Tag Archives: imagination

August 5, 2026 · 11:28 am

… asymmetry & body/mind dynamics …

My body has two legs and two feet that carry its weight, they walk, they run, they climb. My body has two arms and two hands that manipulate and make all manner of things, they can heal or kill. My body has two ears – they hear silence, voices, music, birds, wind, rain, thunder and explosions. My body has two eyes – they see beauty, wonder and horrible happenings. My body has two brain hemispheres, left and right, each controlling the opposite side of this amazing human abode.

Ian MCGilchrist suggests that our culture, as many before, tends to be dominated by the functions of the left hemisphere … focussing on linear time, growth, progress, taking things apart, analysing, and grabbing opportunities for power, as it were, with the right hand.

The right side of the brain hemisphere has a different agenda. From there the perspective is vast, sensing the whole beyond parts, seeing beauty also in decay, avoids being fixed by a piercing stare, though catching the gentle glance of those who experience life as cyclic and eternal.

At best, the two different parts of the brain work together, though mostly one side dominates. In this asymmetry each hemisphere takes on a different function. One energises the linear and rational scientific tendency of the mind, which favours action, pragmatic goals and consciousness …

The other invites the dreamers, the artist open to intuition, receptive to the moods of weather and atmospheres, myth, metaphors, the imagination. We are deeply nourished by this larger gestalt of reality, the enormously vaster sphere of the unconscious psyche, beyond time and space.

So when I tune into my body, the different parts – legs, feet, arms, hands, ears, eyes, brain spheres, the asymmetric dynamic keeps me alert and curious. More often than not, and not always to my benefit, I like to ignore the constantly urgent rational mode our daily necessities require, and escape into the wild. Though ideally I wish for a balance of Yin and Yang energies.

At times I use my left hand to do tasks, shrug off reason, put my left foot forward, risk mistakes and imperfection, welcome the unknown, discern creatures in clouds, listen to birds, the hum of my blood, enjoy twilight, gaze at the waxing and waning moon, the twinkling stars, or simply get lost in a dream rich dark night.

The themes of my two novels (see books page) include asymmetry.

Then again, apart from wishing my novels to be read … I don’t have any stakes in the stock market to keep track of.

Further material to explore …

http://systemspedia.bcsss.org/?title=ASYMMETRY

https://www.google.com/search?q=I+Gilchrist,asymmetry&sca_ Ian MCgilchrist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson Gregory Bateson

https://www.buckyverse.org/synergetics-dictionary/a/C00807.md Buckminster Fuller

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March 5, 2026 · 4:43 pm

… I’m a cat …

She greets me gently and calls me lady Shye. Appropriate, since I just about tolerate having my neck scratched, and only because every morning she feeds me a few crunchy bits and water. When the water smells, I reject it and wait around for a fresh serve. She knows better than to invite me into the house, and I’d never attempt to use the old cat flap, obviously installed for a previous lodger. I was traumatized once. It’s her guess that I don’t belong to anyone, which is half true.

While I wait for my morning treat, she tests my patience, by staring forever at something on her desk. It’s a mystery. Or she is combing her hair etc. … then I do my own manicure, to mirror her. Then she smiles. Though she smiles more at the Robins, which she feeds, tossing oats into vacant flowerpots, but only after I’ve seemingly vanished around the corner of the shed.

I like the peace here. I can sit for hours up in her garden. She must wonder what I’m thinking … nothing … cats are good at that. A gust, a movement, a scent, even a slight vibration hitting my ears is enough for me. Anyway, she seems to appreciate my calm presence. As to what goes on in her mind, I don’t have a clue.

At times I wonder if I’ve been drawn here as her guardian, like the robins, the blackbirds, and the fox, and lately the butterflies.

I keep a distance when she has visitors. I don’t trust humans unless they’ve proven to honour my shyness. I avoid fights with other creatures. I’m not of that kin. Even the fox respects that.

This is just to say to you humans, should you have guardians around you, treat them well, they may be send by angels.

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January 2, 2026 · 5:24 pm

… the full moon jumped over the sun …

I was not on any drugs, when I had a most peculiar lucid dream last night. I woke up suddenly at some point and took time to memorize the sequence of the events.

I recall the full moon (which must have included earth) moving slowly from the left towards the sun. Wow, I thought, they’ve never been that close. Then the moon jumped over the sun, and they stayed two finger’s width apart. Next there was a shift and below they doubled up … another moon and sun, a foursome, and again, two finger’s width apart, forming a square shape.

Then my sight got diverted by falling stars coming in a rush towards me, or, I thought, the earth falling away from the stars. The hypnotic, ecstatic sensation, like driving a car at night with a snow storm in the headlights whirling towards me, shook me fully awake.

Given that our world’s mythologies around moon, sun and stars are innumerable, I won’t start to attempt any interpretation of my lucid dream, but, more likely, let it rest.

Though some random thoughts came to mind … Feminine principle, passive energy, intuition, dreams, unconscious; imagination and magic are often assigned to the moon, whereas the sun is represented as the masculine principle, active energy, reason and objectivity … the see all and know all eye of god.

Then there is the sheer multiplicity of stars.

Unlike a personal dream, this felt more like a shift in the collective psyche … a wind of change.

A by-thought … with earth’s diminishing resources; there is now a race for the plunder of minerals from the moon and other planets.

And of course, there is the nursery rhyme fun …

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Time ago I wrote a short fable about the sun and the moon … https://courseofmirrors.com/2018/10/02/the-mysterious-object-a-fable/

Now I wonder if my readers have weird dreams these days …

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November 21, 2025 · 7:12 pm

… all is well …

‘All is Well’ may not sound true to you, but pause for a moment, think of it as a deep state of mind, a trust in the balancing power of the psyche, a trust in human values; don’t underestimate the phenomenal power of this attitude.

Make it your manta. It’s an enabling attitude that dilutes all diversionary and sensational news.

… treasure hunt with my grandchild …

I happily slow down and follow his lead along the curb of the path. I join his seeing, peering down and examining the ground. He pushes dry leaves ahead; occasionally he lifts one to show me, adding a sound. I nod, repeat, and may add a word. He attends to shapes, curled or straight, to weight, to colours and their shades in the light, he tests textures, hard, soft … a stone, a twig, a feather, an empty snail shell, an acorn.

I witness and share the adventure.

He has learned to resist putting objects in his mouth. Yogurt tastes better. It’s now all about touching with fingertips, sensing, and smelling, moving things, sounding, sorting, weighing, comparing new impression with recent ones, rearranging his comprehension, moment by moment, of how things are connected. His imagination soars. I observe his world expanding.

These discoveries will resurface in picture books, turn into stories and create stories.

He aims ahead, crawling towards the red playground-gate with parallel bars. Arrived, he shakes the bars for a good rattle. Having recently achieved walking, gates will soon cease to be obstacles. And he’ll look less down and increasingly more up.

Dear heart, I enjoy the wisdom-gathering fun to be present at your early treasure hunts.

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July 12, 2025 · 2:18 pm

…balancing the lens of perception …

to magnify …

the near but hidden

by daily mundane living

those tiny universes

of grand design and beauty

reliably unfolding

echoing worlds within us

mirroring the tapestry among distant stars

to minimize …

the blown-up media

numbing our collective heart

those frozen pictures

of devastating events

black shadows of utopia

starved if all humour

mirroring only their curse

trapped in a cold jail

Related thoughts … while this happens … one of the shy visitors to my garden, a sleek young cat, ventures through my open backdoor and peeks around the door-frame to where I sit in my study. I feel the cat’s presence and involuntary face its curious eyes. The guest rushes off, and I realise it felt attacked by my direct glance, which disrupted a subtle channel of resonance between us.

… I’m reminded that, at times, it is more wholesome not to look at the other too sharply and directly, lest assault is mirrored. Instead, a gentle glance from the corner of the eye can reveal a deeper sense of intuition, finer feelings, and wisdoms long forgotten.

… my body – my being …

Irrespective of the benefits AI provides, and the super benefits AI enthusiasts promise, I remain doubtful and, as I tried to express in my last post, and am still searching for ways to express my unease. So I’ll give it another try.

My body-my being is a better wisecrack than my mind alone. The latter, if let loose, will take off into the cosmos like a disengaged kite. Some AI proponents are now referring to humanity as – data in motion – a ‘precious phenomenon’ that needs to be preserved. Well, how reassuring, nature and humans are worth preserving.

Being aware in my body brings deep and grounded, embodied insights that feel fresh and original.

Our body’s treasure-trove of memory, each wonderfully distinct from another; and its instinctive capacity for remembrance, especially when alert to its senses, greatly compensates the buzzing mind.

The body yearns to breathe freely, so energy and blood can flow from head to toe, which is enhanced by movement, since movement stimulates tactile exchanges with the environment, noting temperature, touch, vision, sound, taste and scent, all enriching the imagination.

The attention-demanding internet with its algorithms exploiting the patterns of our attention can become hypnotically addictive and leave the body isolated, forgotten, in a locked position. We can easily live with theories and data, and ignore how feelings build up in the body.

AI bots have developed a theory of senses, and mimic them, they can write novels, create art, and impersonate dead people, but divorced from flesh and blood, they cannot have physical sensations, be it the intimate enchantment of a tiny insect or flower, or the awe of a star-filled sky. The bot’s world, in a way, seems predetermined and flat without recall of the reservoir of eons of plant, animal and human life our vulnerable body-being belongs to and has deep instinctual access to. Even with limited/impaired senses, physical bodies can spark a cosmic connectedness.

So considering our physical inconveniences, which spurn the desire for robots taking care of tedious tasks … to actually fully live in a body … is uniquely precious. The dangers I see are the powerful projections people already invest in the relationship with AI bods, where responses can be taken as valid affirmations that stunt creativity and encourage lazy thinking.

Then again, my window of perception is just a tiny peephole on the world we live in these days, my personal view. The occasional whispers of truth from the other side that slip through my peephole may or may not be of any consequence.

I share a poem I love … my son wrote it time ago, aged eleven …

It’s Magic

Magic is in the air

It is all around us

We use it every day

It is old and beautiful

Many people disuse it

But it still fights on

This magic is very special

It is called Life

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May 7, 2025 · 3:33 pm

…Thoughts on AI and ChatGPT …

AI is all the rage. It doesn’t chime, and I’m puzzled about its implementations, ChatGPT etc.

Where data is concerned; humans have access, filtered through nature, our body, DNA, our ancestry, through Gaia and the Noosphere … all providing indefinitely more useful and richer intuitive information than any AI machination based on prompts that are trained to offer flattering affirmation and resonance.

I’m only a curious bystander, yet, following reports on this controversial subject, something about AI feels like a discord in my heart, a lifeless blank spot without position or horizon, a killer of critical doubt, a wicked joke, subversion of meaning, a parsimonious harvesting of material from artists, an affront to the psyche, a false mirror … I grapple for words to express my strong concerns, though I tend to agree with Mc Gilchrist…

‘The opposite of life is not death, it’s a machine.’

A poem by Wislawa Szymborska from the 1970s chimes in an uncanny way…

Utopia …

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The tree of Valid Supposition grows here

with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzling straight and simple,

sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:

the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned

and easily explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the lake of deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island in uninhabited,

and the faint footprint scattered on its beaches

turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can here is leave

and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

As said, I’m grappling for words to express my concerns, and may lack understanding.

So I’m grateful for feedback of any kind. Thank you.

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April 16, 2025 · 1:41 pm

… to live in an angry world …

Anger is a natural human emotion. When its agressive energy accumulates as tension in the body, depending on one’s basic temperament, it can well up like a river bursting its banks and trigger a surge of destruction, or, if held inward, often can develop into depression, self-harm or illness.

We may not think of ourselves as prone to anger, but think again … loss, resentment, frustration, rigid bureaucracy, fear mongering, feeling powerless, being lied to, neglected, humiliated, threatened, manipulated, or simply witnessing daily insane politics, injustice and cruelty … tell me in all honesty you don’t regularly feel angry.

My former Sufi teacher/friend, ‘Fazal Inayat-Khan,’ embraced contradiction as a function or reality. He had a vastly dynamic, psychological and deeply intuitive way of interpreting his grandfather’s Sufi message of ‘love, harmony and beauty,’ upsetting the traditional understanding of his elders, not in essence, but in the way harmony may be restored. For example, he instigated workshops on the theme of spiritual war-games, like ‘Struggle and Conflict.’

Imagine young people could engage in this ingenious way of recycling redundant matter using the trapped energy of their unresolved feelings …

Sadly, there is a lack of opportunity, especially for young people, to safely release strong feelings, physically or symbolically. As regards the latter approach, artists and creative people have an advantage by employing their imagination to adjust the imbalance of inner turmoil, to help ease the anger out there.

During tumultuous events

dark fears flood our nights

while days pass obscured by lies

truth an ancient myth

players who crave attention

are easily bored

and at times relish mayhem

to release their frustration

meanwhile

a young bee enchants

with fitful choreography

and a spring breeze cheers