas. A single thought can alter the course of events. What matters is where it arrives and whether it is allowed to become real.
A thought can be understood as a metaphysical potential moving toward expression. Unmanifested thoughts remain present. They do not disappear. They wait. At times, it is possible to imagine being one of these unrealized impulses among countless others, seeking seeking entry into consciousness in order to take shape.
As an artist, I work with thought-forms. Some pass through into manifestation. Others remain at the threshold. But they do not vanish. They stay within reach, ready to emerge under the right conditions.
Each human life is an expression of a larger field of consciousness. Beyond what is visible, there are countless potentials moving toward embodiment. The fact of existence becomes rare. To breathe, to see, to feel, to experience—each of these is part of that condition, yet it often goes unnoticed.
When this realization first opened, it was not abstract. It was physical. There was a pressure in the head, not from strain, but from expansion. It took time to hold it, and more time to accept it.