Perhaps the fringe zone of the collective memory… There are many small subdomains each showing its own character and paradigm of traits, but out on the fringe you have the noise zone.

According to Jung the universal concept of hell was the manifestation of everything human cultures found disturbing and persistent and none the less true. Historically, throughout myth, there have been spirits, shamans, and hero deities that ventured into this domain to return with new power and wisdom. So as much as we might view it fearfully (and the South American Indians even went on to call this “underworld” Xibalba, the place of all fears) every meaningful good from ancient and classical times seems to have stemmed from it. Even in modern times they say that there is a fine line between genius and madness. They are even beginning to prove it in the lab.

Batman had a fear of bats, but turned it into his strength. Yes.

In fact, it’s the journey into the underworld that transformed many who were before simply men, into gods. Even today those who survive a near death experience come back to display radically altered psychology. Even when they show no meaningful cognitive impairment, no real brain damage, the experience still changes their life.

How insane do you have to be to revel in your own fear. It could be argued that there is no such thing as insanity as we typically think of it, just greater or lesser degrees of disconnect with our shared living reality.

I would call myself the needler, because I hate needles… but revelling in that would truly cause me to have a psychotic break. Now imagine if your experience lead you to have a psychotic break about everything? With nothing left for you to take refuge in? The reason the insane seem so strange is their behaviour is actually adaptive. They are still in fact trying to cope. They create a context to replace the one that was so badly damaged. If they were never able to create a context in the first place, how would they behave?

Catatonic? Withdrawn. One option. Or animalistic, or autistic, two other options. But as much as conventional thinking seems to imagine otherwise, solipsism would be impossible. Never having been able to build up a context for the self to begin with, there would be no basis for believing that only the self is real.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~