The Free Radical

I was a little surprised to find this little puffball intact after the thaw. I certainly have fond memories of eating many of its brethren the previous autumn– before their interiors turned into a mass of powdery spores. I can’t say that they’re delicious, but I did quite appreciate them nevertheless.

I was doubly surprised to find that all the spores were still intact inside and quite dry enough to disperse in a cloud when trodden upon. I was happy to perform this service to my friend the puffball.

I was triply surprised when Puffball decided to deliver a rather profound message!

“You needn’t wait to be trodden upon to share the riches of your inner world, human. I must await an outside agency to complete my life cycle; you are much more self-contained.

“Today, I would speak to you of impulses… those inklings and urgings that arise within you unbidden. You have been well-conditioned to distrust them; allow me to point out your error.

“You have an innate intelligence which operates quite independently from your ego-driven consciousness, although it takes some of its cues from such. That innate intelligence far surpasses the intellect of your ego in its computational and directive ability. It has at least a million times the organizational capacity of your thinking mind.

“Now, when an impulse arises within you– an urge to behave in a particular, and often peculiar, way– your logical mind assesses the proposition of carrying out that inkling and most often can find no logic in it whatever. To behave in such an impulsive manner just seems to make no sense… so you distrust the impulse and squash it. But what your logical mind fails to take into consideration is that your innate intelligence organizes moment-to-moment a picture of reality that is a million times bigger or more detailed than your mind typically organizes from sensory input alone.

“Consider this: You make a decision with your logical mind to walk across the room, navigating around the furniture, to retrieve a particular book from the shelf. Your conscious mind does little more than form the intent to do so in an instant, and maybe– maybe not– correlate the sensory data along the way. (Usually during such a simple task, and especially in familiar surroundings, you need not pay much attention to the sights, sounds, smells, etc. along the way.) It is your innate intelligence which coordinates this incredibly complex task, beneath your mind’s happy oblivion. Think for a moment how difficult it would be to perform even this simple task if your conscious thinking mind had to deliberately tell each muscle involved exactly when and how much to contract or release, keeping you upright and balanced, through a maze of obstacles defined through sensory data consciously processed. Quite simply, your logical mind could not do it; it lacks the organizational/computational ability… and it simply doesn’t know how!

“You easily trust your innate intelligence to carry out your conscious intentions, and it rarely lets you down. However, when your innate intelligence presents intentions of its own– through impulses– to your conscious mind, it is most often ignored. Your innate intelligence is plugged into an incredible array of data streams; it knows your true position in reality much better than your thinking mind ever could. Why do you insist upon mistrusting it?

“Your impulses will lead you to your fullest growth expression… if you allow them. Yes, when they occur, they may seem completely illogical. If you beheld a jigsaw puzzle of a million pieces unassembled, do you think it likely that you could logically guess the picture from a single piece? Trust that you are not a flawed being. Every living thing you see around you trusts its innate intelligence– acts on its impulses. Is the rest of Nature wrong to do so? Ponder it.”

Hm… I have nothing to add at this time…