How's this for 4:30 AM - then again (a) Time is relative (b) As well as an illusion (c) To label something as "amazing" or "remarkable" shows you're still somewhat attached to the world-view that only a certain narrow range of events/expereinces is to be expected ... anyway here goes -
Every single person in this world is an eternal, divine soul which has chosen to manifest in this three-dimensional realm in order to experince one or more aspects of the human condition. You can never know the full reason why any person or situation is as it is. It is like looking at the surface of the ocean. You can see a lot of activity and much of it may seem furious and chaotic but you can have no idea what is happening five miles below the ocean's surface. So it is with people. You can observe their behaviour and personality and emotional activity but you can never see what is really happening at the level of the soul. (Unless you happen to be experiencing Unity Consciousness at the time)
{Did we really choose to forget JUST so we could experience the joy of remembering??}
Then a little later ... I'll admit, simply using our everyday consciousness and awareness the world does NOT make any sense and never will. So, you have two options really. To live in fear and just see the world as an unfair, cruel unpredictable place where BAD things happen for no seemingly GOOD reason. The second option is to try to access higher levels of awareness/consciousness or to at least trust they exist and that from these perspectives there is a very different picture emerging ... {Even at the risk of being regarded as crazy. But who really is the crazy one?} Yet, I'll readily acknowledge that until you truly expereince these higher levels it is tough if not impossible to imagine what the view is like.
"People (are) good in their good-good life. People (are) good in their own goodness of life."
(Listening to Close To The Edge) ... "This is all merely a framework for souls to interact. Don't take the framework too seriously."
Found a book called Phoenix Rising in library - should type up some excerpts later - about a Native American woman and her relationship with an old shaman "No-Eyes". I open it at random and it is a very apt section about skeptics and not trying to change people ... hmmm ...
Interesting messages at Chopra Forum - par for the course I suppose. It is an interesting one - how do you stay reasonable with the unresonable, flexible with the dogmatic, non-judgemental with the judgemental. It is obviously far easier to love those who are amiable, pleasant, friendly and not in-your-face. Not sure where I was going with all that. I have found it is enormously easy to stay non-judgemental while on your own! A few of those Dharma the Cat cartoons are funny because this stuff aint easy until you become a master. So, retaining a sense of humour is part of the trip.
Should do the same with Tonglen after making a DOC file ...
Buddhist cartoon site
A few of the cartoons (link at Homestead site)
- send link to forum?
Unbelievably warm night for mid March - did not drop below 27 celsius! But I'm not as wiped out as i might have expected to be.
From the Chopra Forum - www.radiantrecovery.com - about sugar sensitivity.
Picture PuzzlesWhy some people paint well and others don't
I've been thinking again despite numerous warnings ... actually, these ideas just pop into my head. Make of them what you will -
If you have a "box" of behaviours/things/experiences/characteristics that you label as "I approve of these" & another box for everything else you won't ever see things As They Really Are. (Until you peel the labels off) I should KNOW - I did this for a very LONG time ...
Along that theme -
How many genuinely happy people do you know? I'm not talking about those who have spent a lifetime pretending they're happy. A person simply cannot be truly happy while they are carrying around fear, worry & mistrust in their hearts and routinely making judgements about the actions of others. These activities are the very antithesis of our true natures and thus by indulging in them happiness is neatly avoided.
"This is a very dysfunctional world. I have struggled to come to terms with it my entire life. We all have. I was never able to bring myself to just give in and conform like the rest. For a long time, I wondered what was wrong with me until it dawned on me that my refusal was very healthy and that those who conform are damaging themselves at a molecular level."
Maybe reality isn't linear at all. Maybe it only appears that way because we as a race have locked ourselves into lonear styles of thinking and the universe merely responds to our thoughts about it. So, let's just stop it before it gets out of hand.
I have no desire to be normal - I never have - I want everyone to be experiencing something far grander than what passes for normality in this dysfunctional paradigm. It really doesn't satisfy anyone and is based on a very impoverished picture of reality. If normality means living with fear and worry and mistrust then we could all live without it.
Yes, that Tonglen meditation is the diametric opposite view from most in the mainstream of modern society
ARTARCHIVE.COM ??
"I'm not in a listening mood at the moment - I'm simply contributing the (unbearable) lightness of my being. That ought to be seen as a valuable contribution but generally is not viewed that way in an environment dominated by linear and concrete thinking. That's okay. i can live with that."
On complaining and adversity -
(a) Once you see evrthing as an opportunity for spiritual growth or the further evolution of your soul then complaining becomes a distant concept. Even being nailed to a Cross can be viewed in such a way
(b) Once you glimpse our true nature and realise everything occurs through choice (even though it continues to boggle my mind why we choose to forget that we chose in the first place) then complaining suddenly seems a bit silly or even laughable.
It's a very dysfunctional world at the moment and it needs a lot of therapy. Fortunately, there are a lot of therapists down here at present.
My comment about our bodies being designed to last forever evoked some odd reactions.
Yes, I am starting to realise what a totally different spin I have on things. The question "Why are these things happening to me?" comes from a very different picture of reality than the question "Why did I create these circumstances I currently find myself in?" One perspective sees "victims" while the other glimpses the true nature of our existence as creative spirits inhabiting a three-dimensional realm for the purpose of having certain experiences. {no pun intended}
Output of written material also through the roof - will type some in her if I remember
What Dreams May Come was recommended to me - has some scenes about Conversations with God?? I had heard good things about it before ...
CWG helped - should include the sections on worry, body lasting 80 years, healers, those souls who return solely to help (and "if you have to ask, you're not there yet!" ...
In fact i shall put those excerpts into a separate file
Sites from the latest copy of Living Now -
Seth Page - from search engine of "Seth" - many analogies to cwg etc ... i suppose NOTHING is really "new" ...
Excerpt from article on Unity consciousness at SPIRITWEB -
"For the full experience and expression of our essential unity will never be achieved if all we do is meditate now and then, write or read articles on spiritual topics, talk about or listen to spiritual information, lead or take part in a spiritual workshop, or give or receive Reiki attunements or birth chart readings.
When we fully experience ourselves as all that is, we will not choose to participate in activities that perpetuate separation, and will see our personal, social, economic, and ecological relationships as opportunities to heal ourselves and to work together as co-creators with Spirit. The awakening of unity consciousness starts with the expansion of our identity and the perception of the interconnectedness of all things, but is only completed when we embody this state of consciousness in all that we do."
Conscious Creation Journal - some great art and articles! Recommended by author of Rufus Ridiculous who said they accept submissions.
Poet Pablo Neruda - Nobel Prize Archive
Pleidians Book - {from
www.2013.com
links &
Recommended Reading which "blew their minds"
}
Forum for poems, stories, reviews at Inspiration Peak - I sent a couple of book reviews, poem, green mile.
Should send em a brief summary of Acacia experience - I don't imagine TOO many atheists have experienced Satori in a psych ward!
MANY PATHS - ONE DESTINATION
- has many many articles & "free stuff" - I love the short story about
Rufus Ridiculous
and others.
and a few million more links I may never get to ...
The Great Awakening
Twyman search
www.spacesbetweenthings.com
More links
Still in a very funny place - here's a sample of the thoughts that flowed through my consciousness at various stages today ...
I'm walking around town and I see hundreds of people all going about their "business" and I have a few thoughts about them Firstlt, it is rather striking that very few if any of them are radiating a significant amount of sublime, profound joy. Having a non-stop imagination, I am also struck by all the things we do NOT do. We really have created a quite unfriendly society - we do not greet or smile towards "strangers" and we don't dare go up to people we don't know and sit beside them to share their energy and if YOU DID go up to soemone and ask if you could share their energy they'd run a million miles or call the cops! (We also tend NOT to look each other in the eyes - even people we "know") Reminds me of an article by Melchizedek about Atlantis and meditations and eye contact that is beyond description. I felt such eye contact once - in a psych ward! What does that tell you about the state of the world? Here's the link to that article - by Melchizedek The fourth dimension is upon us
I also wondered about the word "urgency". A lot of people seem caught up in one type of urgency or other. I don't understand urgency. I really don't. I tend to think it is based on a misconception of reality. if we are all eternal beings how could there possibly be ANY urgency?
I also pondered the word "awakening" - what are we awakening from? And how did we come to be asleep in the first place?
I pondered the dual meanings of the word "content" - one meaning as in the state of being contented; the other meaning referring to e.g. the contents of your mind. Curiously, I tend to feel most content when my mind is devoid of content. Interesting.
Saw some angry people. I know JUST what that anger is like. i have been there many times. Most of those occasions, you could be Jesus Christ and you wouldn't have been able to calm me or get me to think straight. So what do you do?
Saw a book called "Angel Therapy" - by Doreen Virtue. I seem to recall visiting her website some time ago. Book looked interesting enough. I found the site - strangely enough it is www.angeltherapy.com
From that "Wishing wall" on Sunday - as usual on-the-spot I came up a complete blank. I liked the one "I wish you have a happy day." Two days later - "I wish everyone would feel blessed & holy & sacred & powerful beyond belief because we are." Oh well ...
More ideas for books I'll probly never write - (or for "Fragments of a Conversation") -
"My doctor I was mad and so he gave me these little magic pills to make me normal again. BUT they didn't work, thank God."
My doctor loves to perform sacred experiments on my brain.
"Complete enlightenment is utterly indistinguishable from complete madness. Well that's my current theory anyway."
www.poetry.com - has Jo's poem & um, 1.4 million poets! boy! - could submit a severely pruned version of my "Schizophrenia" poem?
Found you CAN FTP to Homestead site - Home Page
(Login is ***allen & surname of kindred spirit - that ought to be safe - anyway I have the originals...)
More spontaneous chanting in the style of the American Indians - I am either approaching TOTAL enLIGHTenment or I am losing my mind. In fact, I have lost my mind - I can't seem to find it anywhere.
Just reflecting on all the books/web pages I have read in the past year - If you TRULY believe them then we cannot possibly et it wrong and nobody is really being harmed and there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Yet, if you walk around saying those things you are more than likely to be regarded as crazy!
Glanced at a new book by author of Conversatioons with God and just reflecting what a funny place I'm in, my immediate reaction is that many people would most likely find it the opposite of inspiring. They would read it and see how his life has been wonderfully transformed and they may well react with jealousy, thinking 'Why him and NOT me?'
An old idea pops back into my head - the "breakthrough" I can clearly imagine may occur quite unexpectedly literally at a moment's notice, under the most "unlikely" of circumstances ... Yet, I would have to admit that the current intermittent nature of these experiences is driving me around the bend.
Re-reading laing after so many years - he also said it would be nice to have a place where those who ahve successfully negotiated the journey could guid others through the labyrinthine landscape of "psychosis". I figure in the more sensible cultures it would NOT go awry as badly or as often and would indeed be viewed in a quite different light.
Web - Kung Fu - Gulliver - Transpersonal Psychology -
Tonglen - Exchanging Self for Others
Send to Forum? - Using Adversity to Wake Up - yep, i sent it.
http://geoallen.homestead.com/files/writing.html - need to alter ALL the a href which may take some time ...
What is truth? How will you know if/when you find it? Is the nature of truth such that it can be "found"? Substitute the following words for truth - LOVE - PEACE - WISDOM - HAPPINESS - REALITY - ENLIGHTENMENT
Yes, psychosis (or whatever other label you wish to attach to the experience) makes you confront the question what is real on a daily if not hourly basis! I used to tell psychiatrists that "normality" was the delusion and that psychosis was the only REAL cure. They didn't really buy into my world-view strange to say ...
From Chopra Forum -
Imagine this conversation:
Joe: Hi, Sam. What have you been up to lately?
Sam: Oh, I just signed two big new contracts for the company, and I came in second at the club golf tournament this weekend. How about you?
Joe: Oh, I've been doing a lot of deep breathing and stretching lately. My wife and I take walks in the woods near our house. I'm getting a massage once a week now, and I'm taking a yoga class.
I suspect that few have had this conversation. We typically do not know how to practice pleasure, and we often confuse achievement with aliveness.
That started me wondering (well, I did compose "Fragments of a Conversation" along similar lines) ... When people are asked about their aims or ambitions, HOW MANY of us answer "My ambition is simply to be a knider, more loving person" ??
Should do another "best of" the Forum entries - been some gems lately but that I suppose could be said of the 50,000 messages posted over the years, but who's going to WADE through it all - an interface that categorised the entries somehow would be nice ...
Saw a program on Mary McKillop - I hadn't realised what a story it was! A nun excommunicated and then re-instated and finally beatified! Search web?
DREAMS & MANIFESTATIONS - artwork as well.
Journal of scientist's transcendent experiences
From the foreword to "Flying Without Wings" -
Science, Consciousness and God
- Includes "Alice in Quantumland"
- Huge list of links as well!
Science and Spirituality
Science of Spirituality
Erowid's Vaults of Spirituality & Religion
More discussion on psychosis and how best to help - I really don't know even after what i have been through. I know just how horrific it can be and I have been in a place for a dozen years or more where you couldn't have reached me no matter what you tried. Do you have to go THROUGH that to be transformed by the whole process? I have heard several people speak of the "long, dark night of the soul" - at Allan Pinches website and at the "Schizophrenia & Shamanism" site. And I sure as hell never expected to experience Satori - I never even knew it had a name until it happened to me. Then again the same could be said of "schizophrenia" ... more details? in di4.htm ?? If I remember ...
Speaking of Satori - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Speaking of long, dark night of the soul - one of the links from "Science, Consciousness and God" site ... some fabulous artwork there as well ...
Thanks to lincoln, from the Chopra Forum, for the links posted a couple of days ago. That first site "Science, Consciousness and God" is excellent in its own right let alone the enormous list of links it has. By following these links and subsequent links, as is my habit, I came across this page, Questions for smart-alecs, which lists 205 questions about God/enlightenment/consciousness/self/being etc. I have posed many of these questions myself over the years, as we all have, but it is mind-boggling to have 205 of them listed in one place.
She had some remarkable people helping hr along the way too which is why the book was written. So many people with psychosis don't find either the inner resources or the external support to get them through it. Found a few links on web - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
I should add to the book review when I remember.
Also had a flick through
Review of "Flying Without Wings"
by Arnold Beisser - brilliant description of what I experienced in Acacia in Feb 1999 -
DRUNK: "Pardon me, what time is it?"
MAN WITH WATCH: "Ten O'clock."
DRUNK: "I must be going crazy. Everytime I ask somebody, they tell me a different time."
Zen students often laugh at the moment of enlightenment. It expresses the experience of relief at sudden contact with reality. If a student reaches satori
- that continuous state of enlightenment - he will maintain the feeling state that approximates a burst of laughter, a state of open-mindedness and wonder. It is what a child must feel when he is suddenly surrounded by playthings, unenecumbered and free.
Speaking of children - also had a quick look at "Tao of Pooh" -
But the adult is not the highest stage of development. The end of the cycle is that of the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child. That is the level known as wisdom. When the Tao te Ching and other wise books say things like, "Return to the beginning; become a child again" that's what they are referring to. Why do the enlightened seem filled with light and happiness like children? Why do they sometimes even look and talk like children? Because they are. The wise are Children Who Know. Their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning and filled with the great wisdom of the Great Nothing, the Way of the Universe.
Yes, another interesting book - drawing parallels between Winnie-the-Pooh and Taoism.
http://www.childrenoflight.com/sites.htm
Been listening a LOT to "Magical Mystery Tour" lately. Not sure what that signifies, if anything ...
Day after day, alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still,
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer.
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.
Well on the way, head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices is speaking perfectly loud.
But nobody ever hears him,
Or the sound he appears to make,
And he never seems to notice.
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.
And nobody seems to like him,
They can tell what he wants t do,
And he never shows his feelings.
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.
He never listens to them,
He knows they're the fools.
They don't like him.
The fool on the hill sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round...
Should re-jig the Fortune City Page too - has a lot of tools and scripts ...
George Harrison lyrics
{Should see if any fan pages of the 1970's group Yes. I have always wondered what some of the lyrics were - especially Close to the Edge & Tales from Topographic Oceans. Never seemed to stop me playing their tapes, not knowing what they were singing about ...
Lyrics of Close To The Edge - after I first heard it 27 years ago!
People need the only world they could ever live in.
ERMHA Murmur? - see paradigm.htm ??
Fixed up more links on home page. Smiley went down well at Forum - add more icons to various pages - if I could JUST work out how to get backgrounds to work ...
http://www.homestead.com/coloradomeditations/index.html - photographic meditations ..
Ho hum - Aussies make 349 in a one day game - fifteen sixes - must've been a small ground.
Some interesting stuff happening at Chopra Forum which I haven't been visiting a lot lately..
The Sage Place - one of the links from "Successful Schizophrenia" Page
A few more ideas for the "Ideal Day Program" -
... Further to that "definition" of Psychosis ... On the other hand, I would not expect anyone to take my word for it. I would not know these things if I had not experienced them directly. That is the entire point of our existence on this planet. In the words of Strawberry Fields, "Nothing is real" unless it is experienced directly and personally - LOVE, DEATH, MADNESS, BEAUTY, TRANSCENDENCE, PSYCHOSIS.
Geoff's poem "My Favourite Psychosis" has become a mandatory part of the training of all workers. They must chant it three times a day if they hope to graduate. The old mentailty of "Take two valium and call me in the morning" is fast becoming a dim and distant memory. (Museums full of Prozac etc - like the way we now regard those who used to in all sincerity burn people as witches)
{You pretty much could say anything about the nature & origin & "cure" for Psychosis because there is no clear agreement even amongst the "proffessionals"}
Oh, wasn't there something about it being a journey each soul will undertake in one of its incarnations, one way or another ... again no general overall agreement. But as Hazel would say, the need for external confirmation is a sign you're not ready ... and I vaguely recall writing something about psychosis as a recommendation for your next lifetime - it forces you to expand your consciousness or you do not get through it ...
After all this recent reading about anti-psychiatry sites ... I open up Conversations with God and in the index, psychiatry aint listed ... So, I just lump it in the general category of "suffering" - here is what I found on page 107, which I have read before but often it depends on where-you-are-at as to whether it has a real impact and sticks with you ...
Maybe in some future lifetime this will not confound me QUITE so much? At times, I DO feel this makes sense but then i interact with people inhabiting the everyday styles of viewing things and I drift ...
Yet, I have to re-mind myself that just 13 months ago I would never have read such a book and IF I did manage to read it, I would have laughed my head off and wondered what kind of drugs you need to think that it makes "sense".
www.mindfreedom.org - Another link from Al Siebert - like he said it is both exciting and depressing to find there are thousands who have a similar tale to tell but the "system" suppresses any view it finds too challenging. Not to sound TOO paranoid ... anyway WHO is the "system" - like "society" it is an entity which evolves and continues despite the fact each of its constituent components is expendable.
Picked up a copy of The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying and briefly flicked thru it as is my habit ... page 221 mentions a poet Shantideva and a prayer he wrote - if I can locate it again I'll type it up - the world would be an amazing place if people went to their death beds with that prayer in their hearts ...
May do Internet search ...
Verses for reflection
A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night
book cover
The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva
Wrote yet another poem walking to the library ...
Telepathic angels
Butterflies
Tinkling bells
Warm sunsets
Household pets
Psychedelic notions
Vast timeless oceans
A voice in the wilderness
Solitude and emptiness
Twelve disciples in a lifeboat
Another idea that will not float
Chalk outlines of our days
A strange but persistent phrase
Coloured clothing in white bags
Quiet days with no time lags
Optimistic souls in flight
Paint the scenery of the night
Watercolour artist Sibylle Rett & Angel Poetry
"It certainly seems that way due to our extremely limited awareness and understanding of the BIG picture." - That could be THE universal reply to any question or value "judgement" ever made. Yes, lately I have been more acutely aware of the yawning gap between the conventional picture of reality and my fluid, ever changing ideas. There may be nothing for it but to sit patiently and wait for everyone else to catch up ...
Checkout Schizophrenia or spiritual emergence website when I get the chance ...
Here goes ...
Years ago, before I became a science writer, I had what i suppose could be called a mystical experience. A psychiatrist would probably call it a psychotic episode. Whatever. For what it's worth, here is what happened. Objectively, i was lying spread-eagled on a suburban lawn, insensible to my surroundings. Subjectively, I was hurtling through a dazzling, dark limbo toward what I was sure was the ultimate secret of life. Wave after wave of acute astonishment at the miraculousness of existence washed over me.
At the same time, I was gripped by an overwhelming solipsism. I became convinced - or rather, I knew - that I was the only conscious being in the universe. There was no future, no present, no past other than what I imagined them to be. I was filled, initially, with a sense of limitless joy and power. Then, abruptly, I became convinced that if I abandoned myself further to this ecstasy, it might consume me. If I alone existed, who could bring me back from oblivion? Who could save me? With this realis
ation my bliss turned into horror; I fled the same revelation I had so eagerly sought. I felt myself falling through a great darkness and as I fell I dissolved into what seemed to be an infinity of selves.
For months after i awoke from this nightmare, I was convinced that I had discovered the secret of existence: God's fear of his own Godhood and of his own potential death underlies everything. This conviction left me both exalted and terrified - and alienated from friends and family and all the ordinary things that make life worth living day to day. I had to work hard to put it behind me, to get on with my life. To an extent I succeeded. As Marvin Minsky might put it, I stuck the exerience in a relatively is
olated part of my mind so that it might not overwhelm all the other more practical parts - the ones concerned with getting and keeping a job, a mate and so on.
(I myself, strangely enough have often had THAT same feeing of being the only REAL thing alive in the universe. And according to SOME religious thought THAT is quite true but not in the way I thought ... )
Further to recent discussions - here is the
Unofficial R.D. Laing Website.
This definition of psychosis spontaneously "popped" into my head as many of my recent poems and ideas have done - I aint sure if/when the world will be ready for such a definition! but here goes -
Psychosis is a mysterious, magical process initiated by the human soul in order to awaken in the individual to a more cosmic awareness. It can never be remotely understood in purely scientific terms. Medication can only delay the process but there IS NO WAY BACK. There can be no return to the straitjacket of "normality". That is the entire point of the process. - I expnaded much further on this definition in my "Ideal Day Program" - if I ever get around to rewriting it with all the newest material spinning
around in my head. And YES, I do realise that anyone who has not experienced what I have experienced would regard that definition as loopy or even delusional. That's cool. NOTHING would have swayed me until I had the direct personal experience.
Been thinking about the whole area of "rules" & protocols & work practices etc - i feel MOST are ONLY necessary because we have drifted about as FAR away from our TRUE nature as we can (without destroying ourselves & the planet completely).
Subscribed to GreenPeace - include website -
www.greenpeace.org
Even though I do have faith in higher realities and beings maybe this is PART of how they work.
Expensive book about making eye-catching sites - see
www.killersites.com
Short, Black Poem
I have thought the darkest thoughts that anyone has ever thought
If your aim is to be/stay "normal" then you have completely missed the point of being alive. Normality is a disease. Psychosis is the only real cure. I feel like I'm about to lose my mind and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.
I am wondering if my consciousness is evolving beyond the need for language. It has great power but also great limitations.
Interesting sketches of Dali & Dalai during computer group today. Should include in Newsletter - if we ever get around to actually printing all the stuff we have to put in it. Been thinking of doing a review of Laing's "Politics of Experience" - written in 1967 and in a sense LITTLE has changed. I hadn't read it for years but the case histry in the last part is astonishingly similar to my own experiences in the past year. Maybe that is no coincidence. Other books to checkout - Myths to Live By
by Joseph campbell & Operators & Things by Barbara O'Brien.
Yes, I read Laing at a crucial early stage of being psychotic - can't really remember where I purchased it or what made me even pick it up - the back cover blew me away as it was the FIRST time I had read such a view of schizophrenia (and this guy was a psychiatrist!) -
Modern society clamps a straitjacket of conformity on every child that is born. In the process, man's potentialities are devastated and the terms 'sanity' & 'madness' become ambiguous. The schizophrenic may simply be someone who has been unable to suppress his normal instincts and conform to an abnormal society.
May transcribe more excerpts from Laing later if I remeber. (Yes, we believe you, Geoff)
Speaking of interesting books - picked up "The End of Science" by John Horgan. He speaks to "the most interesting scientists on the planet" about their various fields of cosmology, physics, evolutionary biology, social science, neuroscience, chaoplexity, limitology, machine science, philosophy etc. Hope I get enough time to read it. Have flicked through Fred Hoyle & the "big bang" and some of Francis Crick, Andrei Linde & Daniel Dennett.
Had a dream that i published a book on my experiences with schizophrenia and when asked at an interview WHY I decribe it SO differently than psychiatrists do, I replied simply that I have lived it from the INSIDE and they haven't
Also some discussion of the qualities needed to be a support worker in the Mental health system - I have often thought it's an incredibly tough job and need a fair amount of "life experience" to handle it well.
Click here for article at Allan Pinches site.
The Universe -
Click here.
Been writing an incredible amount lately - the following ideas for inclusion in my "Ideal Day program" - it is well and truly into the Twilight Zone already. this pushes the envelope a tad further -
Such dark and powerful thoughts I felt that they could not be fought
Read some more of Hazel Gay's book of her experiences. Seems we have followed somewhat parallel paths given that we both reacted badly to the medication so it was never a real option. Personally, I don't think it is ANY kind of answer unless your objective is to subdue people's spirits.
It includes the following quote from RD Laing who i also read at a crucial point in my journey:
"Psychiatry could be, and some psychiatrists are, on the side of transcendence,
of genuine freedom, and of true human growth. But psychiatry can so easily be
a technique of brainwashing, of inducing behavior that is adjusted, by (preferably)
non-injurious torture. In the best places, where straitjackets are abolished, doors
are unlocked, leucotomies largely forgone, these can be replaced by more subtle
lobotomies and tranquilizers that place the bars of bedlam and the locked doors
INSIDE the patient. Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted'
state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities,
that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false
realities."
Laing, R.D. The Divided Self, Pantheon, c1965.
Link for that Chopra webcast on "How to know God"
Poetry & writing at the MadNation Page. Sent a few of my poems to them too.
More interesting reading - from search engines -
www.chinghai.com
Taiwan Lantern Festival
Practice for the New Millennium from the Dalai Lama
Writings in the light
More ideas for poems -
6 o'clock Monday morning
People always gave me their earliest of warnings
During trans-dimensional dreams I felt the madness forming
In the rotating smoothness of each moment I glimpse reality
Moving towards it I see the delicate, exquisite frailty
I awaken from this nightly moving picture show
A little con=versation will help my flowers grow
Eight hours each day I leave this world far behind
I wouldn't really worry if I suddenly became blind
I am a spinning disk of radiant yellow light
I have well and truly earned this gift of second sight
Some more verses for "My Favourite Psychosis"? -
The psychotic realm is pure and transcendental
To fully appreciate it you must be sentimental
Your thinking has to shift towards the oriental
Any resemblance between realities is merely coincidental
Saw "Green Mile" - it is a phenomenal film! The story and the performances - over three hours but never once did it lose me for a second. Saw previews of "The Hurricane" - Rubin Carter's story from that Bob Dylan song. Interesting parallels to the Green Mile since both feature negroes imprisoned when they were completely innocent. One has the advantage of being a true story. See the-hurricane.com & Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
Plus a few more ideas for the "Ideal Day Program" -
There is great excitement with the latest release from the ERMHA recording studios, "David Buller talks about the sublime joys of silent contemplation". This is a ten disk boxed set recorded on ERMHA"s sspecial extra-long-play disks which each hold 2 and a half hours of audio. So, the total listening experience available is over 24 hours. Once you have listened to all ten disks you will fully appreciate the beauty of silence. (Oh, I am wicked, aren't I! I need a good spanking)
More on the "School of transcendental vagueness" - people throughout history have tended to frown on those members of society who are vaguer than the rest. With the collapse of the traditional linear thinking paradigms, this is no longer the case. People from all over the world are flocking to the school and with two such masters of vagueness, the results are phenomenal. There is a growing realisation that vagueness is a big indicator of being tuned into the higher, transcendental realms of consciousness. G eoff has just published his paper entitled, "Quantum Uncertainty and the chemistry of the human brain." This is being heralded as the vaguest theory in the history of science. (More background on Uncertainty Principle & Quantum Mechanics?)
Green Mile - saw a preview and looks well worth checking out. Another review & Official site
