Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Limits to Human Awareness

Sometimes I write stuff that is good, so good I wonder how I ever imagined it. I'm such an ordinary person with no special talents or particular aptitudes. I flunked the fifth grade. My teachers told my mother that I was mildly retarded. Hell, I believed them.... and worse, still do.

So you can understand how when I used to write this poetry that seemed pretty good that I wondered how somebody stupid like me could be writing things that were clearly beyond my pay grade. Eventually I figured it out. It wasn't coming from inside my head. My biocomputer, (BRAIN) did not have the capacity for what I was doing. When it experienced overload I got referred to the next higher level. Sure my noggin had some capacity, and I could perform mundane writing tasks, but when I exceeded that Random Access Memory (RAM) in my brain, it was like a switch flipped and something kicked into overdrive. It seemed like my pea brain, realizing it was in hopelessly over its head, handed me off to a higher cosmic source. I was no longer alone in doing all the computing but like a computer modem something connected me to a greater awareness. In other words I was tapping into an outside source.

I was an enigma to my teachers. I remember once in the fifty grade my teacher wanted us to do a candle making project. In searching for the materials she couldn't find any wicks. She asked the class if they had any suggestions. Nobody responded...the other students sat like a bunch of mutes. So I raised my hand, which surprised her, since I seldom had anything to say.

"Why don't we bring a table candle from home, put it in the form and pour the paraffin around it?"

Her jaw dropped... turning to the class she said, "Did you hear what Percy just said?" Now I'd been eager to do the candle project and frustrated that we couldn't. The answer popped into my head straight out the blue, and I got the distinct impression that my muse whispered it to me because she didn't particularly like Mrs. Jones. (For the record, I was in awe of Mrs. Jones, she was stacked and drop dead gorgeous. Something always stirred when she came near.) I remember seeing a flicker of bewilderment in "Jonsey's" eyes and sensed some doubt, perhaps from remembering she'd just told my mother what a moron I was. SURPRISE! The class idiot solved the problem.

Now yesterday, I mentioned the Greeks and this thing they called the MYSTERIES. I've long suspected that this was more than what we commonly give them credit for. This is not akin to some sort of religious experience that comes from sitting in a pew and praying on Sunday. I believe that the Greeks were tapping into an altogether different source. When we look at all the Greeks were able to achieve in virtually every level of human endeavor, one has to wonder if maybe their greatest breakthrough was being led by an Oracle, into a different realm... a state of mind that connected to a greater corporate awareness. Instead of a distributed, individual link to reality, there coexists, a larger repository swirling about in a foggy interconnected universe.

As humanity struggles to understand who and what we are... as beings we can learn a great deal from our invention of the computer. Our first attempts were with a box that sat on a table and this was analogous to a human brain. Then came the next development, which was an ability to network the boxes together. This was analogous to people interacting with one another and taking advantage of those with special skills and knowledge. The third big development was the CLOUD. Here is what I'm getting at. Computers can today access the corporate knowledge of humanity with a search engine. It's like having a library at your finger tips. Our biocomputers (BRAINS) are able to manage the first two functions but we never really got into the clouds. Why not? We've long suspected a psychic connection but dismissed it as nonsense. Well it's real, and as writers we use it every time we get beyond our individual capabilities, lament our frustrations and cry out for help.

Now I know that saying this, welcomes a healthy dose of derision from those learned minions of Science. You know those self proclaimed experts who point to some Psychological aspect of cognition like Freud, and attribute it to some subliminal source buried deep in the mind. In my view this is pseudo intellectual BS. When something I know little about, or ever remember thinking about, suddenly appears, written with a sophistication that's totally beyond my ability, then that to me is evidence of a cosmic repository out there that someone can actually tap into.

Now here is where it gets a little fuzzy. When I feel like I want to write, or my mind is full of the vicissitudes of life, I can still write but what I jot down, clearly comes from inside my head. Surprisingly when I don't particularly feel in the mood to write, and think my MUSE is out to lunch, this is when I seem to best connect. Note I just used the word MUSE. Think about it. Writers constantly refer to this creative entity, yet almost always with a chuckle or sigh of levity. Writer's acknowledge it's there, perched on their shoulders, but pretend to not really take the idea seriously. It is however, a serious manifestation. When you connect to the cosmos you can go on a rip and achieve things you never thought possible. That's because knowledge and understanding is not a function of how much RAM you have but rather a supplemental capability, a modem that connects to a humongous repository of understanding. There's no limit to what one can do in this state of mind. IMPOSSIBILITY is artificial, and if you limit yourself with negativity you impose constraints that hamstring your real capability. Don't do that!