I was coming back from being soaked in a rainstorm on Mt. Lemmon, listening to the iPod, when a Jimmi Hendrix song played, “If Six Was Nine”.

Now the very title belies having taken a LOT of psychedelics but what’s important to me though are these lines that struck me on the way down the mountain,

Don’t nobody know what I’m talkin’ about
I’ve got my own life to live
I’m the one that’s gonna die when it’s time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to

My first thought on hearing that was “how do I want to live my life?” I don’t know really.

What struck me after the first striking of those lines was that people do things and say things and live their lives but they rarely actively choose each of those things they do to make their lives. It’s mostly part of their cultural continuum. They’re hippies like Jimmi and they smoke pot, expand their minds and make each other miserable in their greed for novelty. Or they’re religious conservatives who preach the righteous path who love Jesus and think, NO SEX NO SEX NO SEX NO SEX over and over again. Or they grow up with text messages and MySpace and constant display of their inner lives. Or the cry JIHAD and long for the death of the infidel and their own martyrdom. Or any other variation of living you can imagine.

I wander the forests and mountains these days since it’s about the only thing that makes much sense to me. I can scramble over rough terrain like a mountain lion and meditate for hours on a rock until the world goes all tripy and woogy. That’s what I do now. It’s partly a conscious choice but it’s more a conscious choice to fill a need that comes from no conscious choice at all.

Doctors tend to hang around with doctors and their families. Artists with artists. Film people with film people. When I worked in advertising I knew a lot of people in advertising and we talked a lot about advertising. These days I know a lot of neohippie types with an affinity for spiritual growth and drugs helpful in that endeavor.

We make the choices of how to live our lives based on the people around us and the choices available to us. It is obviously possible to change and to change drastically and do something that radically alters your life pattern. I’ve done it at least three times in my life so I know it to be possible. Once the change is made though there is a flow of life that makes every other related decision somewhat reflexive and autonomous.

I guess that’s the thing I find so interesting right now. The notion of semi-conscious participation in your own life.

The automatic nature of most of the decisions and choices that stem from a life path somehow annoys me. It’s like every facet of life becomes a game we play that has rules and regulations and referees and uniforms and players. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious way of escaping the games without going insane or hiding in a forest with the deer neither of which is all that satisfying.

All the mystical traditions I’ve encountered say that conscious action is imperative to enlightenment and yet that’s about the last thing you do in normal life. Even if you do live a crazy life you tend to end up in habits and patterns and work your way into ruts so deep light can’t penetrate them. Everything becomes a kind of dream.

It is a curious thing.

You can know this and yet not have the willpower to examine your actions in their fullness and to change them when you need to change them. Such things are very very hard. Why would it be so? That’s another curious thing.

And if six were nine you wouldn’t mind ’cause your mind would be fine. But if six ain’t nine and you find that you mind you just might find your mind.