Finding intellectual motivation

Here’s a tough one for ya, how do you motivate yourself into deep thoughts? How do you probe and push and fight your way into the darkest depths of your reptilian brain and begin to explore your own intellect and humanity?

Intelligence is a funny thing. Complex yet simple, rooted in process and subject to reason’s laws but ruled by emotion and heart. Cold calculating intellect is nothing without clear emotional understanding and integration. Your deepest mind is a place that melds and mixes both. A dark chasm filled with unpleasant thoughts, fantasies, destructive ideals, unconscionable conceptualizations, amorphous morals, bright shining castles of good, romantic moments, purity, humanity and love.

It’s a swirling abyss, beautiful and terrifying, exhilarating and spectacular. Like the deepest reaches of space, the mixture of light and dark, stars of every color sparkling against a ghastly nothingness… colors of thought mixing to form a scintillating display of perceived and imaginable reality.

That place deep inside your mind where anything is possible, everything is probable, and if your not careful, you can wander your life away lost in the winding labyrinth of your mind.

It’s a collusion of delights. One that is rarely reached, hidden behind a thick oak door, studded and banded with material stronger than steel – socialization, morality, good and evil, expectations and guilt. Wash away those things, enter your mind clean and free of expectations and the doors start to ease open. A dangerous anarchy awaits, where one must be careful and yet carefree.

For me that place opens rarely. Often I’m teased with just a glimpse – often after I’ve physically exhausted myself and deem I’m due for a reward. Then it’s just a peek, only a few hours lost in the blissful nothingness of deep thought. Exploring and adventuring in a new world, a retreat from physical reality into the haven of intellectual discovery.

It’s in that place that I find my self, that I ease into my humanity. It’s that visualization, that tantalizing morsel that motivates me to seek out my individuality and true self.

What about you?