In this chapter I invite you to explore several functions of our human cognition through narrative as we near the end of the quest to understand the elusive nature of Quicksilver itself; something we all catch in the corner of our eyes, an elusive dreamlike experience of intuition, of gut feelings of being guided.
This aspect of ourselves has been expressed in countless ways over time in myth and story and mystery tradition.
I could have written technical descriptions of the function of the amygdala and the ascending and descending reticular formation systems. I could have given textbook descriptions of the functions of limbic hijacking and the lizard brain, and of decoupled cognitions and agency detection systems.
The best way we have ever understood this attentional switching mechanism, this orienting response, these root functions of the brain however is not to learn what they are and how they work; it’s to understand how to use them.
Next week’s Chapter, “Quicksilver,” the last chapter written so far - drops the day I begin my journey to the Nass Valley in Nisga’a territory near the Alaska panhandle. I will be spending some time with my friend George who I have not seen since 1997.
George and my daughter were my inspirations for Chasing Quicksilver, perhaps we could call them muses. It was George who inspired me over the last twenty-five years to seek to understand the nature of the Spirit Guide, that part of our Self that we have represented consistently in myth and story in every significant culture in the world through all of history.
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