The Back Tat: Explained

I wrote this long, esoteric, quasi-philosophical, quasi-epistemological essay on the image I wanted to create for the tattoo I ended up getting on my back. I’ve realized that the way I explained the image in the essay was so clunky and out there that it wasn’t much help when I tried to remember how to explain it to real people in casual conversation. So, I’m going to write a more conversation-friendly explanation here.

The first concept at the heart of my tattoo is that of “layers of awareness”. Sometimes I try to explain this by referencing Eckhart Tolle and his theory of the Watcher, but very few people have read him, and in all honesty I came up with my concept before reading him as well. What I want you to do is look out at the world around you (out the window, at your wall, at the people around you). You can perceive sights, smells, sounds, you can perceive how things feel if you touch them, and if there is something socially acceptable to put your tongue on near you can perceive tastes. If there are people around you, you can converse with them, verbally, and non-verbally based on your perception of their words and their body language. This is the most common layer of awareness that we think of when we consider our “consciousness”. It is the level at which we interact with the world around us.

Now, think about that voice in your head that analyzes your interaction with world. That voice that judges your interactions with the world. The voice that tells you something you said was stupid, or that a view from a hilltop is the most beautiful that you’ve ever seen. This is a second layer of awareness, a second level of consciousness. (Incidentally, this is the level that Tolle was referencing with the notion of the Watcher). You could say that this layer is deeper in the mind, one level removed from direct interaction with the world. It is the level of consciousness, which I write about, with which we attribute meaning to the events of our lives, from minute experiences to broad swaths of time. Whether we remember something as good, bad, silly, sad, funny, etc., is based on the judgments of this level of awareness: you could call it the Adjective Giver. And this “attribution of meaning” is the concept at the core of my first tattoo. So you can see how my second tattoo actually builds upon the first, and is in conversation with it, which I think is pretty cool.

Anyway, this next part is where it gets tricky. This act that we have both engaged in (me by writing, you by reading), this act of looking critically at two levels of consciousness and analyzing how they interact, is all done from a third level of consciousness. This level is even deeper than the second, even farther removed from interactions with the physical world. At this layer of awareness, we are essentially analyzing our analysis. We can judge the implications of the way we judge and remember our interactions. We can decide if we approve (assign an adjective!) of the way we attribute meaning, and attempt to change it if we don’t. The crazy part is that we can exist at all three levels of awareness simultaneously. We can interact with the world of experience, can analyze that experience, and judge our analysis all at the same time. What’s even crazier is that there is no limit to the levels of consciousness we are capable of experiencing each moment. Consider, once we are aware that there are three levels of consciousness, three layers of awareness at work, this means that we have moved one step back. It is like we were in the picture, looking at a picture. Then we take a step back to look at the picture we were just in, which is of us looking at a picture. And what if we step out of that picture!? As soon as we are cognizant of a layer of awareness, it means that we are now viewing all the previous layers of awareness from an even deeper level. We can go as deeply into consciousness as we are capable of imagining.

The main point being, this is what I was trying to capture with the hands within the hands within the hands. I was trying to capture the idea that there are different levels of consciousness, each aware of all those that are below it and how they connect to the ones below them.

A common thread that has run through my thinking behind the first and second tattoos is the perspective nature of reality. Meaning, the reality we live in is the reality we perceive. The connection between the reality we perceive and objective reality has been a Holy Grail sought after by philosophy and science since the beginning of thought, and there are serious questions as to whether there can be such a thing as objective reality. Even within physics, there are widely accepted theories that state the perceiver changes the nature of the perceived at fundamental, subatomic levels. But really, this is neither here nor there, because the only reality we will know is the one which we perceive. Perception is a function of our minds, conscious or unconscious. So, the reality each of us exists in is actually created by each of us. All the levels of awareness play a part in this creation of reality.

This perspective nature applies to the tattoo because it introduces an uncertainty to reality. Uncertainty causes many dangers. Metaphysical uncertainty, the fact that we can never know for certain if our lives and our deaths have any purpose leads to nihilism. You can move beyond that despairing view of reality without meaning by recognizing that you in fact are the creator of meaning for your own existence, and through your attribution of meaning you create your reality. Time, life, can be given meaning that originates and finds its end in you. Your life can have inherent meaning simply by being, if you choose. But our minds are fickle by nature, and we are full of mental demons that can

destroy any positive meaning we try to attribute, and any positive reality we try to create. Doubt, self-hate, fear, past pain, and future worries, these can insinuate themselves into the various layers of our consciousness, color our perspective, and blacken our reality. All because we can never know for certain if the present moment is divine because our imagination is capable of conceiving of reasons that it is not.

The divinity of each moment cannot be protected by certainty, so in the end, faith must complete the circle that certainty cannot. This can be metaphysical faith, or this can be faith in yourself, or faith at any level of consciousness. Yet it is only through faith that we can protect our awareness from the demons of the mind, and perceive the holiness of the each and every present reality. And this is what I was trying to capture with the wings encircling the hands within hands, the wings are completing the circle. The dark and menacing aspect of everything outside of the wings was meant to represent those mental demons. And if you pan back, you will see that the entire image together is an eye. The wings and the hands make up the iris and the pupil, and the darkness around it makes up the “whites” of the eye.

It is with this eye that I strive to perceive the world with and create my reality. It is both the eye of the war that rages within the human mind, and, when that war is kept in balance by faith, it is also the eye of God who perceives itself in all things.