Attention Deficit Hyperactivity what(?)  dreadpirate? 

In your clinical comment in my previous post, you remind me of a lumberjack I once encountered at a highly impromptu party in a broken-in cabin in the upper peninsula of Michigan a few years back. Strangers, we had all coalesced spontaneously at a bar somewhere between Alpena and Altoona one Saturday night.  Actually, I had been camping in a nearby forest up there all week and had taken my canoe (yes, dreadpirate, my own captain I was!) into town to tip drinks and enjoy a little non-wildlife company.  Well, at the bar, as we 10 or 12 strangers started to banter it up and mutual discussions ensued,  someone said they knew “someone” with a nearby cabin stocked with lot’s of booze and comfortable accommodations.  So as a loosely partying horde, we unanimously decided to move the whole feast.   But when we all arrived at the cabin by assorted vehicles,  it turned out that the owner was not home (or amongst us).  So someone else (not me, I swear not me) just decided instead to crawl in a window to unlock the cabin door.   It seems that the assemblage of revelers included a motley and cantankerous bunch (a secretary, a dancer, an oyster pearl salesman from Detroit, maybe even a sailor, etc. …oh yeah, me, too…all too similar to a pirate ship's crew, no doubt), two of whom had serious passions for biking.  As it turned out, however, these two had fiery passions for different bikes--one a Harley (hero), the other a Honda (sap).  One challenging vociferous boast led to another until, *wham*,  commotion commenced.  Things would have gone to hell, except for a short 5'2" incredibly stocky, muscled lumberjack whom I happened to be talking to about “intellectual matters” (he tagged me as  the “resident scholar”) at the time.  On seeing the birthing ruckus, he excused himself from my company, flung himself in between both 6' plus road wailers, reached up, grabbed both of them by their collars, and lifted both of them off the ground.  Then turning first to one and then the other, he said to them in the classical *no uncertain terms*: "I don't want any problems here, okay?  I'm going let go of the both of you so you can work things out together, alright?"  Then putting both of them down, shocked, they both wandered, mumbling, together…away.  The lumberjack then turned to me beaming and said; "Did you see that?  That’s interpersonal relations. I learned that in my first class in college, Psychology 101!"    Right!  If I hadn't feared his uncertain reaction, I would have rolled on the floor and laughed! 

I’ve been asked a question with occasional frequency to which I’m reticent to respond but now humbly relent: Where do you get your ideas, what’s the source of your white light?

That is a very difficult question.  Inspiration, for me, sometimes happens without warning, triggered by something I have seen or read about (or perhaps, like Scrooge explaining his visiting spirits, due to indigestion from something I ate).  Other times, when my mind is quiet - when I have stopped my "internal dialogue" - a vision will unexpectedly press its way into my consciousness as an undeniably expanding bubble but from a source, nonetheless, in absolute apparent nothingness. Such moments of "aesthetic arrest" are very exciting, and when I experience one, I’m always childlike to begin my quest, to explore the alien pod at hand.  Sometimes, though, I prod and then fear the bubble pod will burst and I’ll get slimed by alien afterbirth.  Poke, jab, push I, nonetheless. *slimed again*  Does he learn? *slimed again*  Apparently not. *slimed again*

The Jungian psychologist might say my ideational imagings are salient representations of my Soul Image, my unconscious identity, my Anima (feminine aspect). As a man and woman may draw unto one another to explore the unity that is Life, so too does the conscious identity seek union with the unconscious identity to achieve full humanity within—individuation. Hence the haunting image of a woman searching in the forest (a notion constantly reoccurring to me), is in fact a representation of my own search for completion in the labyrinth of my own interior kingdom. So I have also learned that there is a universal, transpersonal dimension to the motifs in which I am awash.  Quite “accidentally” not, I am infused with the same patterns that manifest in nature, in preternatural laws, and human thought dating back at least 20,000 years or a kalpa—whichever is longer. One could never believe so many coincidences to be only coincidences, probability theory notwithstanding.

The spiritualist might say I am in contact with a Transcendent Presence, Who is guiding me along the rocky path to Truth. To apprehend the intimate relation of all things is to see part of the blueprint for the Grand Plan of the Universe, and touch the Divine Will that beckons each of us to our final destiny. Perhaps this is part of the answer. Or perhaps, it’s just a logical construct.  Or perhaps worse yet, it is not a benign spirit Godhead, but the Trickster Coyote who misguides me.  Perhaps, the dark side grows darker with every inspirational indulgence.

The scholar might look at the themes occurring to me and suspect them to be nothing more than the cognitive distillation of what I have studied and read: science and philosophy, history and theology, anthropology and psychology. There can be no question that what I have learned in my studies has colored the tetrahedron crystals through which I perceive the world. But erudition alone cannot explain the existence in my inspirational moments of the tripped-out cosmological patterns and spiraling-staircase associations which press upon me, prior to, and independent of, my “scholarly knowledge” of them.

In my writing, it feels like I am trying to remember something: the images come to me like vague memories of someone I was, someplace I was, something important I knew. And I can't quite retrieve that knowledge and understand it in the light of conscious cognition, and I think I'm supposed to. And so this memory of..."something" has utterly seized me, and I am compelled to gaze into this darkness trying to see - to understand - just what it is I have encountered. In a way, my will is no longer my own; I am, rather, the proxy of a transpersonal force, with an agenda all Her own...