Fourth Form of Madness

A few years back I became fascinated with instinct. I had watched a show on various insect instinct and had became intrigued with how, for example, a certain type of moth knew to automatically eat the egg it was hatching from the second it broke free. Science had found that if it didn’t do this, it would die minutes after birth, but science had not been able to find out how the moth knew to dine on this egg meal first and fore most without any instruction from any other being. Some people might easily dismiss this wonder of the world with the words “That’s just instinct, they know to do this”. Such wonderful tautological replies do much to kill the wonder of the natural world and little to expand our exploration of the unknown. Whilst we may never know the unknown we shouldn’t stop exploring it playground.

To let your mind go where it doesn’t ordinarily go in the course of a normal day (or at least my day :-)). To stop in-between remembering your shopping list, rehashing the argument with said loved one, wondering how you are going to get everything you need to get done completed, and to really notice something in your environment, anything, be it a flower, a crack in the pavement, the sky, the ocean. To just look and notice the absolute wonder it really is, just as it is. Even to contemplate the marvel of it’s beginnings, and how it came to be, even if you will never know. I believe this helps open us all up to all kinds of wonder. Allowing us the possibility of never having to give an answer, never having to get a tick in that box of understanding that the masses so often demand, is liberating and a kind of “final frontier” that the soul thirsts to explore.

Some time back, someone advised me that all the wonders of the world and ourselves are already ours, we don’t even need to ask for them. However, we do need to work for them, in an indirect way. There are many ways and many different kinds of work as there are people. What is right for one, might not be the way for another. The only guide is instinct, and it has to be your own, not projected onto you by others. We all have instinct, whether we have learnt to feel it and listen to it or not, it is there. This means everyone has a shot at the wonders of the world and knowing themselves. You can’t get a more built in equality than that! I believe in that kind of equality instinctively.