Story of my life, really.

Right now, I feel sort of in between states. I know that I am making major psychological progress but in the process it’s left me somewhat untethered and unfocused and a little insecure about who and what I am.

That’s fine. It’s what I expected. A barnacle like me can’t move to a new rock without letting go of the old rock, and things might well get far, far worse before they get better.

I might have to spend a lot of time in existential freefall, with nothing to support or define me but my very own self.

Been thinking about myself as water lately. You kinow. that old metaphor. I’ve used it here before. And it matches my Mars in Pisces, astrologically speaking.

Mars is not happy in Pisces. Mars is the sign of what gives you energy, motivation, and drive, and it helps define how you attack a problem or otherwise get things done.

Pisces is the sign of liquid water, and like water, Pisces tends to go with the flow, change to adapt, seek its lowest level, and remain without form.

That is a strange way for ones motivational system to work.

It’s not all bad. It gives me adaptability and the kind of deep sensitivity that lets me understand how truly fragile we all are and how hard it is to be human sometimes and essentially makes me such a deep humanist.

It’s probably also the wellspring of my genius, because it is this shapelessness that let my mind flow into the lock and become the key to unlock the answer to problems.

Probably helps me be mad creative too.

And it’s what makes me such a secular mystic. Yes, you read that right. It’s not an oxymoron. I have the same kinds of deep insights, poetic thoughts, transcendental consciousness, and connection with the hidden and the unseen as any mystic.

I just don’t believe it to be anything outside the operation of my particular brain. I am not align with the energy of the cosmos (though I have felt that way), I possess no special insight to the divine (though I could tell you a few things about it), and I am in no sense access to some kind of bullshit magic that defies the laws of time and space.

You guys know me. I’m a materialist. Things either exist, and therefore follow the laws of time and physics, or do not exist, in which case why are we talking about them?

Nothing gets to cheat.

I came up with the term “secular mystic” as a way to help reconcile these two sides of myself. I have had “mystical” experiences my whole life without declaring them supernatural in origin.

Perhaps being raised outside of religion played a part in that.

For example, I have had strong intuitions for my whole life. Truths suddenly occur to me in a blinding flash of insight. And they come on like a revelation, complete with the very wonderful feeling that things suddenly make a lot more sense.

I swear, an addiction to that feeling is what makes people like me philosophers.

These revelations of mine are quite powerful, and I can totally imagine that were I the product of another era, or a stricti religious upbringing, I might well have been tempted to think they had something to do with God.

Certainly, in the moment, I feel connected to something far greater than myself and the sudden rush of the joy of insight doesn’t seem like it comes from me.

But without a religious or mystical cosmology, and with my understanding of the human mind and how it works, I see the experience for what it is : brain activity.

Specifically, it is the activation of the reward center of the brain by the cognitive center responsible for keeping our body of knowledge as small and therefore fast as possible.

In that moment of insight, a large body of knowledge is suddenly condensed into a solution or principle the “app” that was working on that problem closes and releases all its resources, and the result is a euphoric moment where everything seems simple and clear and easy to understand.

It’s a heady thing. But it ain’t magic.

Similarly, I have had very strong attacks of deja vu for as long as I can remember, though it accelerated during my teen years and on into college.

Brain science to the rescue once more  That’s because during out teens and twenties, the brain is in its final pre-adult stage of development and its systems are growing in complexity by leaps and bounds, and the brain pathways that get used get reinforced far more than in adult brains, and the ones that do not get harshly culled.

Well I find it interesting, dammit.

And these deja vu attacks are powerful.  This is a full brain event. Memory and reality overlap and it really feels like the exact moment I am in has happened before.

And that used to scare the crap out of me. I felt like I was detaching from the normal time stream and that I was going to return to that previous moment and have to live all the same stuff all over again.

Why that is such a terrifying thought, I do not know. I would love to go back in time to a previous point with all I know now.

But in the moment, I am not exactly rational.

OVer time, thankfully, I got over that fear and now I just see the mments as somewhat unsettling but ultimately meaningness brain misfires where the part of my mind that separates memory from the present is briefly disabled.

It’s still a huge thing. A real full-brain neurological event. It often leaves me feeling dizzy and weak. I get goosebumps and all the hair on my body stands up. I get electric feelings in my hands and large muscle groups.. It really feels like Something happened.

But I know it’s just brain stuff.

So I just do my best to recover smoothly from it, and carry on.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.