Received a posting in my email box from DailyOM today that tells me that what I must have is pineal activation cream to solve all my problems.

“Pineal Activation Cream is excellent for revitalizing the pineal gland (third eye) and opening to clarity. Our third eye area is home to our 6th chakra which allows us to see with our inner vision and be open to our psychic experiences.”  I’m supposed to apply it in circles on my forehead or in little infinity designs while meditating. Maybe I should work on meditating while not doing things like circles with my hands first?

It’s on sale, too, down from $20 to $5.95, so perhaps I should just ignore the cost of my new lenses (couldn’t afford new frames) and brace myself for getting them adjusted if I try this stuff.  Because, knowing me, I’ll for sure turn out to be nearsighted in my 3rd eye. Heck, I’ve always had problems with my outer vision, philosophically speaking.  Adding another thoughtful eye is just expecting too much from my limited foresight skills.

I’ve never been one of those gals who sat down and said, “Hmm.  Where do I want to be in 20 years?  In 10?  in the next 5 minutes?”. My ex impressed me so much when we were dating because he actually had a twenty year plan – written out! I figured on there, as did our two children (that third one threw a wee bit of a wrench in the works, thank heavens), his career was all plotted out, etc., etc. What I didn’t realize, looking at that, was that my life was expected to fit in around his life, for the next 20 years.  We weren’t going to follow any of my choices, you see. At the time, I was lazily okay with that. Then I wasn’t. Sometimes this being a driven soul and spirit is a pain. Oddly, I wanted to do something with MY life.

However, I’m still working at that.  Probably, if I had actually written out a plan, and, ahem, followed it, my achievements would be more, well, achieved. Alas, I am so nearsighted in goal setting I still haven’t really planned dinner and it’s six PM. All I know is that wine will be involved.

If I’d had foresight, I would never have gone into management, a place laden with stress and loss of self-esteem.  Each and every day I had someone telling me what to do and exactly how to do it, everything I was doing wrong, how I’d never get it right.  And then I’d go to work. (Parenting adolescents isn’t for the faint of heart) Maybe if I’d had foresight, I wouldn’t have been parenting adolescents – I’d have run away to do northern nursing as I sortof planned.

I wouldn’t have bought the house that looked too good to be true until I’d asked about the ants. I wouldn’t have moved to a tiny country town until I checked the place out in summer and heard the gravel trucks as they rumbled past my selected house, knocking everything all about. I probably wouldn’t have dated a few of the lads I dated. I might have put fitness first a whole lot sooner.

Add a third eye and I just don’t know how I’d get around.  I’m still tripping over my bifocals (again, with foresight, wouldn’t have teased my dad so much about this.  The gods were listening…).  I never get the angle of my head right for whatever task I’m attempting.  I suspect, even if I did rub the lotion in a figure eight pattern on my forehead, as daily OM suggests, I’d still be seeing blurry.

According to Descartes, the Pineal gland is supposed to house the soul, primarily because there is only one pineal gland and everything else in the brain is doubled.  This makes as much sense as some other theories I’ve read. However, why the pineal gland and not the spleen? Or gallbladder?  Just asking….

According to other philosophers, it is representative of a “blind-spot in Western rationality, and an organ of excess and delirium”. (Georges Bataille) Sounds like the kind of guy you want at your next “Cheer up the economy isn’t really tanking and we aren’t losing democracy right left and centre (but mostly right)” party. Although I’m not sure. Maybe Bataille was in favour of excess and delirium. I suspect Vidocq would have been more the excess type.

According to scientists, it houses melatonin and helps regulate ovarian behaviour. It calcifies with aging. If you take it out of rats it messes them up. Honestly.  You’ve got to pity rats. (Or as I often say, using my third eye, “I bow before our rat overlords.”)

People seem to place the mysterious third eye in the middle of our foreheads simply because some of those deep sea fishes who carry around their own lamps have the lamp start from that area.  Now I’m not saying that a lamp in the centre of our foreheads wouldn’t be handy for late night reading, but I just don’t have such a thing.  I’ve tried.

Nowhere can I see a reference to actually seeing with it, which makes me feel better about my new lenses – and it seems to me that the nervous stimulation required to awaken it would either be light, or a good neck massage. I wonder if the pineal cream would be good for that?

http://www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/display/product.cgi?pid=1964