Riding the Eternal Thread

What is it that makes our brains jump around from one idea to another -- or one image to another? How do those gray cells turn into magical gymnasts in infinitely branching protoplasm?

Is there some sort of meaning to any of it?

Today I was wondering what to blog. My mind kept landing on the image of the three monkeys of "Hear no evil. Speak no evil. See no evil," fame. Could this be because I have been so aware of my need to not contribute negativity to the world (as much as I can avoid it anyway)? I have given that a lot of thought of late - wanting to make my own lifespace as peaceful as possible, as reflective of love as possible. Is that why I have this image gripping me?

Maybe.

I do trust that images will unfold their own intent, so I proceeded to just "ride the thread" of thought to see where it took me. I went to the web looking for images that I could use of the 3 monkeys. I found this one through sheer chance taken at the Toshogu Shrine in Japan. The shrine was built in the early 1600's and is meant to honor the 1st Shogun of Japan. That's all well and good -- but here is the ironic part.

Almost to this exact day, 20 years ago, I was standing in front of that very carving at that precise shrine in the midst of a snowy day in Japan.

Is that day calling me for some reason? Is there something there in the past that I am supposed to learn from now? Or, is the connection a way that the idea of the monkeys gets emphasized or undescored as being important - like the Universe hitting me over the head with a cosmic frying pan "just to get my attention" about the image. Is this how God sends messages, coded into the fabric of ordinary memories?

Or, is this just a random connection?

A friend of mine who is an artist says that she gets certain "image hits" that she follows to their conclusion until she feels they have revealed what they are meant to. An "image hit" for her is a fascination with one sort of image that won't let go. Like my monkeys. She says that usually they end up unearthing something of value.

Let's say that every memory is a collection of images and feelings. And each image and feeling is deposited in the brain, or the body, as some sort of electrochemical imprint.

What if the memory lands there and then starts branching out to anything that references it - so for me, the monkeys branch to Japan, and to a spiritual position, and to the little brass monkeys my Uncle Mac used to have on his shelf, and to every other memory about monkeys that I have.

What if I share a memory with other people? What if my memory of these three shrine monkeys is shared by everyone else that has ever seen them, and those memories are all linked up somewhere in the great Collective Unconscious. Then when I think about the monkeys, a little blip gets ignited which lights up my monkey-mind and connects me with every other person's monkey-mind.

Maybe I was thinking about monkeys because somewhere in Japan, 20 years ago, a woman stood next to me who today is looking at her old pictures. There I am, over to the left, in the corner of one of her pictures of that day.

I am waving. Hello Hello Forever.