For years, I have navigated the world as a practitioner of “Universe Juice,” an inexplicable momentum where focused intent seems to bend reality in favor of the bold. I’ve built a life and a brand, atop the pillars of folklore, hauntings, and the “tangible triggers” of manifestation.
But now, I stand at a precipice, a delicious self-imposed paradox. I have spent the last decade studying the “ghosts”, all that is outside of us. Only to realize that the most fascinating subject is within us, it is the mind itself.
The irony isn’t lost on me: even as I transition from practitioner to researcher, I am still playing the game. By treating certain behaviors as a “tangible trigger,” I am knowingly participating in the very magical thinking I intend to decode. I am no longer just the subject of the momentum; I am the observer tasked with uncovering the cognitive mechanisms that make the “illusion” work. I’ve essentially volunteered as my own greatest case study — the lab rat and the scientist meeting under the same microscope.
There is a great deal moving through my mind — a kind of high-velocity inner landscape where ideas ignite with immediacy, and fast like a deck of cards being shuffled, only to be followed by an abrupt and quiet stillness.
I have spent years learning to navigate these internal shifts, but I am now drawn toward a path that allows for a deeper understanding of these experiences — a kind of intellectual pilgrimage to the very edges of reason. I can imagine a future in which what I have lived is not only spoken of or expressed, but examined, documented, and situated within a research-based academic framework.
There is a certain poetic irony in the idea that the lab rat might eventually write the textbook.
So we shall see how the path unfolds.
Original article: https://medium.com/@anntomology/i-am-the-lab-rat-i-am-the-scientist-goo-goo-gjoob-c0f4c2f3b3cb?source=rss-dd9d16b8d22f——2