I’ve known for a long time that science plays a huge part in my life. But it was only when I intentionally began to document this journey of mine that it became apparent how important it really is to me. Every time when I’m reading a book, or research a particular topic, my mind is constantly asking all sorts of “verification” questions. Has it been proven? Is it repeatable? Can we simulate it?

Lately I’ve been completely absorbed in anything related to our mind. The conscious, and the unconscious, how they relate, how our neural networks function and so forth. I’ve been especially intrigued by how our brain store and retrieve information, aka memories. One question that I’ve yet to answer is: What comes first, the electrical “firing” giving rise to a thought or the thought itself?

Logically one might say, the electrical impulse. But, how is that possible? How could the electrical impulse be fired before I’ve even thought about having the thought? Ha ha, I’m making myself confused. Do you see what I’m trying to get at though? What gives rise to the electrical impulse? How does it know where to travel? Which neurons to connect with? And why does it fire in the first place? Arguing that the impulse comes first would in some sense argue that we’ve no free will. Okay, perhaps a stretch considering that we’d still need to understand how each cognitive impression affects us, but still. If we fully understand the brain we should also be able to fully realize when a particular thought will be raised, no?

It’s mind-boggling. Perhaps because I’m not particularly educated on the topic, but it almost feels like a question similar to that of the universe. What comes outside the universe? Or what gave rise to the universe in the first place? It’s a kind of chicken and egg problem. All this reading about neural pathways, neurons, cations etc. spawned a thought about or cognitive abilities and in particular how we learn new things.

Here’s my written down thought, completely unedited and stupid :-)

When observing something a particular pattern will rise inside our brains which when observed long enough will become “static” and memorized. When we’re trying to recall something we are simply doing random “firing” in our brain to find the particular pattern which was created when we first observed that particular object.

I know, it’s not exactly an amazing thought but well, it gives a clue about how I function. I am constantly asking myself questions, attempting to answer them and understand everything I see around me. Hopefully this will help me in finding a guiding purpose. I do think I’ve learned something today that will give me an edge, mixing science and spirituality, finding where they converge and which questions cannot be answered by science, or spirituality.

… see you soon wonderful world.