Staring at the ceiling, turning the popcorn paint into comical faces and lunar landscapes, I realised for the umpteen millionth time that all around me was a figment of my imagination.

I was at peace.  I was wide awake, unable to sleep, no thoughts troubling me or racing through my mental slideshow.

Sitting here with you now, both of us looking at this electronic mumbo-jumbo with an inkling of understanding, interpreting the bits and bytes as if the contrast between lighter and darker pixels implies meaningful symbols representing the usual letters, words and sentences, we share a common configuration, a gentle push, of our imagination we call the [American/Canadian/Australian/x/y/z] English language.

To complete the resolution, the incorporation, the final weaving, the last brick on the edifice in which the cornerstone of my youth was laid while I was an unnamed being in the womb, I look one last time at the joint alignment of our imaginations we call religion, or emotion-based belief set.

We have already examined the definition of “emotion,” have we not?

EMOTION:  The flow of chemical/molecular concoctions that flow through our bodies to enhance our experience of the moment, whatever that experience and moment may entail.

Some may use the ruse of religion to define their daily actions, like a horse that needs blinders or a racetrack that uses bumpers/rails to keep vehicles safely on the designated course.

In the realm of me-vs-you, us-vs-them, etc., I always think that others (who probably think the same of me) need blinders or bumpers/rails to keep them oriented in the same general direction that the subculture in which they choose to live is going.

What about those who don’t want blinders or don’t want to stay in the subculture in which they live?

I will not generalise their imaginations actively at work in contrast to or against the subculture in which they find themselves.

Rarely are we living under the influence of one subculture.

Some easily accept, without question, the teachings of their elders and peers.

Some do not.

Why some do and some do not is a study that may start at the DNA level.

When I stared at the ceiling in near-darkness last night, happy with the state of the universe at that moment, I asked myself why I was happy.

What made me, lying in a comfortable, warm bed, unable to sleep, think I was happy?

Happy…hmm…

Where in my imagination — my set of states of energy — is a solid definition of happiness?

Simply the intersection of neuronal states that contain the encyclopedic descriptions of states of happiness throughout history, at the species and personal level?

Both the lack of the flow of fear-based molecular sets and the low flow of euphoria-based molecular sets?  A balance of the two?  A lack of both?

Long ago, I wrote a small poem that said my religion was based on a form and concluded that everything goes in a circle.

For some, their experiences that we and/or they would categorise as religious may be happy and they may be unhappy.

Or, rather, their experience with those who operated under the definition of religion may have been happy or unhappy.

For me, the moments in my influential formative years during religious ceremonies or discussion of religious matters were, for the most part, happy.

I remember a few anxious moments such as times when kids competed for who could quote the most number of Bible verses and I only had one or two full or partial verses ready to recite without looking them up.

Otherwise, my experiences were pleasant so I have no reason to adopt an anti-religious viewpoint because of negative experiences with religion and the people who stand/hide behind religion as a cover for their unpleasant treatment/view/comments about others.

I’m just not much of a person for hierarchy in dealing with others so I’m less inclined to want to clump people into leadership pyramids, regardless of socioeconomic situation.

Your imagination is yours to perpetuate and, if you have delusions of grandeur, don’t expect me to reciprocate.  The labels you want to wear, whether on your lapel or in your mannerisms in front of a mirror (including our responses to you), are yours to call your own.

I am happy in my imaginative world where I can pick up just about any set of words and find myself reflected there.

I am not God in the grand sense that I invented the universe before the set of states of energy called me was conceived and grew into this person typing here.

But I am the set of states of energy that reacts to the rest of the universe from a position I can’t help but take from within my imagination, parts of which I share with you through alignment of our imaginations from moment to moment, sometimes feeling like a god who controls his own fate, and thus the universe, while he lives.

I am happy in my thoughts that further build my imagination, no matter where I am, but often perturbed that people interrupt my happy thoughts with their pleas to buy their products/services that put up temporary bumpers/rails/blinders to guide me toward an unnecessary purchase and the inevitable buyer’s remorse.

As a country mouse simplifying his life, how much of the city mouse stuff around me do I really need anymore?