Brain Soup

I just held my poor friend Britt captive as I went on a 15-minute rant about how a young adult Sci-Fi novel changed my entire perception of the universe.  Yes, I read it when I was age 11-14. Yes, “Ender’s Game” and the accompanying series is totally geared towards 12-year-old boys. Yes, it is to this day the coolest series I’ve ever read.  Those who know me well understand that, deep down, I am actually a twelve-year-old awkward nerdy white boy.  I only recently figured out how to dress like a girl, and that ability is definitely still shaky.  ((I am currently wearing a camo sports bra and an orange plaid flannel shirt, accessorized with a hideous lime green rubber watch from Walgreen’s.  The look is really pulled together by a total of about three square centimeters of chipped dinosaur-blue nail polish spread between a few of my fingernails.  HOT.))

Anyway.  In the course of this rant, I made a bunch of connections regarding how this intellectual obsession with this Sci-Fi series has morphed over the past 10 years or so.  It started with the concept which subtly powers the Ender series: Energy bridges are created between sentient beings in the universe, and what would happen if a self-aware being inexplicably manifested in the network of energy that connects all sentient things.  (WooWoo!!)  For a while this concept turned into a somewhat odd understanding of Catholicism in my Catholic-school-saturated high school brain, but then it morphed into a long obsession with the nature of human consciousness, which climaxed during college when I was simultaneously taking a reading course on Artificial Intelligence, an Intro to Psychology course, and the nursing course in Human Physiology.  At the time I even wrote an article for the school paper about a theory called Quantum Consciousness which sounded titillatingly close to explaining the science behind the Ender series.  At some point in this journey I also became obsessed with the idea of auras, particularly the way that Pamala Oslie, a California-based clairvoyant, perceives people’s auric energy.  Add into that mix “Womb Wisdom: Rediscovering the Ancient and Forgotten Powers of the Feminine,” my most recent fascination with astrological charts, my ongoing lifelong desire to attend every single religious service that exists, my fascination (and lack of any hard knowledge of) advanced physics, and a whole lot of Eastern philosophy, and you have what my Grandpa would call a Grade-A Hippie Nutjob.  

I guess it’s all just part of being in your 20’s and trying to figure out what you believe and how the world works, so it’s nothing particularly unique.  But honestly, I’m totally convinced that it is all connected somehow, and I sincerely hope that this discovery process never ends.  What if science, religion, and new age hippie-thoughts are all just three pathways leading to the same common revelation about existence?  How awesome would that be?  It just seems to make the most sense to me that the most elegant solution is something simple, like E=mc2, that would blow open a whole new world of thought possibilities by creating a common thread through which we can understand the universe.  At this point, all of these concepts (energy bridges, sci-fi worlds, quantum physics, human auras, astrology, Buddhism, Catholicism, Atheism, womb wisdom, neurology, the human brain) have amalgamated into a big, crazy, slushy soup in my brain, and they are almost indistinguishable.  It's a tasty-ass soup though, and I can’t get enough of it.  What crazy ideas are hopping around in your brain?  I am always totally game to discuss.  Let’s talk.