I think of my self as a Renaissance person, and I think that truly there are no ideas, just new combinations of old ones, like new combinations of notes make a "new" song..

   I have been reading all manner of spiritual, psychology and self help books since I was a child, hanging onto the ideas that resonated and forgetting the ideas that didn't, to deliberately shape myself, my personality. I was an unusually wise child... tho rather socially inept.

   When I started school, I was very frustrated that my teachers did not understand the value of daydreaming. In Grade 2., I had discovered that reading was a Teacher approved substitute for daydreaming, and I promptly disappeared into the world of books.. which even then, I preferred to television.

   I learned self-hypnosis from a book in Grade 6., and after that the self creation process was more conscious.. tho not always wisely chosen. Hypnosis is a lot of power to put into the hands of a child, even an awakened child.

   The other major book influence that year, was "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach.. It set me free by showing me that there was Spirituality outside of Roman Catholicism. It sent me into an altered state, a Kundalini experience that I still do not remember fully.. but I remember I lost time, about 2 hours sitting under a tree after I finished reading, and I was walking around in a strange trance afterwards feeling love for all creatures.

   This began a path of seeing the Truth in Fiction, and the Fiction of Truth. Hypnosis taught me that my reality was shaped by my thoughts, and fiction taught me how profoundly real the reality of ideas could be.

   A Zen duality: Truth is stranger than fiction: Art imitates life: Life imitates Art. An oroborus Serpent loop where profound truths are encapsulated in story and Myth, while science de-constructs itself against it's own limits to understanding.

   Since I was 12 I have known that my mind stores every idea I have ever come across, every memory, every word. All these become the food of creativity, mixed and blended into my unique perspective... the notes of the melody of me.

   I have observed the similarity of wisdom from different cultures, and how information feeds on itself, cycling round and returning with a new face and name. How the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of evolution is resonant of the levels of the Eastern Chakra system, which is resonant of the Hebrew Kaballah, which is resonant of the ancient Egyptian Sun worship mysticism.

   I am not even unique in making these observations.. inspired scholars like Joseph Campbell number among my influences. He is best known for his talent at finding mythological similarities between different cultures and analysing them in a Jungian format.