I have noticed lately my tendency to ideological suicide ... a meltdown of all the ideas, principles, judgements--all the cognitive structures--i have accrued through the years. A kind friend tells me it precedes the stage of greater self-integration, that it's just a step or a rung in the ever-widening sphere of the self, akin to a shaman-initiate in catatonia. I wonder if he's right. This has happened to me before but it hasn't been so pervasive, so confusing, so ... I was young before now I'm old: age has a way of resisting mental fluidity, ever-hardening into fixed dogma. It has bubbled to the surface now, and is about to pop: who was it who said that the road to individuation is narrow as a razor's edge? Is there a drug for this? Let's just hope ...