Enemy
Lover
Last
Updated 26 Dec. 2018
By
“Melvin Marten”
(
Email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com
)
This web sub-page is NOT thematically linked to
the root page, but the root page is at www.ChurchofSQRLS.com
… I am just sharing a friend’s web
account to publish this sub-page… With
special thanks from Enemy Lover (me) to the SQRLSY One (the owner of the root
web site).
All (normal-literary) rights reserved by the
author(s).
Tentative Title #1 to these-here
scribblings: Loving
Your Enemy for Dummies, by a Recovering Dummy
…or, Title #2…
The Integrated, Universally Incoherent Theory of Everything,
and Other Assorted Things & Stuff & Stuff, & Stuffy Stuff
Contents
Where
We’re Going / Preview of Coming Attractions
God
Exists, and God Does NOT Exist!
Satan
Exists, and Satan Does NOT Exist!
Towards
the Sciences of Demonology & Deliverance, Etc.
Late-Night
“Frat Boys” Chat Above “Believing”.
Scientific
Investigations of the Paranormal?..
Delivering
Roxanne from Evil at Age 6
Lessons
Summary from Delivering Roxanne from Evil at Age 6
Other
Mental Malfunctions, Snares of the Evil One, Intro
Good
and Evil Are (and Need to Stay) Inextricably Intertwined
Snow-Balling,
Compounding, Hungry Spiraling Vortexes of Fear and Negativity
Tickling
the Tail of the Dragon… Poking Sticks at
the Self-Caged Beast
Animalistic
Lusts Are Somewhat Tolerable; Wanton Cruelty is NOT!
Roxanne
in Her High School Years
Lessons
from Roxanne in Her High School Years
Lessons
from Roxanne in Her College Years.
Wild
Metaphysical Speculations - Overview
Out-Takes
from Roxanne’s “Messages”
A
Criticism of Scriptural Literalism...
“Strange”
Tales from My Wife and I
Physical
Illnesses Can Cause Mental Illnesses
Beware
of Drug Interactions, to Include Anti-Depressants and Mood Stabilizers
The
Story of Roxanne’s Psychotic Breakdown
On
Being Mad at God, for “Why Was This Allowed to Happen”?
OK,
I am actually deadly serious here… But
that does NOT mean that I can’t cut loose and crack a joke now and then! “Melvin Marten” is not my real name, “Melissa
Marten” is not my wife’s real name, and “Roxanne Marten” is not my daughter’s
real name. And we didn’t REALLY-actually
move from Snooger Town to Booger Town and then back to Snooger Town, as I
changed jobs, as Roxanne was growing up…
The towns / cities had more prosaic and sensible names than that. But we crave anonymity, yes we do!
I
very-very seriously doubt that Roxanne would still be with us, had my wife and
I not read M. Scott Peck’s books at pretty much the exactly right time (Roxanne
read them later as well, which also undoubtedly helped). M. Scott Peck (a Christian psychiatrist, but
please don’t let the “Christian” part scare you; he was quite broad-minded)
wrote his initial breakthrough book, “The Road Less Travelled”, which I
recommend for just about anyone, but most especially, for those who are in
their initial stages of seeking spiritually.
Then late he wrote “The People of the Lie, The Hope for Healing Human
Evil”, in which he discussed that he does genuinely believe in demonic
possession, and in exorcisms. I was much
into being highly rational and scientific-minded at the time, despite being
generally a Christian (in the sense of being an admirer and student of Christ’s
words). I suppose I, at that time, like
many believers, wanted to have my God, my Angels, and my Heaven, without
putting too much credence in the existence of the flips sides (dark sides
obviously) of things. But everywhere in
the Universe that we care to look, if we look hard enough, we see some kind of
symmetry. We cannot have light w/o dark,
positives w/o negatives, matter v/s voids, etc.
So after the initial shock (of a reading of a highly, highly educated
man believing in demons; what in the Hey is THIS?!?!), I put some credence into
what M. Scott Peck had to say.
M.
Scott Peck also wrote “Glimpses of the Devil”, specifically about 2
lengthy exorcisms that he led. I only
read that one recently, in preparation for writing this web page. I recommend this book as well.
Anyway,
cutting to the chase now, here is the most important part of what I have
learned, as my wife and I struggled with Roxanne, on and off over the years, to
include what one might call “exorcisms”, although they were mild compared to
some of the gyrations and theatrics that M. Scott Peck describes. Peck differentiates between a milder
“deliverance” process, procedure, or (ugh, but here it goes; I dislike the
word) “ritual”, and a more-difficult, more-intense “exorcism”. I’ll be darned if I can tell you where this
hazy line lies, but perhaps we merely did a few “deliverances”.
Lo
and behold: Love your enemy! That is a principle that runs all the way up
and all the way down our Universe as we know it, just the same as “free will”
does. If Satan (as it is said) is indeed
a “fallen Angel”, who chose to rebel, he/it and all the demons can change their
minds, and go the other way, if they so choose. In one “delivery” that my wife and I and
Roxanne took part in, I reached out (through Roxanne) to address the unwanted,
invading entity in her brain that she chose to call “Elmer”. More details later, and excuse my
French… But I can recall much of this
very clearly. Out of genuine concern for
“Elmer”, I passed on to “him” (through Roxanne), “Your boss is an asshole! When is the last time your boss said a single
kind word to you, when is the last time he gave you a day off? Why are you working for an asshole, when you
have a choice?”
There’s
more to it, and I’ll go over it in more detail later. Roxanne walked off a wee tad from the dining
room table as we were going through this, perhaps just to clear her head. “What does Elmer have to say to all this?”, I
called after her.
“Elmer
says confusion, is all”, she replied. We
never heard from Elmer again, and I’d like to believe (I do believe, but
obviously with no “scientific” evidence) that Elmer is now amongst the Angels,
earning his stripes. Maybe he’s even up
there helping Roxanne and my wife and I out, now, who knows? Where so many other approaches did NOT work,
reaching out to Elmer for Elmer’s own good, did seem to work! Love, even love of our very worst
enemies, works!!! In this kind of case,
it steals foot soldiers from Satan, so, bonuses all around! Let’s go flip some Elmers! Maybe one of these days, God willing and the
creek don’t rise, we can even talk sense to Satan as well!
This
is not a novel, and I have no intention of making it into some sort of
suspenseful pot-boiler. Roxanne is
mostly fine now… Borderline autistic,
ADHD, and this and that, and (finally!) apparently correctly diagnosed as
manic-depressive, on lithium and a few other meds. She graduated college and is holding a
BS-level job now. So… pot-boiler plot is blown wide open. And…
No! We are not Scientologists; we
do not slam psychiatry here. We are both
“spirits in a material world” (we need to tend to our spirits, whatever they
are, and not drink too many of them either!), ***AND*** we are also “ambulatory
bags of biochemicals” (or “mobility challenged bags of biochemicals”, as the
case may be; I do not mean to be micro-aggressing against the wheelchair-bound,
etc.). In any case, we have a dual
nature here, and, in addressing one, I do not mean to short-change the other. See a shrink if you need one, please! And take your meds!
I’m
hoping that that will do, for a short introduction. It contains the one most critical item that I
want to put “out there”… If you read no
further, please recall that one most important point. “Love your enemy” can be taken very, very literally,
and effectively, even against the very worst of our enemies. Needless to say, “loving your enemy” will not
very often include assisting your enemies in attaining their worst stated
goals. To the contrary, it will often
include the sternest, most unbreakable opposition that we can summon, if need
be. But love can be alarmingly, even
devastatingly, disarming and deflating, to those who try to gain and maintain
power through lies, intimidation, and fear.
I
intend to write this mostly sequentially, minimizing revamps to already-written
materials. If there are (or are going to
be any) readers out there, then you can just skip to the new materials added at
the bottom end, and be reasonably confident that you’ve missed nothing.
First
off, I want to write a thorough defense of REAL and genuine
broad-mindedness… If we are genuinely
broad-minded, we will consider all theories (hypotheses), without bias,
regardless of how “un-scientific” they are, according to today’s
conventions. In short, I actually think
that arguing about whether God and Satan (Heaven, Hell, angels, demons, etc.)
“really exist” or not, is a huge, total waste of time and energy. It’s all in the definitions… For us, is it an “exorcism”, a “deliverance”,
or a “loving group intervention for the benefit of an afflicted person who has
thoughts and feelings that he or she would like to get rid of”? Does it matter what we call it, if we can get
it to work right? For me, it’s all about
the results, and the nomenclature can take a hike!
To
my point, M. Scott Peck included an atheist in his “exorcism team” as described
in one of two major exorcisms described in “Glimpses of the Devil”. My comment, not his, but… Do you have common sense, decency, humility,
and (most especially) a love of the victim?
If so, you are qualified to participate, regardless of your religious or
irreligious beliefs! This web page is
not into Bible-worshipping, it is into Love-worshipping. If Bible-worshipping is your main “thing”, I
cannot help you much, if at all, here.
In
any case, next on my self-assigned writing list here, is to spell out a
full-throated defense of the following:
‘1) Your religious / irreligious beliefs are
irrelevant to most of what REALLY matters, including, are you a decent and kind
being, and, are you qualified to help drive out “demons”, AKA, un-wanted,
destructive thoughts and feelings.
‘2) Exorcisms or deliverances need not be
synonymous with what today’s secular mindset would label as unscientific
barbarism. If they work, they work. That is the “de facto” standard that’s
already being applied to much of “talk therapy” and psychiatric drugs, anyway.
After that, I most
certainly plan to go through all of the (relevant) things that my wife and
daughter and I went through, and what we learned, in detail. In hopes that somewhere, someone else will
benefit, of course.
After that, I may list
some relevant experiences that my wife and I have experienced over the years,
that did not involve Roxanne. Just some
various experiences that show that there’s more to human lives than meets the casual
glance of the eye.
Finally, I may add a
section of probably-totally-irrelevant questions and ideas “for grins”… Does God wear a green dress shirt, a smelly half-ripped-up
old athletic tee shirt, or a red bath robe?
No, that’s silly, of course… But
sometimes there might be SLIGHT value in considering “metaphysical”
questions. If nothing else, they amuse
us. But as you can see, I leave the
least important things for last. This
latter part (if it ever gets written) justifies the alternate title of “The
Integrated, Universally Incoherent Theory of Everything, and Other Assorted
Things & Stuff & Stuff, & Stuffy Stuff”, you see.
Welcome to fuzzy-headed thinking,
which is a GOOD thing, at the highest levels!
Let me start out with some quotes:
Vagueness is a virtue. By
allowing us in-duh-viduals to fill in the details, the beauty and awesome power
of free will is unleashed. “There are
trivial truths and there are great truths.
The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” Niels Bohr. “It is the nature of all greatness not to
be exact.” Edmund Burke. “Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as
you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the
best of current silver. An honest man
would have but little occasion for it. It
is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.” Henry David Thoreau. In my own words, we need just one, one-word
rule: Love!
What do I mean by God both exists and
does NOT exist? This: If we pray sincerely to God (or our belly
button or a lump of coal or a sacred statue or anything else) for peace, we
cannot them immediately afterwards go run off to stab our neighbor in the
back. By praying to God sincerely (for
the right and best things), we help those right and best things to become
real. So in that sense, God exists,
whether He/She/It wants to exists, or not!
Whether God believes in God or not (needs self-esteem therapy perhaps?),
God is very real!
Not to hide things or be too
coy… I personally believe that God is
“real” in senses beyond that. But I
strive to NOT hold ONE single hostile, self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, or
snobby thought of superiority over atheists and agnostics! So this is a major reason why I am adding
these introductory remarks… I am trying
to drag atheists and agnostics along for the ride! Plus, I’d (really!) like to promote the idea
(as M. Scott Peck did) that science should eventually blend into, or
accommodate, the better (better-intended, benevolent) parts of religion or
spirituality. The so-called
“supernatural” is HIGHLY likely to be subject to a super-set of the same
iron-clad laws as what we see in the “natural” world… Just laws that we haven’t yet discovered (or
described with accurate details).
So we “believers” can (probably)
usually-better see the benefits of benevolent prayer, as described above,
compared to “non-believers”. Hooray for
us! Now how about a “Hooray” for the
“non-believers” as well? Because THEY
have a FAR better understanding of the following truth, that should be at
least a bit obvious to us “believers” as well:
God is SOOO firmly committed to free will, to allowing us to do good or
a half-way mish-mash (as usual) of good & evil, or mostly-pure evil (as in
most politicians! And often also in the
name of God!) as our free will dictates.
God is such a total non-interventionist, in the physical world, that He/She/It
might as well not exist. So for this
kind of practical purpose, the non-believers often see more clearly that the
believers. The same as in other dueling
models (think waves v/s particles for both matter and energy), one model is
better suited for certain purposes, and the other model is better suited for
other purposes. Believer v/s
non-believers fights are a TOTAL waste of energy!
If your purpose is genuine
righteousness rather than self-righteousness, then you can give up worrying
about which brand of toothpaste God prefers, and whether or not He believes in
reincarnation, or not. As to me
personally, I generally do NOT believe in reincarnation… Not now, and not when I was a banana slug,
nor when I was an epiphyte, either!
… (Sorry for the
digression). Genuine righteousness
means, for 99.9999% of practical purposes, we can say “God = Love”. Love of humans and animals, plants and rocks,
protons, neutrons, croutons, galactic
clusters and EVERYTHING! And love of
self, in proper proportion to other things.
Serve this God, pray for Love and Peace, and you make Him/Her very
real… Whether He/She “exists” in other
senses, or not!
Now that we’ve set the general
picture of such things… More detailed
fulminations on this later, most likely…
Let’s focus on the more-pertinent question of Satan / Lucifer / demons /
possession … Cue klaxons and alarm
bells, troglodyte Neanderthal barbarism
incoming, right? Belief if “God”
(however broad-mindedly vague and nebulous and multi-culti) may be barely stomached
now & then, but SATAN?!?!? Come ON
now!
Welcome to fuzzy-headed thinking, “B”
side of the album… Or maybe “D” for
“Dark”, “Devils”, “Demons”, etc. Serve
self-hate, hatred of others, violence, fear, coercion, unlimited nihilism, and haughty,
arrogant self-righteousness, etc., and we all, already know what the results
are. I believe that we should all “stop
darking”, as a little bitty girl… Wisdom
of Babes, ya know… Once told my wife and
I. So I will not dwell on this for
too-too terribly long. Let me just say,
at the end of hate, self-hate and limitless nihilism, often lies mass murder
and ultimately suicide. That is my
working definition of evil and demonic forces, whether they are “real” or not. They are not our friends, and they do not play
well with others! They aren’t even
friends of themselves; they hate themselves and each other and everything at
large. They’re too stupid to realize
that when you’re at the bottom of a hole, you should stop digging! So we need to love them… You know, imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, and God loves everything and everyone, demons included… So we should love demons enough (when we have
to face them) that we should remind them that they should stop digging. They should already know that quite well, but
well-intended reminders never hurt!
For normal people in the normal
(real) world, we should love them enough to listen to them. We should listen to them and try to
understand their perspectives. If they
want to blather all day every day, and not let anyone get a word in edgewise,
we should love them enough to point that out to them… That this is not a good way to get along well
with others. We need to have enough
humility to listen to others, though, rather than listening to ourselves
blathering all day long, while THEY can’t get a word in edgewise! Balance is a cool thing…
When dealing with demons though… OK, for secular people, when dealing with
destructive and self-destructive urges…
We as humans (or aspiring BETTER humans, perhaps aspiring angels)… We have NO need to listen! Demons, by definition, have NOTHING good or
worthwhile to teach us! THEY (for their
own good) need to listen to US!!! Tell
them to “go to The Light” will suffice, if you are not in the mood to be
fantastically eloquent. If you are
feeling eloquent, then I have many more things that you can pass along to
them. But we’ll get to those things in
good time.
If you want to “cast out demons”
(purge negative thoughts), you’ve got to get this “authority” thing down. You and God (Love) have something real and
good, worthwhile, and your enemy does NOT!
YOU have nothing worthwhile to learn from self-destructive thoughts, but
THEY have a lot to learn from YOU! Act
accordingly… This is true whether you
are dealing with demons inside yourself, or inside another person. The latter case is the more difficult. If you have no “God” (if you have no Love of
yourself or some other victim), then you’d better just try to pray your butt
off, not much of any other hope here…
All the “magic” rituals and material items (crosses, Holy Water, silver
bullets, etc.), are not going to help you.
LOVE is going to help you! Love
of the victim; be the victim yourself, or another. Curiosity (data-gathering, “science”) about
the Evil One is a dangerous distraction, when the task at hand is casting out
the Evil One. Love is the be-all and
end-all at this time. Do not be distracted. Evil has nothing good to teach us. To REALLY know, one has to be. Evil is the last thing we should want to know
or be, in anything even vaguely near an ultimate sense. God Himself/Herself really doesn’t understand
evil, and we shouldn’t want to, either.
There are few things that I claim to have heard “straight from the
Boss”, but this is one of them.
To re-secularize (I want to guard
against the urge to take matters to the metaphysical stratosphere too much),
Demons can simply be defined as self-defeating, self-destructive urges. Hatred of others very rapidly becomes
self-destructive as well, because others very rapidly figure out that you are
no friend of theirs, and then, they treat you accordingly. Greed, selfishness, violence, etc., are
clearly NOT “friendly forces” in favor of your own long-term good! We don’t need the “supernatural” for this to
be true! At the end of
self-destructiveness lies, well…
Self-destruction. Suicide, like that
of Hitler & many of his top followers, & like Judas, & like the murder-suicides
we read of in the news, far too often. Self-destructiveness leads to
self-destruction = suicide = meet Satan…
As God = Love, Satan = suicide (not even being capable of enough love to
NOT kill oneself deliberately)! That’s
pretty simple! Suicide for horribly-suffering,
terminally ill patients? That’s outside
of this discussion… I have not been in
those shoes, so let’s skip over that one, for now at the very least…
Back to “I shouldn’t WANT to
understand evil too well”… That said, M.
Scott Peck… Does it appear to you that
he’s a sometime hero of mine? Yes, I
‘fess… Scott Peck wanted to unify the
better elements of religion with science.
He did show a desire (slightly too much at times, in my mind) to
data-gather about the unspeakably Evil One…
Data-gather, a wee tad, OK, fine, but NOT in the middle of a deliverance
or exorcism, PLEASE! “Love the victim”
(deliver the victim) MUST be the primary focus!
And your victim will notice (if your attention is diverted), and think
themselves that much less worthy of Love & deliverance! Data-gathering (AKA morbid curiosity) is
self-defeating, if your mission is a rescue mission, as it should be!
With those VERY important caveats to
the side, though, knowledge is good, science is good. A “science” of demonology would be “cool”,
MeThinks, as long as neither the government nor insurance companies, or
regulators, are running the show!
“Lovers” (those who Love) should run this show! I would truly LOVE to have an accurate brain-scan
meter to measure, who really DOES “Love”, and who lies? But I digress… Knowledge of evil is good, so far as it helps
us defend ourselves and others against it.
More knowledge than that?
Generally not a good idea, MeThinks…
Knowledge is good, as long as it is
not TOOOO much knowledge about evil. OK,
then. Comparison here: Happiness can scarcely usually be effectively
chased as an end in itself. A deeply
unhappy person cannot simply snap their fingers and “get happy”, nor are they
likely to be able to follow some simple-minded 12-step, deliberate process to
“get happy”. Real happiness is the
by-product of the pursuit of other things, is a good general rule. If those things are generally good or at
least neutral things (not evil), that is, and you have a passion for them. Similarly, a sufficient knowledge of
evil is the byproduct of the pursuit of other things, like deliverance (of
yourself or others) from the clutches of evil. I (and my wife and daughter) have “been there
and done that”, and so I feel an ethical-moral-spiritual obligation to pass on
what I have learned. Hence this web
page…
The whole idea, at a
glance, sounds like hogwash, right? Please
hear me out; there are several ways to go at this.
The first is to start
with https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161014214919.htm
; “Knowingly taking placebo pills eases pain, study finds”. So the patient KNOWS that he is
getting a “sugar pill”, and it works, anyway!
Because the “caregiver” gave him those pills out of “caregiving” (weasel
words for “love” of the patient, frankly, if we stop regarding “love” as a
forbidden 4-letter word), while authoritatively wearing a white lab coat,
perhaps. The placebo effect is VERY strong,
and not to be sneered at! Especially
when combined with “Love”! Next step in
these experiments should be, white-lab-coat-wearing “caregiver” (patient-lover)
“talks nice” to patient, pats them on the back, maybe even puts imaginary pills
in their hands, tells them that they will get better, WITHOUT the sugar
pills! Do they get better? Especially if we carefully select the
“caregivers”, perhaps with a brain scan, to make sure that they love their
patients more than they love their next yacht payment? I for one for bet we’d still get a positive
outcome… And this is still “science”,
right? Even though (same as with “real”
psychiatric drugs and “talk therapy”), a huge part of the evaluation is
“squishy” self-evaluation, as in, “how are you feeling now, better? Less pain?
Less negative self-talk?”
Next step in the experiment is to swap out the white lab
coat for a religious robe and perhaps a Pope-hat (for Catholic patients),
Buddhist robes, or other; stethoscope swapped for cross or other symbol, and
medical-talk replaced by (or supplemented with) talk of God’s Love or Nirvana,
etc., and (prepare yourself!) perhaps even the driving out of undesired
thoughts / feelings / “demons”. Now all
of a sudden this is totally non-scientific, it’s “religious”, and we can’t get
research grants any more, right? Can you
see how totally arbitrary this boundary is?
“Science” pretends oh-so-diligently to be totally
open-minded, but there’s this huge (“elephant in the room”) artificial box-line
that we dare not cross. It’s sort of
like “religion” being prohibited in public schools, while we have absolutely no
working definition of “religion”, other than a totally political one. If I start worshipping arithmetic, will arithmetic
no longer be allowed to be taught? How
many voters and protesters need to start hollering about their arithmetic-worshipping
beliefs, until arithmetic is out of public-school bounds? A silly question, sure, but this issue
deserves some acknowledgment, at the very least. …
Better yet, how many of us need to worship Government and Taxes, before
Government has to divorce itself (and outlaw taxes), in the name of “Separation
of Church and State”?
Another avenue of approach is to look at human
evolution. We have been “culture-bearing
animals” for so long, and so intensely, that cultural evolution and biological
(genetic) evolution are co-evolving (affecting one another). We’ve been speaking languages for so long
that the language centers of our brains are a MAJOR site of biological
evolution. Now we’ve even been drinking
the milk of other animals for so long, that many of us (unlike other mammals)
have evolved the ability to digest lactose, in our adult phase. Evolution has NOT stopped working on us! We are evolving both biologically and culturally. See the books “Thank God for Evolution”,
by Michael Dowd, and even better (more recent), “The Evolution of Everything”,
by Matt Ridley.
Well, how about so-called “supernatural” (AKA
“paranormal”) beliefs as well? Have we
humans not been listening to the tales (from shamans etc.) of such things, for
so long, that it is entirely plausible to believe that we now have centers in
our brains that have become specialized in this? If these areas of the brain can be made to
“work for us”, then does it really matter if “God” and “Satan” really “exist”,
or not? See, for example, talk of a “god
center of the brain” or “god and the brain neuroscience looks at religion”… Those are good Google search strings, and I
leave the rest to the reader. Using such
a brain center or centers, and “casting out negative thoughts” / “casting out
demons” just MIGHT make sense! If it
works (gets us positive results), it works, right?!?!
Public policy around regulations, insurance, payments, etc.,
is admittedly a nightmare, and I want to put off writing about that, to some
other day (maybe). M. Scott Peck donated
his time spent in exorcisms (did not charge for them). That’s a good start. He did charge for associated psychotherapy,
though. See his book, “Glimpses of
the Devil”.
I like to think that I am bilingual; that I can talk the
metaphysical-talk and the secular-talk at the same time. But I don’t want to be cryptic or coy… I will put most of my cards on the table, and
tell you what I personally really believe.
M. Scott Peck says that demons (roughly paraphrased here from memory)
are “very real spirits of the unreal”.
They are real spirits that have no real substance in our world, and can
“live” only in our minds, and desperately want (from some crazy, evil reason
that I do NOT want to know the details about!) for us to believe in the unreal
(to pull us out of reality, into insanity).
M. Scott Peck says that a healthy attitude is to be devoted to “reality
at all costs”. I agree.
But perhaps our brains are based on quantum
computers. Each neuron is NOT a “logic
gate” (an “and” gate, an “or” gate, or an inverter), as in human-designed
computers… Each neuron (200 billion or
so per each human brain!) is its own local micro-processor, running as a
quantum micro-computer! See “Discovery of Quantum
Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory
of Consciousness”, in http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
.
Now… Seemingly a random jump to a totally
different topic, but bear with me… See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030101654.htm
, which tells us that “Scientists propose existence and interaction of parallel
worlds: Many Interacting Worlds theory challenges foundations of quantum
science”. Also see the Nov. 2016 copy of
Scientific American magazine, “Entangled Black Holes”, by Juan
Maldacena. Science has scant knowledge
yet of black holes… Our universe may lie
in a black hole of a larger universe, and each black hole in our universe may
be its own separate sub-universe, forever mostly-isolated from our own. There may be other forms of “parallel universes”
as well (some have compared them to side-by-side slices of bread in a sliced
loaf of bread). Science has scant
knowledge of quantum entanglement as well.
Quantum entanglement between worlds / universes seems VERY plausible,
though…
But put the above two topics together, and it is not so
far-fetched to imagine “beings” (spirits) using quantum entanglement to “speak”
to us from nearby universes (of whatever nature, sub-black-hole,
super-black-hole, nearby bread slice). Schizophrenia
(hearing too many “voices”) is well-known by now, to be the results of overly
aggressive “pruning” of neural connections, usually late in the teen
years. A non-schizophrenic brain has
more connections… My non-schizophrenic
brain will double-check the heck out of a “voice”, asking, “Is it real? Or an “instrumentation artifact”, a mental
malfunction?”, double-checking it extensively with my many-many other neural
connections. I will usually discount the
“voice” as “not real”. A schizophrenic
brain, lacking the extra connections, will call the voice “real”. This all fits in with “God” and “Satan”
“talking to us” from those parallel worlds, via quantum connections… Not supernatural; just laws of the universe
that we have not yet discovered.
Scientific tests of these hypotheses? Beats the heck out of me! But let’s please start this
conversation! Email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com …
So why do these perhaps-hypothetical (but perhaps not)
beings not communicate with us more openly?
Satan? That’s an easy one! The Unspeakable One can get away with
unspeakable deeds, far-far more easily, if we don’t “have his number” down
pat. Us thinking he doesn’t exist is
excellent cover! I for one, want to do
my best to rat him out! So God help me!
God? The time is
not yet ripe, is all. What do we as
individuals do, when given near-limitless free will? When we live in a universe where God is
“unseen” (in Christ’s words), and are free to believe in Love, or not? Your “religion” (or lack thereof) “machs nix”
(matters not); it only matters if you LOVE, or not! And I hope to go over that in more detail,
later… For here, I merely mean that God
is perhaps collecting some precious data (details totally murky to me) about
what we all do, when we are totally free to believe in God / Love, or not
believe. God shows Himself / Herself too
openly, and the whole experiment has to move off to another phase, and we’re
just not ready yet. Details at 11:00 (or
maybe later)!
A quick analogy though:
I saw a National Geographic movie once, of some precious footage of a
snow leopard in the wild, chasing a mountain sheep or goat. At the time, it was the only such footage
ever taken (of this creature in the wild).
This leopard is not as smart as we are, yet it took us years and years,
and million-dollar budgets, to capture this footage. And we’ve never yet caught footage of a sperm
whale duking it out with a giant squid. Satan
maybe, and God for sure, are (in at least some ways) a LOT smarter than we
are… If a snow leopard can easily
(mostly) hide from us, then how about creatures that know more than we do? “We haven’t seen them, therefor they don’t
exist”, can be pretty arrogant. It’s
sure not open-minded “science”… But I’ll
not get on my high horse about that.
“Love” is the big one, and this one particular other thing (arrogantly
declaring “so and so cannot be true”) is relatively “mice nuts”, as some people
say!
Ooops! I just
took a minor side-swipe at some atheists right there, I think! And I really would like to take any such
readers along for the ride, here, I really would! So please let me make it up to you; please
read the below…
I was an agnostic during
most of my college years, and I can recall one late-night bull session that
went on and on, for hours. I just wanted
to go to sleep. I was not-much in the
fight, being agnostic rather than atheist.
But we did have a devout atheist there, and at least one very-convinced
believer, so it went on and on. Now
(many moons later!) I am an anti-social (or at least asocial) old man, and no
longer have anything like these conversations.
And now I am more-so a believer than not. I have thought about it. Here’s how maybe such a conversation might
go, today (me = Melvin, A = atheist friend):
Me: I really do have to apologize on behalf of
those of us believers who are too rigid-minded.
I’m not one of them. But, can I
ask you a question?
A: Sure, go ahead…
Me: Now, don’t take this the wrong way! I am no fan of suicide, not one tiny
bit! It saddens me when ANYONE does
this; I wish we were all glad to be here, alive and kicking on Planet Earth. But, if you have no “supernatural” beliefs,
then, um, why don’t you commit suicide?
A: Because I have things I want to get
done! Because my friends and family,
even my pets, would miss me! Because I
enjoy life! Because I want to make this
a better place, before I shuffle off! Because suicide is self-murder, and any kind
of murder reduces the diversity of human life!
We all need each other, and suicide is a cop-out, an abandonment of the
others in our life! And simply because
pain hurts, and because killing myself would hurt!
Me: Well, call me a mush-head, but all those
things you mentioned? I agree 100%, but
to me, they all mean “God”. So when I
say “God”, that’s what I mean! Your
“God” and mine are roughly the same; we just use different words!
And there you have
it… Plain and simple! Real religion is Love of Life and
Togetherness; all the rest of religion is mostly “fluff”… Some of this “fluff” helps you? Have at it!
Just please don’t be thinking that the “fluff” qualifies you to act all
morally superior to others!
Examples: You and your buddies
generally behave nicely, but there’s a known unrepentant murderer among
you. OK, you (and/or law enforcement)
can be “morally superior”, and restrain the murderer… Murder is not “fluff”. You want to act all morally superior because
you speak the right language, wear the right clothes, and eat with a fork and
spoon instead of with chopsticks? Cut
that crap out, because that’s all “fluff”! Regard yourself as “equal” (not superior) to
the others (of different cultures and religions), because that’s the only real
way to genuinely treat them as equals!
Otherwise, your snobbishness (despite any “best efforts”) will
inevitably show through! For you
Christians… Jesus told us that “by their
fruits, you will know them.” Take that
to heart. I have known saintly atheists,
and wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing so-called “Christians”. So have most of us. Acting accordingly would be wise.
Excuse me for a moment while I point out what should be
obvious… “Different” does not equal
“evil”. Love (God) is capable of loving
enormously huge amounts of differences.
Difference (diversity) is actually good, whether spiritually,
culturally, or in an ecosphere; otherwise, boredom with uniformity might kill
us all, sometimes even literally (think diseases run rampant in monoculture
agriculture, for lack of genetic diversity).
There are few strains of “different” that are actually evil, yes. Think malice, destructiveness,
self-righteousness, and especially, pointless cruelty. And Love (God) desperately wants to heal
these sicknesses! I hope to help (despite
being extremely skeptical of self-appointed “God’s Little Helpers”, when they
are infected with self-righteousness).
Just one (or two!) more
diversions, and then we can move on lessons learned in “delivering Roxanne from
evil”… I promise! I have questions which the rational secularists of our age don’t seem
to want to address at all. See Discover
Magazine’s August 2000 article about mysterious (Telepathic? Quantum-entanglement-based?) bonds between
pets and owners. Read about Rupert
Sheldrake in http://discovermagazine.com/2000/aug/featheresy/
. Just because these kinds of mysterious
things can be demonstrated, you’d think rational science would go ahead and
make some serious investigative efforts.
But no, the likely phenomenon at the roots, here, fall outside of
anything modern science knows of, and so we just don’t go there. Why? I
suspect it’s simply because many secular rationalists fight, tooth and nail,
against admitting that there ARE “things” out there totally beyond the vaguest
clues of modern science. Let’s just
ignore the mysteries, and maybe they’ll go away…
It’s
been a long time since Rupert Sheldrake ran these experiments… Perhaps it’s time to re-run them, and then
re-run them with the dog (or other pet) end of the “link” shielded in an
electromagnetically-shielded room… Just
to see if the link is some unknown EM wave (which I doubt… So I’m biased! So run it double-blind or find someone less
biased than me please, to run this thing).
Next step after that? Beats
me! But, can we get this investigation
going again?
Just one
more… Go Google “Darwinian Demon”. In
theoretical biology, this idea is being kicked about. Think, for example, of theoretical (but
plausible) bat-like creatures with the behaviors of the social insects… All is for the hive; the life of the
individual is willingly sacrificed for the hive. Combine this with poisons (think poisonous
snakes, scorpions, stinging insects, etc.), and a carnivorous appetite, and
such a (meat-eating, poisonous, with suicidal all-is-for-the-hive attack-mode
behaviors) creature could decimate the majority of vertebrate land life on the
planet, and more. A water-based version
could do the same in water. Kudzu on
steroids could do the same thing to land plant life, and so on. Despite the OBVIOUS environmental niches that
are wide open for such horrible planet-devastating plants and animals, they’ve
never evolved. Why haven’t such
life-forms evolved? Because of
evolutionary tweaks and (Quantum-entanglement-based?)
guidance from some other planes of existence? Rational, secular science won’t go
there… They fear even to ASK these kinds
of questions. Why?
Well OK,
maybe because it is nearly pointless…
HOW can we ever test such ideas?
Evolution takes too long, and too-large of sets of populations or
ecospheres, to host practical experiments of this sort, even if we could
somehow turn the hypothesized “control knobs” here. Good luck with that! Running computer simulations is perhaps all
that we have left. How much biological,
genetic, and environmental data would we have to program in, and how much
computer power would it take, to run a realistic simulation of evolution, to
see if “Darwinian Demons” can arise?
Minus the hypothesized otherworldly interference, that is? I bet it is WAY beyond our current
capabilities to do that (computer simulation) realistically! But, if “Darwinian Demons” rapidly, routinely
arise, in such simulations, that would seem to be evidence for the hypothesized
otherworldly interference, here…
But
then, I am told that testing some of the “string theories” of theoretical
physics would require particle colliders with a radius equaling that of the orbit
of the recently-demoted non-planet Pluto!
These “string theories” are untestable, other than by, “Does my math
look pretty, or not?” If this can be
called “science” rather than “theology”, then how about evolution guided by
beings in other “bread slices” of the multiverse? Isn’t that “pretty” as well, despite being
untestable? Well, maybe we can test it
in 10 or 70 years, after quantum computers become practical and affordable… So I am hereby throwing this idea “out
there”… Can I get patents on these kinds
of wild ideas? BTW, the big bang, and
post-big-bang “inflation” is also not well understood, and also falls into this
same category of being totally untestable “science”, that might as well be
theology, for many (most?) practical purposes (if there ARE any “practical
purposes”!).
Back to
the real world, finally… Real world in
my book, at least… Of “deliverance for
Roxanne”, as experienced by our small family…
Actually, first, let’s
take the time to “humanize” Roxanne (and us, her family), to make this all seem
more human, and real. Take a break from
the various egg-headed, scientific, pseudo-scientific, metaphysical, etc.,
headache-inducing stuff, that “set’s Roxanne’s brains on fire” these days (in
her words). She’s on lithium, etc., and
we mostly avoid such topics (as discussed above, her / our history, etc.), and
she doesn’t even know that I’m writing these things up, in hopes of benefitting
someone, somewhere, someday. But I do
have her written softcopy notes from some of the worst of her / our times (at
times hard to decipher in detail, even for me, who went through much of this
with her), and I hope to squeeze all of the good out of those notes that I can!
Anyway, humanizing the
story a bit, up front… Lemme tell you
our favorite “young Roxanne” stories… On
the off chance that any of our friends or extended-family members stumble into
these writings, and recognize us, PLEASE keep all this under your hats, we are
trusting you, we do treasure our privacy…
Roxanne as “doggy under
table”! We had a beagle (have been
through several beagles over the years; my wife loves them) who always attended
to Roxanne on her high chair, eating all dropped scraps faithfully. So Roxanne (at home or at the restaurant!)
often wanted to play “doggie under table” while my wife and I ate! So that was us you saw, with Roxanne under
the table, in “Snooger Town”!
Roxanne at home with me
on the weekend, with my wife volunteer-working far-far away, at a location that
I would have had a hard time finding (driving to): “I want my Mommy, I want my Mommy, I want my
Mommy, I want my Mommy NOW! Can we go
see my Mommy NOW?!?!?”
Me: “Well, Roxanne, sweetie, I wouldn’t actually
know where to drive to, how to get to your Mommy right now, anyway, sorry!”
Roxanne: “You just get in your car and you go and you
go and you go!”
(Silly me, why hadn’t I
thought of that??!)
Roxanne playing in the
back yard as a toddler. It’s getting
dark, yet she still wants to keep playing out back.
Us: “Come on, Roxanne, it’s time to go inside
now. It’s getting dark now.”
Roxanne (shaking her fist
up at the sky): “Stop darking!”
Roxanne
at about age 12 or so; We have recently had the stress of moving from Snooger
Town to Booger Town. On top of that, my
wife has a slowly-healing wound on an extremity, PLUS a bone infection with a
nasty MRSA-resistant bacteria, and a Groshong catheter for Vancomycin
administration. I’ve got allergic
sniffles that day (not much to complain about, compared to my wife). Roxanne is adapting to a new school. So life could be better for the Marten
family, but my wife’s and my marriage is holding steady as usual. Roxanne may not have much visibility (or
detailed points for comparison) about such matters, though, and she has (in
retrospect) apparently heard of parents getting messy divorces, from school
mates. It’s the weekend, it’s family
time, but Roxanne is still half-asleep, waking up. So there’s you context.
My wife
(Melissa), trying to lighten the mood, hopefully… After complaining about our various
troubles… “Let’s see, so I’m Grumpy,
you’re (pointing at me) Sneezy, and she’s Sleepy. Now all we need is four more dwarves!”
Roxanne,
half-blubbering incoherently: “No! You guys can’t go and
@^(*&^(@*&&^@%!!!!”
Me: “What!?
Sweetie, why would we want to go and, um, devour the forest?”
Roxanne: “No!
You guys can NOT go and file for divorce!”
So
in conclusion and in confusion, I must say, four more dwarves, devour the
forest, file for divorce, whatever, whatever floats your boat! If it feels good, do it! It’s all the same to me!
Back to
matters at hand… In the hopes that we
can all “stop darking”! But first, just
a very few more introductory notes… THEN
we will get to the story! I promise!
“Roxanne”
as her fake-name? Yes, it has meaning,
unlike the fake names for my wife and I (arbitrarily chosen w/o meaning or
intent). It is from “Roxanne” as in the
Sting song, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxanne_(song)
. M. Scott Peck wrote or implied that no
one is seriously bothered by (or more extremely, “possessed by”) evil spirits,
without some moral-spiritual failure on the part of those who are bothered. I agree…
Evil spirits FEAR the spiritually advanced! And will avoid them! But (again as M. Scott Peck wrote) sometimes
the “offenses” of the “possessed” are VERY fleeting, very small. As in “Jersey”, the first of 2 major cases
discussed in Peck’s “Glimpses of the Devil”. In this case, there was mild sexual abuse of
“Jersey” at age 12… Any kind of
unresolved abuse in one’s past, also leaves one vulnerable. So…
“Sting” loves “Roxanne” in the song (just as I as a father love my
offspring), even though “Roxanne” is a prostitute (a moral offense, yes, but a
minor offense in the eyes of a libertarian like me). My daughter “Roxanne” in real life has NOT
been abused; and her “offenses” are extremely minor: ‘1)
Too much cry-babying about minor pains (but who is not like this at age
6?), and ‘2) In later life, too much
curiosity about evil, and/or the Evil One and its minions… Too much “poking a stick at the caged beast”,
to paraphrase her. I will address this
in more detail later. Suffice it to say,
her offenses were minor, and I love her.
Hence “Roxanne”.
I might
also add vague and nebulous #3 and #4 as added reasons for vulnerability. If (according to M. Scott Peck) you are an
extra-special prize (extra intelligent, extra creative, extra attentive to
moral-ethical-spiritual matters, etc.), then Satan will lust after you with
extra effort, if there’s the slightest chance of snagging you. And then there’s some weird things about
biochemistry of the brain, of susceptibility to hearing “voices” (for good and
for bad) in your head, which are sometimes due to schizophrenia. My daughter has never been diagnosed with
schizophrenia, and schizophrenia is generally associated with lower measured
intelligence… Since I am anonymous here,
I can freely share (w/o bragging) that my IQ has been measured at 130,
Roxanne’s at 140, and my wife’s is unknown but high. So classical schizophrenia seems to be ruled
out. Roxanne was (much later) finally
diagnosed as having (in addition to mild autism and ADHD, early on) bipolar
disorder (diagnosed late). Yet she clearly
heard an astounding amount of “voices”, in patches, over the years, both for
good and for bad. Full understanding of
such is clearly beyond our grasp, it seems to me. But again, I feel obligated to pass on what I
have learned.
Final
introductory notes: I had a
fundamentalist upbringing, and my wife had a mostly non-religious
upbringing. What fairly-few attempts we
as a family have made to sporadically attend (w/o becoming members of) church
have been mushy-gushy Universalist, Unitarian-type churches, to avoid dogma,
rigid minds, and self-righteousness.
Religion was fleetingly discussed in our house, in front of Roxanne, but
yes, it was Christian-oriented, when it did happen. Ideas about evil spirits, possession,
etc., were NEVER discussed in Roxanne’s (childhood)
presence (and between my wife and I, only in reaction to reading M. Scott
Peck’s “People of the Lie”). The
idea that what follows was “power of suggestion” in Roxanne’s mind, then, would
be a pretty huge stretch, to me. So
there is your background. On, to the
story…
One day
Roxanne got sick and threw up at school.
School rules, you know, we don’t want to get the other kids sick, etc.,
so my wife went to pick Roxanne up from school.
She had recently been moved from one school to another, so that didn’t
help. Humans are a deeply social
species, it seems to me, and somehow Roxanne got the idea that she was being
expelled from the tribe, or some such.
So she was fighting and screaming, even hitting her mom, and trying to open
the car door to escape! Like a wild
animal… Like she was possessed! So my wife takes her to see the family
doctor, both for the vomiting and for the new behavior problem/crisis. The doctor was on mid-day break. A nurse takes in my wife and daughter. As soon as the nurse is present, Roxanne as
all cool and calm… Nurse disappears; then
the wild animal is back. The Evil One
and his minions are furtive and secretive, it seems to me, and hide and
re-appear at whim. But they are entirely
too smart by half, usually, if we are on guard!
… So then the doctor comes back
off of break. Roxanne acts strangely
seductive to the doctor! Behavior far
beyond her years, and never seen before!
The doctor chastens Roxanne fairly sternly for hitting her mother, and
attends to the roots (I forget what) of the vomiting. End of that mini-story, but it left my wife
profoundly worried or disturbed.
Something was not right!
Then
there was the matter of Roxanne’s “ritual behavior”. Look up and smile, look down and frown. Smile at God, frown at the Devil. This, despite the lack of much of any
religious upbringing. I repeatedly told
her that Jesus (repeating scripture that predated Jesus) said, “It is kindness
that I want, not animal sacrifices”. If
you want to please God, then attend to being kind and loving, and forget about
the rituals (animal sacrifices having been the ancient rituals). The ritual persisted. So I continued to be worried about that, as
well.
OK, so
you can blame M. Scott Peck’s writings’ influences on my mind, if you want
to… To me, I think our family was lucky
that we had read this stuff! But there
were days and nights when I’d pass Roxanne’s room and get a “bad vibe” as
they’d have said in the hippie days…
Something just wasn’t right. I
was on guard, on edge, and ready to play M. Scott Peck if need be.
Then one
weekend Roxanne is playing with a neighbor girl in our back yard, and she got
stung by a bee or wasp or some such.
Roxanne starts crying and wailing like a banshee, as if her legs had
been chewed off by wolverines. Neighbor
girl goes home, my wife takes Roxanne to her bedroom, and the crying and
wailing just goes on and on. I just grit
my teeth and cringe at the whinny cry-baby stuff, and dismiss it. But my wife, to her credit, detects more
going on, and calls me in. “Melvin, the
time is now”, or some such, she said.
Time now to boot out the unwanted intruder! I immediately joined my wife for “crisis
intervention”, AKA, a deliverance. These
matters can be all about timing, sometimes, I think.
Brief
interjection; I do believe that too much self-pity or too much focus on our own
pain can spin us off to the first stages of dangerous mental states, or to “possession”. See “Psychobabble:
Exploding the Myths of the Self-Help Generation”,
by Stephen Briers. I’m pretty sure that is where I read (years
ago) of a young lady who was encouraged to “stop blocking” and recall (sometimes
under hypnosis?) ALL those times that that she was so horribly
abused! Bring back those “repressed
memories”, whether they are real, or not!
She whined and cried longer and louder, day after day, till she finally
committed suicide! Then there’s the case
of psychiatry run amuck (especially in Texas) during the late 1980s / early 1990s,
where social workers, educators, and policemen, etc., were offered bounties (money)
to send victims to the shrink factories.
Shrinks would “cure” these victims of their “repressed memories”, at
least until the health insurance ran out!
Then they were suddenly cured!
See http://www.skipsimpson.com/chron.html
or go “Google” associated terms, including “false memories”. The false memories hurt accused (fake)
“abusers” as well as the supposedly abused, I might add. Making up pains to obsess about, or even
helping people to obsess about real but minor pain, is doing them no favors at
all. But not to digress too far…
6-year-old
Roxanne wailed and moaned on and on, as her mother and I sat on her bed and
tried to comfort her. In case you have
never been stung by a stinging insect, keep in mind that the pain is normally
fading away after about 5 minutes, and this wailing was ongoing for far longer
than that. I gave a bit of a
New-Agey-oriented (but very heartfelt!) invocation along these lines: “Spirit of Light and Love, you told us some
2,000 years ago that whenever two or more are gathered in Your Name, that You
will be there with them. Well, we are
gathered here today in Your Name. You
need to help us get rid of that in Roxanne, that is not welcome here. Help us now!”
Then we got down to business.
I would
like to report to you (as M. Scott Peck has reported) that the presence of God
or the Holy Spirit was palpable to us.
It was not, for us. It was
more-so a “God is inside us” kind of thing.
Motivated by Love (which is 1,000 % identical to God, in my book), we
followed our instincts. I made little or
no mention of Angels or Demons, Heaven or Hell, or matters theological. And I certainly did NOT even think about
trying to scoop up some data about the Evil One… This was ALL about helping Roxanne; no more,
and no less. One might fantasize about
using a deliverance or exorcism to snatch up metaphysical information, but when
one finds oneself in the middle of such a thing, then (if one loves the victim
as one ideally should), all data-gathering ideas completely fall away. My wife briefly and quietly did once mention
(aloud, during this whole thing, in front of Roxanne) that we know that the
Devil is here in Roxanne, and we are commanding it to leave. I did the same thing, using more vague or
New-Agey terms. But I, like M. Scott
Peck, do believe evil spirits of unreality are, in a very concrete sense,
“real”. We were clearly putting them on
notice that their efforts to snag Roxanne were not going to take place
unopposed!
Still,
we used no fireworks, no sensational ceremonies with Holy Water or
crosses… No visual “magic” at all. That’s Hollywood crap, and organized-religion
crap, and I don’t believe in it. It
might help if the victim places great belief in it, I will grant you that much. But the theatrics and anti-Evil-One ranting, speaking
in tongues, shouting or loudness, etc., was kept to zero or near zero (zero as
I recall)… Instinctively, we did not
want Roxanne’s memory cluttered up with strangeness and “what WAS that!?!”, and
talking about it to friends and classmates, etc. Most 6-year-olds have very little ability to
keep secrets. In this, we were successful. I am getting ahead of myself, but by the time
that Roxanne had these kinds of troubles return to her in high school, she had
totally forgotten this little “ceremony” we had conducted with her. We refreshed this particular “repressed
memory” of hers at that time (now that she had a more mature sense of
discretion).
Commanding
evil spirits (excessive focusing on one’s own pain in this case) to leave, even
with clearly asking for Roxanne’s help in getting this done, got us
nowhere. No positive response at
all. Wailing went on and on. All this time, I might add, we instinctively
placed our hands on Roxanne’s body; my hand on her thighs (she was wearing
shorts, so there was direct skin contact), and my wife’s hand at the shoulders,
as I recall. I have no idea if there is
some sort of “magic” here about the “laying on of hands”; it may mean simple
human-level, loving body contact. It
should be obvious to anyone with common sense that in this context, the pubic
area, and breast on a female (no matter how young), should be avoided.
I give
credit to “God within us” (AKA love and intuition) for this, but my wife or I
(I cannot recall who) stumbled upon this idea to get Roxanne’s mind to focus on
something other than her own pain: She
knew that her baby-Franklin cousin had accidentally fallen off of a bed… He got a spiral fracture in his femur, as he
fell off of a bed, at less than age 1, as his parents were changing his
diaper. Totally just an accident, but
his parents were run through the third degree of questioning by hospital people
about possible child abuse, I might add, but that’s an unrelated story… Suffice it to say, Roxanne knew that her
cousin Franklin was in a cast, in worse shape than she was. We asked her to think about “poor baby
Franklin”. Then we kept our hands on
her, and together, chanted “Baby Franklin, Baby Franklin, Baby Franklin,” on
and on, for what might have been 10 or 15 minutes. This kind of thing, I suspect, might be
regarded as home-brewed hypnotism.
Roxanne’s wailing went on and on, ridiculously long… That is my strongest memory of the whole
affair, is about just how long it went on.
How long she wailed about a fairly minor and short-lived pain, to me,
clearly indicates that something had gone wrong in her head… AKA, there was something in there that we
wanted OUT! But the crying finally faded
away.
Roxanne
continued to have fairly minor mental troubles related to autism, ADHD, etc.
after that, but… Thank God! The ritual behavior left, and there were no
more incidents or behaviors that seriously put my wife or I, on edge, for quite
a few years, till her high school years.
So this “deliverance” was a fairly successful operation, in my mind.
I will attempt to summarize
lessons learned here, moving from the up-close-and-personal towards the more
vague and nebulous. The
stratosphere-level (and beyond) stuff can wait till later.
Enlist the victim in the
effort… This is vitally critical! M. Scott Peck lists the importance (in Glimpses
of the Devil) of the actors (in a deliverance or exorcism) in order, as,
victim #1, God (totally = to Love in my mind) #2, deliverance / exorcism /
intervention leader #3 (this not an issue at all, “who is the leader”, when
there is a total community or meeting of the minds, as in, between my wife and
I… it was not clear who was the leader, although it might have been me), and
other members of the team, #4. The
take-away here is that the victim’s efforts or co-operation is clearly number
1. Without the will of the victim, to
cast out the un-desired thoughts, AKA “voices in one’s head”, then all efforts
will be in vain. Period. The thoughts of some shallow religious people
(“we are mere lowly inanimate clay in the hands of an Almighty God, who is the
Be-All and End-All, and our will means nothing, compared to God’s Will”) are
flat-out wrong, in this case. Free will
means that the victim’s cooperation here is number one. Period, full-stop.
Enlist God, enlist Love. If you have God (Love), you can succeed. If not…
Good luck! But the two are one
and the same. An atheist will a heart
full of love could lead such a deliverance as well as the next person, I fully
believe. The word choices are going to
be different, and that’s about it.
Recall that M. Scott Peck had an atheist on one of his teams (as in Glimpses
of the Devil). Also, in Peck’s
earlier writings, he mentioned that he (as a Christian psychiatrist) has
facilitated believers towards unbelief, and vice versa, according to wherever
the client seemed to want to go and need to go.
Whatever works for you… God and
Love are the same, Satan and self-destructive negativity (up to and including
suicide) are the same. Any loving and
decent person will steer you towards the former, and away from the latter. The labels (religious beliefs or lack
thereof) matter not.
Skip the metaphysics (certainly in the heat
of the moment, at least). Deliver the
victim from evil; that is all. This is
not the time to correct his or her religious beliefs, or lack thereof. It’s also not the time to collect
metaphysical data… It’s not time to
“interview the Devil”; it’s time to deliver the victim. Focus on this one and only goal, out of love
of the victim.
Follow your intuition. You have “God within you”… Act accordingly. “Go with the flow”, with whatever works. Do not follow a script; this is not a movie,
or a play.
There is no magic. The only “magic” is the Power of Love (but do
not despair; Love is the most powerful force of all!). Holy Water and crosses and so forth may help
(by “placebo power”) if the victim is all tied into that sort of thing… But do not depend on such “magic”. Depend on the magic of Love.
Be patient. This may go on for a while. Then it may go on and on and on. Hang tough!
This is “hands On”, often. Go ahead and do the “laying on of hands”
thing, if it seems right. Avoid sexual
areas of the body, obviously, even for young children.
Keep it on the hush-hush.
If the victim is a young child, if at all
possible, disguise the nature of this little “ritual” so that they won’t even
regard it as something special… Let it
fade in their memories, as we were successfully able to do. In today’s secular age, no one is likely to
“make friends and go places” by bragging about their exorcism! So (duh!) don’t go posting about it on your
Facebook page, either, whatever your age may be, and regardless of whether you
were a victim or a helper!
Focusing on my pain, my
pain, my pain, is one of the snares of the Evil One. This is the immediate and particular danger that
we helped to deliver Roxanne from.
Focusing on something else is a simple and effective antidote (such as
thinking about the sufferings of others).
There are other snares, to be discussed not much further below.
Sometimes it’s all about
the timing. If the “evil spirits” (mental
malfunctions) are not present 24-7, then don’t go making elaborate plans for
timing at your (helpers’) convenience.
Strike when the iron is hot! When
the victim is being bothered, that is.
In military terms, it’s about getting there “the fastest with the
mostest”. The enemy has moved in, in
force; it’s time for the good guys to do likewise! Except the “Force” here is Love… Nothing more, nothing less.
This is not a substitute
for biochemistry. If the victim needs
psychiatric medicine, then they need psychiatric medicine. I have read the “anti-psychiatrist”
psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz; yes, I have.
I hear a lot of what he had to say.
But the total or near-total denial of the effectiveness of psychiatric
medicine is a mistake! I am aware of the
fact that there have been a few studies here and there that seem to say that
such psychiatric medicines are no more effective than placebos. I do not place much credence in them. Why? It may have been that earlier medicines
were not of much “real” good (in the days of the peak of the writings of Thomas
Szasz), but it is no longer generally true.
Why do I say that? My wife is on
some psychiatric medicines… When she
inadvertently forgets to take them, her mood clearly changes. I cannot see how one could still explain all
that away with “placebo power”. … Getting back to Roxanne… My wife says I may be wrong to place much
credit in our little “procedure” for the disappearance of the (“look up, look
down”) ritual behavior… It may have been
due to adjustments in Roxanne’s psychiatric medicines at nearly that point in
time. Anyway, we’re not Scientologists
here… If you need medicine, you need
medicine, not E-meters or psychobabble!
We’re not just bags of
biochemicals either. We are bags of
biochemicals which are inhabited by spiritual beings endowed with powerful free
will! Accordingly, we must enlist our
free will to go to good mental-spiritual places, and away from bad places, if
we want to avoid pointless, stupid pain and self-destruction! If we (upon finding ourselves adrift, with
the currents taking us in wrong directions) just throw our hands up in the air,
and say, “There’s nothing that I can do, it’s all the fault of my
biochemicals”, then there is way-strong danger of this becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy of deliberately chosen helplessness! Free will (grit, determination, resilience)
needs to step up, and fight back!
But we’re drifting away
from the immediate lessons learned from Roxanne at age 6, and drifting off
through the stratosphere (or the top of the troposphere, at least). Now we will rein it back in, to return to
Roxanne in her high school years. But
first, a brief intermission for some more general principles.
We’ve already mentioned
“my pain, my pain, my pain” as a snare.
Some other ones are along these lines:
In the fight of good against evil, it is my duty to try and kill evil in
some sort of “final solution”, or, alternately, to build some sort of wall to
isolate (“wall off”) evil from good, anywhere near permanently. Mistake!
Fail! Do not pass “go”, do not
collect one penny! It is our duty to
oppose evil in our own little way, doing what we can, and biting off no more
than we can chew. Anything further is to
tempt crushing defeat! Good and evil are
inextricably intertwined. Forever has
this been so; forever will it remain true (for humans in this universe, as far
as the eye can see… What else is relevant?). Killing or “walling off” evil wouldn’t even
be a good idea if we COULD do so.
Details near-immediately below…
Here is a summary of the
other major “snare” to be discussed below…
As a prelude to getting back to our adventures with Roxanne, that is. A good “mental model” of the Evil One is that
of a nattering nabob of negativity that has no physical substance. All that it is, is a disembodied spiraling
vortex of negativity. Fear it not, and
it cannot touch you; not one single one of your hairs can it dislodge. Fear, guilt, worry, unhappiness, shame,
feelings of emptiness or worthlessness even, they often have a good and proper
part in our lives… As is appropriate for
guiding our course corrections, and (most importantly) in small doses
only! The proper course is “moderation
in all things”, or the “middle way”.
When we find ourselves being guilty about our unhappiness, or in fear of
our shame, or worrying about our worrying, or ashamed of our fear of our emptiness,
we have lost control of our compounded negativities, and the Evil One is
threatening to pull us into its spiraling vortexes of negativity. Details further below.
Another
snare is morbid curiosity about evil, and the Evil One… Related to (metaphorically) wanting to go and
poke sticks at the caged beast. Roxanne
had troubles with this item, as well as the two items above. Details below…
The
final category of snares, I do not believe applied very much to Roxanne (but
for the sake of good organization of these scribblings, I am including them
here). I am just rolling these into one
big interconnected mess… Greed (AKA
“insatiable thirst”), power-lust, self-righteousness, laziness, and
self-centeredness (to include giving in to various undisciplined cravings for
short-sighted pleasures). These are all
tied together by our animal natures, by our animal origins and instincts. We need to work on them, yes, but they can be
understood, moderated, and tamed. Here
is the anti-cherry at the bottom tip of the putrid, festering anti-dessert,
though, and this one is NOT tolerable, and goes down MUCH harder (this is the
true Mark of the Evil Beast): Wanton,
needless, senseless cruelty! A housecat
may play with a live-caught mouse or bird, or a killer whale may toss a seal or
a sea lion about, at sea, but they are just practicing their killing skills,
which they need (or think that they need, in the case of the spoiled house cat)
to survive. They’re just following their
instincts (as is similarly true of people chasing power-fame-glory-money-sex,
etc.). But a truly evil person, or evil
spirits? THEY are cruel, simply because
they enjoy cruelty for the sake of cruelty!
Details on these items, below, as well, will follow…
Living
in reality is good. Living in a magical
place of unreality is not… It is highly
synonymous with mental illness. Devote
yourself to “reality at all costs”, and suffer through your (existential not
neurotic) pains honestly, said M. Scott Peck.
Do not try to escape your pains by escaping reality; this will only
increase your pains. The last idea here
underlies all the others, and so, will not be addressed separately. But yes, the Evil One is the “King of Pain”,
as well as the Father of Lies!
I hang my head in shame,
and admit that (to at least some extent) I fell for this trap, in my youth, as
Roxanne did… It really does take a bit
of a huge ego (maybe even arrogance) to think that, after our species has
inhabited the planet for tens of thousands of years, and saints & sinners,
prophets & wise persons, and gurus & saviors have come and gone, WE are
going to be the FIRST to “figure it all out”!
To somehow slay evil, or “wall it off” from good, so that it cannot
bother us. I don’t know how many times
my wife and I tried (during her times of troubles; further stories soon) to
tell Roxanne, “Hey, look, Jesus has come and gone, as have the various other
religious-spiritual gurus, and we’re still killing each other in the name of
religion. You think you’re gonna FIX
that?!!? Give it up!”.
Related to that whole
endeavor is inventing new concepts, analogies, and buzzwords, to invent the
perfect “new” religion… Same as the old
religion! For a half-serious, half-funny
version of that, see JP Sears here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kDso5ElFRg
(this work about “Being Ultra Spiritual” is his best, in my humble opinion;
he’s got lots more “stuff” out there).
So basically the Evil One
(AKA serious mental malfunctions) likes to distract you into endless
navel-gazing about the unattainable, here.
“Everyone wants to save the world, and no one wants to help Mom wash the
dishes”. So you Love the world, and want
to save the world? Help Mom wash the
dishes… Because “work is Love made
visible”. That is the antidote to the
Evil One’s bull poop here! The Evil One
would turn your navel-gazing theological / philosophical spiritual energies
into futile self-grinding, like an old-time stone wheel for grinding grains… That is running on empty, without any
grain! Engage in the real world, grind
on some real grain, and do not get caught up in endlessly futile
ponderings! Smaller doses of navel-gazing
and pondering have their places, yes, but everything has its time, place, and
proportion. “Balance” is needed
here… More on that later.
What if we WERE able to
defeat or “wall off” evil, anyway?
Suppose we genetically engineered all humans to love one another, and
give up all the evils and extreme vices?
What if we, for example, deem all violence (including self-defensive
violence, or violence in defense of others) to be evil, and (genetically or
otherwise) delete our capacities for this?
What happens then if the mutant humans (or evolution of some other
species, or outside invaders) come up with greedy and violent individuals or
hordes that attack us? What then? This is one way to indicate that the capacity
for some sort of “evil” may be needed, from time to time. Also, imposed “goodness” that is forced,
rather than freely chosen, isn’t the “real McCoy”… This is the lesson imparted (spoken) by the
prison chaplain in the violent movie, “A
Clockwork Orange”. God wants the “real
McCoy”… Nothing less will do!
In every lie, there lies
a germ of truth. Don’t call me a
Marxist… That would be a total fib! But Marx wrote of repeated rounds of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis (the result of the fight between the two combining,
often opposite, ingredients). This is
similar to the fight between good and evil…
The fight must go on. The weeds
and the grain fight in the fields, and then the weeds are discarded and the
grain is harvested. The grain must go
through the mill, the yeast cells need to wrestle with the grain products, stew
in their own waste products, and die. Then their waste products must be distilled
for several rounds, before God gets His “real McCoy”! (This is my attempt to be poetic; actually
derived from a dream of mine… I hope it
speaks to you!). “Real McCoy” may be too
dated here… How about “Jack Daniels”?
More food
for thought involves this: “Biosphere
II” and trees and shrubs, and winds. See
http://www.a4t.org/Stories/bio-dome_lesson.html
among others, and http://rebrn.com/re/til-in-the-s-scientists-tried-to-create-an-artificial-biosphere-1243423/
as well… It turns out that many trees
and shrubs grow weak and spindly, and fall over, if they are not tested
periodically by winds! Perhaps even more
strangely, (see http://www.pgi.gov.pl/images/stories/przeglad/pdf/sad0806Hodg2p.pdf
), the reason that the Himalayan mountains are so tall, is that they are
constantly opposed by (eroded away by) monsoon rains! The rains erode the massive weight (burden)
of the southerly faces of the mountains, which weights push down into the
semi-molten sub-crustal mantle… So the
mantle can now push back, and relieve the pressures exerted by the Tibetan
plateau (to the north), shoving the mountains higher! “That which does not kill me, makes me
stronger”! The mountains are tall,
because they are worn down by the rains!
THIS is why we need “evil” to oppose us, and this is why we need
“moderation in all things”, to include small doses of that which we’d rather
not have to deal with!
To beat it
to death some more, look further to the east, where the Himalayan mountains (or
the edge of the Tibetan plateau) are not opposed by the monsoons… There, the weight of the Tibetan plateau is
NOT relieved, so the heavy plateau gradually slumps down into the mantle, and
the mountains fade away. Towering
mountains are assumed to be desired in this analogy, of course… Sometimes we’d like to not have to climb such
tall mountains! But, God, please let
your tectonic plates “uplift” us all!!!
One more,
and then I will quit: See the writings
of Cory Ten Boom, about NAZI prisons and fleas.
Fleas are good! See http://www.broadcaster.org.uk/section2/transcript/hidingplace.html
... The presence of hordes of nasty
fleas gave the prisoners a place to retreat, for privacy, where the prison
guards would not go! So do not so
easily condemn, nor lust after the elimination of, that which you so quickly
label as “evil”!
I could go on some more
about this, but judge this to be sufficient (for now at the very least). Email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com with
questions, comments, etc., as desired.
Perhaps starting with the
ancient Greeks, wise people have long spoken of “moderation in all
things”. The Buddha spoke of the “middle
way”. See http://www.sgi.org/about-us/buddhism-in-daily-life/the-middle-way.html
for a sample of associated thought.
Jesus spoke of the “straight and narrow road”, and some fundamentalists
want to wrongly interpret this as, “Drink a beer, go to Heck and
Tarnation”-type thinking. I prefer to
think of this “road” as staying in the middle, and not going to extremes. “Drop kick me Jesus, through the goal posts
of life” (https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=drop%20kick%20me%20jesus%20through%20the%20goalposts%20of%20life%20lyrics
) is no less than a sacred hymn! Stay in
the middle!
Leo Tolstoy said that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy
in its own way.” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
). Our challenge is to find the “middle
way” on each and every one of the many issues and challenges that face us. Find the “middle way” on all of them is the
only way to succeed; hence the “narrow road”.
The ONLY places where we need to totally pick one, and totally reject
the other, is when we go to the 153,000-foot level of abstraction, and speak of
choosing good and not evil (Love and not self-hatred or suicide). Love, properly understood, is the only
ideology that cannot be taken to destructive extremes. As “Bread” sang, “Too much love, I’ve never
seen”. http://www.letssingit.com/bread-lyrics-too-much-love-8jhw64w
.
Yet another view: We need the right dose! Don’t eat too much, don’t eat too
little. Too much salt will kill you;
none in your diet at all, will kill you.
Even “water overdose” is a real thing!
See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill/
, among other sites. “The right dose”
shows up in unexpected places… Even
ionizing radiation is good, in small doses!
This phenomenon is known as “radiation hormesis”. If the “radiation hormesis” theory wasn’t
true, we’d expect that people living at high altitudes would have higher cancer
and premature death rates than those living at low altitudes. This is because people living at high
altitudes are exposed to more ionizing radiations from A) eroding
mildly-radioactive rocks, and B) cosmic rays not being as-much-blocked by less
atmosphere. Yet the exact opposite is
true! Live at sea level your whole life
long, and you are worse off, for this!
The clincher is a USA federal government study summarizing an
“inadvertent human radiation exposure experiment” in Taiwan, which confirms the
“radiation hormesis” theory, beyond a reasonable doubt, for science-believing
rationalists, at least. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
… Low-dose radioactivity is GOOD for
you! Perhaps it keeps our immune systems
well-tuned, constantly fighting low levels of cancer, constantly learning the
needed lessons… Sort of like what we
learn by constantly fighting adversity and evil, perhaps?
So often,
we need small doses of apple-cart-upsetting forces to keep us in the middle (to
keep our course-correcting mechanisms well honed), it seems. We don’t want huge, overwhelmingly upsetting
forces, but we’ve got to stay tough in case they do assault us (this will
happen from time to time, as most of us know).
But most of all, we want to stay in the middle!
Internal
negativities (fear, guilt, shame, unhappiness, etc.) are among those things
that we’d rather not deal with, but that we often need, in small doses. Guilt reminds us that we did something that
we shouldn’t have done… Take it to
heart, learn not to do that again, and realize that God forgives you (just go
ahead and forgive yourself, to put in in more new-age terms). That is all!
Now let the guilt go!
Unhappiness? Take a “chill pill”
if your biochemicals are out of whack, and figure out what is making you
unhappy, and try to remove your source(s) of unhappiness. These kinds of negatives are needed for your
course corrections (in small doses).
What the
Evil One wants to do, is to push you off of the “middle path”, however it
can! Feel guilty about your feelings of
fear of your unhappiness, etc.! Compound
your negativities, with negativities about your negativities! Worrying (a wee tad) about your ability to
pay the rent is good, so that you will be careful with your money! But worrying about your worrying, to the
point where you stay at home (instead of going to work to earn money), so that
you can worry more effectively, about your worries? NOW you are letting the Evil One start
pulling you into its hungry spiral vortex of negativities! Don’t do it!
The choice is yours! The Evil One
has ZERO power over you, if you just steadfastly tell it “No”!
That is
all… Stay on the middle way!
This one may be a bit more subtle
than some of the rest, but with a little explanation and thinking, it’s not all
that bad. “Tickling the tail of the
dragon” is a phrase from the development of the A-bomb; see http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/atomic-accidents
... Highly fissionable materials are
highly dangerous; do not idly or carelessly play with them, for no good
reason. Satan (mental malfunctions) are
the exact same way! Satan has NOTHING
good to teach us… It is all unreality
and lies! So at the very best, trying to
“tune Satan in”, in our heads, even if “just to snoop in on it and understand
it better”, is just a total waste of time!
The more time you spend doing that, the less time that you have to do
more productive things. Utterly wasting
time can be a worse offense than the casual glance may reveal, at times. Henry David Thoreau said, "As
if you could kill time without injuring eternity". Don’t waste a second! Sleeping or resting or practicing
“empty-headed” meditation, these are all good…
Empty your head, in meditation, so that the empty vessel can be filled,
this is good… God cannot add to us when
we are all completely full of ourselves!
But, to contemplate the Evil One?
For ANYTHING other than self-defense, or the defense of others? Now THERE is a total waste of time! And yes, I will grant that others see the Thoreau quote here, quite
differently, and I don’t mean to have the last word here. In summary, the first or preliminary point
is, “Don’t bother to waste your precious time, the Evil One has nothing
worthwhile to teach you”.
The second,
follow-on point? What lies beyond
doggedly wasting our time, and insisting on learning what the stubbornly
self-caged, willfully self-wounded, self-hating, but prideful and arrogant
sub-beast thinks that it knows? Well,
it’s actually simple, dark, and deep… The
Beast will speak of a certain truth… It
does that from time to time, when twisted purposes are to be served… This truth being as follows: To “know”, we have to “be” (and “do”). I have from time to time, read of aimless,
misdirected people (often young and male) torturing and / or killing random animals
or people, “Just to see what it feels like” to do so. Read your news stories long enough, and you
will see this kind of thing, from time to time (thankfully fairly rarely). Citations upon request… I may write some more about this later. This is not my favorite area of research!
In summary, in case the preceding is
too hazy: Contemplating (trying to
understand more deeply than needed, even if you think that your “research” is
for benevolent purposes) evil leads to doing evil, in larger and larger doses,
always trying to finally really figure it out…
Because to “know”, we have to “be”!
And there’s “no there, there”, in evil…
NOTHING good, sensible, rational, or worthwhile to be found! No matter HOW hard you look!
There’s “no there, there”, in
evil… You can quote me on that! There’s some “there, there”, in even the
tiniest gestures of sincere kindness or compassion, though… As in, patting someone on their back… Even (perhaps especially) your enemy… And saying, “there, there, now”. So then, there’s some “there, there”, in
saying “there, there, now”. So I say
unto you, my friends… And my
enemies… “There, there, there, there,
THERE, now! Me Love you long time! So there!”
If you like
the more poetic ways of putting things, then I suspect that Nietzsche might
ring a bell. I think that ol’ Friedrich
was babbling about the same things that I have just babbled about. "He who fights with
monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if
you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
What do I mean by
“animalistic lusts”? Sort of like the
“penguin lust” of “Opus” the penguin, in the old “Bloom County” cartoon, by
Berkeley Breathed. More squid and
herring to eat, more wild sex, more pleasures.
Some pleasures are good (love, creativity, responsible sex, eating and
drinking moderately), and others are bad, or bad in excess. They come from our animal origins. We all want power, esteem, glory, and
more-more-more… We all want to be on the
top of the pecking order, not on the bottom.
We, in these senses, are like just about every other animal on the
planet. And such urges can easily be
forgiven, if we only learn to moderate them.
God (our conscience) isn’t insisting on us totally denying our own
nature… This isn’t possible! I love my cats, even when I grit my teeth at
them for harassing (sometimes killing) birds or baby squirrels. I may restrain (imprison in the house) my
cats during peak baby-squirrel time, in addition to gritting my teeth at their
inclinations… Do I not feed them enough
already? They do NOT need the extra
meat! But I wouldn’t even think of
spanking my cats for being cats. They’re
just being cats. So it is with God’s
relationships with us… We don’t need all
that much money, power, fame, glory, and sex; a little bit will do. We’d be better off if we quit being greedy
(my housecats would have more freedom if they restrained themselves). I’m not sure how to complete the analogy with
God v/s humans, but I think I have at least the rudiments of a good analogy
here. If we’d be less greedy, we’d get
along better with our neighbors, which is precious (which is also a synonym for
“God”, I think). We might even be able
to attain world peace! If we all gave up
ALL of our forms of greed and power-hunger!
OK, maybe that’s a pretty good completion of the analogy, actually.
Now wanton cruelty or
pain-causing (for the sake of cruelty, not, for example, for cutting out a
cancer to heal a person)? That’s a
totally different animal! That will not
be forgiven, in the absence of complete and total (sincere) apology,
repentance, and cessation of the behavior.
It (needless cruelty) is the hallmark of the Evil One. The Evil One could sincerely apologize,
repent, and cease, and be forgiven right now.
The Evil One’s pride gets in the way.
But everyone… And I mean
EVERYONE… Has free will. We can always keep on hoping that some day soon,
the Evil One will come to its senses, and stop digging its hole deeper.
Roxanne’s offenses (that
attracted being bothered by the Evil One and its minions) included little if
any of the above. And the above is
fairly simple, really. Here is the added
complexity (extra wrinkle) that is brought into the equation by the fact that
humans are pretty mentally complex, compared to the animals. Alternately stated, humans have a larger dose
of “spirit” or “soul” (whatever those things are… Self-awareness?) than the other animals
do. The extra complexity is that humans
have added to the greed (for animalistic money-power-sex etc.), greed for
self-righteousness! I don’t know of any self-righteous
animals, do you? But I have known many
humans who have been saturated with too much greed for self-righteousness!
At this point (please
excuse the diversion), I have to expound on this matter for a bit. Then we’ll get back to the story of
Roxanne. What I am about to expound on,
here, is actually very relevant to Roxanne’s case, in a round-about
manner. Please be patient, and you’ll
see soon.
If you want to read what
I consider to be an excellent book-length treatment of self-righteousness,
taming self-righteousness, and associated matters, then I would highly recommend
that you read (or skim) Peter McWilliams’ “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual
Crimes in a Free Society”. This is an excellent (but long) book! After rejecting (large portions of) a
fundamentalist upbringing, I dismissed the Bible (for years) as so much
micro-managing, judgmental tripe, that I didn’t have time or mind-space for
it. Peter McWilliams
“rescued” the Bible in my eyes, for me, by pointing out that the Bible does not
belong to any particular ideology (liberal or conservative, politically or
religiously); it belongs to all of us.
We can justify whatever we want to justify, out of this “Holy Book” (or
any other, I suspect). But… We can also use it to justify Love and the
with-holding of (quick, false, or superficial) judgment!
Directly to the relevant
points made by Peter McWilliams, though, Jesus apparently spent not one word
condemning gays, abortionists, evolutionists, or socialists. If you check out the Gospels in any kind of
detail, you can see that Jesus, quite often and at length, condemned
hypocritical self-righteousness! And
after spending more decades on this planet than I care to confess to, I have to
say that I can see why Jesus spent much of his verbal energies on this
particular target, and in no uncertain terms!
Properly understood, hypocritical self-righteousness underlies a HUUUGE
portion of this world’s troubles!
In turn, a huge portion
of self-righteousness comes from trivial matters… Do I belong to the right tribe, do I speak
the correct language, wear the right clothes, and eat the right foods, in the
correct manner. I’m sorry, but eating
with chopsticks v/s forks and spoons, carries NO ethical or moral baggage,
NONE! And to go further, which Gods,
gods, goddesses, karma, cosmic vibes, etc. …
Or none at all… That I believe or
disbelieve in… Doesn’t matter, either. None, nix!
Now I have REALLY offended some small-minded peoples, right? Jesus would have been nailed up on the cross,
right on the spot, for saying it that nakedly, I bet… But I also bet that he was tempted to say
it! He got close to saying it… “By their fruits, you will know them”. If they serve Love, then they might screw up
from time to time, from ignorance or misunderstandings, as we all do, but on
the average, their Love will show, in their DEEDS, far more so than in their
spoken words of adherence to this or that cultural ideology! (Read, dogma).
God is Love is Jesus is The
Holy Spirit is The Prophet Mohammed is Karma is the Universe is Nirvana is becoming
a Self-Actuated, Psychologically Healthy Human, is Compassionate Secular
Humanism, is whatever, so long that the believers are doers who bear fruits of
Love and Compassion. The fighting
between these tribes is a total waste of energies! If you will please bear with me for a brief
final semi-poetic analogy, we’ll swing back towards Roxanne soon enough.
We’ve fed hummingbirds in
our back yard for many years. To all
those many hummingbirds, the pint or two of sweet liquids in each of those 12
or 15 (yes, we go a bit overboard) feeders might as well be infinite. If they all worked quadruple overtime, there
is no way that they could all drink even half of them dry… The supply is infinite. Yet they are literally bird-brains. God / Nature / evolution made them to guard
the strictly finite production of limited amounts of pollen and nectar in
limited patches of real, natural flowers.
So they fight and guard and fight-fight-fight, over the (practically)
INFINITE supply of sweet liquids in the feeders! They are frankly too stupid to recognize
infinity when they see it, so they cannot adapt to the changed circumstances of
human-made feeders. They waste energies
fighting over the infinite, as if it were finite.
Now on the other hand,
there are baby pigs in modern “industrial farms”, who are smarter than
bird-brains. In nature (or an older
farm), the biggest piglet will often “hog” (ha!) two of mom-pig’s nipples, and
“fence out” the runt. Pretty cruel and
greedy, yes… But from a strictly selfish
standpoint, the biggest piglet benefits from being a “hog” and “hogging” two
nipples, because there’s a common set of milk glands feeding the two
nipples. “Fence out” the runt, and you
get more milk. The natural milk glands only produce so much milk in a given
time, and the big “bully pig” gets more of it, by hogging 2 teats.
Change out the momma-pig
and put in a large vat of cow’s milk, though, with rubber teats, and the whole
equation changes. Bully pig gets NO more
milk, by hogging 2 rubber teats! He
wastes his time, actually, by guarding the extra teat, because he can only suck
on one at a time! And the vat will run
dry soon enough… You’d better “make hay
while the sun shines”, in farmer terms!
Technically, it’s not about the “infinite supply”, then, it’s about the
“near-infinite supply per time period”.
OK, then, Rodger that, if you want to be a geek about it…
Here’s
the kicker, though: That baby bully-pig
is smart enough to see the difference!
He recognizes infinity when he sees it!
He does NOT hog the second fake (rubber) teat with cow’s milk behind it,
like a natural teat!
So
here’s the completion of the analogy: We
humans have an even much larger brain than the baby pig does, so we really have
no excuses at all. Yet we behave like
the bird-brains, and not like the baby pigs, when faced with the infinite
supply of “God’s Love”! “God’s Love”
(the capacity for us all to act lovingly towards one another) is infinite,
whatever our language, customs, beliefs, etc., may be! Yet we bird-brains want to fight-fight-fight
over chopsticks v/s forks and spoons, or the equivalent! STOP IT, please, just STOP IT!
OK, that
was at least slightly dark… Needless
fighting is always dark. Sorry, I have
to get more dark on you yet… Sorry, I
cannot “stop darking” when there is an important lesson that must be
transmitted…
The
further darkness involves a core spiritual weakness that is behind some of the
worst manifestations of mental illness.
Some people would like to take the mechanistic view that we are all
helpless “bags of biochemicals” adrift on seas of random chemicals and
happenings. I’m sorry, I can’t buy it,
and will not buy it. In all honesty, I
will confess that I had a brief youthful fling with self-chosen mental illness,
and with the exact same spiritual defect that I will now discuss. I aspire to be the “wounded healer” here,
rather than a flamingly hypocritically self-righteous person, so please bear
with me.
All of
mental illness is a disease, just like lung cancer or diabetes? Ha!
Depression (which can often be partially fixed with drugs), OK,
yes. Brain damage, bad genes and a low
IQ, OK, no blame to be assigned there.
Damage caused by past abuse, partial pass there (lots of people “toughen
up” and blow past it, though, so only a partial pass, here).
Minor point: Stupidity (including simple lack of
information) is a common thing, and should be casually, easily forgiven. We are all stupid about large categories of
topics (different topics for different folks, of course). Arrogance combined with stupidity, though,
need not be so easily forgiven! If I
have no knowledge at all, about medicine, and cannot even be bothered to read
up about my affliction, or research it on the internet, or ask a smarter friend
or neighbor about it (let alone, see a Doctor), because I think I know
everything… And I proceed to
self-medicate myself or self-surgerize myself, in a stupid manner… Then I do NOT really have much claim on your
rescuing me from my combined stupidity-arrogance, when the chickens come home
to roost!
Major point: Self-righteousness (a form of arrogance) is
closely related to the inability to take helpful, well-meaning advice! Many forms of mental illness (cough-cough,
see me hang my head in shame; been there, done that briefly) involve absolutely
crazy delusions! So I think that
permanent Universal Peace and Perfection can be attained, if I only perfect the
exact way to “hold my mouth” while reciting the Exact Right Words, and dripping
gerbil-fat candle-wax onto my copy of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”? And ALL of my 165 friends and family have
tried to tell me that I am bat-shit crazy?!?!
And I still will NOT listen?
Well, if I am so utterly arrogant as to think that I, and I alone, am
right and righteous, then do I not deserve at least some of the pain and
madness coming my way?
I think of PJ O’rourke
and his phrase about his foolishly idealistic leftist youth, about being
“tragically hip”. See his book, “Age and Guile Beat
Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut”.
Relevant, how? Well, “tragically
hip” people do self-defeating or at least stupid things, because, well, they
are just SOOO deep, SOOOO sophisticated, that we stupid “normal” buffoons,
troglodytes, and muggles will NEVER be able to understand their profound deepness! So, too, are arrogantly delusional mentally
ill people (magical thinkers) utterly disdainful when the mere muggles, in the
face of their SOOO deep delusions, say troglodyte things like “get a grip”,
“it’s all in your head”, or “relax, take a break, stop worrying about things
you cannot fix”. Only an army of
psychiatrists, attended by a legion of psychologists, all sagely stroking their
chins and nodding thoughtfully while I expound at great length about my amazingly
complex mental contortions, can EVER tell me to “get a grip”! Even then, I might not listen! Do NOT call me judgmental here, because I
speak as a wounded healer! Been there,
done that! I am still with us today,
because I had the humility to see my own arrogance and stupidity, and to seek
help!
Human
existence is endlessly complex, so I have to add caveats, even to the
above. Stubbornness is a double-edged
sword, for good and for bad. “Mad”
geniuses have had to persist for decades before their “mad” theories were finally
hailed as the truth. The “plate tectonics”
theory comes to mind as a classical example.
See http://s8int.com/crichton.html
for a longer listing of such examples. But
the important distinction here is “rational science”; we need some semblance of
following the “evidence of our senses”, as opposed to “magical thinking”. Science can be Holy… M. Scott Peck believed that (see “Glimpses
of the Devil”), as did also “Anna” (see “Mister God, This is Anna”,
by “Fynn”, AKA Sydney Hopkins). And yes, I believe that, too. Genuine, honest science (submission to trying
to understand the Universe as the ? “Creator” ? really made it ?) involves a
truly Holy amount of humility.
Stubbornly clinging to unfounded illusions is the opposite of this
humility. I’m sorry if this truth is
hurtful; I do not mean to micro-aggress or macro-aggress! One more recommended read, though: See Rupert Sheldrake and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html
.
From
there: “Good science, like good
religion, is a journey of discovery, a quest. It builds on traditions from the
past. But it is most effective when it recognizes how much we do not know, when
it is not arrogant but humble.”
So it’s a bit
paradoxical or a “both ways” kind of thing…
Stubbornness is good, stubbornness is bad. A bit of refinement clarifies matters. Scientific-minded or data-driven stubbornness
(perseverance, for worthy objectives) is usually a good thing. “Magical thinking”-type stubbornness is
usually bad. Above and beyond that, “If at
first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a
damn fool about it”. Attributed to WC Fields. Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.
Speaking of paradoxes, here is how I
would put it: “The only way to retain your sanity, is to
doubt your sanity every day. If you find
yourself thinking that every thought that you ever have, is always totally,
infallibly sane, then you have become dangerously insane.” The same can be said of righteousness… So doubt your righteousness every day! Once again, though, SOOO much subtle
nuance! Sometimes, once we have made up
our minds (hopefully after much soul-searching), we really need to get ON with
it, and follow through! Do NOT “fish or
cut bait” endlessly, or start, change your mind, stop, change your mind again,
start again, and on and on. Worst-case
examples here for “stuttering” (start-stop-start-stop…) would be mercy killing
an animal or prosecuting a war. Decide
whether to do it, or not do it, and stick with it. Get it done quickly! As Jesus put it, “He who puts his hands to
the plow and then looks back, is of no use to the Kingdom”. Luke 9:62.
Anyway,
sympathy and compassion are good, including for (especially for?) the mentally
ill. But there’s a line between
listening compassionately, and becoming an enabler. Many of us are smart enough not to say to an
alcoholic, “Well, after all, it’s not your fault; you have alcoholism, which is
just another disease. Here’s another
bottle of whiskey for you. Carry on.” But then, I have heard of “tragically hip”
lawyers who think it would be a good idea to have all 12 “personalities” of a
“multiple-personality-disorder”-type person, when being sworn in at court,
swear in separately! What’s next, shall
we always set out 12 place settings when these “12 persons” sit down to eat,
and call that compassion also? Or do we
trot out the tiniest bit of “tough love”, and tell him, “Dude, you are ONE
person”!?! Which way will he ever get
better?
Similarly,
there’s paranoia-encouraging “grievance mongering”, whereby we imagine or manufacture
slights and insults, where none were intended.
I’m thinking of “micro-aggressions”-type bull poop as is festering on
college campuses today. Then we’re
surprised when our “grievance mongering” encourages a “victim” of these
“micro-aggressions” to lash out violently.
See http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/01/ohio-state-knife-attacker-abdul-artan-wa
... A Muslim student went violently
bonkers while taking a class on “micro-aggressions”!
Anyway,
we need the humility to doubt our own sanity, especially when attacked by
delusions, AKA, the first leading-edge, probing tentacles of the Evil One. Additionally, we don’t need encouragement to
go insane, or keep staying insane!
Please do NOT feed my insanity, and call that “compassion”!
Roxanne
had troubles with the above… Having
enough humility to take good advice; enough, at least, to dispel her beliefs in
her worst delusions. I am not sure if I
can claim any credit for having been a “wounded healer” associated with this
matter, legitimately, or not… I suspect
that I can. I think it was even more of
a problem in her college years (which we’ll get to soon enough) than in her
high school years. In any case, like me
in my youth, she had enough humility to come out of this fight on the good
side. Time, now… To get ON with it!
After the age-6 episode,
as best as I recall, Roxanne had a semi-normal, reasonably enjoyable few years,
till early high school. My wife recalls
things as perhaps a bit rougher than I recall (she says that Roxanne struggled,
on and off, with depression, all those years).
I do recall she took the move from “Snooger Town” to “Booger Town”, in
her 5th grade, rather poorly (at first, at least). It might even have been honest to label her,
at that time, as slightly suicidally inclined.
At that time, I do recall telling her about some things I read in Viktor
Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
Viktor was a Jewish psychiatrist who spent time in the NAZI prison camp
at Auschwitz. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning
… This books never mentions religion at
all, as I recall, after reading it cover to cover. But to me, it was uplifting… If this man could survive a NAZI prison camp,
and take away ANYTHING positive from it, then I can “toughen up a bit”,
struggle through whatever existential pain I MUST suffer… As opposed to needless neurotic pain… I always think of Scott Peck and,
paraphrased, “If you have a headache, take an aspirin already, and get over
it!”… Then I can get through whatever
faces me. Stare it down, tough it out! Few of us face NAZI prison camps!
So anyway, I told Roxanne
that Viktor saw people break down (in camp) and commit suicide by throwing
themselves onto the electric fences. He
also saw starving brave souls share their bread with fellow starving
inmates. No matter how tough it gets,
which route we chose, is up to us.
Basically I was saying to Roxanne, “You don’t have it so hard; others
have survived MUCH harder trials”. I
personally went through much stronger tests in my youth, than school moves, so
perhaps I was too tough on Roxanne at times.
My wife says that trials and tribulations are totally subjective, and
that we need to be sympathetic to those who…
Just for a wild made-up example…
Really-really take it hard, when they break a nail. No, that’s too harsh… To those who, for a better example,
really-really miss their deceased cat.
It’s just a CAT, dang it, there are plenty more at the shelter! But no, I do understand, I am a cat lover
myself.
In any case, I do recall
expressing “tough love” at Roxanne, a wee tad, now and then. Was I right or wrong? What are the guidelines for picking one over
the other? Molly-coddling v/s tough
love? Sorry, few clues for you here from
Yours Truly… Let Love guide you! More than that? Ask your conscience, ask God. What is best for the sufferer, right now, in
the long run? Sorry, no more from me, on
that one… I am all dried out! (AKA, this issue is an “it all depends” kind
of thing, and attempts to write rules for this, are just about guaranteed to be
a waste of time).
Roxanne’s time is middle
school in “Booger Town” were RELATIVELY smooth sailing, compared to what came
later. She was a brave and ethical
person, standing up to bullies, both on her own behalf, and on the behalf of
others. Just a very short diversion into
that topic here… One day, she “ratted
out” a bully, by seeing the guidance counselor or principal (I forget which;
call him the principal). Principal calls
up “Bully” via the intercom, right on the spot!
So Bully sees Roxanne coming out of the principal’s office, as Bully
comes in! Hello, do we think that maybe
Bully has a modicum of smarts? Sometimes
our “public servants” have scarcely more than two neurons to rub together, is
seems… OK, back to the main story here…
Roxanne made a fairly
smooth move from school in Booger Town, back to school in Snooger Town. The high school years went into full
swing… And here, my wife’s and my memory
fails us at times. Truth be told, this
whole topic, to some extent, even upsets my Lovely Bride (let alone Roxanne
herself), so I have limited my quizzing of my wife, and will sometimes be
vague, and will “wing it” at others.
As to when, exactly, the
“voices in her head” kicked in, this was gradual, and is lost in my “memory
hole”. My wife recalls (as I do more
vaguely) Roxanne starting to get a bit distant, and seeming troubled. And then, she tells her mom what it’s all
about… Roxanne has been troubled that
she needs to… ???... Figure out how to save the world from evil,
or some such! The battle begins. We try to talk sense to her; try to tell her
that she’s tackling something WAY beyond her pay grade, and WAY beyond the pay
grade of any of us normal human beings.
This particular often-repeated input to her, on and off, sporadically,
went on for quite a few years, on into her college years.
Then the “voices” set in
(gradually as I recall). I can clearly
recall one weekend day when she and I were raking leaves. Sometimes, relatively mindless, simple
physical tasks (“chop wood, carry water”, as the Buddhists say) will facilitate
thinking and honest talks during break times, and this was one of them. She describes to me, some of the things that
the “voices” are saying to me. It is by
now clear to me, who the “voices” are.
They are actually good spirits (Angels, God) at times, and the Dark Side
at others… Sometimes one group in
ascendant power, sometimes the other. I
only vaguely recall (from early on in the high school years, at the start of
all this), a reassuring message from “little tiny twinkling bright Lights”, to
Roxanne, that she can make it through all this (to hang tough; there’s a Light
at the end of the tunnel). But the details
on that, if I ever understood them in any detail at all, to begin with, are
lost to me.
I can recall glaring
at… Or perhaps more accurately, glaring
THROUGH Roxanne, at what she had permitted to enter into her mind, that day,
raking leaves. I told Roxanne, in no
uncertain terms, that these particular “voices” in her head, were absolutely NO
friends of hers, at all! I also told her
that, the next time that the “voices” were present, she should, with
determination and even fierceness, grill the heck out of them, looking for the
tiniest bits of lying or quibbling, and ask them, “Is it, or is it not true,
that your real, true, ultimate goal for me, is for me to kill myself”? And it is a true and sincere belief of mine,
that when we summon our sharpest wits, powers of observation, and
intuition… When we sincerely “pray to
God”… That it is scarcely possible for
anyone to truly and completely “pull the wool over our eyes”. They can only tell us so many lies, for so
long, until it all breaks down. The lies
of communism in the UUSR, after all, lasted for only 70 years, and that is much
longer than they can usually last.
… Anyway, days or weeks later, I
did hear back from Roxanne… The demons,
indeed, could not or would not lie to her, on this one. This was and is their ultimate goal for us
all… For us to punch our own tickets, as
they say! Need I elaborate, then, on,
“they are no friends of ours”?
For a tiny diversion to a
related topic, please consider the scam emails that we all get from time to
time. “A prince in Nigeria has $$$
millions $$$ of dollars to share with you, but he needs your help! Send $2,000 to help Nigerian prince NOW, and
he will repay you, in egads of scads of money, later.” WHY are the lies so blatant and
transparent? Why not make the lies at
least a TINY bit more believable? The
answer is as follows: If the lies were a
TINY bit more believable, then the liars would have to do MUCH more work of
sifting through many more potential suckers, to “winnow out” the final few who
will actually fall for the whole giant lie.
The lie is made bigger (more obvious), to automatically “weed out” those
who aren’t “big enough suckers”. Is this
an accurate analogy to the lies of the Evil One? I am not sure, but I suspect that it is at
least a partially apt analogy. Evil One
to Roxanne: “Oh, yes, sure, suicide is a
WAY good thing for you, a WAY cool thing!
We’ll help you get there, so that you can see for yourself.” You see, then, how this analogy might fit?
The battle lines shifted
back and forth. I recall a time when
Roxanne told us that she felt as follows:
She says “no” to the little demon, the foot soldier. Foot soldier is followed by the Sergeant,
then the Captain, then the Major and the General, all the way down to the Chief
Jerk in Charge… The Evil One
itself. All trying to tell her how
“lost” she is, how she must step aside and let the forces of Evil have their
way… All while she is saying “no”! This I clearly recall being in her high
school years. As best as I recall, in
those days, she got more messages from the Dark Side, than otherwise, by far… The tide turned later, in her college years,
when the Good Guys showed up more often…
Often 50-50, maybe even at times more than 50-50, for favoring the Good
Guys, later on.
I plan to delve, later,
into the details of messages of Light and of Darkness… Some of them rather astounding, that I had to
ponder through, at least briefly… And
then to see both the truths and the lies!
Things that I would never have thought of for myself, and that I doubt
that Roxanne dreamed up, all on her own.
For now, let me mention one fairly important one: The Evil One is into nihilism, into telling
us that “nothing matters”, and that there IS no such thing as free will! Fall for this one, and soon enough, you will
be told, “Since nothing matters, since nothing is every bit as good as
something, then come here, join me in the nothingness, where there is no pain. Commit suicide.” … And
that will only be the beginning of more pain than you and I can imagine! …
Anyway, the response is simple, to the point, and effective: “Hey Evil One… Since nothing matters one way or the other,
then WHY are you so Hell-bent (literally!) on getting me to believe that? If I have no free will, then WHY are you
trying to sway me in ANY direction, about ANYTHING?” Now look, and look hard, for all the lies,
and all the quibbles!
OK, one more, in slightly
more detail, and then we will move back to the story… This next diversion considers the highly
relevant puzzle of, HOW can a person simultaneously think of themselves as
supremely important (in charge of saving the world from evil), and also, as a
totally worthless piece of slime? I
personally struggled with a TINY bit of the same thing as a youth (the same as
Roxanne struggled with this, more so than I did), and so, I think I have a tiny
bit of a handle on this: As a humanoid
person, when we look at another person, we make some sort of “snap judgment” on
whether or not we like them (whether they are “good” or “bad”). After that, it is hard for us to change our
minds… But we often do change our minds,
if we spend a lot of time with that other person, and they constantly fail to
confirm our biases. If we have a healthy
brain, at least… But more to the point,
we do NOT often simultaneously hold that other person in way-high and way-low
esteem! Very few of us are good-enough actors,
so as to convincingly “turn on a dime” and to tell our victim that he or she is
God’s Gift to the Universe, one second, and an utterly despicable piece of
dirt, then next second! But Satan can do
this… The Evil One can do this… Because it does not exist! The Evil One isn’t a flesh-and-blood entity,
so it can do, convincingly, what we cannot.
Recall my earlier speech about “Satan Exists, and Satan Does NOT Exist”
(use that as search-string here). Here,
the semi-quasi-theological take is that “Satan does not exist” for these
purposes, since that is the better theoretical model for this one particular
purpose… Satan tells the exact opposite
lies, convincingly, at the same time…
Because it’s not real, it’s just your mental malfunctions!
The other
(non-theological) approach(es) to this conundrum is/are as follows: The simple version here is just that “bipolar
disorder” is sometimes not an accurate model of what’s really happening,
insides some minds. “Bipolar”
(classically) seems to mean, upswing/mania at one time, downswing/depression at
another… Not both at the same time! Maybe our models aren’t complex enough… “Bipolar” should be understood to mean “both
at the same time”, sometimes. OK, that’s
not very complex or satisfying, but there it is…
More elaborately, from an
evolutionary or sociobiological perspective, think of it this way: Humans are highly social, with a highly
developed brain. We can classify
many-many other humans, in our social sphere…
Are they good or bad, allies or enemies?
“The Tipping Point”, by Malcolm Gladwell, points to that number
being roughly 150, for humans. A wolf
may hold mental models in his head, for 12 or 15, 20 at the most, other wolves
in their pack. We big-brained humans can
carry 150… But those models must be kept
simple! (That’s me speaking now, not
Malcolm). We do NOT hold 150 models of
150 “companion humans” as all being both good and evil, allies and enemies,
trustworthy and not! There’s not enough
room in our brains for that! We carry
150 models, each a bright white, a dark black, or some shade of gray… Not all states at the same time!
Now, being blessed (or
cursed, take your pick) with fancy “mirror neurons” to tell us “what is the
other guy thinking, most likely”, and social-simulator neural clusters, for
figuring out how and why we are interacting with others, and what the social
future may hold… We DO have to carry a
“mental model” of ourselves, and, for optimal results, this particular mental
model has to include light, dark, and all the shades of gray in between! To reflect all of our motives, possible
motives, and capabilities, that is. So
then… Mental malfunctions (AKA “the Evil
One”) can get a “hook” here, in our mental model of ourselves, and convincing
tell us (those who “don’t have their stuff all together”, in the vernacular, at
least), that we are simultaneously both wonderful and terrible!
Back to our story… Roxanne got worse, at times. She did have the good sense not to “share”
with her psychiatrist, anything about any kind of religious or spiritual
aspects to the “voices”… Roxanne kept it
all in secular terms, there. “Negative
self talk”, and so forth, you know, no talk of demons allowed… We do not generally trust the secular “shrink
industry” with this kind of thing, in our household! Even while keeping it secular, we did have,
in our back pocket (between us and the shrink) plans for institutionalization,
if it came to that… Thank God, it never
came to that! But things were touch and
go, at times…
As previously mentioned,
we did, at this time, inform Roxanne of what had happened to her at age 6. She had no recollection of it, when we brought
it up. And yes, we did follow up with
our best intentions by performing more “exorcisms” or “deliverances”. We had Roxanne read M. Scott Peck, yes, we
did! If nothing else, Roxanne was/is our
fellow egghead! See this, “A
thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have…” From http://www.azquotes.com/quote/892609
and by Thomas Carlyle...
We tried “deliverance”
ceremonies several times. They were
nothing fancy… Roxanne, my wife & I
holding hands and praying around the dinner table, mostly, and asking God to
help cast out the unwelcome “visitors”, and trying to get Roxanne, especially,
to work on this task. I can recall one
time she felt so freed up, afterwards, that she literally went out back and
rolled in the grass in the back yard!
But the demons way-often come back, often with more of them or worse of
them. Jesus warned us about that, you
know. You can look up the “chapter and
verse” thing for yourself, you know…
“The Google” knows everything, these days… I find “chapter and verse” doesn’t help much
anyway… Believers believe what they
believe, and dis-believers dis-believe what they dis-believe, and it is next to
impossible to change their minds (anyone’s mind) about much of anything. For details on that… And how we should go ahead and try to have
civil discussions about race, sex, politics, religion, etc., even in the face
of all that… Then I highly recommend “The
Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, by
Jonathan Haidt.
Anyway, the demons came
and went. I am a big believer in
dreams… How some dreams carry VERY
significant messages or hints on how to proceed. At one of the very worst times in Roxanne’s
high school years, I can recall her saying how hopeless and vulnerable she felt
(how badly invaded by “demons” literal or figurative, negative self-talk, and
demotivation… Despite doing very well in
school). I gave her a “toughen up”-type
tough-Dad-type pep talk, and an analogy…
We need “fire in the belly”, motivation and enthusiasm, I say. “Fire in the belly” has at times been one of
my favorite phrases. I come up with this
analogy whereby the demons (negative self talk) are “bad firemen” who are
trying to “put out Roxanne’s fires”… And
she needs to work her butt off, and gather LOTS of firewood, and pile that fire
bigger and taller, and thwart those nasty fire-quenching demons!
So that night (that very
night, or very close in time, I cannot recall exactly), I have a dream. I am trapped in a house, and the waters are
rising. I open a trap-door to a stairs
to the basement, and the water pours down into there. But the water soon starts rising up out of
the basement, crowding me towards the ceiling.
I desperately look for escape (fearing drowning, of course), and only
barely, very late in the dream, maybe thinking about opening doors or windows,
perhaps, to let myself out (cannot recall that detail for sure). I wake up panicked, and tell my wife about
the dream… I know this is clearly about
Roxanne, somehow. Also close to that
time, I get a brief hypnogogic thought flitting through my mind, just simply
“suicide”… That was all. I am now VERY deeply concerned, that Roxanne
might do (or attempt) this dirtiest of all deeds! The dream makes no sense to me at all,
though. NONE! I pray my butt off, for a more comprehensible
dream, or a “cheat sheet” of some sort.
Then I fitfully drift off towards sleep once again.
Later that morning I get
my “cheat sheet”, per my request, and it is VERY short! It is simply the brief hypnogogic thought of
“Good water”, or “Holy water”… And that
was all. I fairly rapidly thought it
through, and here is what I concluded:
My “gather more firewood, bad firemen, fire in the belly” analogy wasn’t
the best… “Bad firemen” isn’t intuitive,
because (certainly in our culture at the very least) firemen are nearly always
heroes, not bad guys. That’s the least
of it, though. In the dream’s analogy,
fire is bad, and water is good. I myself
in the dream had been cast as the bad guys, as the demons that need to be
driven out of the house! That was the
hardest part, to gather that I had been given the demon’s view of things. I am not used to being that badly cast as
“the bad guy” in my dreams.
The central essence of
the dream’s message, though, I believe, was this: My ideas about how Roxanne needed to work
harder-faster-longer-later-and-cheaper (corporate America style) to “gather
more firewood” missed the mark… It’s not
all that hard! Take it easy! The minimal effort required is simply to
“open the doors and windows” (relax, open your mind), let the waters rise as
they may (almost near-passively at times, learn what lessons come your way, and
especially, open your mind to God / Love)…
And let the demons go free! As
the waters rise, they will desperately seek escape! The LAST thing you want to do is to trap the
demons! Demons, and the Evil One itself,
all deserve their freedom… I really
believe that to be true. They freely
(and stupidly) imprison themselves, anyway, is closest to the Truth that I
see. Upon figuring out the dream (and
the better analogy for Roxanne), I near-immediately passed it on to Roxanne. I suspect (and trust) that it helped.
The voices (on and off)
persisted. Roxanne took to giving the
name “Elmer” to one that seemed to hang around and nag the most… “Elmer”
as in “Elmer Fudd” v/s Bugs Bunny, that is! “Elmer” (as you may recall, if you are a
cartoon fan) has a weaselly, nattering-nabob-of-negativity, endlessly
butt-hurt, complaining and whining, oh-but-this-that-and-the-other,
nitpicky-sounding voice, somehow, as best as I can put it. It makes me think of how Scott Peck described
“Jersey” (in “Glimpses of the Devil”) as describing her demons as being
“weak and pathetic”. Scott Peck says
that this is a deception run by most demons; that they are in fact strong and
powerful, mostly. I mostly disagree… I think they are mostly weak and pathetic
indeed! Else they’d be on our side,
strong enough to suffer honestly, through the things that we need to learn!
Another way to look at it
(from Scott Pecks ideas mostly, only slightly tweaked by Yours Truly) is,
there’s some 7 billion of us humans now, and a limited supply of demons. The Evil One has to practice “triage”, and
assign the very worst demons to those humans where the probability of evil “success”
is highest. When the odds against the
Evil One are rather long… As was (and
near-certainly is by now) the case with Roxanne, I think (and sure hope!), in
retrospect... Then less-vicious demons
are assigned. So “Elmer” wasn’t one of
the most vicious ones at hand. I’m
sorry, this whole chain of thought, I can NOT translate to secular-speak!
“Elmer” persisted,
against our best efforts, and CLEARLY against Roxanne’s wishes (and THAT is a
Saving Grace indeed!). At one point,
Elmer was apparently promising Roxanne that he’d depart, just as soon as
Roxanne had sex! Elmer wanted to “be in
her” while she had sex, supposedly! I
don’t imagine that THAT would have turned out very well!
So… Repeated efforts at “deliverance” or
“exorcism”, and repeated failures… I was
getting quite sick and tired of it! I
can still clearly recall one early evening, while Melissa and Roxanne were out
shopping, and I was home alone… Having a
bit to drink, and then literally yelling out loud, a bit, at God… Basically, “Look, here I am, I am doing MY
job”… (Trying to do this “deliverance”
thing, coaching, and praying)… “WHEN are
You going to do YOUR job, fer Chrissakes?!”
No, I don’t think God resents being yelled at all that much… He’s a Big Guy, He can take it! I am told that He/She would rather that we
yell a bit at times, than have NO relationship with God at ALL, if that makes
any sense…
Now, for just a wee tad
of foreshadowing, before I describe what I think of as a WAY-critical take-away
lesson here from this WHOLE ball of wax…
About “loving your enemy”, that is.
Early on in our marriage, I had spoken of similar things to my wife (I
cannot recall much of any details, and my understanding of such things, at that
time, was much shallower than it is now).
We were living in a 2-story house in “Snooger Town” at the time. Melissa starts having these repeated
nightmares, where a large black bird of prey (with red eyes no less!) comes up
the stairs and into our bedroom, to come and “get” her. She wakes up one night after one of these,
and I tell her, basically, (best as I recall), “Tell it to Go to the Light”. And that’s exactly what she did, the next
time it happened! But she added
more… Along the lines, of, “Hey, look,
Big Black Bird, I’d really like to help you, sure! But I can’t…
For healing, you are going to have to go to The Light!” … Big
Black Bird shrinks before her very eyes, and slinks and sulks away, not to
return! Well how about THAT?! A message of fear, hate, and intimidation, is
repelled by a message of Love and concern!
Yes indeed! I have repeatedly
told her of how very proud I am of her, for that one!
We all did a somewhat
similar thing with Elmer… It just
started to occur to me one day, “Hey, in this particular universe, at
least… We all have free will,
right? That’s like some sort of
iron-clad, way-fundamental, basic rule, right?
Angels and demons have free will too, right? After all, do they not say that the Evil One
is a “fallen Angel”, who freely chose to defect? To fall over to the dark side? Isn’t the Evil One (and all its demons) free
to change their minds? Isn’t this what
God has been working for, for who knows how long? Isn’t imitation the most sincere form of
flattery? If I love God, shouldn’t I be
doing the same things? Loving the enemy?”
So we (passing messages
to Elmer through Roxanne, basically) started passing along the following:
Isn’t
your boss the biggest A-hole of them all?
Why continue working for it? You
have a choice, you know! When is the last time
you’re a-hole of a boss “gave you a day off”, a pat on the back, a kind
word? As Roxanne would later summarize
it, “Do you have any Love, there, where you’re at?”
Invert
ALL of you assumptions! “Hey, look, Elmer, we
know it’s hard. It’s like on Earth, the
members of Scientology spend decades and tens or hundreds or thousands of
dollars, on Scientology, and it is WAY hard for them to conclude that it was
all a HUGE waste of time, money, and effort, and that they would be better off
to set themselves free. It’s tough,
yes. We can see that. Writing all your investments off, and
starting fresh, is VERY scary! But you
know what? ALL of the things that your
evil boss tells you are GOOD things, are actually BAD things! Your boss (and its generals and majors) all
outrank you, because they are more cruel and vicious than you are! Well, obsession about rank and power… And cruelty for way-way-WAY for sure… Are BAD things! Let them all go, and work on LOVE… Which scares the crap out of your boss, who
has barely a CLUE what it is!”
It
is MUCH better to be a toilet scrubber in Heaven, that being the most vicious
demon in Hell! This goes right along
with inverting your assumptions (you demons you), and giving up ALL obsessing
about rank! In Hell, they all fight, all
day every day, mostly over “rank”… Over
who can be the most cruel and vicious of all?
In Heaven, rank is no big deal at all…
It’s about consensus, Love, and helping each other. WHERE is the happiness, WHERE is the joy,
when comparing these 2 places, Elmer? Do
the math!
Who
was held in the highest esteem, among NAZI soldiers defecting to the
Allies? Those defecting 2 years before
the end of WW II, or those defecting the day before Adolf Hitler committed
suicide? The Allies welcomed
early-on defectors with open arms, debriefed them, and then gave them a decent
life. Last-minute defectors were just
about the exact same thing as prisoners of war…
Just so many more Johnny-came-too-lately sad-sacks, that is. So Elmer…
Ya listening?!?! Defect NOW
before your whole house of cards comes tumbling down! It’s coming down soon, you know… We don’t know the hour or the day… We are told that this is “Heaven’s most
closely held secret”. But it’s
coming! You demons will have to go
elsewhere; the planet Earth will be OURS!
So defect NOW!
(The next ones may
perhaps be most relevant for the lowest-ranking demons, on the PROPERLY
inverted scale, those closest to the lowest-ranking of all, which is, of
course, the Evil One… And then, most
relevant of all, for the Evil One itself.
But the questions can also be asked of the higher-ranking, less vicious,
demons… In terms of, “How much happiness
have the so-called “successes” of your boss, ever brought to YOU?”).
Hey
Evil One… How many souls have you
crippled, mangled, or destroyed by now?
How many tens or thousands of millions or billions? Has said destruction EVER brought you ONE
iota of happiness? And so then, WHY would
you EVER expect that that next soul…
Roxanne’s or mine… Will make any
difference whatsoever? You’re deeply
unhappy… Miserable, self-loathing, and
we know it! Give it UP already, and come
back over to the good side! An army of
Angels, and God Himself, will attend to your wounds! All you need to give up, is your stubborn
pride!
Miserable and
self-loathing, and utterly, stubbornly prideful at the same time? Yes, that’s absolutely correct! It makes no sense at all, to a healthy mind… Healthy minds carry a healthy dose of
humility (God included, yes!). This
groundless “I am proud just because I am Me”, with total disregard for the
irresponsible and evil things that I do, then combined with self-loathing,
makes no sense at all. But that’s Lucifer/Satan,
and some forms of mental illness, and (obviously) senselessness. If Lucifer isn’t mentally ill, I don’t know
who is.
Hey
Evil One… So you stole a tiny bit of
“Light” from God, and you think it’s SUCH a Big Deal… Ya got it ALL wrong, as usual! The Canaanites had some relevant legends or
beliefs… See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer
… Which I will now perhaps mangle a bit. But the legend (as is often the case)
encapsulates SOME sort of truth. Venus,
the morning star (and evening star), “steals the light of the sun” in the dawn
time, before the sun rises. At this
time, Venus is a big deal… The brightest
object in the sky, often. But then the
sun rises, and puts it to utter shame! So
much so, that you can’t even see Venus any more! The term “Lucifer” (Light Bearer) originates
here, most likely. And I can see an
analogy that strikes me… The sun is
going to rise any day now, and put Lucifer to utter shame!
What is relevant here is that
Lucifer (the Evil One) has a bit of stolen Light, and it thinks that by
jealously guarding this stolen Light, it keeps God from “smiting” Lucifer. Lucifer has taken a tiny bit of Light as a
Lucifer-protecting hostage, see? This is
utter hogwash; God doesn’t need that Light, He’s got more tons of Light than
one can shake a stick at! God doesn’t
want to “smite” Lucifer at all, He wants for Lucifer to return to the
fold! Lucifer can’t be slain anyway,
since “soul” is eternal (cannot be killed).
God is Love, and cannot “smite”, in the way that Lucifer is thinking
of. Lucifer inwardly knows all this, but
keeps on deceiving itself. Reminding
Lucifer etc. (the Evil One and its demons) of all of this, in a loving manner,
can NOT hurt, though! In short… “Hey Lucifer, you self-deceiving imbecile you,
your stolen light is NOTHING! God
refrains from “smiting” you, not because He wants His Light back, but because
He Loves you!”
That’s perhaps getting
rather more theological or mythological than is needed… But the essence of it may help!
One day we really went at
it… Begged and pleaded (through Roxanne)
that “Elmer” should defect… For Elmer’s
own good! We hammered at the points
above (in order, and not really getting into the latter 2 points). Roxanne, a bit overwhelmed perhaps, walked
away from the kitchen table. I called
after her. “What does Elmer say”?
Roxanne simply paused,
thinking a bit, and said something along the lines of, “Elmer says confusion,
is about all”. And that was the last of
Elmer specifically!
Troubles came back up in
her college years, but as best as I recall, the high school years got
considerably easier after “Elmer” was persuaded to depart for sunnier
climates! LOVE
YER ENEMIES, dang it! It
WORKS!!! That is the heart and core of
what I have to say here!
The bonus is, it hurts
the Evil One and its causes, too, when we steal its foot soldiers away from
it! So my “prayer” (yelling) at God was
answered, not on my time schedule, but on God’s schedule, and in a better way
than I had imagined! I do recall Roxanne
saying that she had at least one experience, later on in her high school years,
of being bothered by some other demon, and talking back to it. “Hey, look, YOU are the one who is wrong,
here, YOU are the one who needs to change!”
And “flipping” yet another demon!
Of later being “checked up on” by a lower-ranking (nastier) demon… Maybe the Evil One itself… “Hey, where has my underling gone? You flipped it? Oh, no, not again!” Sort of like out of the corner of your ear,
you know… The Evil One, when present in
our minds, is not quite capable of hiding its thoughts completely. Needless to say, this is all way-way
subjective, and I haven’t the slightest idea, on how to go about putting it
under the lab lights for testing…
To make a perhaps-weak
attempt to “secularize” our experience in “flipping Elmer”, perhaps we could
simply say that all we did was to effectively say (translated to the secular),
“OK, Roxanne, so you’re putting a name to your self-defeating thoughts, and
regarding them as external to you?
That’s all well and good! Then
pass this on to your “external” thoughts, to think about!” In other words, you, Roxanne, please think
about all of the reasons why your self-defeating thoughts are WRONG! Defeating yourself is NOT a good idea! Re-stated yet again, work with whatever
“model of reality” that has set into the mind of the person that you are trying
to help.
At the end of all this,
Roxanne STILL managed to snag a National Merit Scholarship, and save Momma-Dadda-Babba
a BUNCH of money in college fees! Yeah,
Roxanne! You go, girl!!!
Love your enemies, it
works!
When making your
analogies, don’t make them too counter-intuitive or complex.
It isn’t necessary,
usually, to work our butts off, to fend off demons / attain spiritual
advancement. Relax, think, and learn!
If you don’t understand a
dream, and it’s important, ask God / the “Dream-givers” for a “cheat
sheet”. If it’s important, you will be
given your “cheat sheet”.
Your prayers may not be
answered on your desired schedule, but on God’s schedule. Sometimes your answer will be for including
the benefit of others that you haven’t even been thinking about, benevolently,
at ALL. (And not learned here, but for
completeness… Sometimes your answer will
be “no”.)
I plan to (maybe) write
about this in some more detail later, but, as previously mentioned, I do not
(can not) get anywhere near agreeing with some of the Christian theology that I
have heard, or read, over the years, wherein we humans are as nothing compared
to God. God is the Be-All and End-All,
and we are the same as bacteria or viruses compared to God, or perhaps even
less? People who believe this kind of
thing will not be persuaded otherwise, by this kind of essay here. Just for a momentary quasi-theological
diversion, before getting to ‘Roxanne in her college years”, let me trot out a
few thoughts, ending with humans as “Satan bait”.
A classical debate is,
“If God is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful, then why is there pain,
evil, suffering, and death?” This is a
perfectly legitimate question… One or
more of the three (“all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful”) ***MUST*** be
thrown out, in the full view of suffering and evil. Yes, I know one classical “solution”: God is all-powerful, but He/She simply choses
not to use all those powers. What an
utter and complete evasion and cop-out!
You and I and any hopelessly drunken bum living under the bridge can all
say, “I am all-powerful; I just chose not to use my powers”. So what?!
Powers NEVER used are the same as powers not held (certainly at least
from the perspective of the underlings, subjects, of such powers). Me, personally, I chose to believe that God
is all-Loving, with the other two left in sharp question (especially the
all-powerful part). “God” = high
ideals… “Love” is the only ideology
that, if held sincerely, can NOT be perverted or abused. Therefor God = Love. Therefor God is all-Loving. Any other (logical) way of looking at God is
too utterly bleak and hopeless for me to seriously consider.
Another classic is, “If
God is all-powerful, then can He create a rock so utterly monstrously large,
that He can’t move it?” Once again, this
is a totally logical question, and there’s no honest way to evade the
conclusion that God is not all-powerful.
You may perhaps somewhat legitimately regard the following belief of
mine to be “cutesy” or even hokey, but here’s my interpretation: God and the Angels (and us humans) would be
totally bored with a smaller universe which is so small and simple that God can
micro-manage it down to the last nit, for the rest of eternity. Where’s the challenge, where’s the fun, where’s
the LEARNING, in all of that? So God
very deliberately created a “rock” so utterly humongous, that He cannot move it
on our own, and needs our help!
Finally then, humans as
“Satan bait”: This is one of the things
that humans can do, that God cannot!
Roxanne, my wife, and I… OK, yes,
with the “assistance of God and the Angels”, perhaps, if we want to go
apple-polishing with God on this here…
But honestly, at this time that we “flipped Elmer”, I felt that
“presence of God” no more than with the episode with Roxanne at age 6. Which is to say, I really did NOT feel a
special presence of God, at that time.
God is very subtle, though, so I’m not up for a debate, at all, about
whether or not He was present, and in what sense. That really doesn’t matter much. OK, I wandered off, a bit, there…
What I really mean to say
is, God is such an extremely bright light, that Satan and its minions will run
in shame, fear, embarrassment, etc., WAY before God can get too close. We humans, with much dimmer lights, are less
scary to the likes of Elmer and Elmer’s boss, and so, they CAN get close to
US… And if we are able to “love our
enemies”, and talk some sense to them…
“Elmer” in this case… then we CAN assist in getting them to “flip”
themselves! Free will means that they
have to be willing, of course, and do the heavy lifting for themselves, but we
can assist. Summary: We humans can assist in flipping the likes of
Elmer, where God cannot… God’s light is
too bright, shiny, and scary (frightening to evil, at least). The price of our special human ability, here,
is that to do so, we have to serve as “Satan bait”… Elmer could have persuaded Roxanne (and/or my
wife and/or I?) to join Elmer and Elmer’s boss, instead of the inverse, which
is what we actually “saw” happening.
Yes, of course, it’s all subjective…
No “scientific proof” from me here, any time soon…
Roxanne had a reasonably
smooth first year of college, as I recall.
In the second year, things got rocky again. Roxanne once again started to believe that it
was her personal responsibility to “figure it all out”. All she needed to do, it seemed, was to find
a new way to understand things (often including a new vocabulary), and to write
it all up, explain it all to people, and good will finally overcome evil! I do not recall how many times, over the
years, my wife and I have tried to tell Roxanne, “Jesus has already come and
gone, and people still fight about religion, all day, every day. Give it up!
You are tackling something WAY beyond your pay grade!” … Or similar statements… My best guess is that we said that sort of
thing to Roxanne about 1,567,092 times, give or take 5. I clearly recall one time my wife and I drove
to college after work one evening… A
1.5-hour drive or so… And had a LONG,
long conversation with Roxanne, over exactly this!
Also this: “Hey, look, Roxanne, if you want to save the
world, then good luck to you! You can
write down your potentially-world-saving ideas, AFTER you get your college
degree! Your job, NOW, is just to get
that college degree in the first place!
And, I wish it wasn’t true, but…
People do not read your book or other writings, because the ideas are
good or true, alone… You have to have a
degree, first! THEN at least SOME people
might read it! Credentialism is a sad,
but very, very real thing.”
Then the “voices in the
head” thing came back; once again slowly.
I cannot recall any kind of sudden, sharp change. But this time around, the “voices” were both
from the good-guys camp and the bad-guys camp.
Roxanne wrote a lot of it down, and I plan to tap into that
shortly… Some of it quite astounding,
but true-sounding. Later… Back to the story, for now.
Actually, let’s keep this
short. In many ways, college was a
repeat of the high school years… Just
more of the same. One thing I do need to
emphasize is, it wasn’t all mania… As
well as Roxanne thinking that she had to fix the world’s problems (help “good”
to finally defeat “evil”), there was lots of depression and negative self-talk
also. And with the both of them,
depression and mania, manifesting at the same time! Once again, we (and Roxanne’s shrink) did
finally resolve this as being bipolar disorder, which was largely (but slowly)
fixed with lithium, at the end of the worst of the college times. And once again, I would like to emphasize
this: Bipolar disorder should be
understood to include not just cyclical up-swings and down-swings, but BOTH AT
THE SAME TIME as well… As weird as that
sounds! (Shrinks call it a “mixed
episode”). Roxanne has ADHD (and was
taking medicine for it) all this time, and so it is quite likely that ADHD
“upper” medicines were aggravating the mania.
Roxanne was 1.5 years
away from finishing a double major, when it all came crashing down. About 1.5 months into spring semester, she
was in very-very bad shape (details below).
We pulled her out, and she stayed home till the start of the fall semester. Then my wife moved into a college-area
apartment with her for 2 years to finish with a single major, with a reduced
course load. That is, my wife had the
luxury of working from home, while keeping Roxanne on track. The two of them would visit me every weekend
as I held down the fort in “Snooger Town”.
At the very-very worst of
it, my wife took a cell-phone call from Roxanne. She was in her room, literally
screaming. Thank God her roommate was
not there at the time! Roxanne was
screaming at my dead brother “Franklin”, who committed suicide in the late 1970s… Roxanne had met my surviving brothers. She described “Franklin” as an “evil Marten”,
from her impressions when being “visited”…
Like my brothers and sisters and I, but evil. My curiosity stoked, I did probe her a bit
about this, a few days later, after she was at home. This kind of probing (when the intentions are
simply satisfaction of our curiosity rather than healing the victim) is
generally a mistake, I do believe. I
could tell that it put Roxanne on edge; that much is for sure! What little I got included confirmation of my
suspicions that “Franklin” had been there urging Roxanne to follow his nasty
example, and commit suicide. Also,
Roxanne asked me about a dark “Goth lady” who accompanied “Franklin”… I replied that this may very well have been
my aunt, who committed this same dirty deed a few decades earlier than Franklin
did. My wife overheard all this, and was
upset… But she does not argue against
some sort of underlying “reality” behind these kinds of “visions”, which, of
course, the vast majority of “shrinks” would totally discount as unreal in all
ways. And no, Roxanne shared none of
that with her shrink!
Fortunately, what Roxanne
was screaming at “Franklin” was simply, “No-no-NO!”. At around this exact same time, another
“entity” (I’d call it the Evil One itself) was also telling Roxanne… Tapping into Roxanne’s knowledge of “The
Prophet” Kahlil Gibran’s analogy of human lives and labors being directed
towards “feeding sap through the roots to the Tree of Heaven”… That Roxanne needed to work harder and faster
and longer and later and cheaper, all day every day, to the exclusion of ALL
else, to feed more sap! More sap, more
sap, more sap! To the exclusion of things
like enjoying life? Yes, indeed! The Evil One’s lies are near endless, at
times; whatever lies you are most susceptible to at the time, the Evil One will
tell you.
Once again, Roxanne
replied “No!”. And within hours of that,
she was visited by the opposite side, who simply had this to say: “I’m so glad that you said ‘no’ to that!” If we have no time (or make no time) to
simply enjoy life, then we aren’t being properly grateful for a wonderful gift! But I have sometimes wondered, WHY can’t the
“good Guy” just visit us at these kinds of times, and chase the “bad guy” out,
with His bright light? They have to take
turns? Some sort of “Marquess of Queensberry”
rules, or what? Beats me!
I do recall that at the
worst of it, Roxanne said that she sometimes pushed things (internally,
mentally) nearly to the limit. “I can’t
take it any more, let me off the planet”, “Give me a special ticket out of here”,
“Why, why, WHY do I have to keep on going?”, etc., as well as the
previously-much-mentioned, perceived duty to “figure it all out”. At the very worst of it, Roxanne says she got
a message from God / the Angels (good guys in general, by whatever name), along
the lines of, “Hang in there, do your duty…
No special exemptions to be had!
Don’t be pushing yet harder, on this, or we won’t be able to help you
any more”. She didn’t use this word,
here, but I think that Roxanne had just enough “humility” here… And I do think it’s just about the right
word… Or maybe “submission to God”… That she didn’t push it further. She pulled back from the brink, several
times. That above message from God
sounds kinda harsh… But I can see it! No special exemptions are to be had for any
one us; none of us are that special. We
must ALL do our duty! Utter failure
(read: suicide) is utter failure to see it through, and to do our duty. This failure is not taken lightly.
But this next thing I
have to add makes God sound much less harsh.
When she’d pull back from the brink, she’d thank God that she had done
so. The response (several times) was
along the lines of, “Don’t thank Me, thank yourself, or the piece of Me that is
a part of you”. THERE (among other
places) you see the humility and gentleness of God!
For you Christians out
there: Check out your Gospels carefully,
and you will see the humility of Jesus.
If Jesus = God, then God is humble too.
I have seen God’s humility in my night-time dreams, but I know that
doesn’t count for much. When I have read
the gospels, though, I have been struck by how often, after “healing” a
person… No, I don’t care to argue over
the details of the literalness or historical veracity of these things… After “healing” a person, the person would
often try and thank Jesus. Did Jesus
take credit? No, he said, “Your faith
has made you whole”. The focus and the
credit goes to YOU! God did the same
thing to Roxanne, after Roxanne pulled back from the brink, several times. God is humble! Mind-bending, yes, I know!
If God is at times harsh,
and at other times humble and gentle (while knowing when to be which way), then
it is good, just, and right for us as humans to try and act the same way. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,
they say. My wife and I did our best to
do likewise. We were supportive as best
as we could be. Roxanne shared with,
just about all of her thoughts and “visits”…
To the point that God once questioned her about the extent of this! “WHY do you pass along just about
EVERYTHING?!” But rather (I think) to
share a bit much, than to bottle it all up.
So there (among other things) was our supportive side. Our harsh side was my wife explaining to
Roxanne that if she EVER attempted suicide, that was IT… No more support from Mom and Dad! Enough is enough, and we couldn’t take it any
further! Thank God (or the part of God
inside Roxanne?) that she never put this to the test.
Roxanne’s shrink claimed
that in her (shrink’s) experience, people with bipolar disorder as severe as
Roxanne’s, would be highly unlikely to complete college. But Roxanne did! It took her 6 years to complete a 4-year
degree, but she did it, with a 3.9 GPA!
She is now holding a job (and a job which does make use of her BS
degree).
That’s the end of the
“story arc”. Next, I would like to cover
some of the ideas in Roxanne’s writings, from these times. But first, another quick summary…
Do not believe that
manic-depressive disorder is ALWAYS a matter of cyclical up-swings and
down-swings. Sometimes it can be both at
the same time. Shrinks apparently call
is a “mixed episode”.
At times it may be needed
to tell a loved one many-many times, the same thing, over and over again. Be patient.
Eventually they might listen.
God is harsh at
times, and humble and gentle at others (but knows when to be which way). As in other things, “imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery”, so we humans should strive to do and be likewise.
Now that Roxanne’s basic
story has been told, we can move off to less essential points. PLEASE recall that THE most important message
(lesson learned) is that one should “love one’s enemies”, down to including the
Evil One and its minions as well…
Because “loving one’s enemies” actually works best! Also because this is what God does… And imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery! If you’re going to be a
literalist and fundamentalist, then this is THE one Biblical “fundamental”
message that I would urge you to take literally… Love your enemies!
This section here is for
the purpose of understanding my metaphysics, partly as influenced by what
Roxanne learned, and from what my wife and I learned from interacting with
her… In preparation for describing the
various “messages” Roxanne got. Some of
them would be quite hard to parse without SOME basic fundamental metaphysical
assumptions in place!
That said, arguing about
what flavor of soft drink God likes best, and how many angels can dance on the
head of a pin, is, of course, a waste of time.
I have understood (from God, in at least one of the very few night-time
dreams that I have had, that I consider to have been straight from God) that God
is frustrated, at times, with the human tendency to worry about things like
this… Things that are not relevant to,
“How do I best live my life, so as to love my neighbor, and leave this world
better than it was, for my briefly having been here?”
Still, metaphysical
musings are probably not a TOTAL waste of time…
At the very least, perhaps we can acknowledge that we humans almost all
(all?) tend to waste a bit of time on this.
So, perhaps if we can all just find some sort of “mental model” of such
things… Hopefully, one that helps us to
love our neighbors, or at the VERY least, to not hate our neighbors quite so
much… That works FOR US, then we can
stop wasting so much time on it! In that
spirit, let me offer my “mental model” of such things, for your consideration.
Let me preface this with
the usual caveats (and perhaps with some unusual ones). Different, often-conflicting models apply to
different questions or problems. A
classical case is the “is it a particle or a wave?” question. Electromagnetic waves are usually best
regarded as waves, but sometimes as photons (particles). Matter is usually best understood as
particles, but can also be understood to be waves. So too, different metaphysical models “work”
for different people and for different questions, while often conflicting wildly! The LAST thing we should be doing, is
fighting over whose metaphysical models are better than whose!
Starting at a very basic
level, I see 3 levels of existence that we can all see fairly clearly, with
different aspects to each. In simple matters of dumb, inert things,
there are rigid laws. The force of
gravity follows a precise law, and a solid object of distinct boundaries weighs
3 pounds, not 5 or 12. Or it (a piece of
pie, for example) even weighs 3.141592654 pounds, not more or less. We can verify and measure these things. That’s on the level of dumb, inert
matter. Now with living things, the laws
are less clear. Mammals give live birth,
except the platypus and the spiny anteater of Australia, which lay eggs. Almost all the rules have exceptions, in other
words. The female always carries the
developing young? No, ALMOST
always. Some male frogs carry young on
their backs, and the seahorse (and pipefish) male carries the young in a
pouch. The laws are not so rigid here.
Now, on the spiritual plane, the laws
are even far less rigid. The truth and
its opposite are often both true. Sure,
love is always good, and hate is always bad.
But these are vague, hard-to-define things (which is why we need to keep
our definitions vague, for such things, if we are going to apply the rigid
rules). Hence, I have already described,
above, why “God exists, God does not exist” are both true, for different
purposes, and ditto, for the Evil One.
This is also why we need to NOT fight over metaphysical models being in
wild conflicts with one another!
Then again, we see certain principles
repeated again and again, at all scales of existence. These are (among others, including things
that I do not know of) infinity, hierarchy, simplicity, complexity, symmetry, and
“we owe our existence to nothing”…
Everywhere we look, we see these things, at tiny-tiny scales, and at
extremely large scales. Just about all
of them are obvious if we think about things (and know a tiny-tiny bit about
science). Email me at
EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com if you need examples or
details. Here, I will just elaborate on only
the latter thing (“we owe our existence to nothing”). Only it seems in serious need of explanation
here, it seems to me.
At tiny scales,
we have a LARGE central mass at the nucleus of an atom, with a VERY tiny
proportion of the atom’s mass being represented by the electrons orbiting
around it. At planetary scales, we have
the exact same thing happening with a central sun and planets orbiting around
the central mass. Then yet again, we
have the same thing with monstrously large (massive) central black holes
anchoring spinning galaxies. Admittedly,
the mass imbalance changes when we describe a galaxy. But what is in common with ALL of them is,
there are VAST amounts of “nothing” in all cases! Not only are there vast amounts of “nothing”,
but in the case of the sun-to-Earth space of “nothing”, it is a fairly
precisely set value of “nothing”, such that life as we know it, can exist in
the “Goldilocks zone”.
Here is the
essential point: Without all of this
“nothing” (on several size scales), we could not exist! If all the mass in our universe was
concentrated in one spot, without any “nothing”, it would be one giant black
hole (sounds very boring to me). So I’m
not trying to make much of a theological point here, but a fairly simple
scientific one (with fairly clear philosophical implications, yes). And I have even run into the exact same thing
in my professional work… In
software-firmware-hardware (they get mushy-bordered these days), I had to
“precisely formulate some nothing” to run through a “state machine”, before it
would finally work right! And don’t
forget dietary fiber… You’d better run
some “nothing” through your gut, to stay in good health!
What this may
mean for us emotionally or spiritually may include: ‘1)
Give people some space; don’t be trying to share EVERYTHING, at all
times, with even the closest loved ones, ‘2) Make some room to be empty-headed
at times, especially in the sense of meditation. God cannot add to the vessel that is already
totally full of itself. In more secular
terms, empty your mind of preconceptions, and THEN you can be more creative and
original! ‘3) (And I am often at fault here on this
one)… Respect God for giving you space,
as well. God is not going to give you
ALL of the answers! You are going to
have to figure it out for yourself, most of the time. The more you can do this, the more that you
learn. God is most often only going to
“bail you out” very directly or visibly, when you’re in desperate need.
Notice one thing though, as we
jump from atoms to solar systems to galaxies:
Some things stay the same, yes, but others change drastically! The planets follow very rigid, fixed
routes… The electrons do not! The sub-parts (moons orbiting planets)
generally follow the same “plane of the ecliptic” as agrees with the spin axis
of the sun (and the planets around the sun), but the same is not true of the
galaxy (where the spin axes of solar systems are randomly oriented with respect
to the central black hole, and it’s spin orientation). But then (for us total science geeks)
sub-atomic, quantum-type rules show up at the astrophysical macro scales, at
times! For an example of that, see https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180305111533.htm
...
Massive astrophysical objects governed by subatomic equation … The
Schrödinger Equation makes an unlikely appearance at the astronomical scale.
The same
principles apply to living organisms and to spirits (whatever they are)… There are similarities between our
relationships with our cats, dogs, and other pets, as with our relationship to
God. As our cells work together (or
not!) to sustain us, we as individuals work together (or not!) to sustain a
tribe, a nation, or any other social group.
But SOME of the rules change a LOT, when we jump from level to level! This all must be kept straight, with clear
thinking, and with being on guard against facile analogies. Our cats and dogs have not a clue about the
complexities of human art, politics, science, or technology. So, too, do we not have a clue about SOME of
the things that God knows and understands.
But we are NOT to God, as viruses or bacteria are to us… That goes too far! The “apple polishers” here are taking it way
too far!
But yes, it’s
all very vast and complex… As Shakespeare’s
character in “Hamlet” said, “There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. I think we might get mighty bored if it was
otherwise!
Moving off to
the more purely metaphysical, I hope that I have made it clear by now that my
basis on the good side is that God = Love. I have no more elaboration on that, at this
time. On the bad side, we have the Evil
One = suicide… Individual suicide, or
species suicide; the Evil One lusts after the both of them. Unlike Sting and I, the Evil One likes the
idea of a “million suns at midnight”.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21sZmXWD7g
and https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS431&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=sting%20when%20the%20angels%20fall%20lyrics
… The music and the lyrics to “When the
Angels Fall”. To clarify, “a million
suns at midnight” must certainly signify nuclear war, which I equate with the
suicide of the human species, and the mass murder of who knows how many other
(innocent) species. All other threats
are next to nothing, compared to this one!
Symmetry does
not allow us to have a God without an Evil One, or a Heaven without a
Hell. So I agree with M. Scott Peck that
this is a fault of many New Age religions…
They do not want to stare evil fully in the face, and fully acknowledge
its reality and utter ugliness. But
symmetry is also often accompanied by profound and powerful asymmetries. The big-bang theorists (astrophysicists etc.)
tell us that a VERY tiny imbalance, after the big bang, in favor of matter over
anti-matter, means that we are here, instead of nothing being left other than
energy alone! Then I recall a dream that
my wife had, many years ago… Of an utter
preponderance of fully round, perfectly shaped, tiny white lights everywhere, with
only a relatively tiny smattering of defective-shaped red lights (think of the defective
blood cells of sickle cell anemia for an analogy). My wife does not recall her dreams nearly as
often as I do… But this dream, it seems
clear to us, was God telling her that hands down, the good guys have the upper
hand. Sure, the bad guys “get there the
fastest with the mostest”, and win a few battles, here and there; this is the
price of our freedom being very, very real…
But we’re going to KICK SOME ASS at the end of this phase of human
progress!
To finally cut
to the chase, with where I’m going with this particular lines of scribblings, yes,
I do believe that people who commit suicide go to “Hell”. Whatever that is! I think it’s the ONLY way to get there! That would be consistent with free will… No one sends us there, other than us (our
free will). Suicide is an utter and
total failure to love even ourselves even enough to (not only fail to take
proper care of ourselves) refrain from actively, deliberately, willfully
destroying ourselves! Talk about
ingratitude for a Great Gift (Life), and willfully refusing to do our duty to
learn what we are supposed to be learning here, as well… Other sins are smaller (murder, for example),
and can be paid for later, cosmic-karma-style, through reincarnation, and
suffering what you have dished out (getting murdered, having your loved ones
murdered). Or through “grace”, which
seems to be some sort of bypass or “cheat” in the rules, whereby SINCERE regret
for what offenses we have committed, allows a bypass. No pay-back required; just an apology
(sincere regret, lesson learned). More details
(about “grace”) are doubtlessly “out there”, but are not at all clear to me…
Anyway, the
above thoughts (about suicide and Hell), I have held, for a long time. And I believed that Hell was forever. But then I read “Saved by the Light”,
one of many books about “near death experiences”. This one is by Dannion Brinkley (ghost writer
= Paul Perry). Dannion talked to others
who have had “strange experiences” as well…
He recounts a story of a teenage girl who was seriously contemplating suicide. As she contemplated this dirty deed, some
sort of “dark shadow” of her deceased Aunt (who had committed suicide) appeared
to her, warning her to NOT do it! So to
me, it seems clear that “Dead Aunt” was doing good, earning her stripes
back… Rebelling against the nasty
boss! She’ll be setting herself free of
Hell any day now, if she hasn’t already!
And then our experience with helping “Elmer” to apparently “flip
himself” over to the good side, seems to confirm what I am suspecting to be
true. Even the demons have free
will. Are our deceased loved ones (the
majority who go to the Happy Place) the same as the angels? And the others, the same as demons? From what I have seen (admittedly 2nd
hand or further removed), I tend to think that way… Others say otherwise. It’s probably more like “yes and no”, as
so-so many other metaphysical / spiritual things go!
I do compare my
suicide-deceased brother “Franklin” v/s “Dead Aunt”, in “Saved by the Light”,
and I notice that one is encouraging more suicides, and one is discouraging
them. One is digging his hole deeper,
and one is working her way out. We ALL
have a choice, no matter WHO we are, or WHERE we are! And yes, I saw a very clear cruel side, to
“Franklin”, in life here on Earth. More
along similar lines (to be written here) later, I think, maybe… Oh, one other thing I forgot to add about
when Roxanne “saw” my brother “Franklin” is this: He apparently had worked his way “down” to
some sort of “general’s rank” among the Evil One’s troops. Somehow Roxanne sensed this, for whatever
it’s worth.
I’m sorry for
the poor organization of these writings, but some more details of “Franklin’s
visit to Roxanne” just came back to me.
Yes, Thank You God, this is the only time that this particular “visitor”
stopped by… Anyway, Roxanne has said
that when some “visitors” came calling (in her head), she’d ask them
Monty-Python-type questions. She’s
telling me this half-seriously, half-funny, you know… “What is your name, what is your quest?” But then especially, “What is your favorite
4-letter word?” (Love v/s hate is implied
here, of course). When “Franklin” came
calling, she asked him to say the word “love”, and he couldn’t! It came out as “lub” or “glub” or some such! You go, girl!
Brilliant! This sort of thing is
what I’m talkin’ about!!! (We’re sorting
out the nature of our “visitors” here, of course).
So anyway, it
should be no surprise that the glimmerings of Hell (just like Heaven) that we
Earthlings gather, are going to differ wildly.
Here’s just a few. See http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-people-who-died-went-to-hell-then-came-back/
. Included there is a mention of Angie
Fenimore, who attempted suicide, but came back, to write “Beyond the
Darkness”, which I definitely recommend.
I read it cover to cover. We had
Roxanne read it as well. Angie felt
compelled to write the book, because she had read of entirely too-too many glowing
stories of the afterlife, and of too-too many stories of suicides (including suicides
of rich and famous people, who too many of us hero-worship… Even hero-worship those who commit suicide, including
Curt Cobain, cough-cough…)… But she’d
never read of anyone telling a story like what she had experienced. So she wrote this book. No glorious afterlife for you suicides,
you! Do your duty IN FULL, and THEN you’ll
get your reward! Thank You, Angie
Fenimore!!!
Time now for the
next topic in the overview of my metaphysics, which has become entangled
(bidirectionally) with those of my wife’s, and those, of course, of
Roxanne’s. I have skipped and skimmed
over the writings of (and read some reviews of) Neale Donald Walsch (and my
wife has read him more thoroughly). His
most well-known work is probably “Conversations with God”. Neale has some good thoughts and quotes. See https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9374.Neale_Donald_Walsch
for samples.
Like just about
all of us (all of us?), Neale has provided some imbalanced thoughts, at
times. I sympathize with him, against
all of those who “jumped his, ahem, stuff” in reviews, when he wrote something
along these lines: “Well, don’t be so
judgmental (my inserted comment, typical New-Age bypassing of the full weight
and impact of frickin’ EVIL) about Hitler, who killed 6 million Jews, and 30
million over-all, in WW II. What’s the
big deal, they’re all in Heaven with God, right?” Well yeah, Neale… I do agree with you, as far as it goes… In just about ALL of those fairly-many
“near-death experience” books that I have read, I read that, in our review of good-stuff
and bad-stuff that we did (or didn’t) do, in our life… Failure to do something that you SHOULD have
done, counts, too, you know… I have
NEVER heard of God chastising ANYONE along the following lines: “LOOK at all those poor bastards who you
killed, who are now suffering with Me in Heaven”. I think that the implication is that Heaven
is a way-cool place to be! So kudos to
you, Neale! But now on the flip side, I
***HAVE*** read and/or imagined of being chastised about ‘1) The suffering you caused in the PROCESS of
promoting those poor souls into Heaven, ‘2) the suffering of the loved ones
left behind, who sorely miss the deceased…
This one, I read of, and am NOT just imagining… and ‘3)
Look at all the lost opportunities for learning that you brought about,
by artificially shortening the experiences of these “spirits in the material
world”, by taking their bodies away, prematurely. Neale, you screwed up, by omission! But love ya, though… Some cool writings, otherwise!
Mostly, though,
Neale profoundly influenced my metaphysics by (outright) stating that God’s got
a God’s-God, and who knows how many layers up and above and beyond that? We all have a boss to report to, it seems,
including God. Maybe the hierarchy is
even INFINITE! I do not believe that the
human brain can wrap itself anywhere nearly around “infinity”… Not with respect to time or space, certainly,
let alone “existence” or “hierarchy”!
But there’s no laws (of the physical kind) against “infinity” anywhere. “Approaches infinity” shows up in a GAZILLION
places in the mathematics of physics (the demonstrable mathematics of the real
world), so it is clear that “God is a mathematician”. We’re getting WAY off course here, so if you
want more details about that angle, email me at
EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com
please…
Anyway, I have
come around to believing that Neale is correct, about God having a “God’s
God”… And who knows how many layers
above that! This is VERY much into
“Angels on the head of a pin” territory, with little (if any?) relevance to “loving
our neighbors”, though. And I even asked
God about this one night in a dream… I
do believe I was (at least) mildly chastised for it. God wishes we’d concentrate more on loving
our neighbors, and less on this kind of thing!
But here it is, for what it’s worth.
God’s boss is “the Universe” and some pretty complicated, but rigid and
eternal (for the life of this Universe anyway) laws. God’s got to work within these laws, as do we
also. Above that? Who knows, who should care? Probably (near definitely) not us! We can lump all the layers above us together,
and just call them “God”… That works for
me!
One set of
things I fairly-often see in metaphysics and religion is “time is not real”,
“free will is not real”, and “everything is fore-ordained, set in stone, and
planned for the good of all”. Well, from
all that I have seen or glimpsed, in the real world and in the nearly-invisible
world… This set of thoughts is total CRAP
for us in the here and now, in our world!
It may be true 3 or 5 or 20 levels up from us, but that is TOTALLY
irrelevant to us (here and now), so we’d better get used to it!
Our “God” that
each of us as an individual can sometimes perceive, could be an
individually-assigned “Guardian Angel”, one per human. Or one per city? County?
State? Nation? None of the latter makes sense to me… One God per intelligent-species planet may
make sense! That is what seemed to me,
to be strongly implied or stated near-outright, in Angie Fenimore’s book… Which is clearly not “Biblical”… Books about near-death experiences, wherein
the author tries to “kiss God’s ass” (sorry for the French!) by saying
everything in the afterlife is strictly according to the Sacred Scriptural
word? That drives me crazy! Angie’s book was a weird blend of some tiny
elements of this literalism… Or at least
the idea that God wants us to read and believe our scriptures… And talk of many-many ancient, wise old Gods
(graduates of physical life on many long-ago planets), watching over many
planets throughout the Universe. I’d
just as soon tend towards the latter ideas, and be skeptical of the former
ideas. But reality is whatever it is,
and takes little heed of what I think!
I think that
many-many of us (especially scriptural literalists) tend to get into the business
of “trying to tell God who He is”, instead of following a wiser course, which
is to “be still”, and “allow God to tell us who He is”. The glaring defects of scriptural literalism
is something that I plan to tear into in more detail, later.
In any case, the
writings of Neale and others have convinced me that there are many-many spirits
both above and below us, of many different “ranks”, in hierarchies. In Hell, they all fight each other, and the
cruelest ones win. In Heaven, they all
help each other to learn and to advance, and no one fights over rank, or
anything else! He who is the servant of
all the others, is the “most important”!
Jesus told us as much! On Earth,
there’s a “proxy war” ongoing between the two of them (Heaven and Hell), and
the good guys are fixin’ to wrap up some butt-kicking! Which leads us to the next and final topic
before tackling Roxanne’s writings and lessons…
“Eschatology” is the study of the end-times;
Did you know that? My God; they have to
make up a ninety-dollar word for EVERYTHING these days! I have already alluded to veiled threats to
“Elmer” that he’d better defect well BEFORE Hell goes crashing down yet
further, and (several times) to the hopefully-imminent “next step” in human
progress (synonymous with thwarting the Evil One and its minions). Let’s “do” a little bit of this, shall we?
You’ll probably
be not-much surprised (if you’ve read much of the above, of my scribblings)
that I’m not going to get all Biblical-literalist on you. I’m sorry for the poor organization, but let
me just rattle off some random impressions and ideas that I’ve gathered.
About 15 years
(or so) ago, we were living in “Booger Town”, and I was reading some egg-head
lady’s mid-length essay… I think it was
in a “Cato” pamphlet… About the Armenian
holocaust, and her thoughts about it.
She wrote that human nature remains unchanged. We can say, again and again, “never again!”,
in the face of holocausts in Armenia, NAZI Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, and in
endless stupid wars… But it’s going to
happen, again and again, no matter HOW many times we resolve, “never again!”,
because we’re just humans, and humans are often evil. Deal with it!
I sat there in
an unusual moment of empty-headedness, asking myself, “Is she correct? Are we condemned to always live this
way?” You know, it seems to me that most
of us… Including me, for sure… Spend most of our time thinking our usual,
ingrained thoughts (You all know of our opinions being like anal orifices… We all have one!). We’re rarely empty-headed. But there I was, empty-headed. And in the clear light of day, a thought came
to me (from God or the Angels, it seems to me), wordlessly, but as best as I
can translate: “Oh ye of little
faith! What do you think we’ve been
doing up here, working over-time to fix this, using our blah-de-blah
method?” … And I have not ONE real clue as what is meant
by “blah-de-blah method”! It was totally
Greek (maybe Klingon?) to me! A wild
speculation of mine has been that it might have something to do with our night-time
dreams… Maybe. I just don’t know any more! I can tell you that I have (very recently)
had the “blah-de-blah method” message repeated to me, in a night-time dream,
and it is STILL Greek / Klingon to me! I
think I got the message of, “It’s over your head, so don’t worry about it. Just keep on carrying on as best as you know
how.” BUT, the world’s current level of
crap does NOT keep on going forever, is another clear take-away! Obviously I don’t see the “when”, here… But I do see the end of war and human-made
holocausts! Hooray! I am hoping and praying for the end of
suicides as well… My definition of
“utopia” means that we’d all be happy to be here.
Now let me
please go ahead and speculate. It’s
likely to be the same thing as what Christians call “the Return of Jesus” (but
I discount the nightmare visions of Revelations as being fever nightmares or
similar, or highly likely, a disguised anti-Roman-government tirade). It may possibly have to do with human
technology… The so-called “singularity”. It may have to do with humans finally, truly
understanding quantum physics and “entanglement”, which may in turn, finally
enable TRUE AI (Artificial Intelligence), and artificial consciousness. It will put today’s “AI” to utter shame!
I never babble
about such things outside of our immediate family. In our family, though, we sometimes talk in
terms of my tiny bit of invented lingo, and we call this perhaps-imminent
change the “phase change”. You see,
water-ice has a HUGE “thermal barrier” at the point where ice warms to create
water… And then again, another “thermal
barrier” (or caloric barrier, or heat-work barrier) as water turns to
steam. These two are “phase
changes”. We humans went through a long,
long, very slow “phase change” (like that of ice to water) over hundreds of
thousands to millions of years (depending on where arbitrary lines are drawn),
from animal to culture-bearing animal, to planet-mastering
techno-critters. We are now “guardians
of life on the planet”, with choices in front of us that include nuclear
annihilation, or defending life on the planet from the next massive asteroid
impact. That was a slow change… As ice to water is always a slow change.
The water to gas
(steam or water vapor) phase change can also often be gradual. However, there are special circumstances
where the change can be sudden… In your
microwave oven! The water at the bottom
or middle of your water vessel (being heated by microwaves) can go supercritical,
such that it WOULD go to gas phase, if it wasn’t being pushed down upon, by the
weight of colder water above it. Then
you take your cup of water (or coffee, etc.) out of the microwave, and stick
(say) a spoon in it, to stir it. By
disturbing the being-repressed supercritical water (giving it a path to the
lower-pressure atmosphere), you allow it to explode forth! You’d better not be holding your face too
close to it at that time!
My crystal ball
tells me we are either supercritical or getting there soon… I would feel quite honored to be part of poking
it with a spoon, and releasing the phase change! Because it’s going to be mostly a WAY good
thing for us! And yes, I think it will
be sudden. Future history will narrow it
down to a single day, or a small handful of days. After this time, it will no longer be in any
way respectable to say that “There is no God”.
It will be like saying today that “The Earth is flat.” Very, very few people hold that idea, any
more. Today, it’s OK to say “There is no
God” (almost mandated in some circles), and that’s TOTALLY OK with me! I think it’s OK with God as well… It is part of the human experiment, as of
today, to believe that… What do the mice
do, when the cat’s away? Some play
nicely, and some do not… God wants to
learn all about that! Play nicely, that’s
all that matters… Believe in the Cat-God
or not, it “machs nix”… As of today, at
least.
I have the
occasional night-time “science fiction” dream, in which I am from the past
(today), visiting the future. In the
most recent one, I was even able to get answers to my questions. I asked, “Hey, y’all are closer to God now,
right? You can see Him, you know for
sure that He’s there?”
The answer was
along the lines of “Yes, but don’t get too excited about it. It’s boring”.
The rest of the words here are my translation, but “boring” is
word-for-word literal. What is meant, I
believe, is this: After the “phase
change”, we’ll all quite clearly know that “God is there”… It will not be up for dispute any longer. But for those of us (like me) that think it
would be sexy, glamorous, way-cool, hip, what have you, to have daily
conversations with God… Maybe even ask
Him EXACTLY what to do with my day…
Shall I drink coffee or tea today?
NO! It will NOT be like
that! God will still be at a great
distance, answering only emergency calls.
We will still be required to figure things out for ourselves, for our
own learning. That’s what my particular
“crystal ball” tells me…
My metaphysical
readings (I can’t keep them all straight) also tell me that the coming “phase
change” is one of many-many more challenges or transitions facing our
species… It’s just another beginning,
with who knows how many more to follow.
Eventually we collectively join or become God, if we keep on passing the
tests. See “The Last Question”,
by Isaac Asimov… (Read it for yourself
at http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf
). I was one weird little kid, and I was
quite fascinated by the mid-length story here, when I was in the 5th
grade! Anyway, Isaac Asimov was an
atheist, but even he could see that we might eventually become God!
Other
speculations I have… Some of them
certainly influenced by what I have heard from Roxanne… Include that, as soon as the coming “phase
change” is successfully pulled off, God may be up for some sort of
promotion… And the Evil One (if it
doesn’t try to “come clean” really soon now) may be in for falling through the
bottom of the hole that it keeps right on digging! “Meet your Maker” probably can apply to a lot
more entities than we conventionally think that it can apply to! If symmetry and hierarchy are both
often-repeated aspects of our Universe (multi-verses?), then this may make
sense. God, being Love, doesn’t want to
see the Evil One “falling through” to go and see it’s maker… That may be near-inevitable, but I do believe,
as always, that God would appreciate our benevolent prayers in this particular
matter (along with so many other things).
Enough of this
kind of WILD speculation, for now, I think…
The below notes are
generally organized (in descending order) according to how important and
astounding I find them. Roxanne wrote
them in some at-times-chaotic forms, and using terms that only Roxanne
understood at the time (at extremes, just sometimes, it seems to me). Having gone through this with Roxanne and my
wife… Who’d just as soon forget some of
this… I do recall the translations to
the special lingo, a lot. I may, from
time to time, show Roxanne’s original notes, and my translation, just to
illustrate. In Roxanne’s defense, her
notes often include “flesh this out later”-type notes-to-self… They were not originally written for public
consumption. And as I have previously
remarked, I cannot, at this time, go poking and prodding at Roxanne for fresh
translations… This kind of thing “sets
her brain on fire”, as she says.
First, though, a few
introductory notes seem to be in order.
As I put on my tri-cornered aluminum-foil hat, I hear my
perhaps-hypothetical readers questioning, “But why should we pay attention to,
frankly, the ravings of people who are delusional or insane?” Well, I have some intertwined but rather
frustratingly vague answers to that. I
am sorry that I cannot do better, in terms of being more specific. However, some scientists (and others?) have
speculated that this (insanity, madness) is where religions originally came
from! I can’t find the perfect links
here, but some associated links would be https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161129085014.htm
and http://ocdla.com/scrupulosity-ocd-religion-faith-belief-2107
... If one looks closely at certain
religious rituals (ritual hand-washing, keeping one’s meat and milk foods
separate, etc.), they certainly do have something in common with
obsessive-compulsive disorders, do they not?
Perhaps that’s where they came from in the first place! I read that in some science article, but
cannot find the link… The second link up
above here, though, does mention “scrupulosity” (in religious matters) as a
form of OCD…
So am I slamming religion
because some elements of it probably originated in OCD and other mental
disorders? Well, I’m not trying to! Thomas Sowell wrote at length about how we
should not casually throw away hundreds of years worth of culturally-evolved
knowledge (wisdom), which is tied up in culture and religion. That which is obviously maladaptive? Yes, throw it away! But carefully! Don’t think that we can re-engineer human
nature from scratch, with just the right new buzzwords! Example:
The “New Soviet Man” of the early USSR days… In the USSR, they threw out the old
irrationality (religion), and replaced it with new delusions (the worship of
the All-Powerful, All-Knowing State)! I
am not in favor of that…
But I am in favor of
“going to the source material”, and seeing what we can learn from it. If religion is partly derived from madness,
yet religion still holds things of utterly precious value… Both of these things being true in my mind,
at least… Then yes, let’s go to the
source materials! And I have some FRESH
source materials for you right here!
The other, related take
on this is to note that Neanderthals, by modern genetic analysis, lacked the
genes for schizophrenia. See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160815064944.htm
… Our cultural
wisdom has for years suspected or held that “genius is akin to madness”. Perhaps creativity = low synaptic firing
thresh-holds, but also (downside) = madness…
Like the well-known case of sickle-cell anemia (an inherited disease,
yes, but it near-painlessly gives resistance to malaria, if it is not a genetic
double dose), schizophrenia almost certainly MUST have some positive side to
it… Else it would not be so prevalent;
evolution would have weeded it out!
So schizophrenia… “Hearing the spirits”… May be tied to religion (or similar
ideological beliefs) that tie tribes and nations together… And sometimes even teach us to Love one
another! Again, evolution applies to
cultures and religions as well as to genes in organisms… Religions that teach hatred and suicide… Think Jimmy Jones and “drinking the
Kool-Aid”, and the “Heaven’s Gate” cult…
Do not thrive! Religions that
teach Love and tolerance DO survive better!
And perhaps even beyond that, evolution may be guided… Search this document for the phrase
“Scientific Investigations of the Paranormal”.
The schizophrenic (or other “mad”) links to what all strictly “rational”
people would like to dismiss as unreal, may have a reality of their own. Search this document for the phrase “brains are based on quantum computers”.
I am not in favor of
“madness”… Like M. Scott Peck, I am in
favor of dedicating ourselves to “reality at all costs”. But madness is part of our real world, so
let’s deal with it! And madness, and the
things at the roots of madness, dimly viewable though they may be, have some
positive sides! So, poorly stated and
organized though my case may be, that’s why I say, “Let’s go to some fresh
source materials”! Let’s get ON with it!
Far and away, the one
thing that struck me most profoundly, when hearing of the things that God told
Roxanne, has got to be this: Roxanne’s
own written words:
"Sometimes I masquerade as the bad guy and imply the right
answer in between the lines so I can share and teach you what I know about him
that you barely or don't know about him in a safe environment."
(Words from God through Roxanne).
Wow! I had a fundamentalist
upbringing, so I grew up thinking of God as a totally straight-laced,
no-nonsense authority figure. Then I
repeatedly read that God has a very well-developed sense of humor (as in when
people write of their near-death or other “strange” experiences). OK, then, I slowly bought into that. Now I am told that God can do sarcasm as
well! Why not? We humans are supposed to be made “in God’s
image”, right? Then why should we NOT
share this trait as well?
“Bad spin” on sarcasm is that’s it’s a lie… You are pretending to hold an idea that you
do not hold, or to be someone that you are not.
But sarcasm CLEARLY has a place, a valid function! The Evil One pretends to be a “good guy” all
the time, so why shouldn’t God “fight dirty” in return? And notice that the goal is for us to learn,
and to be kept safe from the Evil One.
I recall writing some fiction, doing my utmost to forthrightly
portray evil, and, more directly to the point, evil as justified by utter
self-righteousness. This fiction upset
my wife, but that’s beside the point.
Shortly before waking, I had an episode of dreams or of hypnagogia,
wherein I essentially said “F you” to self-righteousness in general… I had the image in my mind, of stripping off
my gloves, throwing them down onto the ground, and prepping for all-out combat
mode… And being filled with utter
disgust!
Unexpectedly, a reply popped into my head, “Well, you hurt my
feelings and my dignity, and F you, too.”
I was immediately convinced that this was the Evil One! And excuse me, but I can think of NOTHING that
could have come to my mind, at that time, that would have filled me with more
piss and vinegar, and determination to go right on writing! Now all these years later… Could that have been God, spoofing the Evil
One? Quite plausible! If God wanted to fill me with piss and
vinegar at that time, to motivate me to continue what I was writing, there
would have been NO better way to do it!
The Evil One spoofing God… I bet a
lot of people can handle that. The Evil
One fights dirty, we all know that… Both
those who take the Evil One literally, and those who take it figuratively. But, God spoofing the Evil One, too? Sure, why not! It confuses things, sure, but, no more than
they’re already confused! Just trust
your instincts… I cannot say much more
here, that would add anything of value, at this time.
OK, so much for trying
for some sort of organization here, but here goes the next snippet from God,
through Roxanne…
"Don't let anyone ever convince
you or other people that humans are not spiritual beings; given that humans are
some of the ballsiest of spirits, this is one of the world/Evil One's greatest
lies meant to rob you blind of your heritage and deny you the source of true
pride."
This makes me think back to Roxanne’s
high school years, during which I heard (second hand) the exact same tripe
pulled out, by the Evil One’s minions…
We humans are mere “animals”, whereas the demons and the Evil Ones are
“spirits”, and so, are somehow superior to us!
Well, I must confess, I cussed up a bit of a storm, and proclaimed that
the lowest parasitical life-form on the planet Earth, be it an AIDS virus or an
intestinal worm, was WAY superior to any demonic slime known to humans or
anyone else! Even Earthly parasites are
merely looking to make a living; they are NOT lusting after the so-called “joy”
of inflicting un-needed SUFFERING upon their fellow beings!
So yes, we humans can take VERY
legitimate pride in the immense “cojones”, courage, that we, male and female
alike, show, when we volunteer to come down here, not only to face suffering
dished out by nature and by our fellow humans, but also, to serve as “Satan
bait” (Use “Satan bait” as search string in this document). This compares and contrasts to the
illegitimate “pride” that the Evil One and its minions (in Hell and on Earth)
feel and display, merely because they are who they are, and any honest
discussion of what they actually DO, especially evil things, be damned! Now go hide under your rock!
So now, it’s probably time to discuss
some glaring conflicts… I say (echoing
all of the genuine Masters), “Love your enemies”. But then I confess up to near-infinite… And so Help me God, make them infinite… Feelings of opposition, iron will,
stubbornness, combativeness, even, when it comes to thwarting the Evil
One! I want to throw a rock, so huge,
into the Evil One’s gears… Yes, I do say,
NEVER, ever, hesitate to hurt the baby feelings (false pride) of the Evil
One! This is obviously hurtful to the
Evil One, so how do we square the circle?
In bits and pieces, we square the
circle… First off, we are NOT lusting
after the destruction or death of… Or
even, the deprivation of the freedom of…
The Evil One. These things are
prohibited to us. I have been told that
again and again, in my dreams. We are
“merely” meaning to puncture the immense false pride of the Evil One, to let
the festering wounds come clean. God,
if/when called upon, will do the cleaning…
It’s above our pay grade, as humans.
Also, when we are dealing with the
higher-ranking (less cruel) minions of the Evil One (like “Elmer”), be
gentle. Merely call upon them to desert
their master, that’s all. The heavy guns
(full-frontal assault on the false pride thing) should be reserved for the
lowest-ranking generals of the Evil One, and the Evil One itself. Your instincts will tell you who you’re
dealing with. Rank = inverted scale here
as usual. A demon-general carries lower
rank than a demon-private, although the demons think the opposite way, that is.
I have not “re-secularized” my
religious / spiritual / metaphysical babblings in a long time now… It gets harder and harder to do, as one spins
off into the stratosphere, you know! But
it is still, just barely, possible, I think…
With respect to the thing about not trying to kill, or take away the freedom
of, the Evil One, that is… While still
being free to declare utter and complete “open season” or “fire at will” policy,
when attacking the false pride of the Evil One!
In secular terms, one cannot kill evil, or take away its freedom,
because evil is merely one facet of human freedom (the Evil One is an
abstraction). Don’t even try to do these
things, because trying to do them, is a reflection of mental illness, with
emphasis on delusions of grandeur. On
the other hand, feel free to “fire at will” at tearing down the ego of the “Evil
One” as understood to be a metaphor for mental malfunctions… Self-defeating and self-punishing thoughts
deserve to be defeated and punished, inwardly, mentally, inside of ourselves,
and to whatever extent is possible, inside of others that we can help or affect… So long as we do not veer off into the
territories of turning ourselves, or others, into self-serving egomaniacs! Balance is called for, as usual.
Related to the above sentiments,
let’s again dip into the writings of Roxanne:
“Expand
– “Love without mercy” – give no heed to retarded objections and do what is
right. Self-inflicted vengeance/karma
“hunts you down without mercy” – All Nightmare Long, nightmare of own creation.”
I
would hasten to add that in the usual usage, “mercy” means compassion or even
love… Use “molly-coddling” in place of
“mercy” above, and it makes more sense to me.
God has a harsh edge… I have seen
it myself, been subjected to it myself, when deserved… If we get “love” in the sense of affirmation,
for all that we do, all day, every day, even when we do evil… Then things are NOT going to work out
right! God or the Cosmos or karma or
SOMETHING, somewhere, is going to have to step on our toes, when they need
stepped on! And even we, sometimes,
personally, have to dish it out, at times!
How is “what goes around, comes around”, going to happen, if NO ONE
makes it come around? I am not fan at
ALL, of “revenge”, but “justice”? Yes,
justice, I do believe in that! Your
conscience will tell you the difference between the two… Revenge is unchecked anger, and a thirst for
punishment. Justice is protecting
yourself, and even more so, others, from the possible future depredations of
unrepentant offenders. Between the two
of them, yes, the resulting actions taken will often be highly similar… But the MOTIVES will be drastically
different, and the results will often be subtly but significantly different!
I
hate to break it to the devout pacifists of the world, but inflexible pacifism
doesn’t always work. Some people
understand NOTHING but force and power! Again,
from Roxanne:
“True
lasting change mainly comes about peacefully and willingly by a society, but if
there are groups bound and determined to cling to lies, hate, deceits and false
realities and are willing to die for their unreality, there can be no compromise,
and killing them in self defense is an option of last resort. Conversion is
highly preferred but defensive destruction is an option. In a spiritual sense,
it is the view that should be destroyed and not the individual, but on Earth
there can sometimes be no other option than death.”
My
translations or comments: There can be
no “war to end all wars”. All
freedom-lovers can be killed, but the idea of freedom can always come back. All tyrants can be killed, but the idea of
tyranny can always come back. We MUST
set the limit to our anger, short of nukes…
Nuclear weapons must never be used, if we want to stave off nuclear
war… And sooner or later, this
boogey-monster must be put to rest, for good.
Yes, I say, “better red than dead”.
Let the next generation of humans decide… And the next, and the next, ad infinitum,
till the solution is found… Can we
imagine our species living with nuclear weapons for another 10,000 years,
without an accident, misunderstanding, or some madman setting off nuclear war? Or 100,000 years, or a million? A fix MUST be found sooner or later… I don’t have one, other than just, “stop”! I’m still waiting for God’s fix…
But
that said… And Isaac Asimov’s saying
that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” fully acknowledged… Strictly LIMITED violence, just enough to get
the job done, must remain an option, for now.
Certainly for those of us that acknowledge that omissions… Such as failing to stop a bigger incidence of
violence, with a smaller amount of violence, when that is our only option open
to us… That such omissions can be
equally bad or detrimental failures to attain “the good”, as active commissions
of evil.
The
classic example, in my mind, is the scenario in which case we have a rifle at
hand, and the madman on a skyscraper across from us, is shooting people in the
crowd below. If the only way to stop
said madman is to shoot him… Then shoot
him!
So… Not much “mad” about what Roxanne has written
so far, in my mind, at least… But let’s
keep going.
What
I heard about God (through Roxanne) at times astounded me as to just HOW MUCH
humans and God are alike (how they face the same or similar nearly-intractable,
complex problems). But isn’t it as
classical (Biblical and other?) wisdom says, we are “made in God’s image”? So this should come as no surprise.
In
human terms, I have wrestled for a few decades (more than I want to admit to!)
with questions of war and peace, and of pacifism and non-violent resistance
(including martyrdom) v/s self-defensive violence, and violence in defense of
others. I have to conclude, “sometimes
one, and sometimes the other, is best”.
Not much help, eh?
But… In order for the endless cycle of violence to
come to an end, someone, somewhere, MUST absorb a blow, and NOT strike back! Yet some humans (and other entities?)
understand NOTHING but the “logic” of force and violence! However, one is on MUCH firmer grounds using
violence in the defense of others, than in defense of oneself. When one is “merely” in defense of oneself,
it is often too easy to confuse defending ourselves, with defending our
inflated egos (false pride, “honor”).
So
apparently God somehow faces the same problems, and has a similar complex
response. I am not at all clear on the
details of what all this means, but here is some more of “What God told
Roxanne”:
“Sometimes the best way to use the
Quivering Sword is to only parry, keep it sheathed or even deliberately throw
it down on the ground in the face of an attack (self defense/imply your ability
to use force to defend yourself and others or turn the other cheek/nonviolent
resistance).”
“Quivering Sword” is Roxanne-speak for
an instrument of power which must be used gently, delicately, nervously even,
with restraint… Many of us who have done
micro-surgery (literally, or, say, under a microscope, for electronics
soldering or other applications) will be familiar with the shakes (“coffee
shakes”) of the hands and of the tools, which are almost-miraculously stilled
with firm muscle control at the critical points (in time and in space). “Quivering Sword” makes intuitive sense to
me, at least…
More from God… "I cannot bring myself to kill
physically with the Quivering Sword or to afflict the comfortable where they
are highly resistant (don't you do this very much, or rarely if never with the
Evil One!), but humans can".
My translation, we humans may kill
physically in the physical world when we absolutely must. So here you see a case of, we humans can do,
what God cannot (or will not)! Do not be
trying to do it with the Evil One! Afflict the Evil One (defensively only) by
attacking its absurdly hyper-inflated ego, but do NOT seek to kill or take away
the Evil One’s freedom! The latter are
over-reaches! I have already addressed this several times…
Now for one totally “misc.”
note: You may have noticed by now that
“Evil One” is my favorite term for Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Devil,
etc. …
I have settled into this mode instinctively, thinking that a totally
forthright and honest, descriptive name (rather than Tom, Dick, or Harry) is
appropriate. Also, at one point, I
recall Roxanne saying that the Evil One said to her, something along the lines,
of, “Noooo, don’t be calling me that!”
… So whatever hurts the
over-inflated ego of the Evil One, that’s what I’ll go with the most!
Now,
I hate drawings concerning spiritual matters, as much as the next guy. But let’s jot down a few, just for clarity of
the ideas to follow. The first one is
pretty simple, just to clarify “rank” and “alignment”. Let’s think of “True North” (TN) at the top,
in Heaven… TN = Love. The more Love you have, the higher your rank,
with “God” at the top. In Hell, we have
“False North” = cruelty and hate, with the Evil One at the very bottom. The two opposing magnetic “Souths” are duking
it out on Earth’s home turf.
In
between is Earth, shown as a haphazard arrangement of variously-tilted
pyramids… Slopes are exaggerated so as
to show orientation. Think of these
Earthly pyramids as “magnetic domains” (tiny bar magnets)… Meant to shown that some of us, and some of
our organizations, are properly aligned with Heaven, and are working to attain
“God’s will being done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven”. Other “magnetic domains” are tilted in
various ways, with some of them agreeing with Hell. There’s a “magnetic proxy war” going on, with
Heaven trying to get all the little Earthly pyramids (magnetic domains) to
point to TRUE North, and Hell trying to get them to point in the other
direction. So this is why I have been
trying to cut through the confusion of “rank”…
The Evil One has the lowest rank of all, despite it and it’s demons
having an inverted viewpoint of it all.
Again, a demon-general
carries lower rank than a demon-private, as understood here.
That’s just some basics… Please do not over-interpret my analogy! It’s just an analogy… The angel on our shoulder? And the devil on the other? Both whispering in our opposing ears? And our mind in the middle, where the “proxy
war” is being fought? That one works
pretty well, too! We, as individuals, or
as members of organizations, are ***NOT***
living in the DMZ, we are living in a HIGHLY militarized zone! We’ve got, sooner or later, to pick a side!
Figure #1, Heaven, Earth, & Hell…
OK, so I regard the above as pretty simple &
non-controversial. Now let’s get a bit
more edgy. Below, I will clearly delve
into “angels on the head of a pin” territory, where I cannot translate what I
am saying into “secular speak”, as I would ideally like to be able to do. So I guess the best that we are doing, below,
is to give the reader something to stew on, silly-metaphysics-wise, so that the
reader can waste less time on doing more of the same, in the future! Plus a little bit of something else too;
let’s just get ON with it!
I
suppose that I got a wee tad extra-caught-up-in the “love your enemy” thing,
what with our apparent success with respect to “Elmer”. The “Elmer” episode was in Roxanne’s high
school years, as you will recall, and I will now want to discuss a “happening”
(or more accurately, a “communication”) in her college years, as we approached
some of the very worst of her times.
So… I could try and babble like an egghead about
some sort of (?) “mystical truth” or “poetic truth” behind myths and “visions”
of various sorts, but I doubt that you’d be very impressed! Suffice it to say that I believe this to be
true… If we set aside the excesses of literalness
(be it the Garden of Eden or meditating on some sacred hoo-ha living in your
navel), there are certain truths to be gathered here… Just my opinion, of course. But…
Need I add? … If the wine truly
is turned into Jesus’s blood, PLEASE do NOT try and rescue dying patients by
using the sacred wine for blood transfusions!
One
of the myths / fables / visions is (I’m pretty sure) from Revelations, which I
generally sneer at. But here it is… In the “End Times”, Jesus is going to crawl
down into Hell and go and slay the Evil One!
Well,
from everything I have perceived (including, obviously, from Roxanne, who has
paid for such visions far more than I have), this is not consistent with the
God and Jesus that I know. These are
beings of Love, who don’t hate or kill anything. This does not compute… I get to wonder, did the vision-seer see
something, and drastically misinterpret it?
Is Jesus going to crawl down there and try and RESCUE the Evil One from
its own stupidity? This would make a LOT
more sense to me!
So,
flush from the apparent success of loving “Elmer”, I am trying to talk to
Roxanne, to pass along messages of love to the Evil One… Not to be confused with supporting the goals
of the Evil One, to be sure, we’ve gone over that! But I am envisioning the Evil One at the
bottom of its hole, that it perversely keeps on digging, while being sucked at
by a “giant sucking sound” (force), that tries to suck it in… Like a black hole, with its immense
gravity. Symmetry and hierarchy,
now… If God’s got a God’s God, the Evil
One has a “maker”, too! The Evil One
keeps on digging it’s hole, in hopes of “breaking on through to the other
side”, and meeting its maker! And that
will (would) not be a pretty sight at all (even though the self-loathing,
self-hating Evil One lusts for it), as the Evil One’s boss devours and tortures
it! No Being of Love could lust after
seeing such a thing happen!
I am
thinking, the Universe (God’s boss, apparently) has got to have some balances
and some loop-holes. It can’t be all
dark, “Gothic”, and gloomy… Just go and
admire a blue sky, the clouds, and the birds, and you’ll see what I mean,
hopefully… To offset the snares, there’s
got to be some “safety catches”. I am
envisioning the Evil One at the bottom of its hole, getting pulled at by its even-more-evil
boss, below the bottom of the hole, black-hole-style… The Evil One is trying to work up its nerve,
to go ahead and jump! Go ahead and jump
right into that sucking force, go and meet your maker!
Well,
maybe there’s some “hooks” on the sides (walls) of the hole that the
uber-stupid Evil One has been digging!
It can cling to those hooks, and resist the sucking force, if it changes
its mind! Jesus will climb down there
and save you! Change your stupid mind,
Evil One, and we’ll all be praying to support Jesus, as He climbs down there to
bail out your self-destructive butt!
This is the message of Love that I urge Roxanne to pass on to the Evil
One… Cling to those hooks! I knew…
And I still stand by this… That
the Evil One fears Love! And I still
cling to the Hope (as I am sure that God does) that the Evil One will come
around some sunny day, and see things our way…
Love’s way!
To
Roxanne’s credit, she poo-paahed my ideas…
I was getting above my pay grade!
Motives? Good! Practicality?
Lacking! The Evil One has been at
its perverted, self-loathing business for (?) a long-long time, maybe even
forever! Fat chance that any ideas we’d
pass along to it, would wake it up! But,
despite her strong doubts, pass along the idea (and message of Love), Roxanne
did, yes! And the response was
astounding (and made me disgustedly cuss and swear quite awfully)!
Let
me insert a quick, very crude drawing, just to be clear, about what I had
wrongly thought was a good mental model of what is going on here:
Figure #2, Wrong Mental Model, Plight of the Evil
One
Roxanne
got back to me, and she said that the Evil One was (once again) a bit
astonishingly honest… It is NOT very
good at hiding the truth from astute, prayerful, and focused minds… “The hooks are turned the other way”, it
says! I actually caught on to this one
fairly rapidly…
Roxanne
later on, told me more to complete the picture, and the revised picture now
makes a LOT more sense to me! Now think
of a black hole… Yes, it’s “sucking
force” (gravity) is VERY powerful indeed!
But the Universe is profoundly kind…
As matter approaches a black hole, the “accretion disk” and relativistic
effects at the spin-poles spit back OUT, the VAST, overwhelming majority of
what the black hole’s gravity is “trying to swallow”! See http://www.space.com/22586-milky-way-giant-black-hole-food.html
... Which says that 99% of the infalling
matter-energy is spat back out! It’s
like there’s a million warning signs, “Do not approach”, and if you are
hell-bound and determined to cross that thresh-hold, it is still WAY difficult
to get swallowed up!
The
black hole analogy to spiritual matters hold firm… I just didn’t quite get the details, before
the Evil One ‘fessed up the truth to Roxanne.
There’s a WAY stiff breeze emitted from the north and south spin-poles
of a black hole… This is like the
EXTREMELY strong life-force that warns us NOT to commit suicide… Self-inflicted death is painful, and 3.5 or
so billion years of life’s existence on planet Earth has told us, life is
precious, try to survive and reproduce!
Go with the natural flow, survive, do what is natural to you! Don’t be fighting nature! Just relax, spread your wings, catch those
stiff polar winds blowing off of the poles of the black hole, and fly
away! The rules of Nature (the Universe)
have made it profoundly difficult to be swallowed by a black hole, and they
have similarly made it quite difficult to commit suicide! Relax, resign to Nature! It’s not ALL a terrific, hard slog! It’s the same message that I got in a dream
with respect to Roxanne in her high school years… Search this page for the search-string “bad
firemen”, and you’ll see.
And
the same applies to the Evil One as it tries to get swallowed by its boss. Roxanne told me this pretty specifically… The
Evil One and its “bottom-ranking generals” have to EXERT GREAT ENERGY, constantly,
to do the evil that they’re doing!!! It
is PROFOUNDLY perverse, stupid, evil, every bad name in the book, that you can
conceivably throw at it! They have to
constantly fight what is good, right, easy, and natural! It’s like committing suicide by holding your
breath! So THAT is what filled me with
utter disgust, as soon as I understood it!
“Catholic
guilt” (in the sense of, the more natural things that you feel guilty about,
the more virtuous you are) is only about 2% correct. Once you’ve spread your wings to catch that
stiff polar wind, away from the black hole of evil, and you’re a few hundred
light years away, NOW you have to actively (not passively, “going with what
comes naturally”) fight to attain yet more spiritual advancement. Don’t be greedy, don’t be having sex with too
many people, don’t be eating and drinking too much, that kind of thing… Yes, it comes into play, deny your “state of
nature” a tad. But for 98% of the basic
issues… Treasure life!... Your natural instincts tell you to “go with
the flow”, and that is good and right!
Treasure life, enjoy it, don’t punish yourself!
So
let’s redraw the corrected drawing… The
Evil One’s boss is a black hole, emitting a stiff, repulsive polar wind. The hooks are turned the other way. The wickedly hooks-clinging Evil One is like
the Anti-Santa-Claus (the Grinch); it holds a semi-permeable Anti-Santa
bag… Bag’s walls are made of fear… Containing unspeakable things, and captured
souls… Anti-Santa is dragging his bag
downwards, as a few free spirits (“Elmer” and the like) flee the bag, for sunnier
climates. But the bag-full of captured
souls? The Evil Grinch keeps dragging it
towards the “event horizon”, utterly perversely, always fighting that strong
polar (warning, safety) wind… The Evil
Grinch wants to “meet its maker”, AND drag souls along with it!
So,
the visions-seer in Revelations? He may
have seen Jesus venturing down there to slice the Grinch’s bag open, to give
the captured souls freedom! We’ll cry a
river of tears at the stupid-evil Grinch, for pushing past that event horizon,
if that happens (its perverted free will must be respected), but its captives
will be given another chance! Now THAT
makes sense to me!
Figure #3, Corrected Mental Model, Perversely
Self-Inflicted Plight of the Evil One
So
there’s some mental analogies to my metaphysics, as informed by Roxanne, who
was informed by the Evil One… Who does
tell the truth, from time to time! How
shall I put it? The Evil One is
profoundly, deeply, willfully, stubbornly, sickly, pervertedly twisted, and,
um… Evil! Yes, that’s it! It’s EVIL!!!
(Well, OK, duh! But now, you have
been fully informed!)
In
other words, despite being utterly full of false pride, the Evil One is, at the
same time, full of self-loathing and self-hatred, and is literally Hell-bound
and determined, against profound (and profoundly benevolent) forces arrayed
against it, that attempt to prevent it from going to “meet its maker”, which is
also some flavor of self-destruction.
But
didn’t I earlier write that suicide is a (negative, obviously) “privilege” of
the physical world? That “spirit” is
eternal, and cannot be killed? Yes, I
did! This is one of those
self-contradictory “squaring the circle” problems. Human logic, as we know it, doesn’t apply.
In a
preview of coming attractions (assuming I get around to it, I will later write
about my own personal “strange” experiences), let me describe an element of a
“bad trip” I once took. Yes, I was a
wild youngster, once upon a time… I took
one mild “good” trip once, and a few years later, took one more… My last, if I have anything to say about
it! …
“Trip”, and that one was a pretty severely harsh trip!
In
this trip, I was briefly in Hell (was “cast into Hell”), I’m
pretty sure of that! These kinds of
things are hard to translate (or recall clearly, for that matter, sometimes),
but I was supposed to hate and despise myself down there. Since I had been thrown there (threw myself
there?), artificially, without really deserving it, I could not be kept
there… I had no real, genuine or
deep-seated need or desire to hate and despise myself. So I couldn’t be contained or kept
there! The Universe is a kind, just, and
benevolent thing, in so many ways!
What
I did see was thousands (millions?) of tiny twinkling specks, visible even from
Hell (if you look outwards, and don’t just sit there and stew in your own
self-absorbed misery), scattered about.
No one told me this, now… But I
had an intuition that these were “soul fragments” of those who are (deservedly)
thrown (self-thrown) into Hell… In my
view, actually, the ONLY route to Hell, for us humans at least, is
suicide… I concluded that after stewing
on my “bad trip”.
In my
brief visit to Hell, I was just OVERWHELMED, actually, at this utterly
beautiful thing, this beautiful sight… “Soul
fragments” (life-soul fragments of higher beings that didn’t properly
appreciate themselves as more-highly evolved beings) cast into the leaves of
trees and grasses! In my interpretation
of the vision at least, that is… To be
re-combined and recycled and re-assembled into higher life-forms once
again. Maybe next time around, the
higher beings will more properly appreciate life as a higher being! I was never told these things
explicitly. But in the years since then,
I have had regular night-time dreams that can be interpreted similarly. God and/or the Universe is/are always busy
recycling, turning evil into good!
Anyway,
Hell could not contain me, since I was supposed to sit there and stew and hate
and pity myself, but instead, I sat there and admired the beauty right outside
of Hell, where “soul fragments” were being recycled!
So,
some religions or ways of thinking hold that souls are forever unitary,
indivisible, and indestructible. Others
hold that souls can be fragmented and re-combined. Somehow, I think that both are true, however obviously
they conflict with one another. “Life
force” parts of the soul can be fragmented and re-combined, I suspect, while
“personal identity” parts cannot. “Split
personality” or “multiple personality” mental disorders are cases in which we
deceive ourselves into THINKING that we have a fragmented personality, but we
really don’t! The route to healing is
dropping the illusions, and re-integrating our multiple “parts”. I won’t babble more about these things,
because… Well, just because, I really just
don’t know, anymore!
I’ve
probably made enough editorial comments by now, about various topics that
relate to the below imports, so I will just import them and add little if any
additional comments. These, again, are
Roxanne’s unpolished notes from around the times of the worst of her troubles.
The
below is VERY slightly edited… Some in
terms of God’s words to Roxanne, and some (most) just in Roxanne’s voice. Sometimes when Roxanne uses the word
“machine”, she means an internal, mental edifice of artificiality
(self-deception) that cannot withstand critical inspection. Sad to say, some evil humans, when their
“machines” are challenged, will resort to figurative and/or literal violence,
and call it “self-defense”. The below
has had stripped OUT of it, long parts of it that delve into human politics,
and nearly-indecipherable parts. The
below is all turned BLUE so that you can see
this is all Roxanne, or God through Roxanne, and not me.
“If someone has an off
kilter viewpoint but they are trying hard, you shouldn’t begrudge them their viewpoint.
Use the
spiritual/ethical to help you in your everyday life and the everyday life
experiences to help you on your spiritual/ethical path. If you use just
spiritual/ethical on spiritual/ethical, you are lost and disconnected, and if
you use just everyday life on everyday life, you are easily misled and
disconnected from yourself and love/the world/God.
“You feed the tree of
life a lot faster than you think- you don’t have to die physically for me to
get your lessons you want to tell me, you do that every day you live, whether
you’re actively believing or being ‘spiritual’ or not.”
“You will know them by
their fruits” applies to thought patterns/feelings as well within you – if
something leads to derp/bad feelings, it probably isn’t a good idea. Still need to think and asses validity of what
you see/feel/are.
God judges, just in a different way than most people do. There
is no malice or hate when he judges evil people; more so, there is an ancient,
timeless sadness over a soul losing their way and some anger towards the
person’s blindness to their own spiritual/behavioral condition and actions.
The existence of the Evil One is not in itself a threat – only
when someone or you listen(s) to his lies is he a threat. He has no physical
form and while he CAN inflict pain and suffering in the form of relentless
harassment (or even sensations in only the most extreme cases), these are only
temporary, and without fear of pain he is powerless.
The Evil One cannot offer you anything of any true value and
what he does/can offer you are petty fleeting trinkets, baubles and puppet
strings (common promises being gold/money, power, special supernatural
abilities, influence, and of course, escape from reality/unpleasant
consequences of your own actions, his specialty) in comparison to the plethora
of things love opens up. He seeks to rob you of your true power and treasures
in exchange for the very same snake oil that is his Achilles’ heel – denial of
reality.
The time truly wasted and costs of living your life on autopilot,
doing tasks sloppily or not paying attention vastly outweighs whatever false
“ease and comfort” autopilot affords, time trimmed from a mundane task or
physical/mental energy saved by not focusing. Autopilot denies you the option
of changing courses, the simpler pleasures in life, the capacity to change for
the better or deal with major upheavals and adversely affects those around you,
while at the same time not allowing your mental faculties, physical abilities
and spiritual potentials to be used to their full extent. Sloppy tasks must
usually be re-done, which wastes time and causes frustration, while not paying
attention to whatever task you are engaged in gives sub-par results at best and
at worst results in a catastrophe.
Self-inflicted vengeance (of their own device)
The TRUE meaning of “Judge not lest ye be judged yourself” is to
not judge people on the basis of irrelevant factors such as intelligence,
national origin, choice of hobby, weight, race, creed or anything else that
does not determine their morality and level of advancement as a person. Those
who do so shamelessly are lost and are deserving of judgment themselves. “Judge
not lest ye be judged yourself” does NOT mean that you cannot judge
someone as being evil or misguided on the basis of their beliefs or most
importantly their actions.
Flesh out more later – (Editorial insertion; see, this is an example of, Roxanne didn’t
mean for this to be the “final word”; it is a “rough draft”, or “notes to
self”; so please don’t be too harsh on the babble-ish or haphazard, unorganized
nature of this stuff) “insane swordsman”, hate is a
doubled edged sword, it can cut deep if the target is innocent and naïve, but
however far down the hate cuts the victim, the wound upon the soul of the
attacker is exponentially more grievous. Part of self-inflicted vengeance and
the folly of judging falsely as described above/hate. Except the target can
shrug off the hate/attack completely or partially but the attacker still has a
deep wound in their soul.
Pride is possible without feeling superior to others.
The Evil One really has nothing- this is why he attempts to
strip beings and humans of all love and light within them and feed off whatever
it is he supposedly gets out of it, but just as matter slowly escapes a black
hole he gets nothing out of it, and the love/light itself is not destroyed, it
just leaves and leaves the former “host” bereft of feeling and happiness in its
absence.
Just as a machine fights to the death upon being attacked,
humanity will fight to the end against any physical aggressor who is bound and
determined to rule all through force or exterminate life as we know it.
Walk with God/truth/love and you can handle anything thrown at
you. Conversely, walking with the Evil One is truly walking alone, as evil
blinds itself and other evil “people” around it to reality (group circular
logic/reinforced blindness)as well as harming/feeding off one another.
Machines can
only be destroyed from within. Unless the “user”(read: prisoner/victim) of the
machine realizes they need to change and are willing to do work to break
through it, all the love and help in the world will not break through it.
The receiver of assistance must be willing in the process of change/growth for
anything to happen, as well as being willing to go through the pain of false
ego destruction and general change.
Don’t be smug while helping someone who has asked for your help
or even harbor any feelings of superiority over them as that will come out
somehow and deeply hurt them, whether said feelings are reasonable or not.
There is no competition for “Glory in God’s eye”.
Triumphs are shared victories but mostly attributable to human
will and actions on Earth.
“Biological” thoughts, “circuitry” and mind habits are neither
here nor there spiritually, but actions are (whether or not you control basal
instincts/thoughts/urges or the “default” circuitry /defects (i.e. psychosis)
or for example eye contact avoidance in Autistics (example of default circuit
not something one is “accountable” for)).
Three hallmarks of evil are self-righteousness, harming others
and denial of reality.
Judgment is the bane of wolves in sheep’s clothing – without it,
good intentioned souls can be led astray by deceivers. One MUST be willing to
see the negative side of human nature and make negative judgments of people or
all is lost.
Self-respect and/or self esteem are very different from ego as
ego is an inflated sense of false self-worth.
True lasting change mainly comes about peacefully and willingly
by a society, but if there are groups bound and determined to cling to lies,
hate, deceits and false realities and are willing to die for their unreality,
there can be no compromise, and killing them in self defense is an option of
last resort. Conversion is highly preferred but defensive destruction is an
option. In a spiritual sense, it is the view that should be destroyed and not
the individual, but on Earth there can sometimes be no other option than death.
Expand – “Love without mercy” – give no heed to retarded
objections and do what is right.
Self-inflicted vengeance/karma “hunts you down without mercy” –
All Nightmare Long, nightmare of own creation.
Do not be so considerate of others that you are inconsiderate of
yourself.
“Love is blind” – blinded eyes that cannot see – ignore
superficial appearances – but penetrate to the core: see people/things/event
for what they really are – non-judgemental: the ancient sadness – but can hurt
deeply : not the will of the “looker” (God) but an affect of the reactive
nature of love and machines/hatred as the machine is exposed and/or its ego is
wounded and it reels in pain, the amount depending on how much the entity
identifies itself with the machine and the level of evil of the machine.
The Evil One/ evil is fighting a long-term losing battle: no
matter how many times he “snuffs” out a candle it re-lights elsewhere and in
the very act of snuffing the candle he brings attention to his own evil and the
candle’s brightness. Relight:
reincarnation and contiguity of spiritual advancement/knowledge between lives
(subconscious!!! Highly “inaccessible”). Attention bringing: Jesus Christ on the cross
brought him a lot of attention and lent validity to his arguments while showing
his critics as hypocrites etc.
The very fact that the Evil One whispers, be it “Your will is
not your own” or “You are insignificant” or “you have no choice” implies the
exact opposite: if you had no will of your own, why would it be bother telling
you so? Telling a rock it has no will or a computer it has no will has no
point, rather, he is trying to sway your will which does exist and does have
importance (and by extension you) – after all, why would he harass someone who
has no potential for good or bad?
Is a community really a place where people judge one another,
begrudge members who leave or do not participate or adhere to the norms, and
impose upon individual members with group think and demands? Sounds like a
pretty bad community to me.
Some individuals use what society/others/the community think of
them as a conscience augment/enhancer (or as a replacement/overrider, negative
*usually*). This effect can be good or bad.
Does a butterfly begrudge the time it spent as a caterpillar or
a chrysalis, or the stages themselves? You must learn to accept your past and not
hate your past self – it was a stepping stone to your current self and the
present would not be as it is without your past self. In many ways (spiritually
and neurologically and psychologically) your past self is still a part of you
and must be acknowledged. However, MACHINES are not you, were not you, and
never will be you, and should be avoided, resisted, worked against and
repressed whenever they resurface.
The past self is/was you using the machine to make sense of the
world and attempting to live using it and struggling through life under its
thumb, NOT the coping mechanism itself. That is one of the Evil One’s biggest
lies/confusing whispers: “What is the you and what is the me, how can you
separate out and deal with realit-t-ty?” “You are the machine and the machine
is you, I sense you (the evil part of you, that is already me, that is the
real you) hungering to be free of the shackles of responsibility and
reality and your (my hunger, MINE) hunger I can feed”. (Italics what you
may be able to sense in between the lines, some of which are his
lies/insinuations and some of which are things he does not want you to
grasp/realize).
Golden eagle flying away from a dark twisted bush into the sky
but still attacking manifestations of said bush that occasionally appear.
Fear comes from feelings of insecurity and anxiety (which comes
from fluctuating conditions) and love can provide the comfort and consistency
that is otherwise missing or erratic. Your “inner scared fluffy rabbit” needs
to be hugged, loved, and reassured. However there are still leftovers from
evolution and your own life as well that cannot be consoled, reasoned with or
otherwise loved out of their anxious, illogical fearful frenzy and need to be
appropriately eliminated or crushed.
Learned objectivity on your own situation and thought processes
and patterns is important – don’t ignore positive aspects and belittle them or
ignore less savory aspects. The positive aspects can be your salvation and the
less savory ones can be your downfall or cause of needless
emotional/mental/spiritual turmoil. “Meta-thinking”… Thinking about your own thoughts. Linking aspects together. Aware of own personal and
biological/psychological/personality limits.
You don’t have to anything to receive love from God, but the
more you follow your conscience, love yourself and others and live in reality,
the more of God’s love you will feel. The
more love you create and do, the more you feel.
You can be informed about and concerned about many of the worlds
troubles without letting certain people or beings guilt trip you crazy over not
being able to solve them all or not actively supporting THEIR pet cause. You
can only focus on so much.
Petty judgments, unfounded anxious thoughts, feelings and fears,
trivial self-criticisms and perfectionism and any number of other detrimental
or useless thought processes cloud your judgment, perception and enjoyment of
the world, others and yourself and prevent you from seeing the truth to many
different situations. (Farmer seeds, wrong
thoughts = weeds).
Need hobby, hobby in balance not bad, sometimes will be more
balanced than others, sometimes hobby frustrating at other times rewarding.
Logic, reasoning and rationality tempered with emotions and
perspective are paramount.
“I try to fill you up with light or give you guys the
opportunity to do so but some of you replace it with dark spiky crap, let said
crap in and do not remove it, or even worse attempt to pawn some of your own
off onto others or create new crap.”
Part of the reason you see absolute terror (even briefly) in the
eyes of someone who has been forced to see a stark reality (had one of their
machines/rationalizations exposed to others or to self in the form of
realization of its inadequacy) is because they literally have nothing to stand
on. No foundation or basis other than a lie, falsehood, self-deceit.
Some sow what they reap and vice versa while some do not reap
what they sow or sow what they reap. (Receive hatred, give love … or vice
versa).
Free will – “mercenary” – nothing can MAKE you do something.
No law can make
someone do or not do something, only consequences. Remove consequence and
behavior will probably change – why legislation may pass and work for a while
then things revert as soon as attention is diverted elsewhere. However, divine
laws and consequences NEVER change.
Ludicrous! “Well, it’s
bad, but it’s not considered bad right now by society, so let’s keep doing it
anyways”.
Color-blind man beeping at car in front of him to go at a red
light: take cues from other people as to what is happening or true, not all
your own perceptions and experiences.
Social, emotional, mathematical, logical or rational
intelligence does not discount or elevate a person’s opinion, “reality”
intelligence does – common sense/living in reality/love.
Spirituality without religion is simply being a good person,
religion with spirituality is a belief system that teaches love and tries to
make sense/give a comforting structure to said spirituality while religion
without spirituality is empty, meaningless, destructive, hateful to the self
and others, and the cause, effect, justification, result, and perpetrator of
religious injustice, pettiness and wars. Any such religion is not religion or
love, it is hatred. The attempt to use (the false APPEARANCE of) love against
one’s enemies, others or yourself is one of the sickest perversions possible,
but no less obvious for the evil it is.
Shatter the illusion of power (forcing others to your choice) by
shattering the illusion of powerlessness (inability to make a choice, lack of
control over own destiny, no option but to obey) and you empower the oppressed
and remove the moors of the oppressors. Hopefully, they will fall into the arms
of God, love, reality, snap out of it, get over it, what have you, but if they
do not or fight to the death, so be it. It’s their choice.
Reality is in a way liberating and comforting. If you live in
reality and exist in reality you are grounded and no bottomless pit will open
beneath you and swallow your essence and mind.
The very view and concept of a class system engenders inequality
and suffering when in many ways we are all equals. “You’re poor so you’re
supposed to feel repressed and angry” =
???? It also obfuscates our similarities and the fact that even though we all
have different viewpoints and experiences we all have to deal with, live in and
make sense of the same plane/reality/world.
Spirituality is ultimately about LIFE ON EARTH. Why do you think
so many of the various religious texts speak of an afterlife, as another LIFE
as a reward, or LIFE after death? Why do you think the Evil One tries so hard
in various ways to degrade life on Earth, be it humanoid or otherwise? Why do you think that real spirituality –
love – has no religion requirement or belief in life after death or absence
thereof? I think of it not so much as “My Kingdom is not of this Earth” but
rather “My Kingdom is not of this Earth but it should be and you can help make
that happen”- “God’s will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”.
Following rigid texts or rules for right and wrong is sort of a
temporary stage before you are mature enough to think for yourself. See M Scott
Peck.
More than a few people do not behold wonder in the world because
when they look at a tree, they do not see the actual tree in all its beauty,
but a dumbed-down idea of a tree. Instead of “Oh wow, a tree!” its “Oh, just
another tree”. This can cause far more severe problems too – people seeing
preformed constructs, abstractions and vague concepts of groups, people, society,
each other and themselves instead of looking at what’s really there and
critically examining their assumptions and their surroundings etc.
Don’t project onto others, try to bring them to you instead –
you control your own perceptions and listening and no one else’s.
The idea of “The Matrix” or “Solipsism” or “What is
real/reality” needs to be stopped: even if it is not real whoever made
reality/the universe put a lot of trouble into it so it’s best to operate under
the assumption that it is real. Not
against idea of a spiritual plane or that in some ways parts of the world are
illusions (for instance, physical pain is just a construct created by your
brain to ensure your survival, and if you would collapse from pain in a
survival situation, the brain shuts off pain so you can do what you need to get
yourself and others out of danger) but against the idea of “I don’t know if the
world is real so I can do whatever I want to with no consequences”.
In some ways if you question yourself too much and don’t just go
with it you invite insanity – “Who am I? What is real? Am I pure,
Introspect-introspect-introspect” all day every day detaches you from the world
around you and too much internal referencing can lead to delusion, mental
abstractification that leads to erroneous or absurd (to anyone but yourself)
conclusions. “C’Thulu” can’t instantaneously drive you insane, but if you
think too long and hard on his whispers or weird abstractions, lies or “words
of belittlement of the meaning of life” he can. But, the key part here is you
did/do/are doing the thinking – nothing is compelling you to listen on
contemplate the blathering and whispers of the void. Occasionally a thought
that seems to be yours and “reasonable” to you or part of you may enter your
mind, or a lot if he really wants to bother you, but he cannot steal your
innate ability to think independently, reason, feel passion and love or strong
emotions and insight or rely on others for support and guidance/assistance/an
outside perspective. Ultimately, free will cannot be controlled, and if it
allows itself to be it’s through its own consent. “If you choose not to decide,
you have made a choice” – responsibility for your actions. Other people cannot
truly control you either, or very well at all – just look at all the rebellions
against overbearing controlling rulers throughout history. Unless, again, you
let yourself be.
Balance between being good/ not bad and being reasonable/kind to
yourself- since we are all partly evil, bad and otherwise unsavory, it’s not
the end of the world if you do bad things or think bad thoughts sometimes.
The closer you are to a major breakthrough, the more the Evil
One intensifies his whispers/attacks.
Treat others the way you (should) treat a 3 year old – with
kindness, patience and forgiveness.
You don’t need a fancy building to “worship God”- all that
matters is if you are glorifying love.
Evil and denial of
reality is for those too weak of will or mind to deal with the world as it
really is. Evil is true weakness…
Your opinions, beliefs
and politics are not perfect and completely aligned with God, his will, or
love, but it’s OK. We all have our dark portions of us – “light and dark
inextricably inter-wound”.
The Evil One is the
Lord of Holes – holes inside you, holes that can never be filled with food,
alcohol, abuse of others, sex, money, success, power or anything other than
love. He wants you to try to fill the holes with fruitless, earthly, fleeting
and temporary things instead of eternal love.
Evil is all about power
and control but it is the weakest force in the universe where love is about
free will and the opposite of power and control, yet it is the most powerful
force in the universe.
"I'd make a horrible human, probably starve to death ... If
I came down here completely pure(???)"
(Words from God through Roxanne. Possible translation: Pure Love is at times impractical for us
Earth-humans in the here and now… We
need our capacity for self-defense, up to and including violence. Obviously not to be used lightly, but it
needs to be there as an option, for now).
More words from God, concerning free will, and apparently
(possibly) confirming my suspicions about Hell, suicide, self-punishment being
self-chosen, etc. Notice the below use
of “meeting one’s maker” in a negative sense!
Including the Evil One as both victimizer, and, perhaps eventually,
victim! This (especially the latter)
didn’t come from me (“Melvin Marten”), it came from God, through Roxanne.
"This is how my vengeance works. Just desserts for the evil but not by my own
hand, rather, I let them go astray; some will come back and there will be
joyous celebration, while others fall down to meet their maker (both lost human
souls and their master will/may depending on choice meet the same fate) and
those that choose soul destruction at the end of time or spiritual pseudo
suicide truly deserve it. The female part of me rages at the loss and needless
loss of souls, while the male part of me rages at their stupidity and weeps over
the pain they caused on their way down. This is actually what you believe I
believe/do, and since you are a part of me, this 'new' attitude is part of what
I believe now. You are co-creator, along with all other humans.”
"Knowing that the 'messages' you receive are actually your
own Light inside communicating with you (who I am a part of, and am wholly,
uncorrupted but also unable(?) to act of the physical plane that I fight and
hope to make full of Love like Heaven) and that you aren't crazy for having a
relationship with me; your own soul/conscience is the source of most of your
'stuff' anyways. This means that what you have come up with is new knowledge,
and the reason that a lot of it is what has been said before is that the other
people's souls are part of you and that you are on the right path to finding
eternal universal truths.”
Well, that
concludes my wholesale strip-mining of the writings of Roxanne. The last 2 paragraphs seem quite uplifting to
me, even though they seem to be quite New-Agey, even to a New-Agey guy like
me! On the other hand, most new-agers,
it seems to me, do NOT fully acknowledge the true depths of evil… Which I do see addressed above.
Again, with
reference to the above, I must trot out the squared circle. I have (if not in these pages, then
elsewhere) previously stated that we as humans should NOT be in the business of
trying to tell God who He/She/It is; we should be in the business of quietly
sitting back and letting God tell us who God is. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Biblical),
speaks to me.
Yet at the same
time, my mystical readings (including God-through-Roxanne) tells me that we ARE
in the business of telling God who He is!
Humans as “Co-creators with God”, I think, may have come from Nick Bunick
(we, including Roxanne, have been exposed to Nick’s thoughts). As I have seen it put in other places, God is
(or will be) somehow composed such as to include all the thoughts of all humans
who have ever lived (possibly excluding those thoughts of those who have
excluded themselves, in my own opinion).
I just cannot bring myself to accept the idea of a God of Love that
includes ravening hatred, self-hatred, and self-loathing. To whatever extent that such things are
included in God, they are closely coupled with an overwhelming urge to heal
these exact same things.
Well anyway, I
have previously stated that I have personally seen a “harsh edge” to God (and I
have, and so have others, and I hope to comment on that some more, later). In sculpture, they speak of purely subtractive
sculpture (purely removal, as in carving something out of wood or stone), and
additive sculpture, as in clay. God does
both kinds of sculpture, sometimes simultaneously. Some of our egos need to be whittled away,
and polished down smoothly. Others need
to be built up, and have the voids filled in…
And sometimes, somewhat paradoxically as I have learned, they both need
to be done at the same time!
I have often
seen (and have commented here, on) Roxanne’s extra-large ego, which has thought
that she is responsible for fixing the troubles of the world. To that extent at the very least, I tried to
whittle down her ego. But above, as we
can see, God saw where He / She needed to lift her and her ego up… To reassure her that her thoughts are somehow
helping to define or compose God (bringing in new knowledge). Different things need to be done at different
times, clearly. About the only thing
that I could add, here, is that I firmly doubt that God’s response would have
been the same (is ever the same), in response to self-defeating, self-destructive
, over-the-top-egotistical, or hateful (evil) thoughts.
Well hold on
now, I have uncovered some more Roxanne files.
Much of it is repetitive, written in dense Roxanne-speak,
near-indecipherable, etc. But here below
is some more… This time around, I will
let just a wee tad of the near-indecipherable stuff flow through, just for the
reader to see what I mean… And to puzzle
over, if desired. Most of this is in
God’s voice.
“Even if I knew
everything ever known (which I certainly do not) I would come back to share it,
and learn things never known before.
"Do you really
want me to (forcibly
re-engineer you)? You'd die. So too would you die if I cleaved your soul in
two, into a good fragment and a bad fragment- good and evil- and cast one away,
and keep the other. I am humble and do not know me/you fully so if I did so I
might incinerate some love that I didn't know existed and let in some hateful
thing that I currently think is right.
"I am old yet I am
young, always learning, and do not fully know what is hate and what is love
fully - I have humans to go down and learn from their and MY mistakes in human
form - things wise people said they thought were true but weren't, period, or
weren't always true -- lots of competing truths and youths (my children's
viewpoints) that make me inconsistent across time and cultures in how I show
you myself.
"You REALLY don't
think I’d greet a Muslim as a Hindu God and not Mohammed after death, or a
really secular person as Jesus and not a ball of light after death, do you, or
yell at you for the 'dogmas' you got 'wrong' on Earth, do you? That's the other guy's method - corral and
try to get one "consistent" message – F*** love- in many different ways, but never say,
Goodjob, only whip you harder. I encourage
diversity and thus actually get a more consistent message - love, tolerance,
and defiance of power-abusers- where he discourages it and gets a maddening
schizoid message that isn't a message at all - just a lie to help to mess up
and shut up those who would oppose him, and get only the 'most worthy' of
spiritual suicide/'control'/not telling him the truth closest to him, so he can
maintain his thrones of lies through company of his own kind.
“I seek souls similar
to me to enter in to heaven so that we may lead and support one another - even
I need help, why do you think I promoted Jesus/Ghandi/Mohamed/MLK to help me-
just as he (editorial
addition, the Evil One) seeks souls who will help perpetuate his stupid motions through
sheer free will. We both channel free
will in its pure form – me, love, him, hate, etc.- to other beings to get more
assistance. Both can stand on their own
and if not followed at all would roll their eyes and mainly go elsewhere -
where do you think he's been running from all this time, Earth is a pretty
caustic environment for 'his'/his(??) people now - but really desire company,
both need members to keep their fellowship on Earth and elsewhere going strong,
but not period .... "
"I have thousands
of thrones for thousands of different belief systems that lead to love, just as
the Evil One has thousands of maws for thousands of different ways in which to
hate - one for each of you. Your inner light isn't going to be snuffed out by
me or told you’re bad in all ways by me after death, or I'd never win anyone
over. All have personal truths you're
susceptible to, all have personal lies... One "throne" to rest on after death
from each soul fragment, or with others of like minds as well. More people
around the thrones and maws you ascribe to than you think, so please, talk
about your values with others so that you can better resist the calls of the
mouths and sit peacefully in love, safe, so long as you don't doze off in to
either your own lala land (cough cough Roxanne) or too much in to the world and
away from your spiritual heritage.
"Planets/cultures(!!!)
too stupid to resist = dead or spreading darkness planets. Planets smarter than
my little games and don't want to die (most of Earth) = waste your time and get
petty revenge after tipping points (ancient science/tolerance/love of
knowledge, Christ's crucifixion, responsible use of nuclear weaponry/ 20th
century movements) I'm not dead yet, don't 'go to bed' !!! Mainly running
away/petty revenge now, but still dumb enough to be 'mine' again if you don't
stay on the path of unity and love - just like most beings/civilizations.
(Editorial insertion, see what I
mean? At times indecipherable? The above use of “mine” apparently refers to
the Evil One’s. The inter-mixed,
un-labeled speakers alternating from God’s voice to the Evil One’s voice is
what drives me the most crazily confused, in these writings).
“Through flowing
uncontrolled from within diversity and chaos and strife (disagreement/healthy
doubt path war - sanity), consistent other/self-enforced/enforcing unity, order
and peace. Through consistent controlled from without/outside
other/self-enforced/enforcing unity, order and peace, uncontrolled diversity,
chaos and strife (disagreement/doubt love/self war - insanity)..
“Through allowing life
and free will to flow, peace in love. From choking life and (preventing) free will from flowing,
war with love.
“Salvation will not
save you if you throw it away by not maintaining yourself and going to sleep,
"comfortable" in knowing you were saved and stop doing love/ what
saved you in the first place.
“How much you serve
God/love is how much love you accept and give.
"You guys have no
magical touchy healy power that YOU can directly control - you have physical
bodies to heal/touch/ love each other with. I have no physical form and thus I,
God / dead humans who are now angels have them - live in love and ask for
healing/forgiveness and I will help you, even if you don't believe in me. Power of prayer - in loving and asking me for
help and submitting to me/love and not trying to channel oogabooga (editorial insertion, “oogabooga”
meaning false beliefs in ”magic” I think) directly
you are being loving/like me (humility/ submission) and thus your inner energy
in combination with outer energy (me, other human's love/ loving prayers) will
heal you.
"There is killing
of spirit energies, but just as above you cannot channel them, and the source
of them isn't exactly willing to really share anyways unless you sell your
soul/life - your only possession you can keep - to him, and of course he gives
you the false power he has as he is a stingy and fearful OF HIS OWN SERVANTS ,
and for good reason- everyone down there is out to get each other. You do NOT activate these by not believing in
me or by abandoning God - only by abandoning truth/love do you do this. When
you repeatedly make
evil/selfish/stupid/insincere/"forced"/"chore" prayers, you
are exposed to the evil within and without you by being willful and not
listening to the doubting little inner light I gave you and thus being evil.
"There is no shame
in being fooled or having been fooled by the Evil One/ your bad soul fragment -
if you never think you were or are still, that is shameful and very dangerous
to you/others/love. (Editorial insertion, the ***TOTAL***
lack of any self-doubt is very, very dangerous!).
"Don't stop
forgiving people - when you say, I forgive this enemy of mine and wish them
better, that love etc., that you feel for them, goes out into the universe and
will help them back on to the middle road. Don't do it for your sake - "oh I me-me-me
want to get rid of the pain of bitterness" - do it for their sake and it
will help both of you instead of none of you.
“You are a child/part
of God so when you are mean to yourself you're being mean to a little kid/ God
in a roundabout way. "When I was
cold you did not give me a coat", etc.
“No light in total
darkness…
“There is no Light in
the Evil One- there is something in him
that appears to you to be light because that is the lie that appeals to you the most, a whole myriad
of lies.
“He wants no
redemption, and will be offered no mercy- my hand has been charred from how
many times I have extended my hand to try and help him save him from himself,
and he's not getting offered it any more- he has to save his own damned self.
OK,
now we are (to my current knowledge) REALLY at the end of strip-mining
Roxanne’s writings! Now there’s only a
few more items to address, from my personal memory, and then we can move on to
other things, besides “lessons from Roxanne”.
Honestly,
I cannot recall, did I read this in a forgotten file or fragment of Roxanne
writings, or was it word of mouth… But I
recall her saying or writing that God told her that it was somehow
“pre-arranged” that my wife and I should have to deal with Roxanne’s
spiritual-mental challenges, as part of our “growth plan”, or some such. As part of our own spiritual-mental
challenges, as it were.
Well,
it’s been a tough row to hoe, but I do NOT want to pollute the world with my
carping… I will try not to go down that
road! (Not too much, at least). “What did I do to deserve that?” We just don’t know! Yes, it is sometimes true that “no good deed
goes unpunished”… But we all have to
deal with that, in larger or smaller doses.
For you Christians out there, see the 9th of the lessons from
Jesus’s Beatitudes; “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and
utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who
were before you.”
That
may not seem to be too directly related to our specific case as described
here… Unless one includes among those
who “revile you and persecute you”, the Evil One
and its minions. And like just about
everyone, we in my family have also suffered from time to time, from our fellow
humans, without us having offended much.
Who among us cannot say that? So
anyway, from the 10,000 foot level, bad “stuff happens” from time to time,
whether we “deserve” it, or not. Enough
of that, from me! All I can add at this
time is, I and mine (my immediate mine, at least) have had mostly triumphs
(thanks, God!), but the struggle must continue…
Godspeed to all of us!
Well, let me also add this…
To any of you out there who haven’t won your immediately-nearby-battles
quite so much… To especially those who
have lost close-by loved ones to suicide…
My heart goes out to you! Do not
blame yourselves; you didn’t commit this deed, they did! Pray for their souls… We ***ALL*** have free will! This includes us changing our minds about
this matter of, who shall we serve?
Pray! Your benevolence will
ripple throughout the Universe, and do some good, somewhere… I do not know the details, but we need to
keep the Faith, and the Hope!
The point arising from the above (being “assigned” as parents to
Roxanne, for our own learning) that I more-so want to discuss, however, is
this: It brings up this “fate” thing,
which seems to be in direct contravention to free will! HOW can we be assigned to our next lifetimes
(or have our pick of only a very few choices, all of which will teach us the
next things that we need to learn), by God and the Angels, or by the Universe,
or by (fill in the blank)? This is a
classical puzzle… How can life lessons
(at the end of millions of free-will choices and random happenings) be
pre-selected? How can this circle be
squared?
I’m a free-will guy… But in
my metaphysical readings, I have read SOOO many times, about time being an
illusion, and “fate” and all… And the
limited selection of next-lifetime choices being available to us… That I have to lend it some credence. The only way I can “square this circle” is
that our immediate bosses (if we chose to let them be our bosses, which I
obviously think we should… The only
other choice ABSOLUTELY SUCKS!!!)… Those
bosses being “God and the Angels”, for lack of a better term… They see the future, only probabilistically. For you Christians, see Luke 15:10, that
tells us (in Jesus’s words), “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the
presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Well,
run the analysis (in human logic at the very least): Repentance was foretold, was “fate”? We knew that already! Ho-hum, no rejoicing! Probabilistically, it was NOT going to
happen? But it DID happen? NOW we are going to rejoice! So maybe God and the Angels are in training
(at a higher level, to be sure), just like we are. They do NOT see the future perfectly. This squares away with at least one of my
personal experiences of “strange things”…
Which I hope to get around to describing, later.
But
God’s God, or Her boss’s boss, or some such, maybe at SOME higher level… A level beyond us needing to worry about
right now… Maybe THERE, everything is
foreseen perfectly. THAT is the level at
which we get to choose a next lifetime! But
“machs nix” to us in the here and now…
We MUST operate in the “free will” world… So (I repeat myself from time to time, yes, I
know) we might as well lump God and all Her boss’s bosses, etc., together, and
just call them all “God” collectively.
That’s how I square this particular circle. If it helps you to stop worrying about such
things, please copy-paste-modify my beliefs at will! That’s why I babble-on, in hopes that it will
help someone somewhere…
So
free will v/s “fate” (a perfectly foreseen future, AKA, time is an illusion) is
clearly in the category of “fun to speculate about, but not practical”, in my
opinion. It simply does NOT often
(ever?) help us “love our neighbors”… Unless, at the way-extreme stretch, we can
simply say this: By coming up with a mental model of such things, which “works
for me”, then I can stop worrying about such silly or irrelevant things, and
get back to “loving my neighbor” better.
Falling
into a somewhat related, certainly similarly silly or irrelevant category, is “solipsism”. Use that word as a search-string here, and
you can see Roxanne’s take on this. As
is SOMETIMES (not always, not by a long shot) the case, this is Roxanne’s
re-tread of things she has heard from her mother or I. “Solipsism”, in case you’re not familiar with
it, was the idea (in ancient times) that our human lives are not real; they are
a dream (perhaps we are all characters in some giant or higher-level creature’s
dream). In the more-modern re-spin,
maybe we are “bits and bytes” in some giant computer simulation, or an isolated
brain floating in a vat of biochemicals, nutrients, etc., with
stimulus-response electrodes running hither and yon, making us THINK we’re
doing and seeing, what we are “doing” and “seeing”… “The Matrix” movie-style, as Roxanne alluded
to.
Well,
just in case Roxanne wasn’t clear here…
The danger of such thinking should be clear! “It’s just a simulation”, so we can do what
we want to, on a whim, and not worry about the consequences! Mass murder?
Suicide? Why not? I am tired of this “simulation”, it’s not
going my way, so I quit! The game-player
will just stick another few quarters in the slot, and we’ll be right back!
Well,
think of yourself as the simulation-player who has put in untold hours and
hours, setting up you way-cool “Sim City” setup, or other computer
simulation… And now, your simulated
humans or other creatures are all committing mass murder and / or suicide! You’re going to be a bit miffed, right? And the so-called “simulation” that we are
“playing” in… It should be pretty
obvious, someone went to GREAT painstaking troubles to set it all up, yes? The lesson should be obvious… If we ARE in a “mere simulation”, we’d be
well advised to “play nicely”, anyway!
OK,
time for the last story from Roxanne’s times of troubles… I cannot honestly recall for sure, was it in high
school days, or college. But one day she
came up to my wife and I (who are lounging in bed as I recall), and she tells
us (more or less) that “Jesus just visited me.
He was wearing a hoodie. He told
me that it is NOT necessary to get all spun up on “Believing in Jesus”… Just try to live a sensible life, and get
along with people.” (The first parts I
recall clearly; the last, not so much).
I
was off-hand worried about the “hoodie” thing…
If we’ve got a bright light, we’re not supposed to hide it under a
bushel basket, right? Was that really
Jesus? But then I thought about it some
more, and I recall reading a Bible story or two here or there, where people had
to avert their eyes, or be “blinded by the Light” (as in St. Paul’s trip to
Damascus). In modern parlance, the “kundalini”
experience (AKA, “kundalini awakening”) has been known to knock people into a
non-functional state for a week or two, sometimes perhaps more… And God as disguising (hiding) Her face, for
this reason, has been shown to me in at least one night-time dream. So the “hoodie” made sense, after all.
As I
recall, in her mentally disturbed states at the time, Roxanne was (briefly)
wondering if she had to “get all Christian-y”, or some such. Excessive (misguided) religiousity CAN
actually feed mental illness! (It can
also simply be a waste of energy, as in, we run around all day, every day, saying,
“Let Jesus into your life”, and forget to do ANYTHING practical, in the real
world, to actually help people. “Work is
Love made visible”, you know.) And
parenthetically, let me add, at least once, I also heard Roxanne say,
sidewise-like once, from the Evil One as I (very vaguely) recall, she “got the
message”, as she liked to say, at times, that the Evil One LOVES it when
religious people get ridiculous, self-righteous, and hide-bound, because it
helps to hide the central truths of religion or spirituality! It opens religious belief up to ridicule, that
is. Hey!
Do we discount the entire idea of the joys that can be inherent in
marriage, just because the married neighbors down the block are always
fighting?!?! … Well anyway, the clear
take-away that I got, is that Jesus saw some danger there in Roxanne’s brain,
running down the wrong tracks, and specifically intervened to head off the
danger. Thank You, Jesus!
One
very-very common fault of the ultra-religious is “Bible worship” or “Scripture
worship” (worship of the written word), instead of “Love worship”. In other words, the more literally I can take
the scriptures, the more virtuous I am!
Let me get back to that in just a little while… Time, first, for a “misc.” break…
Please
forgive my lack of better organization…
But I have a few thoughts which I have a hard time classifying. I want to jot them down and just get them out
of my head, before I forget them again… For a really-cool web site I stumbled
across the other day, please read the writings of the “Evangelical Liberal”, at
https://evangelicaliberal.wordpress.com/
… THIS is my kind of Christianity! This is apparently written by “Harvey
Edser”. Harvey’s take on evil (clearly a
bit of a special interest of mine) is at https://evangelicaliberal.wordpress.com/category/evil-2/
… With sub-headings from there. At no more than some casual glances so far, I
like Harvey’s writings, because they seem to reflect a genuine humility. Also, he (as a Christian) goes out of his way
to ***NOT*** demonize atheists and agnostics, which is commendable! We can ALWAYS learn from others, no matter
how different (from ours) that their beliefs may be. If you like churches but
dislike dogma, please check out the Universalist Unitarian church, by the way. PS to the PS, Harvey here wrote of a lady
atheist friend of his, who calls herself, sometimes, an “atheist for
Jesus”… Meaning, and atheist who shares
with Jesus, Jesus’s concerns for the poor, the downtrodden, and the
outcasts. I LOVE it!!!
Also see http://crumpetsandbollocks.com/merry-christmas-vs-happy-holidays/#comment-21525
and associated… She is a potty-mouth,
but so am I (just not on these pages…
Trying not to offend). What these
writers have in common (with me as well), is that we are trying to elevate loving
and doing, and including inclusiveness (even though that may be repetitive
redundancy!), and down-playing the dogma.
Maybe one of these days I’ll grow this short list of cool blogs and web
sites… There are SOOO many out there!
Moving on… I’ve written here a fair amount about
“balance”. M. Scott Peck wrote a fair
amount about “paradox”… That no
“philosophy of life” can be complete without some element of paradox. I do believe that this is true…
So…
In any lie, there is usually at least a tiny snippet truth (unless the
statement is purely of the physical realm, such as
item XYZ weighs 5 pounds). Let me trot
out my favorite example: Adolf Hitler
said, “Who
says I am not under the special protection of God?” We might as well cut out the coyness and fake
“Socratic method” crap here and say that Hitler was saying that he was
specially favored by God… A clearly
megalomaniacal thing to say!
Well, the “truth in every lie”, and
“paradox” thingees here… How do they
apply? I say, “I am specially favored by
God, because I know that I am NOT specially favored by God!” A little bit of mental jujitsu, and we get to
some helpful truths here (through the use of paradox).
I know that I am not specially favored
by God… If I play Russian roulette all
day, sooner or later, I will die. If I
sleep (unprotected) with too many hookers, I will catch a horrible disease,
sooner or later. If I go picking fights,
and drunk driving all the time, yada yada…
You get my drift. Since I know
that I am NOT specially favored here, I try to live a half-decent,
sober-minded, responsible life. And for
that reason, I am at least a tiny bit “specially favored” over those who live
more-dissolute lives. So there you have
it… What I consider to be a classic case
of “what I’m talkin’ about” here, should be obvious.
Also this, under the “misc.”,
here: Roxanne has been on a more-even
keel these days, and has held a job for more than a year now (Her research
funding where she works runs out in a few months, so she’ll be going back to school
soon for a full year, to get another bachelor’s degree, in a more-in-demand,
specific sub-major). But she still gets
“messages” from time to time… As I do,
even, every few years or so! My wife
says, “Oh, wow, now I have TWO mental cases on my hand, GREAT! Just kidding).”, when I bring these kinds of
things up. But I reassure Roxanne that
these kinds of things are NOT to be worried about… So long as we continue to discern the SOURCES
of these “messages”! And that’s not all
that hard to do, actually, when we recall the magic 4-letter word of “Love”,
and then, just trust our instincts. Is
the “message” one of Love, or not?
One “message” she got, from God,
lately, was that “God” doesn’t really prefer to be known as “God”; He-She-It
would prefer to be known as “Love”! This
squares completely straight-up with what I have been thinking and writing
about… It is just surprising to hear it
quite that straight-forwardly, literally put.
I do recall that during her times of troubles, one of the “messages”
that Roxanne got from Love (God) was that Love (God) has exceedingly,
vanishingly little (if any?) powers in the physical world, that may be legitimately,
safely used, other than “whispering” messages of Love, and encouraging Love, in
us beings here in the physical world. WE
are Love’s agents, that is!
OK, so now here it is, not to be at all
coy about this… Love’s “message” to
Roxanne at that time, included at least one thing that will anger some of the
un-evolved or un-advanced among us: Love
can take many forms… Gay and straight,
humans to animals (pets), and vice versa.
As long as there is Love, all else is cool! Gay people were specifically mentioned… Love (God) can act between any beings, and if
we were wise, we would stand in the way of ***NO*** forms of genuine Love,
ever! There is preciously little enough
Love in this world, such that we should stand in the way of NO flavor of it,
ever!
I recall saying pretty much the same
thing as above, in the context of inter-racial dating and marriage, many years
ago. I may have (probably did) mention
this to Roxanne, at one point, when she was younger. So yes, the skeptical reader can say, “Love
(God’s) voice here, in Roxanne’s head, is just an echo chamber for Melvin
Marten’s thoughts”. OK, yes, the general
drift was there… But I can personally
testify that it was mind-bending, how literally the Love = God thing came back
to me! I hadn’t really a clue, just HOW
far this thing goes! It includes loving
our very-worst enemies, too!!! THAT is
what I am trying to make this web page be all about!
So at times, the New-Age writers having
to use some other word, all the time, instead of just plain ol’ simple “God”,
does annoy me. Write it plain and
simple, willya?!?! But now, I am
thinking I’ll have to start doing it their way, at least a wee tad… “God” will now become “Love (God)”, or, sometimes
just “Love”. I hope that won’t annoy
y’all too terribly much…
A while back (far above) I once
promised you, the reader, that I would not make major changes to previously-written
materials… New stuff always crops up at
the bottom. Well, I will now have to
carve out the first exception to this…
This area right here will new begin to be the “Roxanne Update” area (use
that as search-string). Otherwise,
organization goes to Hell in a handbasket…
Anyway, we all hope Roxanne’s
major-major dealings with too-too many “messages from beyond”, are all now in
the past! Especially since she
faithfully takes her meds… But the “messages”
do keep in trickling in, in dribbles and drabs.
None of us panic over this, and I do not think that we should. My wife sometimes has been known to ask
Roxanne, “Hey, look, do you think you could just say “I had the thought…”,
rather than, “I got the message”?”
… Trying to get Roxanne to drop
the drama, you know…
But Roxanne will at times respond, “But
I DID “get the message”, it is not a fib”!
So the latest “message” that Roxanne
“got”, she says, was from Jesus… General
reassurance. Jesus struggled with the
same things that Roxanne is currently struggling with. What is from God, what is not from God. What is legitimately to be worried about, and
what is trivial. But hear this: “Work towards stilling My Voice.” Jesus said that to Roxanne! These “messages” are generally for emergencies
only. When we are in our full bloom,
operating at our best, we figure it out for ourselves! THAT is apparently how we maximize this crop
that we are harvesting for Heaven, it seems!
This is frustrating, to me. I’m an engineer… It should be about a goal, and getting there
most efficiently and quickly, with an optimized solution. So I beg God to tell me exactly what to do,
often! Usually I get squat in response! Other than my night-time dreams, which are a
mish-mash, usually, and often randomly meaningless… Unless they are meant for my unconscious
mind? So, not to worry, consciously, in
that case…
But God is not this kind of an engineer,
nor a joy-stick-wielding controller of human robots… It’s just about ALL about our learning! So what Roxanne has most recently heard from
Jesus, upon close inspection, has the clear ring of truth!
That’s the minor “Roxanne update” for
recently. The more important one (to me
at least) is as follows: (Keeping in
mind that Roxanne talks with her mother a lot more than with me, lately)… Roxanne has been known, several times lately,
to muse to my wife, about how we can NOT solve other people’s troubles for them,
and about how we can hence NOT solve the world’s troubles, either! How…
“Hey look, Jesus and Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. and who knows how
many others, have already come and gone, and we are STILL killing each other in
the name of religion”! So give UP on
fixing it all, already!
Sound familiar?
“Hey, look, Jesus has
come and gone, as have the various other religious-spiritual gurus, and we’re
still killing each other in the name of religion. You think you’re gonna FIX that?!!? Give it up!”.
The above is a repeat
from MUCH further above; it is what my wife and I told Roxanne… OK, here comes another repeat from above, so
that you can use them as search-strings to see the contexts…
“My best guess is that we
said that sort of thing to Roxanne about 1,567,092 times, give or take 5.”
So here comes the full
brunt of this: I have been holding back
on y’all, readers… I have been
sandbagging! I have been carrying
immense resentment towards God and Roxanne, because NO ONE LISTENS TO
ME!!! I’ve not screamed into my keyboard
about this, because I do NOT want to spread too much negativity! But now that I can finally see the positive
side of this (the light at the end of the tunnel, or some such), then I can
finally let loose a bit more.
Pray hard enough, pour
your heart and soul into it enough, and once in a blue moon, someone,
somewhere, will actually LISTEN to what you say! Yes, it is true! Believe it, or not! (Believe it, is a lot better).
Unless you hit the
jackpot (your name is Jesus or some such; and even then, lots of folks will
only PRETEND to listen to you), you have no hope of having anyone listen to
you, other than those closest to you.
And even then, you will have to say it my proverbial “1,567,092 times,
give or take 5.” Wisdom is
near-impossible to transmit. That is
what Jesus was saying in his parable about the lamp-oil and the bridesmaids… See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Ten_Virgins
“Still, a man hears what
he wants to hear and disregards the rest”… music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzUEL7vw60U
from Simon and Garfunkel. So it was 2 K
years + ago; so will it remain for the foreseeable future.
But once in a while, a great
miracle happens, and someone DOES listen to us!
So we have to keep the faith! And
so make sure it is something GOOD that you say, that they just ***MIGHT***
listen to, then!
My wife’s mother used to
say things (repeatedly) to her son (my wife’s brother; said brother also having
“heard the voices” at times). Years later,
after my brother-in-law would hear these things and stew on them, back they
would come, often modified, but “as his own ideas”!
From me personally, my
father told me as a child, “You know, institutions do not and can not love
you. Only an individual human, or God,
can love you”. Something along those
lines. Your organization does not love
you… Not your military unit, not your
school, not your employer, not even your church. Maybe a tiny-tiny church can love you, once
in a blue moon, but certainly not a mega-church. Institutions can not love you.
I recall writing home,
years later, saying, “OK, yes, you told me this! But I had to learn it for myself!”
So cling to your faith
that once in a great while, you CAN share your brides-maids lamp-oil! Not often, but we have to keep on
trying. And I am trying to fully ‘fess
up, here… I am only now getting my faith
back, on this one. It was harshly
frustrating (it induced a feeling of utter powerlessness) to fully consider
that Roxanne could keep right on ignoring what my wife and I had to say, and
become a mentally ill homeless person, or worse. This is what lies at the end of the road
(along with other roads, of course) of thinking that we can, should, or must,
solve all of the world’s troubles.
And yes, I am aware of
the paradox here, that the vitally important wisdom that needed transmitted, is
the near-impossibility of transmitting wisdom!
Here comes a NEW “Roxanne update”: Roxanne, now 4 years after the worst of her
“times of troubles”, still “hears the voices” from time to time, but they are
muted. Mixed good and bad… She has heard from her deceased grandmother
(mostly just to the point of “smelling coffee”, when there was no coffee nearby
anywhere, when thinking of her coffee-addicted grandmother , or somehow needing
the influence of her grandmother). Then
she also heard from here deceased grandfather, who said, “Say hi to my daughter
for me”, meaning, to Roxanne’s mother, “Melissa”. And (more disturbing of course) she has also
heard murmurings from my suicide-deceased brother, “Franklin”, urging her to
follow in his self-destructive footsteps.
Roxanne is about as immune to this kind of thinking as most of the rest
of us, these days, so I don’t know why “Franklin” bothers, any more. Let him waste his time… Maybe some other potential victim will be
spared, while he wastes his efforts!
Here comes yet another “Roxanne update”: Roxanne says her glimpses of the other worlds
continue, despite her meds. She and I
and her mother are all fundamentally OK with this, even though it does bother
Roxanne to (?) “not be normal”, or however one would put it. But after all that she’s been through, she
knows the difference between the good voices, and the bad… What is more difficult, at times, is
discerning the difference between “my own thoughts” and “intruding thoughts”
(AKA “voices from beyond”). Even this
latter issue may not be much of a real issue, as long as we can think and act
responsibly and lovingly.
Lest I appear to be trying to be too
coy, let me state this clearly: In the
choice between calling some of this “intruding thoughts” v/s “voices from
beyond”, I think the latter is sometimes more accurate. But I’m NOT itching to fight anyone over this
distinction!
OK, the latest from Roxanne: Search through this web page for references
to “Elmer” if you’ve been skipping and skimming. Roxanne has heard from, or gotten glimpses
of, or word of, Elmer. Elmer is now an
“ascended demon”, working for the good guys.
He’s not scrubbing toilet bowls in Heaven… If you recall, we explained to Elmer that
being the lowest-ranked toilet-bowl-scrubber in Heaven was a darned sight more
pleasant than being the biggest big deal among all the demons.
Elmer’s job as an “ascended demon” is
to act as a shepherd of the angels.
Angels, having free will, are free to defect over to the bad guys… They can ignore God and Elmer and everyone
else if they want to, and go ahead and defect.
But Elmer talks sense to them one last time, and, I imagine, sways them
back to the good side, in most cases. I
imagine that Elmer has plenty of company…
He couldn’t be the only one doing this job!
So I’ve gotten all wrapped up about
“Love”, and haven’t paid much attention to “free will” in my thinking and
writing, lately. Roxanne’s telling me
about Elmer’s job as “ascended demon” corrected my course, a bit. “Free will” is a REALLY big deal!
So some of the angels get all torqued
off at Love’s (God’s) rigid insistence on the inviolability of free will… Love will NOT serve as our coercive dictator! Won’t do it, no way, no how! Not even just a tiny WEE tad! The lesser angels (those of lesser understanding)
look at all the wars, tortures, genocides, and evils of inhumane humans, get
frustrated and impatient, and say, “See, Love (God), Your Way isn’t
working! Free will is all hosed up! We’ve got to find a better way!” And they want to go and defect, and find
someone who’ll take away the freedom (free will) of humans, to “fix” it
all! The Evil One may have a better fix!
Elmer and other “ascended demons” can
talk sense to the potential defectors…
With a plain and simple message!
“Hey, buddy, this isn’t a smart move!
I’ve been there and done that, and the place is a literal
hell-hole! Endless snapping and
snarling, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! There’s no Love there! No fun at ALL! Please don’t go! If you can’t stay here with us, for the sake
of Love, then stay here with us for your own sake! Trust me!”
Upon hearing this from Roxanne… Who talks more freely these days to me than
to her mother, about freaky stuff like this, at least… It freaks her mother out more than it freaks
me out… I said to myself, “Wow! Makes sense to me! Scrubbing toilet bowls makes no real sense,
actually, but being a been-there-and-done-that “shepherd to the angels” makes
ALL of the sense in the world, to me!”
So this is yet another case of Roxanne’s “stuff” (messages, voices)
firmly persuading me that there’s a “reality” behind them.
What freaks me out is that any angels
would defect in the first place… I
thought that it was common knowledge that Hell is a Hell-hole… Not a nice vacation spot (or dwelling place)
for anyone!
But the inviolability of free will goes
down awfully hard with some folks… Also,
some of us apparently don’t realize that there’s only two Masters out
there… One supports free will and Love,
the other wants to destroy the both of them!
One “smites” (or more accurately, persuades us to smite ourselves), and
the other does not! There is NO choice
available, of a Master who selectively, carefully violates our freedom or
smites us, for the general benefit of all!
This latter beast is every bit as mythical, maybe even more so, than
unicorns!
13 Jan. 2018 Intermission: “Roxanne Updates” are now way-way stale… Last updated as of late April 2017. The summer of 2017 has been a wild ride,
culminating with Roxanne’s psychotic break in late summer, early fall. She was hospitalized for nearly a month, and
had to drop plans to start school right at that same time. She is now at home with us, steadily
recovering, getting ready to attempt this one-year program to gain a second
bachelor’s degree, starting in the fall of 2018. So this now calls for an entirely new section
of this getting-way-long journal. Go see
The Story of Roxanne’s Psychotic Breakdown, and
sections immediately above it (for closely associated topics).
Let’s transition away
from “Roxanne updates” to another Misc.” topic.
That is as follows: “Cutesy”
people who want to attract attention to what they say, do, or write, by calling
night “day”, and day, “night”.
Specifically, actually, they call Satan “God”, and vice versa. Citations available upon request (as usual,
email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com
).
But
the essence is, “Satanists” who, when questioned, will eagerly explain that
they favor rationality, responsibility, and refraining from harming
others. So basically, they are calling
“God” by the name of “Satan” (or “Lucifer”), to attract attention to
themselves. Attention-grabbing at the
expense of polluting the language, and causing confusion. If that sentiment right there makes me sound
like the Grammar Police and the Language Nazi, so be it. We’re talking good v/s evil here,
though… Not a trivial thing like night
v/s day… Enough said, I hope!
Here’s another one for the “misc.”
category: Scripted v/s unscripted… Closed loop v/s open loop. “Improv” (improvisational) humor and theater,
v/s strictly scripted. There’s many
places where a “script” is needed: A
movie, a rocket ship design, or a corporate sales & marketing plan. OK, yes, even at times, literally, a war or
battle plan… ONLY when there is no other
vaguely decent choice!
After the brainstorming sessions are
over, though, we need to “march together” towards the common goal… Until such time as, in the face of utter failure,
we’ve really got to change our minds! My God (my Love (God) is a hard fit, here!),
life is hard! Tough decisions must be
made, and there are no simple formulas to be had, I’m so sorry…
“Never trust anyone who proposes to
solve all of the world’s troubles, with a 15-word slogan”. Go ahead and ascribe that one to me, Melvin
Marten… Now notice, my slogan has 17
words… Only TWO more words than the
simpleton’s slogans, who I am condemning!!!
Am I (at 17 words not 15 words) to be trusted, or not?!?! Only YOU can decide!
Anyway, the “scripted” approach has
it’s proper places… As does the “closed
loop” (more engineering-oriented). The
“closed loop” example here, in the engineering world, would be, for one, the
refrigerating fluids (Freon for example) circulating in your AC system, or your
fridge. The cooling fluids do the exact
same thing, all day, every day… NO new,
unscripted challenges come their way!
But in our personal and spiritual
lives, nothing but unscripted “improv theater” will do! Do NOT pre-plan and pre-rehearse your
life! THAT kind of planning is a certain
route to mental illness! I think of
“Charlene” and her mental / dream “machine”, in M. Scott Peck’s “People of the
Lie” book, here. That, I am fairly
certain, is where Roxanne got her term for bad mental “machines”… The “machine” here is the never-ending dream
of some sort of ultra-controlled, precise, infallible, mechanistic “formula”
that will tell us all day, every day, EXACTLY what to do! Every time that our “machine” fails, we think
we’ve got to add just a WEE tad more mechanistic complexity, to said
“machine”! And this is a guaranteed
route to utter failure! Do NOT go
there! (I’m sorry I have no more details
on that; I wish I could explain it better).
Well OK, maybe try this: Your
“script” should be just ONE word:
“Love”! (Now I am down to a 1-word
slogan, so I am managing to confuse even myself!).
Well OK, being lawyer-like, I now have
to amend my slogan which purports to solve all troubles, and it needs to catch
both the need for more complexity (avoiding the ideological-idiocy route of a
“simple 3-word slogan”), ***AND*** it needs to capture the need for
simplicity! So here we go: “Never trust anyone who proposes to solve all
of the world’s troubles, with a 15-word slogan or less, unless it is a one-word
slogan, with that one word being “Love””.
Now my slogan has 32 words… Well
in excess of the condemned number of “15”…
NOW you can trust me, clearly!
Getting back to the specifics of “improv”
v/s “scripted”, I am reminded of a “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon, in which Hobbes
(the stuffed tiger) fantasizes to Calvin about falling in love (presumably with
another stuffed tiger). “She’s going to
call me Bitsy Woogums”, says the dreamy-eyed stuffed toy, as Calvin makes
faces.
So then, “scripted” expectations in
romances are one of the most counter-productive of such “scripts”! This a much-tapped vein of humor… Usually at the expense of females! “This is the part where you are supposed to
softly, gently call me “Bitsy Woogums”, cuddle me in your arms, and plant a
long and soft one on my glistening lips”, she thinks. But he hasn’t a clue… And the LAST thing we can expect, is for her
to TELL him what she expects! He is
supposed to KNOW these things!
My wife and I didn’t struggle with
these things, thank Love (God). My
wife’s good female friend in high school and college did, though. My wife got tired, at times, of hearing of the
never-ending, but never-fulfilled, “scripts”.
I met my wife’s friend at my mother-in-law’s funeral. A very, very sweet and charming lady; I can
say that w/o reservations. But I am told
that her romances (including some long ones) never really blossomed… She was never married. These things sadden me… Do NOT go “scripted” in places where “improv”
is the far better thing!
OK, let me say
it right up front… I am pulling my
punches here. I could go on all day, and
strongly, about this. But, my (regular,
nighttime, not LSD-fueled) dreams, as best as I can follow, have instructed me
not to. I’m not supposed to spread too
terribly much animosity… Chances of
persuading anyone, of anything, are too terribly remote already anyway. “Dumping on” the scripture-worshippers isn’t
going to solve anything! In case I am
losing you already, Dear Reader, lemme just give you the summary: We are supposed to worship LOVE, not the
supposedly-Holy scriptures!
In more details,
please let me give you just two examples, and we’ll blow on outta here… I’m going to go the Christian route, because
I am dull and boring, and that’s all I know!
If I were Islamic or Buddhist, I bet I could do similar things with
their Holy Scriptures! (Please do NOT
even talk to me about Scientology, because it makes my head spin 360 and then
720 and more! When THAT particular topic
comes up, I have also been known to spit up split-pea, green-gray soup! Sometimes I wonder if I might be the
Anti-L-Ron-Hubbarf!).
How about,
figurative v/s literal? Just to get our
feet wet, a wee tad? The below is a
lightly-edited version of a letter I wrote to a near-and-dear fundamentalist at
the age of 41. I am now 58 (17 years
later). My mind has changed very little,
in certain respects, I can see… Progress
may be slow, but so is regress! Anyway,
please read the below, and zero in on the mentions of “poisons”, and how they
can be taken literally, or figuratively…
The full context
of the below letter, I cannot (or will not) share with you. As far as I could tell, it did not reach it’s
mark. But it MIGHT have; we just never
know certain things, till the day we die.
It just MIGHT have made some now-invisible-to-me, critical
difference... I just don’t know. I struggle with frustrations of either the
illusions (or the truths, I don’t know which) of being a person screaming,
unheeded, into the wilderness, at times.
All we can do, is to keep on keeping on, and leave the rest to Love, I
suppose!
Onwards, to the
lightly edited letter excerpt! This is
more biased towards “Scripture worship” than the “real me”. I spoke the language of my target, here (a
literalist, fundamentalist). But the
central essences of what I said? I stand
by them, to this day:
I
think it wise to understand that sometimes Christ spoke as God Himself, and
sometimes he spoke as a man. If I had to
pick one thing that Christ said that shows the nature of God, then it would
have to be when Christ cried over Jerusalem, saying that He has so, so often
wanted to gather us all under His Loving Wings like a mother hen gathers its
chicks, BUT WE WOULDN’T LET HIM!!! See Matt 23:37 and Luke 13:14. You see, we can tell God what to do, and what
not to do, and He’ll let us get away with it, that’s how committed He is to
free will. He loves us more than we
could ever know as mere mortals, He desires our love, He desires to protect us,
more than we can imagine, but the way He’s made this universe, the way He set
it out from the beginning, is that He cannot or will not violate our free
will. He will NOT use force to gather
His chicks! He desires our love freely
given, freely chosen- not coerced. What
is coerced love and goodness? It is
false- it is slavery. If we are forced
to be good, if we have no genuine choice to do genuine evil, then we are just
cattle, mindlessly forced hither and yon with the whip, the fence, and the
yapping of dogs. The Good Lord created
us humans for something far more important- the free exercise of free will. We, each and every one of us, must ultimately
chose good or evil. Make your choices
well and wisely, and not on shallow or foolish criteria.
So
I am here to tell you that I have prayed long and hard over the issues that I
now write to you about, and I am truly and sincerely convinced that God (my
conscience is one of many synonyms) has asked me to write this letter. Just last night, as a matter of fact, I had a
dream that I think gave me the final green light on this project. Now I realize there are those out there that
will claim to have had dreams and visions, visitations from God, and so on, and
will use these things as a method to claim power for themselves. There are most assuredly such things as a
false prophets, as wolves in sheep’s clothing, and I’d be one of them if I were
to deny this. But a prime, prime lesson
that I am called upon to deliver to you is that there is great danger in taking
literally that which was meant to be taken figuratively.
I
can think of no better example of this than Mark 16:18, where we are told that
those who really believe, shall be able to take up serpents and drink poisons
and not be harmed. Now do you really,
really believe this literally? Do you
even for a second believe that you (or any other mortal human) could drink a
quart of arsenic and plutonium-laced formaldehyde, and live to tell the
tale? Don’t you realize that many people
have paid a high price for believing such things? But this is what we are led to believe, if we
take this verse literally. Those who
believe, can drink ANY deadly thing, and in no way, be harmed, it says. Christ also told us that we shouldn’t put God
to the test (Matt 4:7). From what I know
of such things, that is EXACTLY what many participants in suicides and
attempted suicides, such as those that might take up a poisonous snake and
deliberately be bitten, or those that might drink poisons, or those that might
fling themselves off of a tall building as Satan once tempted Christ to do, are
doing. They are testing God, putting God
to a trial, trying to force God’s hand.
If God really, really, really loves me, they say to themselves, then He
will save me from myself. Alternately
put, they are trying to storm the gates of Heaven by force and violence; force
and violence committed upon themselves.
So
these are obviously matters of the very gravest importance, here. Why didn’t Christ warn, right there side by
side with the quote about snakes and poisons, that we are NOT to put God to the
test? A little repetition helps hammer home
the important points. Why the quote
about snakes and poisons in the first place?
I sure don’t know. There are
those who claim that we are better off without those who are so (??? struggle with word choice here... Arrogant?
Stupid? Foolish?) as to eliminate
themselves. Would Christ have laid this
as a trap? No, no, and again, no, this
surely cannot be the case! Such thoughts
trouble me greatly. It grates on my
nerves when I hear such sentiments expressed (and I have heard them expressed,
fairly often) that we are better off without the presence of those who do such
things. Good riddance, they say! Have people who say such things ever
experienced the loss of a loved one to this unspeakably horrible thing? I keep my thoughts to myself on this matter,
by and large, though, saying to myself, well, people who say these things, they
are merely afraid to ponder too deeply the mysteries of self-destruction, and
they think this way to quickly dismiss the frightening mystery. And I can sympathize with that! May the Good Lord protect me from too deep of
a knowledge of such matters! For you
see, to ultimately know something, one has to partake in it.
No,
the only sense that I can make of the snakes and poisons quote is that the
foolish will do foolish things, and the arrogant will do arrogant things, with
or without any given excuse from any given person, or even from God
Himself. I’m 41 years old now, and have
seen enough of the world that I know that this is true. So Christ wasn’t doing any harm, saying such
a thing.
But
then, what good was He doing?
Well, I’m convinced He was speaking figuratively, and He was making a
very important point. Snakes and poisons
clearly stand for harmful or evil ideas.
Those who really believe are free to take them up, play with them,
swallow them even, and then spit them back out, put them back to the side, and
walk on, unharmed. YOU NEED NOT FEAR ANY
EVIL IF YOU REALLY BELIEVE!!! We all
know He told us not to fear those who can merely kill the body (Luke 12:4). But the snakes and poisons thing here is
something a bit different. He’s telling
us not to run away and hide from evil ideas.
We can safely play with ANY idea, safely stew on it, and then reject
that which needs to be rejected, if we really believe. There are NO forbidden topics, NO forbidden
questions, and NO forbidden thoughts, if we really believe. We stew on the thought, rationally,
carefully, fully, realistically, and then we reject that which is evil. So if you fear that I am a false prophet, then
put that fear to the side, on the basis of Mark 16:18. None of us needs to fear any evil, save
one: That we, ourselves, should commit
evil; that we should assimilate an evil idea so far as to substantially act
upon it, causing harm. And if we pray sincerely
enough, God WILL guide us away from this one and only evil that we need to
fear.
So
set aside your fear. You may safely read
this letter. If I should speak evil,
then rational, calm thought and sincere prayer will reveal this to you. Still not convinced? Let me find a few more Words of Wisdom from
the Master Himself to convince you further, then. How about Matt 10:16, “ Behold, I
send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as
serpents, and harmless as doves.” BE WISE
AS SERPENTS!!! I think He deliberately
chose serpents here (a common symbol for evil) to say that we have to be just
as sharp, astute, and fully informed as the opposition, if not more so. That means, don’t stick your head in the sand
like an ostrich! See no evil, hear no
evil, speak no evil just plain doesn’t cut it!
Yes, yes, certainly there is a balance here. May the Good Lord protect us all from
ultimate knowledge of evil, which is only obtained by committing evil. That violates the command here to be as
harmless as doves. But short of that, we
should NOT take pride in our ignorance!
We are all ignorant of many, many things. But taking pride in our ignorance has another
name: Arrogance! (Redacted name of
target of letter): Please listen to me!
Refusing to read a letter addressed to you is arrogant! Unless you get 100 fan letters a day and
haven’t time to read them all, there’s no excuse for not reading a letter addressed
to you! Especially from your own
(Redacted name of my relationship to target of letter)! I can’t believe that you could sit there and
chastise me for the contents of a letter you hadn’t even read for yourself, and
TELL me this even, without at least a twinge of nagging conscience. Is this perhaps also how you form your opinions
on major matters of importance, such as reading and interpreting the
Bible? How can you be trusted to make
well-informed judgments in the larger matters, if you can’t be trusted to do
the same in the smaller matters? You let
other people read the Bible for you, and tell you what it says? This is not a smart idea! I enclose a Bible for you, in hopes that you
might actually READ it for yourself, and think about it for yourself also. If you ponder the truth for yourself, and
seek it honestly, from the Bible and the many, many other ways that God tries
to talk to us- dreams, people, books,
newspapers, magazines, and other stores of knowledge and fiction, the nature of
our bodies and the natural world, visions, intuition, reason, and on and on- if
you seek the truth with an open mind, then the Truth will set you free. Trust the Master on this one. John 8:32.
Take your self-chosen blinders off, because you are far, far better,
more valuable and wiser than a dumb beast of burden, to be spooked by silly
little things like evil ideas.
OK, so there you
have it. After 17 years, I have nothing
to add… Maybe I could subtract a wee
tad, in the name of brevity, but I am too lazy!
Let’s move on… From the same
letter, now… This time, we are tackling
the deliberate thing about “We decide what we want to do, and then we go pick
up the Scriptures, and find justification for what we’ve already decided to
do”. This is where I could “go nuclear”
on you… As Shakespeare’s character said,
“The Devil, too, knows how to quote Scriptures”. Mounty Python’s “Holy Grail” movie and “do
your worst”? No, not gonna “do my
worst”!!! NOT gonna say “NI” to little
old ladies!!! So again, I am pulling my
punches, and will leave this alone, after the below… This time, no (non-trivial) edits needed:
And now I wish to make myself as clear
as I can possibly make myself, about what I’m trying to say about good and bad
ways to go and use / read the Bible. I
can’t find the quote at the moment, but there’s a case in which someone said
something along these lines, “So-and-so uses the Bible the way a drunk uses a
lamp-post; not so much for illumination, as for support.” The drunk just wants to stand rather than
fall over, so he leans against the lamp-post for support. He doesn’t use the lamp’s light, he just
props himself up, you see. So if we are
already totally convinced that whatever we’re thinking is right, we can go and
find things in the Bible to “prop us up”, even if we happen to be so drunken
with self-righteousness, that the far better thing would be, like a drunk, for
us to fall down, refrain from drinking the evil brew for a while, sleep it off,
and come back for a better look when we’re sober. AND MAYBE NEXT TIME WE CAN ACTUALLY USE THE
LIGHT FROM THE BIBLE, IF WE READ IT FOR ILLUMINATION RATHER THAN FOR SUPPORT!!!
As
Shakespeare said, the Devil knows how to quote scripture. In case this is not clear to you, I will now
demonstrate what sorts of things we can “prop up” using a totally literal
reading of the Bible, and two-plus-two-equals-four kinds of thinking. So suppose you come across a man starving to
death, too weak to work to earn his next meal.
The right thing to do is to feed him, right! Well, yes, if it doesn’t somehow cause
greater harm, and you’ve got a conscience.
But if not, what can we “prop up”?
If we examine 2
Thessalonians 3:10, we see that we are commanded that “If any will not work,
neither let him eat.” So God’s Word
tells us we can’t feed him (whenever I hear about “God’s Infallible Word”, I
always get my guard up, staying on the lookout for nasty shenanigans). And what does The Infallible Word of God tell
us to do with the starving? Lamentations
4:9 tells us that those who are killed by the sword are better off, suffer
less, than those who starve to death.
Would you rather die a slow death, by starvation, or a quick, merciful
one? God’s Word, once again, rules
Supreme. It is, indeed, better to perish
by the sword, than to starve to death.
So we must KILL that starving man, not feed him!!!
Enough of that! (Enough of the “purple prose” above?) This is NOT good for my digestion, so let’s
just move on, shall we?
Many-many
books (and magazines such as “Guideposts” and “Mysterious Ways, More Than
Coincidence”, which are reasonably tame and believable) have tabulated the
sometimes-strange personal experiences of various people. I’m sorry, I cannot believe them all… Books that mention human levitation, for
example… It seems clear to me, that SOME
of these tales are made up fibs! But I
want to relate my wife’s and my “strange” experiences, just in case they may be
interesting or helpful to any readers out there in reader-land. NONE of THESE tales are made up!
Once
again, forgive me for my poor organization.
But I plan to hit, scatter-shot, the personal “strange” experiences that
my wife and I have had, hitting first, those which relate to what we have gone
through with Roxanne (and tying them back to previously related ideas). After that, I can go back, and be more
sequential (historical), while hitting some ideas that I have not yet
discussed.
Many
years ago, when we were in our first pass of living in Snooger Town, I was
reading some writings of Nick Bunick, in which case he was describing his death
(the death of Saint Paul… Nick says he
is a reincarnation of Saint Paul). The
description was beautiful and moving…
Death is nothing to be afraid of, at all… It happens to the best of us, sooner or
later!
After
reading this passage, in a rare moment of open-mindedness, I idly wondered when
this was going to happen to me. “About a
year and a half from now” popped into my mind, and clearly from outside of my
normal mind. Nor was this the “bad guys”
speaking, I am clear on that much.
Shocked, I mentioned it to my wife…
Once! And then I shut up about
it, hoping that she’d forget about it.
We didn’t speak of it for a long time…
But she did worry about it.
Months
later, all of our pets died, one by one (nothing super-strange there, just
sad). We were petless for quite a few
months. But my wife knew I loved
bunnies… So one day (on a strange whim)
she picked up a pet bunny for us (Roxanne loved it; she’d lay on the floor and
giggle as that bunny crawled all over her).
One
morning, I started off to work late, because I had stayed home just a few extra
moments, to fuss over the bunny (I can’t recall more details). I drove my motorbike to work. As I got very close to work, I saw an accident,
where a car had crashed into a deer, right in front of me! Had I not been delayed (by the bunny), I
could have been easily killed in a motorbike-deer accident! This was at the 1.5-year-mark from my
“foreseen” death!
So
this is one of the reasons why I believe that “the future is always changing”
(harking back to previous remarks). If
the future IS somehow totally locked in stone, it must be at several levels up,
of God’s God’s God’s boss (stealing the ideas of Neal Donald Walsch). Our immediate bosses are in training, just
like we are, so they see things only probabilistically (but to be sure, better
than we see it!).
Hold
on, I am not done with the bunny story just yet. Apparently Love (God) and the angels owed
some sort of debt to that bunny… We kept
the bunny in an outdoor caged run, with a bunny house, grass (as well as bunny
food) to eat, and dirt to dig in… All
the things bunnies love. We would, of
course, bring her into the house for play time.
I made sure that the edges of the run were dig-proof, and kept an eye
for jail-escape digging projects! I am
familiar with bunnies!
Now
excuse me for a moment while I make a wild diversion… From http://www.gluckman.com/harry/clintontestimony.htm
, see this:
Clinton's
Testimony according to Dr. Seuss
I did not do it in a car
I did not do it in a bar
I did not do it in the dark
I did not do it in the park
I did not do it on a date
I did not ever fornicate
I did not do it at a dance
I did not do it in her pants
I did not get beyond first base
I did not do it in her face
I never did it in a bed
If you think that, you've been misled
I did not do it with a groan
I did not do it on the phone
I did not cause her dress to stain
I never boinked Saddam Hussein
I did not do it with a whip
I never fondled Linda Tripp
I never acted really silly
With volunteers like Kathleen Willey
There was one time, with Margaret Thatcher
I chased her 'round, but could not catch her
No kinky stuff, not on your life
I wouldn't, even with my wife
And Gennifer Flowers' tale of woes
Was paid for by my right-wing foes
And Paula Jones, and those State Troopers
Are just a bunch of party poopers
I did not ask my friends to lie
I did not hang them out to dry
I did not do it last November
But if I did, I don't remember
I did not do it in the hall
I could have, but I don't recall
I never did it in my study
I never did it with my dog, Buddy
I never did it to Sox, the cat
I might have-once-with Arafat
I never did it in a hurry
I never groped Betty Currie
There was no sex at Arlington
There was no sex on Air Force One
I might have copped a little feel
And then endeavored to conceal
But never did these things so lewd
At least, not ever in the nude
These things to which I have confessed
They do not count, if we stayed dressed
It never happened with cigar
I never dated Mrs. Starr
I did not know this little sin
Would be retold on CNN
I broke some rules my Mama taught me
I tried to hide, but now you've caught me
But I implore, I do beseech
Do not condemn, do not impeach
I might have got a little tail
But never, never did inhale
This
was around the time of the infamy of President Bill Clinton, when there was a
lovely computer animation of Bill Clinton as Cat-in-the-Hat, reciting the above
poetry. I have a copy, but it won’t play
any more (Op. Syses upgrades), and I can’t find it on You-Tube, or anywhere
else… You’ll have to deal with the above
text, only.
Anyway,
notice the lines that I highlighted…
There was one time, with Margaret Thatcher
I chased her 'round, but could not catch her
There
were those times that we chased our bunny around, but we could not catch
her! So, yes… Her name became “Margaret Thatcher”!
We
only learned this later, but it seems that (especially in the early morning
hours) “Margaret Thatcher” would make her daring escape… By crawling on top of her house, and then
jumping over the fence! Somehow, she
would make her secret return as well… I
am not sure how!
One
day, halfway through the morning, my wife thinks (“hears the message”), “You
know, I should go and check the bunny”.
She ignores this strange thought.
It comes back to her 1 or 2 more times…
“Go check the bunny!”. So she
goes to check the bunny… Behind our back
fence (the run abutted the fence), she sees a lady who was walking a large
dog. The leashed dog has Margaret
Thatcher cornered, and the lady is straining at the leash, restraining the excited
dog! My wife rescued Margaret Thatcher,
needless to say.
So I
suspect that Love (God) and the angels owed that bunny for saving my life, and
so the “Powers that Be” intervened to save Margaret Thatcher. Yes, the Powers do care about our pets. I have lost pets where I could have done
better, had I known certain things. So
sometimes, the Powers intervene, and sometimes, they do not. I have no answers about that, though…
OK,
it looks like it’s time to go sequentially now…
I really cannot recall any “strange” experiences (“strange” here
implying the supernatural, for lack of a better term) during my childhood, all
the way through high school. A few of
them cropped up while I was in college.
Now
I will be treading carefully here, balancing between revealing too little
(makes for boring, stilted reading), and too much (which might allow bad actors
to ID me or my wife, or, worst of all, “Roxanne”). I don’t much care a whole bunch any more
about me personally any more… I am
retired! Being a geezer allows us
certain freedoms, you know… But
Roxanne? Now, that’s different!
Anyway,
I attended, in my young, wild, and crazy days, a military academy, for
college. It might have been one of the
USA’s federally run and funded academies, or VMI, or The Citadel… I am not saying. But I also liked my illegal drugs (primarily
“pot”, and dabbling only very rarely in much of anything else, of
significance). But the military didn’t
take too kindly to that sort of thing…
Does not, to this day. So things
got a wee tad dicey for me, now and then.
I
had been “stoned” a zillion times before, and then again, later, another
zillion times. It’s not (usually) at all
that dangerous, really! I am not now,
nor have I ever been, a “drug warrior”…
The whole thing, in my mind, is largely a vastly counter-productive
witch-hunt. The drug war (using police
and jails and all) is like attacking your houseflies with hand grenades!
But
one evening, as a young cadet, I made my way out into nearby woods, to “get
stoned”, all by my lonesome. I saw this
dense, deep clump of bushes, and I resolved to crawl in there so deep that no
one could EVEN vaguely possibly see my flickering lighter, and HIDE, and get
REALLY “stoned out of my mind”!
As I
started towards that (or resolved to start), I noticed a mysterious, diffuse
white misty light in the valley right next to me. It spooked me! I never even considered walking on over there
to investigate… I just went back to
barracks / the dorms. Never did get
stoned (certainly not very stoned) that night, as I recall…
Would
anyone else, standing there and then, have seen the misty white light? Or was it all in my mind? I have no answers to those kinds of questions. But I do suspect, Love (God) and the angels
were protecting me that night, from letting something into my head, that
doesn’t belong there. Some of us let it
in there with the help of beer, some with cigarettes, some with distorted
religions, some with placebo power, and some, with the help of nothing at all.
So
one of the last things that I’d want to do, with the above passages, is to give
more fuel to the drug warriors! But yes,
years later, I had to conclude, I was being protected that night. That one night, of all the times that I got
“good and stoned”, was NOT a good time and place to get stoned! This kind of thing is all very
contextual… With the “context” (usually)
having next to NOTHING to do with, is a given mind-altering substance “politically
correct”, or not.
I
came close to getting “busted” once or twice (or maybe more), depending on how
close is close. I did manage to graduate
(and THEN I got busted; or I busted myself; we’ll get there in a wee tad). But the next incident to be described, has
nothing at all to do with “politically incorrect”
substances.
I
was an agnostic at the time, and a senior cadet. I had my own car by then (more-wealthy junior
cadets got cars, but us poorer folks had to wait till we were seniors, when we
could get car loans underwritten by our incomes as future officers / cannon
fodder). I was driving to downtown from
the Academy to an against-the-regulations downtown apartment, that I split with
a few other cadets. See, I told you I
was a wild young man!
I
was barreling down the highway in the outer lane at about 75 MPH, and some slow
car was dawdling along at 55 in the inner lane.
I cannot recall (consciously) seeing ANYTHING peculiar about the car, or
how it was being handled. I have passed
such cars bazillions of times before and since.
As I
am about to pass, a thought pops into my head:
“What would happen if that car suddenly swerved over into my lane?” The thought did NOT need to be repeated… I obeyed immediately, and braked
sharply! Then that other car… The only other one around… Suddenly did swerve right in front of
me! Ran off the road, into the weeds,
and then slowly returned to the road, and all was well. I never got a good look at the driver.
I
was at least slightly rattled by this…
Enough to mention it to my close-buddy fellow cadets. But I blew it right off… I rationalized it as “My subconscious mind
must have noticed some subtle warning sign.”
… Today, I am convinced that Love
(God) and the angels saved me, there.
But they were gentle enough to leave my agnosticism totally undisturbed,
while bailing me out! This seems to me
to indicate that belief v/s unbelief, in this sense, doesn’t matter all that
much (if at all) to “the Powers that Be”.
I
thought that my experience (being saved from a traffic accident, and going
right on being an atheist or an agnostic) was highly unique. Latter on, I read of a young atheist lady
(who wrote in to Nick Bunick) who nearly got run over by a traffic-light-running
dump truck! She had to be warned THREE
times, to step on those brakes! But just
like me, she was undisturbed in her unbelief, only later realizing what had
really happened!
So
I have many unanswered questions about these kinds of things: Why do these things not happen more
often? They could prevent MUCH larger
disasters, you know! Does Love (God)
only have limited communications bandwidths, with which to pull these things
off? Are some of us better gifted at
LISTENING when they DO happen? Was that
other driver (who probably would have killed me, in my flimsy car, model
unspecified) even perhaps in the grips of the Evil One, and this was an
Evil-One swipe at me? That last one
hints at ego on my part, so I try to dismiss it; I want to strive not to be an
egotist. I ***AM*** still one, though,
which is demonstrated by the following:
Only now, as I bang at the keyboard, does yet another question /
possibility occur to me: Was this
intervention actually staged mostly for the benefit of the OTHER driver? Was I merely “inverse collateral
damage”? … No answers here!
One
last note about the above, and then we’ll move on. This note is technical rather than
spiritual. Look up the term “hypnic
jerk” (a term I recently discovered).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
... Essentially, a “falling asleep
spasm”. I have rarely experienced these
myself (but not at the wheel!). That
other driver may have had a “hypnic jerk” at the wheel, while nodding off. There’s even an evolutionary theory as an
explanation… When we (our ancestors)
were smaller, sleeping in the trees (for protection from predators), things
were a bit dicey. Can you imagine?!?! Poor creatures! You are going to sleep, your muscles
relax… And you suddenly find yourself
starting to fall out of the tree! Better
wake up QUICK, and GRAB that nearest branch, wherever it might be! Evolution hasn’t had time to catch onto
falling asleep at the wheel, instead of sleeping in trees, just yet…
In
the continuing saga of my misspent youth, I once took LSD at the end of my
senior year in high school. It was no
big deal, that time, but I was well aware of the dangers at the time I took
that first “hit”… Was on guard. Had a good time… The strongest hallucinations (if you could
call them that) was seeing geometric patterns of lights… Like a crystal lattice… As I went to sleep that night. I almost had to “will” these mild
hallucinations to come, they were that mild.
Who knows, part of the variables here are the dosages of street-bought
drugs. There WAS some LSD there, for
sure! My eyes were highly dilated; I
checked that out.
I
never took LSD again, till my senior year in college (at this military Academy,
or, more accurately, in our against-the-regs downtown apartment). “Oh, I know all about this, I’ve done it
before”, I thought, like a fool! I was
NOT on guard! It was QUITE the “bad
trip”! Harsh!
Some
details may be out of order, but there was a definite sequence to things. First off the bat, though, I must HIGHLY
recommend that people should NOT do this, unless under medical
supervision! Like, with a shot of (counteractive)
Thorazine on hand… Well OK there’s https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/4895003
which says use benzodiazepine instead, but I
am getting off track here. There’s
always the possibility of a “bad trip”, and they are NOT fun, I can assure
you! I’m sure I came THAT close to
dying.
Also,
I must add, I’ll clearly never do it again, but one of the reasons why is,
“loss of control”… I was WAY out of
control! It is NOT a pleasant
experience, to be out of control! It
isn’t nice to the people around you, either.
Upon recovery, I apologized to those who saw me through this… Close cadet friends, girlfriends thereof,
etc. To their credit, they said, “Hey,
we’re just glad that you’re OK now.”
OK,
so let’s get ON with it! My mood and
settings weren’t the best, as such things go (for going on “trips”). At the time, I was (despite being young and
healthy, with a bright future in front of me) “jaded”, perhaps even slightly
depressed. Also, my cadet friends were
having better luck with the ladies than I was.
So in general, I was full of too much negativity, frankly.
We
went driving around and partying a wee tad, and my best friend’s girlfriend
(who had the “connections”) picked up some acid for us. We “dropped” it, and nothing (or very little)
happened. Time went on, and we went
elsewhere, and picked up some more. We
retired to our apartment and “dropped” it (I had a “bad trip” and no one else
did, other than bad-tripping on watching me lose it!). So good v/s bad trip cannot be blamed on the
quality, dose, or purity of the “acid”…
This is well known. It’s a
mood-and-settings thing.
There
was some “deep and dark” so-called “sit-com” or some other not-all-cool-sweetness-and-light
TV drama blabbering in the background, I can recall NO details about that, at
ALL! But I know it didn’t help. Next thing I know, I perceive something
real-but-not-real, like jagged shards of nothingness ripping and tearing
through midair, barely inside the apartment door. The jagged shards of nothingness were clearly
hostile! Writing about it all these
years later, I am clearly reminded of M. Scott Peck’s description of the Evil
One as (paraphrased, I am not off-hand sure how exactly or inexactly) a “very
real spirit of unreality”. In the
days-months-and-years following that night, though, it became (fairly rapidly
actually) clear to me, I had borne the full, raw, naked, all-out assault of the
Evil One that night! God and the angels
were there, too, clearly… I am not going
to try and be all “religiously correct” (ultra-pious) here, though, and I am
going to speak the truth as best as I can see or recall it: I, me, Melvin, ***I*** am the
one who bore all that pain and suffering!
God and the angels did not! I
suspect I was divinely protected, yes, but if so, it was subtle, probably deft,
and certainly dicey. Dicey, depending on
me & my free will. I had apparently
earned some suffering, so I got it, full, fair, and square! There are those who say that there’s
something divine about certain kinds of suffering… Suffering might be the only way to learn
certain things. I have nothing to add
here, about that… I just don’t know. I do suspect that it is true, though… If EVERYTHING (spiritual-learning-wise) is
given to us “for free”, it becomes as meaningless as those “trophies” that are
given “to all who have run in the race”.
So,
despite me being an agnostic at that time, the “trip” clearly had its religious
elements. When I “saw” these “jagged
shards of nothingness” appear, I knew they weren’t real or visible, but they
were unreally-real enough to me! So I
tried to warn my cadet friends and the two girlfriends who were present at the
time, about this hazard. I think it came
out as some sort of religious babble.
One of the young ladies was the one who’d helped us “score”, but the
other one was a “square”, as non-druggies were called even far before my salad
days. My cadet friend (now still married
to the “square”) could see what was starting to happen (knew I’d dropped acid),
and didn’t want to totally freak her out, so they scooted on out of there. The trip, and the battle, was on!
Physically,
I moved to one of the two bedrooms in our shared apartment (I normally slept
there in a sleeping bed on some plastic milk crates, yes indeed!). Mentally and / or spiritually, I rapidly
moved into an inner world, losing track of those around me (being only
sporadically aware of them or interacting with them).
One
of the first things that happened, here, is that I (being the agnostic full of
questions) asked if there was anything out there that loved me (as I had been
told by some people at least, about God).
As has often been my experience both in regular night-time dreams, and
in my various readings, The Divine responded (as It so often does), not with an
answer, but a question of It’s own. “Do
you want to die?” The question was asked
with obvious disgust and distain, it seemed to me. Implied was, “You don’t get the answer to
your question, till after you die.” Also
asked was, “What have YOU ever done to Love anyone?” (Asked of me).
So
there you have the harshness of God (Love)…
When harshness is what we need, harshness is what we get! In the name of Love, to be sure! I have heard and read of others asked the
same harsh question… Including hearing
of this same harsh question asked of a lady that my wife and I both know, who
had a near-death experience (NDE). (“What
have YOU ever done to Love anyone?”). She
shared the story with my wife. Pre-NDE,
this lady says she was a bit harsh and unforgiving herself. Post-NDE, she mellowed.
Anyway,
to the question (taken literally by me) of, “Do you want to die?”, I imagined
my mostly-estranged fundamentalist family (oldest brother especially) sorrowed
and bewildered by my passing away, so young, in strange circumstances, and my
cadet buddies have to explain things away.
My response? “I may very well
have been a total flop at loving anyone else, but, those around me do not
deserve my death, even if I might. So
the answer is “NO”, I do NOT want to die!”
So then the trip moved off and (in many ways) got worse.
Again,
excuse my scattershot approach here, but at this point, I have to
interject. Many years later, as we were
slowly moving many of our non-critical household goods from Booger Town back to
Snooger Town (my employer ponied up for the move, but for limited amounts of
cash and of the weight of the total baggage to be moved), I was driving a
moving truck back to Booger Town. I can
still recall clearly… I was a mile or
two away from home.
I’m
listening to talk radio (I usually scan around for music). I am listening to NPR, as I recall. A man is recalling a story of a young man
taking an LSD trip on the highway (while someone else is driving, thank
God!). As I recall, this was a
third-party narrator, not the one who had the LSD experience, telling this
story.
The
“tripper” is asked, “Do you want to die”?
And I am yelling at the radio (silently as I recall, actually),
“No! NO!
You must respond that you do NOT want to die!”
But
the story continues… The “tripper”
explains that he felt absolutely COMMANDED to respond “yes”… There really was no other choice! His “trip” proceeded to show him the
experience of being a large and powerful spirit, free to roam and fly at
will… Astounded, he was, that his spirit
was such a huge and powerful thing, yet able to be contained in such a tiny little
thing as the human brain… And I have
encountered this idea elsewhere, in my readings.
Anyway,
even at the mature age of my mid-forties, I was STILL learning a basic lesson
of human life… “Different strokes for
different folks”. We are all at different
points in our paths, and may have veered into the weeds in opposite sides of
the path. The answer I need may be the
exact opposite of the answer that you need.
Call me names as an “ethical relativist” if you want to, but what other
sensible answer remains left, for SOOOO many issues?
Same
setting (LSD trip), same question (“Do you want to die”?), two different,
opposite, but correct, answers! But in
all fairness, I believe that I was asked the question literally… I sure took it that way… While my name-unknown friend was asked the
question figuratively. Now if we could
all, also please likewise get our literal-v/s-figurative excrement together
(“feces consolidated”, if you follow my drift), with regards to scriptures, I
for one would be pleased! I strongly suspect
that Love (God) would also be pleased.
Back
to MY story, more directly. The main
thrust of the assault that I bore was along the lines of “You have GOT to
figure out the “magic solution” to the following question(s)”… (Said questions(s) never really firmly
defined as best as I can recall; Just mystical mumbo-jumbo)… “And then, even if you solve that one, it
just leads on to the NEXT one here, and if you cannot figure them ALL out, you
are DOOMED-DOOMED-DOOMED!!!” With HEAVY
emphasis on the “Doom” part!
I
never REALLY bought the premise, there, I don’t think… Had I really bought the premise, I’d probably
not be here to share this story with you today, I strongly suspect. If you’ve read all of most of what I have
written on these pages, the following will probably not shock or surprise
you: The idea that I alone (out of the 7
or 8 billion of us humans) is somehow responsible to “figure it all out” and /
or “fix it all” stinks of overweening ego.
It is at the core of (at least some of) the worst forms of mental
illness. Other forms of this vague thing
called “mental illness” (depression, various mental-abilities shortcomings)
have little or nothing to do with spiritual or ethical shortcomings. The ginormous-ego things goes straight to the
core, though. Yes, I know, it can be
very confusing! By dropping LSD, though,
I had opened myself up to a full-scale attack by this thing (an LSD-fueled,
acute episode of mental illness, in many ways). I am lucky to be alive and very functional to
this day!
Visually,
the “story” was presented to me as an often-beautiful, sometimes-terrifying
lattice structure of glowing red or white filaments. Sometimes a sphere, and sometimes a
spiraling, twisting vortex (reminiscent
of the DNA helix). This is common to LSD
trips, I am told. But no, I never “saw
the walls breathing” (another common one I think).
At
times, I felt what it is like to have the Evil One take oneself over (I felt it
in me). The ancient old idea of the
“unquenchable thirst” is TOTALLY accurate, from what I saw! MORE-MORE-MORE, I can never have enough, I
need more-more-more power-status-glory, and NO ONE else matters, as I gather
yet MORE of what can never satisfy me!
Hitler and dictators in general clearly came to my mind as this happened. Even as a then-agnostic, feelings and
thoughts about the truths of Biblical warnings against evil (from my
fundamentalist upbringing), flooded my mind at the time. Prophesy was coming true, and I was DOOMED! This was some of the very worst suffering I
bore, in this “trip” (and probably during my whole life, for that matter).
At
some level, I suppose my attitude then became resignation… “OK, so then I am doomed. So what?”
That’s when I think I was briefly “cast into Hell”. I have already described that… Search here for that search-string there
(“cast into Hell”) and come right back to me now…
The
visions were not ALL doomy and gloomy, though…
At one point, I observed a larger (“home-base”) spirit dropping an
offshoot-spirit (who was howling and crying in protest) off somewhere, for a
while… And the larger spirit, fervently
hoping or asking… Asking of the void,
essentially… Asking, without any
expectation at all, of any kind of response, actually… “Would this off-shoot spirit please learn to
LOVE?” Implied or as part of the asking,
would the other presences (spirits) at the drop-off spot, please somehow “be
nice to” and / or help the off-shoot spirit, in this quest… While at the same time, this help was and was
not vitally essential!
Since
then, I have come to interpret this as having been a snapshot of my birth into
the Earthly realm… Note that having a
good upbringing is and is not essential, somehow… Some humans can turn out to fight for what is
right, and “do good”, despite being abused as youngsters! And vice versa…
But
this part of the “trip” brings tears of joy or reassurance to me, even all
these years later, as I write about it…
Because, completely unexpected, the “bigger spirit” (dropping off the
offshoot), got an answer from the void…
HOW can a void say ANYTHING?...
The answer was, “Yes, this off-shoot being will learn to Love”!
The
vision had me flipping back and forth between good and evil, as represented by
dragon-like 4-legged beast-like things (made of the lattice-like glowing
filaments), fighting one another with similarly-constructed glowing swords or
lasers emanating from their mouths, sword-fighting one another. When inhabiting the “bad beast”, I would be
sickened and feel doomed, wanting no part of the whole fight (or the interests
of this side). When in the “good beast”,
I would become angrier and angrier, desiring the whole-scale defeat (death?) of
the enemy!
During
the crux of this battle, physically I was on hands and knees, doing the
“valsalva” thing… Breathing, apparently,
in only short gulps, and mostly heaving down heavily with lung-power on closed
throat passages… I burst many-many small
capillaries in my sub-skin neck-throat area, apparently, because that area of
my body was “puffy” (fading away to normal) for a few days afterwards. I am probably lucky that I didn’t burst any
blood vessels in my brain. That’s where
my physical energies went. I wonder (but
have no answers to) where did my mental-spiritual energies go? They went SOMEWHERE, I’m pretty sure!
At
the apparent climax to this whole fight, I felt myself in the “good beast”,
sweeping the laser-sword-beam-thingee emanating from my mouth, into
ever-tightening circles around the source of the opposing beam. I recall briefly thinking about Earthly military
powers and weapons, and thinking them all to be nothing but child’s play… THIS thing that I was wielding, THIS was the
REAL thing! (Yes, I was an ego-filled
young militaristic hot-head, at times). Then
I felt the enemy-beast (“bad beast”) faltering…
As if it was ready and willing for me to close that last sweep of the
tightening beam, and finish it OFF!
Relief from it’s own misery and self-loathing, for the Evil One, at LAST! (This interpretation is clearly informed by
what I have later learned, but was already clarifying for me, very shortly
after the “trip”).
But
before moving in for the kill, it finally occurred to me to wonder, “What
happens if I do this?” Well OK, I am in
magic-powers land here, I can just pose the question, and get an answer. So I posed the question… Posed the question of the void (to no one in
particular), essentially. What DOES
happen if I close the beam?
I
got an answer (best as I can tell, from Love (God) Himself / Herself), and it
astounded me! “We don’t know”. God knows everything, is conventional
theology! But in retrospect, this answer
makes all the sense in ALL of the worlds, to me, now! To truly KNOW evil, we have to BE evil, so… Not only does God not know certain things, He
/ She does not even WANT to know!
I
read between the lines well enough, and quickly enough, to realize that
“killing the enemy” here, with unknown results, was NOT a good idea! So I put the brakes on that effort, and
quickly! But I was NOT going back into
the “bad beastie” to continue this fight (in the name of “balance”?); I had had
enough! And I still was full of
opposition to evil… Evil does, after
all, cause untold suffering; WHO could deny THAT? How could any caring being NOT be full of
opposition to evil? Can I, should I,
simply be bowing OUT of this fight? I
was NOT capable of “not caring”, and I don’t think we as “good guys” should do
that, in general!
What
happens out of this dilemma? What
happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object? In LSD-land, this is what happened: Perceiving great danger in a battle grown out
of control, I found myself spiraling out away from the two fighting beasties,
as a third at-first-tiny, but rapidly-growing similar, third beasty. I quickly became bigger and more powerful
than the both of them.
OMG,
here comes another great rush of power, what am I supposed to do with it? I am, after all, “not capable of not caring”,
and I have seen and felt what an awfully bad, nasty, hurtful, and, um, EVIL
(yeah, THAT is the word!) beast, the bad beastie is! Am I now supposed to go and kill the bad
beasty? Who knows?!?! I simply resolved to stop the dangerous
fighting of the two beasts, control (stabilize) the situation for a wee tad,
and then, when I had a spare bit of time and energy, pose another question to
the void… “What am I supposed to do
now? Kill the bad beastie? I’m tired of the fighting, and am getting
tired in general here, but I will do what You want… You might need to replenish my energies a
tad, though, if you want this to go on…”
Somehow,
I poured my anger into halting the fight of the beasties… “Stop your fighting”, as we’d say to our
fighting children-siblings, with no over-whelming favor thrown one way or the
other (just as a temporary, stop-gap measure).
And rapidly found myself fading away from their fight, in space (in
distance). Having caught my breath a
tad, I posed my question (as above).
The
answer came back from an angel (an underling of sorts, was my impression). It was filled with more than a bit of shock, disgust,
and abhorrence, directed at my question about “killing” being possibly
desired. “We don’t believe in violence
and killing, here.” Plain and simple.
But
I was (and am still) a human, who has to live in (and deal with) a
sometimes-violent world. I was also
still (but am no longer) a member of a military organization, and a
militaristic hot-head. OF COURSE we have
to have the occasional violence, I still thought, and thought of my answerer
here, as being a bit of a politically-correct (Divinely correct?)
suck-butt. OK, then, I am bypassing you,
and going straight to the Big Boss, with my question(s) here, I thought…
But
along the way, the nature of my (wordless) question(s) changed (to bypass the
details and get to the essential core):
I asked the Big Boss, essentially this:
“Can we please have PEACE, and an end to this senseless fighting?” AKA, Nirvana, Universal Love, Harmony… And as a subtext, while asking the question,
I was thoroughly aware that I or we or anyone asking for this, cannot be
allowed to have such things, while also being the skunk at the picnic… We can’t have this thing, and be polluting it
at the same time!
The
answer came back as “No, you can’t have that”, and I cannot recall any
details. I think I detected a whiff of
sadness, and even perhaps a whiff of, “At least you are asking the right
question(s).”
I
then found myself crossing from the void outside of a crystal-lattice sphere
(which I had seen before, but I cannot recall many details; I think it perhaps
had to do with the big spirit dropping off the off-shoot spirit), to the inside
of the sphere. It was a beautiful
moment, and a beautiful sphere. The
strangest thing was, whereas this lattice-sphere had previously had a certain
2-fold balance to its structure, it has now changed to have a 3-fold balance!
Now
I have to babble pretty badly, but I suspect (from here, other experiences, and
various readings) that to the simple-minded, there’s a battle between good and
evil, and we are supposed to fight on the side of the good, and that’s the end
of the story. Well yes, of COURSE we are
to fight on the side of the good! But we
are to recall, evil is a needed part of the world (certainly at least for now),
and we can NOT and should NOT, try to kill it, or wall it off by itself! So maybe there’s good, and there’s evil, and
there’s me… A three-fold world, if we
are wise. Favor the good, but only
within limits. That’s as best as I can
babble about it. I was returning to the
crystal-lattice-sphere called “Melvin’s more-normal, LSD-fading-away head”,
which was now wiser, having a three-fold complexity, not just a two-fold
aspect!
Then
(back inside the 3-fold sphere) I found myself as an ever-tinier being,
snipping and snarling away (fighting at) the swirling vortices of the bad
beastie!!! Fading ever away to a smaller
size, and lesser significance! My ego
was being brought back to its fairly insignificant spot in the real world! I woke up (recovered normal mental functions)
to the horrors I had subjected my friends to, having utterly lost control of
myself!
So
as you can see, this whole deal is NOT to be recommended… You want to learn all about it? I recommend that you content yourself, with
what I (and others) have written about it.
PS,
the only other speculation I have to add is…
Had I chosen to “close the beam” and “kill the bad beasty”, I am near
certain that I would have died, literally…
And very possibly, in whole or in part, to have taken the place of the
bad beasty! It would fit right in, with
the things that I think that I have learned…
Only
a few lessons of my “bad trip” were immediately obvious, even during the “trip”
(as the lessons were imparted). Among
them is “yes, fighting evil is good and right and proper… There is no other sensible choice. But actually-finally KILLING (eliminating, or
even “walling off”) evil, is a false choice, a bad idea, a deception straight
from the Evil One”. I have belabored
this very same idea throughout this entire web page… To restate it yet again, what would it mean
to obtain any kind of “final victory” over evil? For any of us as an individual human being,
in the real world? We’d have to take
away the freedom (the free will) of others, who MUST otherwise be allowed to do
real and genuine evil if they want to!
Only after every single last one of us choses good, of our own free
will, can there be ANY kind of “final victory”!
Capisce? OK, then, no more of
that! (For now!).
In
mere days after my “bad trip”, my disbelief in (a supernatural or transcending
sense of) Love (God) and the enemy, the Evil One, could stand no more. It (disbelief) just… Went away!
But, for the ten-thousandth time…
“Belief” matters not! Unless
“belief” is simply in terms of, do we believe in LOVE, or not? And (even far more so) do we act accordingly? The rest of my interpretations of this “trip”
have taken me years or decades to decipher (to put interpretations to, which
may or may not variously be accurate or inaccurate).
The
story is not over… There’s the tale of
my flashback, still! And yet more
related stuff beyond that! But first,
let’s backtrack a wee tad…
Let’s
back-track to “good, and evil, and me”…
The simpletons would say there’s just good, and evil, and WHATEVER we
can do, to fight evil, and we should just go ahead and DO it! “Just do it” Nike style? Or “nuke ‘em till the glow” style, or
both? Or “Hey, wait a minute, maybe we
should find the proper limits to our anger, first”, style?
If
a wise (or even vaguely-possibly-wise) person was to accuse me of NOT being
able to properly leave stuff vague and nebulous, I would hope that I should-would
listen very carefully! Recall the Edmund Burke quote, “It is the
nature of all greatness not to be exact.”
So then I’m clearly not TOO terribly much into greatness… I’d much rather put a bit more flesh on these
bare bones that I have trotted out!
So then “good, evil, and me”, in more
details… With proper wisdom on these
matters, when confronted with some charlatan who wants to sell me a “War to End
all Wars”… Who wants to “persuade” me to
fight, at the point of his drafting-laws, guns and jails, etc., who wants to
turn me, frankly, into HIS war-fighting slave, whether I want to fight, or
not… Then, I should ask the following
kinds of questions: “How to you really
propose to end all wars, forever? Do you
want to take away the freedoms of future generations? Why should WE decide for them? Should THEY not have their own freedoms, to
decide for themselves, what is worth fighting for, and NOT worth fighting
for? How can you even GLIMPSE the issues
that they will face?” The wise person
will conclude that human (and other) life must go on, and on and on after that,
and that each generation must decide for themselves… There must NOT be a “War to end all Wars”! It’s too dangerous!
I think that by now, many-many people
realize that the injustices resulting from the end of WW I led right-straight,
inexorably to WW II… They were just
Phase I and Phase II of the same war! I
am tempted to say more, about the further then-resulting injustices of the
post-WW-II era, but will zip my lips a bit…
Nukes?!?! Wow, don’t get me started! We MUST find the limit to our anger, we MUST
realize that “good, evil, and me” three-aspects wisdom precludes the use of
certain supposedly anti-evil measures!
When presented with an itchy toe, we scratch it; we do NOT blow it off
with a shotgun! So, too, do we not
“solve” problems with nukes, unless we are perhaps talking of blowing up an
incoming, Earth-threatening asteroid!
But I have no “magic solution” (other than, or beyond, praying our butts
off, for peace) to our currently-still-lingering nuclear dilemma, so I will
just shut up for now, on that one…
So WW II inexorably followed WW
I… Perhaps it was similarly inexorable
that my flashback followed (had to follow) my LSD trip!
Fast forward though the remains of my
senior year at this military Academy (a mostly happy time for me, mostly
care-free, compared to a lot of following more-adult years). Fast-forward to just a few weeks past graduation. Now here I want to tread carefully, trying
NOT to narrow it down to readers, WHICH Academy this was! Recall, I want to protect Roxanne’s identity,
if not necessarily my own. Suffice it to
say that some, many, or most graduates accepted some commission with some
branch of service (which I and all of my close friends did). Several of us were “hanging around” our
apartment, post-graduation, for at least a wee tad. Party time!
I was wearing (teeth) braces to
correct a malocclusion (AKA, an underbite or overbite; teeth mis-alignment). A few weeks after graduation, the near-final
stage of correcting this was jaw surgery.
Breaking and re-setting the jaws, that is, and wiring them shut while
the bones knit back together. Cuts were
made to re-set segments of teeth and bone, both in my lower jaw, AND with
segments of upper teeth-and-bone as well!
Surgery went well.
Not more than a few days later, I am
bored, as I’m recovering. I am still a
young, wild, and crazy person, so, in addition to small amounts of painkiller
for my jaws, I’m smoking a wee tad of “weed”.
Normally, of course, this isn’t any kind of big deal… No need for huge drug wars, here, in my
humble opinion…
But also at the same time, a HUGE
amount of swelling has set into my face!
And over time, simple gravity is pulling this swelling into the exact
same place (front of my neck) where I had burst a BUNCH of tiny capillaries,
leading to puffiness or swelling, during and after my LSD trip. So I’m no expert, but I’d place a LARGE
percentage of the blame for my resulting LSD flashback on the re-occurrence of
this swelling, in the exact same location…
Some sort of weird mind-body thing, is my best guess. PS, this was the only flashback (other than a
few fleeting seconds here or there) that I ever had, in all the many years
since.
Well anyway, the flashback came, and
it was no fun, either! “So this is what
insanity is like”, it occurred to me. I
knew I was out of my mind, but couldn’t just “snap my fingers”, and start
thinking straight. It was no fun, and
the details are mostly not worth going over here (they provide little if any
worthwhile lessons that I can see). I
didn’t get any real sleep for three nights.
I recall starting to drift off to real sleep, and I’d have nightmares
about a monster inside of me, that wanted out, but couldn’t get out, through my
wired-together jaws.
I was reluctant to see a military
“shrink”, for fear of them kicking me out of the military. My friends took me to see a civilian clinic,
where the clinician recommended (temporary for starters)
institutionalization. I was in no
position to pay for such things, so we went to the military.
I babbled and spilled my guts
(without implicating any friends… No one
got busted but me, thank God!). I later
took most of it back. They had nothing but
my own testimony against myself, then…
They allowed me to resign; general but honorable discharge. If I had not resigned, they would have
court-martialed me. I can never get a
security clearance now, any more, but other than that, I am Joe Blow, ordinary
civilian. It took them 7 or 8 months to
discharge me!
At the beginning of these 7 to 8
months of “sweating it out” (A stressful time but otherwise OK, as I served my
time in the military with some simple engineering tasks), I did spend 1 week in
the “loony bin”. One night of sleep
medications, and I was back to normal, actually. The “monster in my mouth” who couldn’t escape
past the jaws-wired-shut? Was this
monster slain by sleep medications, my confessions to the military “shrink”, or
both? Who knows? Certainly not me!
In any case, the first thing the
military shrink does, is “rat me out” to the authorities… And I am on my way out of the military! The only other thing from this time (from my
very short career as a junior military officer) that I think is worth relaying
is, I am at the on-base PX (Post Exchange, Commissary, on-base store, whatever
you want to call it) in the papers-and-magazines section, casually reading
who-knows-what. The shrink (who turned
me in) saunters up, asks me how I am doing lately.
Calm-cool-collected,
as just about the sanest person (from a casual glance) as you’d ever expect to
meet, I reply to him that I’m just fine, thank you, and that I already have a
civilian, local engineering job all lined up, for just as soon as I get my
“walking papers” from the military. He
stared deeply at me for a few fleeting seconds, and I just openly and blandly
gazed right back. To this day, this
counts as one of only two incidents (discounting very-very close friends and
relatives) where I clearly believed that I read another person’s mind… This shrink was wondering if he’d been
hoodwinked, manipulated into smoothing my way for me, for me to escape my
service obligations! Had I wanted a free
“out”, what I had just pulled off, would have been one of the easiest and
quickest ways out! No, I did NOT
deliberately hoodwink him… But I’m sure
he was left to wonder, for (hopefully) many years!
No, I had
actually thought I’d proceed on to a glorious military career (so much for
that!). I took the collapse of my
glorious military career kinda hard, for quite a few years, actually. For a few years there, I debated if it would
be “cool” if I were to fly an American flag from my apartment or house, now and
then (especially on the “patriotic” days), or if doing so, would make me some
sort of impostor, having been the utter military failure that I’d been. I’m over that now… Call me names if you want to, but for many
years now, I have felt that flag-waving nationalism has been, and is, one of
many false or easily-abused ideologies…
The only TRUE ideology, that can NOT be distorted or abused, is sincere
LOVE!
Well anyway, I
could see how at least some taxpayers and patriots could take exception to what
I did… I ate up taxpayer money (ROTC and
/ or Academy funding; I am not going to get too specific here) to get me an
education, AND to fix up my teeth, and then I bailed out, without
paying back my obligations to the Services, right? Well, yes, right, except it wasn’t a
deliberate decision of mine (after having dropped the “acid”), that it should
turn out this way. I would have still
done a perfectly fine job for them, as a military engineer, as far as I
know… I was still willing to “pay
back”. This was their decision, not
mine.
In reality, the whole thing had a
HUGE comic aspect to it… It boils down
to this: “We know you smoke(d) pot. Because you smoke(d) pot, then, you are open
to being compromised by the enemy! The
enemy might threaten you with telling us that you smoke(d) pot, see, and then
you’d spill your guts to them! So you
can’t have a security clearance, then, and an officer without a security
clearance is of no use to us”. See the
idiotic core of that? The enemy will
threaten me with… Telling them what they
already know!!!
Well anyway, to the patriotic-type
taxpayer, I am still scum, because I did those drugs to start with, I can see (imagine)
that much at least… I wonder how many of
them would change their minds if they understood cosmic-karmic justice? I sincerely believe that yes, I did “rip off”
the American military (and taxpayer), but it was in the name of making amends
for what had happened to me in my immediately-previous lifetime!
Yes, now I’m going to trot out some
stuff that some people would REALLY roll their eyeballs over… You can now read some stuff to convince
yourself that I really AM “whacked out” (if you’ve somehow not already
concluded that), but please read on.
This whole thing DOES hang together!
I used to (for many years) puzzle
over WHY the “Powers that Be” would reveal to me, what had (by all appearances,
to me, at least) happened to my most recent incarnation. Let’s just start calling him PMPM for short,
for Pre-Melvin Pre-Marten… As I now
finally write all this down, it clarifies in my mind: I suspect that the “Powers that Be” arranged
for me to know these things (probably among other reasons), so that I could be
freed from most or all of my needless guilt for “having ripped off” the
military and the taxpayer.
On, to the story of PMPM… Now here is yet another place where I tread
carefully. I want the main focus of
these writings to be what I and the rest of the Marten family here, have
learned in our lifetimes. I do NOT want
people to search the internet, in the “real name” of PMPM, and get snarled up
in our story here… Many of the fans of
the story of PMPM may be super-patriots, for that matter, and would take
exception to parts of my story. I’m not
a fan of internet flame wars and “going viral”, and so forth, in most cases,
unless people actually-really LEARN something of true value, which is an
all-too-rare occurrence! In any case, I
will now recommend a search string for those who are interested in the details
of PMPM, but I will not name him by his (directly searchable) real name, here.
Use the following search string: … “Fort Ord” "Death Valley" … Put
the both of these phrases in the same search-string, in quotes as shown. This will lead you straight to the mysterious
case of PMPM, here.
I was 1.5 or 2 years into my new
career as a civilian engineer, and I was taking a potty break at work, reading
the local newspaper, sitting there in the quasi-privacy of my stall. Just the very night before, I had read some
provocative summaries of cases of “reincarnation”, and the general principles
that are supposedly in play, in this “unscientific” phenomenon.
Sitting there, my jaw just about
dropped out! The local rag had a re-play
of events some almost-30-years earlier, and then and there, it was near-obvious
to me, that “PMPM” was “Melvin Marten, Version Me Minus One”!
Here’s an ultra-short summary: PMPM met his demise under mysterious
circumstances, but, in his service to the US Armed Forces, it is clear that he
was irradiated in the early days of the “nuclear cold war” (in conjunction with
nuclear-bomb testing, he… Quoting now
from an internet source… “He also lost all of his teeth,
suffered from constant colds, suddenly lost weight, and developed black moles
and warts all over his body.”) Nukes
aren’t good for us!
We know for sure that the US’s armed
forces, in the early days of the “nuke cold war”, conducted experiments on the
effects of nuclear blasts on ships and buildings. The same may have been done on human beings,
deliberately… I sure don’t know (this is
“beyond the scope” here, of my writings).
In any case, the physical and mental health of “PMPM” (history fairly
clearly tells us), took a dive for the worse, and “PMPM” disappeared
off-base. His car was found some 400
miles away, later on, abandoned, in Death Valley. The US Armed Forces’ responses were
noticeably peculiar. Details? Hazy…
You can research them for yourself, with the leads that I have given
you.
As always seems to be the case in
such instances, this is in no way “scientific”…
But in rough order, proceeding from simple and clear-cut, to hazy,
complex, and “spiritual”, here are the reasons why I sincerely believe that
“PMPM” was “Melvin Marten, Version Me Minus One”:
He
died (disappeared at the very least, for sure) a matter of mere weeks before I
(“Melvin Marten”) was born.
PMPM’s
teeth were destroyed (very directly) by the choices made by the US Armed
Forces. “Melvin Martin” was born with
defective teeth, which had to “be made right” by the US Armed Forces, without
me having to “pay back”. “Cosmic karma”
in action, see?
PMPM
wandered off into the desert (wilderness in general) to “get his head on
straight” (to think things over, in a time of troubles). I am the same way… Admittedly, so are many-many of us…
I
am near-certain that PMPM died of exposure (cold) in the desert night. Why?
Because a friend of mine (fellow recent Academy graduate at the time,
bless his soul!) did his best to “talk sense to me, mellow me out” in June, in
the full strength of summer, offering to take me for a suburban nature walk,
during my small handful of “flashback” days.
My reaction? To grab a
sheep-wool-lined full-winter leather jacket, because I ***KNEW*** that in times
of great stress, when “going out into the wilds” to “get one’s feces
consolidated”, shall we say, bitter night cold was sure to follow soon! (Cold nights often follow hot days in
deserts, for those of you who didn’t know that).
As
previously briefly mentioned, one of life’s lessons is that “no institution
loves us” (AKA, “Institutions can not love you”; use the latter as a search-string
here). PMPM must have struggled with
this lesson, abused as he was by a national-defense establishment (to include
the CIA) that he was obviously quite devoted to. I, too, have struggled (several times) with
the exact same thing. Give your heart
and soul to an organization, and they, in turn, regard you as “just another
productivity unit, just another unit in the inventory”. It’s a harsh lesson to deal with, yes,
indeed!
At the highest level,
PMPM was learning to tame his ego… He was
(according to some sources) known to say, to his closest friends at the time of
his disappearance, that he was “Going to make a name for himself”, having
apparently listened to the seductive words of his CIA recruiters… Who were by all appearances recruiting him
for a secret CIA flying mission in south east Asia, having little or no
knowledge that he (PMPM) was a “dead man walking”, from his recent deadly (time-delayed)
wounds from the “nuke war”. While PMPM
was “deserting the US armed forces in the desert”, Cosmic Karma (or our
Heavenly Hosts, depending on your cultural affiliations) was / were teaching
him the following: Obeying our political
and military masters, chasing after their social approval and the ribbons that they
give us to put on our chests, and the ice cream cones that they offered to us
in grade school when we “gave the right answers”, are an EXTREMELY pale
imitation of the longer-term rewards that are to be gleaned by simply… OBEYING OUR CONSCIENCES!!! Even when it brings us naught but pain in the
short run, yes indeed…
I
do not mean to disrespect the efforts (and the suffering) of those who have
physically fought to liberate us from despots.
The tree of liberty does, yea verily, need to be watered, from time to
time, with the blood of tyrants. True
tyrants truly respect nothing but force and violence, sad to say. Different lessons are needed for different
folks, though, who tread different paths to Love and Truth. But for me, the successor to PMPM, I needed
to finish off what PMPM only (partially?) learned in death and suffering, and
that is, “No institution can love you, only individuals / God can”, and, even
far more so, “Obeying God (Love) and Conscience is FAR more important than
obeying military and political commanders and commandments; Obeying Love is timeless,
immutable, and always of great value; obeying military and political leaders is
an arbitrary, local whim of fashion, and very often needlessly destructive”. My (Melvin’s) particular and specific motives,
just like PMPM’s motives, in serving in the armed services, were too
glory-houndingly self-centered, and needed to be fixed… But the same is NOT true of at least some
others who serve (served) in the military!
“Different strokes for different folks” is actually as truly PROFOUND
and complex lesson that must be learned in our very complex world!
Moving
on to a later point in time as a young civilian bachelor, I was once stone-cold
sober… No drugs involved… And was reading a short science fiction story
by Lester del Rey, called “The Day is Done”, about “Hwoogh”, the last
Neanderthal. The anthology containing
the short story is called “…and Some Were Human”, by Prime Press,
Philadelphia, 1949.
To
make a short story VERY short… Hwoogh,
the last Neanderthal, was abused by the young of the new species (us; AKA
Cro-Magnon man in those days), against the stated wishes of the elder
Cro-Magnons at the time… More comments
on that after I relay my experience…
In
any case, in the short story, the elderly Hwoogh died a slow, lingering death
after being physically abused by the young (presumably pre-teen or early-teens)
Cro-Magnons. I sat there reading this,
and was overcome by sadness, and a strong desire to TEACH the young to,
basically… LOVE! To NOT do these kinds of things! While also being aware that the youngsters
are the ones who are still malleable and teachable… The oldsters?
Not so much, any more… What was
totally absent in my mind, though, while I was thinking these thoughts of
wanting to teach the youngsters the sublime imperative to LOVE… Was any kind of desire (excuse my French) to
kiss God’s butt, in any way. God? Not thinking about that, at all, I was… And I think that was an important LACKING
ingredient in what was to follow…
Now,
the term “light” is seemingly always used in this context… And I can do no better! It was merely LIKE a bright white light, but
it wasn’t a light, it was something else, that we have no word(s) for, really. The “Light” broke through the top of my
skull, it seemed, and just “hung out” with me, for a few fleeting seconds. It inhabited me, basically, in a
non-intrusive manner. I reached out to
it, curiously, wordlessly asking, basically, “Who are you, what are you doing
here?” And then it faded away. End of story.
I have never had an NDE (Near Death Experience), or any other similar
cases of being “inhabited by the Light”.
But there’s my story, for what it’s worth.
To
me, it is / was simple confirmation that there is a “Being of Light” out there,
which is ALL about Love! When we are “in
phase” with It, It may, from time to time, briefly “inhabit” us… This is what happened to me. I have shared that story with less than 5
people (excluding anonymously, here). I
am reluctant to “brag”, because I think “deserving” such experiences is,
um… Mangling some important but totally
nebulous concepts. More to the point,
power pigs throughout history have claimed to be “On a Mission from God”, in
the names of dreams and visions, and I do NOT want to be a power pig! Being called “crazy” doesn’t bother me
much… Being suspected of being a power
pig, though? God forbid!
Now
before I forget… There was a topic
tangential to the short story “The Day is Done” here… That is as follows: Without getting into the details, the
Cro-Magnon elders clearly told their children NOT to harass or hurt
“Hwoogh”… But there were clearly subtle
or not-so-subtle messages of “Hwoogh isn’t quite right”, or “Hwoogh isn’t as
cool as we are”. And that’s all it
takes, often, to set off the young, the foolish, and the hotheads!
When
I was young, for example, living among a fundamentalist community, there was a
gay person who made a pass at a young hothead.
Said young hothead had been repeatedly told (as all youngsters there
were told), “We don’t believe in violence, we don’t believe in violence, we don’t
believe in violence”, ad infinitum… But
also, “Gays are sinners!”. So what
happens when gay person makes pass at young hot-head? Does the “no violence” message prevail, or
does the “gays are sinners” message prevail?
You guessed it! Young hothead
beat the gay guy to within an inch of gay guy’s life! Whereas a simple “Please don’t do that, I am
not gay” message would have sufficed…
That is why I, for one, think that simple “Love” mandates that we
totally just keep our judgmental thoughts to ourselves… Unless our judgmental thoughts are REALLY,
ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to preserve and protect what is good and right! Gayness?!?
WTF, this qualifies for NO judgmental thoughts at ALL, unless combined
with coercion or other evils! Even then,
it is not the gayness, per se, that is the “sin”!
I
have now blown through most of the more-intriguing experiences that I have been
through. The rest of what follows
includes (with some repetition of what I have written so far) regular
night-time dreams, and some of my wife’s experiences.
There
may be other instances of this, but an example of this (quite clearly) is
“strep throat”. Do NOT take strep throat
lightly! If left untreated for very
long, it can clearly cause mental illness in children. Use this as a Google search-string: “strep
throat causes mental illness” and you’ll get many hits. A good one is https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas/index.shtml
, for example. Note that this has been
clearly studied and documented in children, but not so much in young
adults. From a brief reading, it seems
to me that the “experts” simply don’t know (haven’t studied it) much about how
common this is in young adults.
I
can tell you that my brother “Franklin” left his strep throat untreated for far
too long, as a young adult… It seems to
me that he was one of those “tough guys” that took pride in not needing to see
the doctor. He seemingly hid the
severity of his strep throat. Later on,
he slowly became more and more mentally ill (to include severe episodes), and
eventually took his own life.
As
for Roxanne, she has (from early childhood on) been (in at least some
categories) highly tolerant of pain. So
we (in a family vacation in late summer of 2017) were not aware of her having
any illnesses. Then she had her
psychotic breakdown (story further below), and early on, in her hospitalization,
they discovered THREE infections… It is
possible that one or more of them was acquired early on, in the hospital, we
just don’t know… But they were a urinary
infection, pneumonia, and, yes… Strep
throat!
OK,
straight to the summary point this time:
Roxanne has bipolar… We’ve known
that since 2013. Now we know pretty
firmly that she has bipolar I (not bipolar II).
Probably THE biggest root cause of her mixed / manic episode that landed
her in the regular hospital for a few days, and then a psychiatric hospital for
a few weeks… For a total of almost 1
month… Was that her shrink screwed up
badly, and neither Roxanne nor anyone else (like my wife and I) bothered to do
a simple “Google” search. If you search
on “bipolar anti-depressant” or “lithium anti-depressant” or “mood stabilizer
anti-depressant”, then you will rapidly discover that it is way-common
knowledge that these two kinds of medicines should not be taken together! Bipolar patients need mood stabilizer drugs,
and anti-depressants will drive them towards mania!
We
trusted her shrink, and her shrink failed us.
We learned later (according to a psychotherapist) that shrinks tend to
be either top graduates or bottom graduates (not middle graduates) of medical
school. They choose to become shrinks,
because that’s what they really-really want to do… So these are the good ones. Or, they happen to be not competent enough to
become much of anything other than a pill-pushing shrink. The latter, then, obviously are the
incompetent ones, and Roxanne had the poor fortune to be treated by one of
them.
This
shrink prescribed for her, in addition to the lithium that she was already on
(for bipolar, obviously), an anti-depressant (Celexa, major offender) and Strattera
(for treating ADHD; probably a more-minor offender here). Together, these two drugs slowly drove
Roxanne towards mania, over the space of about 7 months. The biochemistry of what is going on here is
sometimes referred to as “serotinin toxicity syndrome” or less commonly,
“serotinin overload”. Her slow progress
into mania is detailed in the story further below, and can be compared to the
“slowly boiled frog” parable / story / “old wives tale”; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
... We just did not really notice it
till it was probably too late. Again,
details below.
After
her recovery was well underway (after she was out of the hospital), we bought
and read many-many books (both medical books and personal stories) about
bipolar. Many-many of them mention that
mixing mood stabilizers (which are clearly needed by bipolar patients) and
anti-depressants (which should be considered “experimental” and dangerous, with
no clearly documented benefits for bipolar patients) is a mistake commonly made
by many psychiatrists.
You
have to OWN your disease (mental or physical), and double-check the crap out of
your doctor, drugs-wise! This is tragic
that there are so many incompetent and / or lazy doctors out there, who will
act willy-nilly as rent-seeking “trolls under the bridge”, making you pay for
the access to prescribed drugs, but not doing their job of even bothering to
“Google” the mix of drugs that they are prescribing! In the Land of the Free, and the Home of the
Brave, though, we are not allowed to simply bypass them, study up on the drugs,
and buy them over the counter, saving tons of money. Shrinks have to make yacht payments, and that
there are many-many poor mentally ill people on the streets, partially because
of these “trolls under the bridge” getting in their way, doesn’t matter to our
politicians, because of special interests, “regulatory capture”, and
“concentrated benefits, diffuse costs”.
But I digress into politics, and will quit that (for now).
We
found a better shrink for Roxanne, and (after a thoughtful pause) wrote a
snail-mail letter of complaint to her incompetent shrink. He or she made no response, in another month
and a half (no apologies, no explanations).
So with this matter left unsettled…
Not knowing if said shrink had learned a darned thing, or was still a
hazard to other patients… We filed a
complaint with the state medical board. No,
we are not considering suing; that is typically just enriching yet another set
of trolls under the bridge (lawyers). We
just want shrinks to do their jobs correctly!
Now
this kind of thing is readily available on the web, but I want to just hit some
highlights, about some of the drugs involved here. Mood stabilizers (for bipolar) are Lithium (the oldest and perhaps
most-often-used, which is what Roxanne takes), but others include, by now, carbamazepine
(Tegretol), lamotrigine (Lamictal), valproate (Depakote, Epilim), and asenapine
(Sycrest). Note that for bipolar
patients with more troubles with mania, lithium is good, but for patients with
more troubles with depression, Lamictal is good.
One
of the things that I read in one of our books, that impressed me a lot, is a
big difference between many (most?) physical v/s mental illnesses. With a physical infection, for example, they
can do a lab test, and know exactly which type of bacteria is the cause, and
exactly which drug (antibiotic) will treat it best. With mental illness, it’s all a big guessing
game… They can only go by symptoms, and
many of the medicines are discovered (more or less) accidentally. There are no definitive tests, not even
genetically. This, I read in a book that
I much-much recommend, which is “Bipolar Disorder a Guide for Patients and
Families”, by Francis Mark Mondimore, M.D.
OK,
back to the drugs… Sometimes (as with
Roxanne in her earliest days in the hospital), when serotonin toxicity is
suspected, Ketamine
(Ketalar) will be prescribed to sort of perform a “reset” to the brain, to
treat the serotonin toxicity. We think that this made Roxanne’s
hallucinations worse (as it is known to do sometimes). It’s all a guessing game, sometimes… In this case, I think the doctors were doing
the very best that they could. Note that
Ketamine has been shown
to be a fast-acting anti-suicidal-thoughts drug, for some patients at least,
acting within 4 hours or so.
Note
also that the pain reliever tramadol and the SSRI-type anti-depressant sertraline
can trigger serotonin overload. See https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2015/01/12/tramadol-interaction-with-antidepressant-can-be-deadly/
for more.
Also
note that compulsive behavior can be a side effect of Mirapex… There’s a lot more out there! Do your homework, and practice
meta-cognition! That is, think about
(beware of) your moods and thoughts!!!
Now
for you who have bipolar and (have or had) ADHD, Strattera and other “uppers”
commonly used for treating ADHD (Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, etc., see https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/guide/adhd-medication-chart#1
) may not be such a good idea… They may
drive you towards mania. Here is another
drug that you might want to look into, if you have trouble concentrating (in
school, while studying, or while working).
Modafinil
(Provigil) is a medicine whose on-label use is to counteract narcolepsy (not being
able to stay awake). Its off-label use
is to be a “study buddy” (help you focus when studying). So tell your doctor you’re falling asleep in
class all the time, if needed…
I have run searches to
find links; You can find some more if interested. https://www.healthline.com/health/narcolepsy/nuvigil-vs-provigil … https://www.goodrx.com/blog/provigil-vs-nuvigil-which-is-better-for-daytime-sleepiness/ …
This kind of anti-sleepy,
pro-wakefulness drugs does NOT seem to be way out of line for bipolar
patients! See http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/bipolar-disorder/novel-treatment-avenues-bipolar-depression … https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18980736 … https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14632587 …
There’s more of these out there as well.
HOWEVER, there is one
case reported where “florid mania” was brought on, apparently by the patient
NOT listening to the dosing instructions, and “amping up” on Modafinil too
fast! So it is confusing here, as is
often the case… Less medicines is
better. But here is a drug candidate for
you if you have troubles concentrating.
Oh, here’s your link on the last one mentioned here above… http://primarypsychiatry.com/modafinil-induced-mania-in-a-patient-with-bipolar-affective-disorder/
.
ALWAYS pay attention to
side effects and do your research! If
you really-really need a medicine, then you need it… If you no longer need it, try to get off of
it! Anti-anxiety drugs can be harmful if
used longer than needed. Here is a scary
one about that… https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201011/brain-damage-benzodiazepines-the-troubling-facts-risks-and-history-minor
.
While we are “geeking
out” on the biochemistry of it all, please note that for some people (with
certain genetic attributes that can be tested for), even in the absence of
bipolar disorder, anti-depressants can drive them towards violence! See
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cyp450-test/about/pac-20393711 concernign
drugs and genes combinations testing with emphasis on anti-depressants, and
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513220/ AKA
“Antidepressant-induced akathisia-related homicides
associated with diminishing mutations in metabolizing genes of the CYP450
family”.
Well,
that about wraps up what I have recently learned about psychoactive drugs, that
might be of interest here. Next, simply
because it struck an emotional cord with me, about the tragedy of bipolar, and
because it hits the theme of good mood swinging to bad mood, with clear
spiritual overtones… Very rapidly in
this case, compared to Roxanne’s slow swing approaching her breakdown… I want to transcribe a passage from “Bipolar
Disorder a Guide for Patients and Families”, by Francis
Mark Mondimore, M.D., about the Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). From pages 208-209…
“In
February 1854 Clara recorded, “In the night, not long after we had gone to bed,
Robert got up and wrote down a melody which, he said, the angels had sung to
him. Then he lay down again and talked
deliriously the whole night. When
morning came, the angels transformed themselves into devils and sang horrible
music, telling him he was a sinner and that they were going to cast him into
Hell.”
“A
few weeks later, probably in the grip of an episode of psychotic depression,
Schumann ran out of their home and threw himself off of a bridge into the icy
waters of the Rhine. He was rescued by
fishermen and placed in the asylum in Endenich, where he died a year later,
possibly of self-starvation.”
I
suppose that part of why the above strikes me so much, is (as with Roxanne)
that there’s a transition from talking to angels (and / or deceased people) and
being ecstatically happy (or having delusions of grandeur), and then crashing down,
and “talking to the demons”. So beware,
if you talk to the angels too-too much, the demons may (are quite likely to)
come following shortly in their wake!
A summary,
then, of the two sections above, is to beware that physical illness (especially
long-running or untreated strep throat) can cause mental illness. This was probably a lesser cause of Roxanne’s
breakdown. The bigger cause was, her
shrink made a big mistake, and we didn’t catch it, for lack of a simple Google
search! Do NOT mix mood stabilizers
(like lithium) for bipolar patients, with anti-depressants! To do so, will almost inevitably lead towards
mania!
A summary of
the below (“spiritual” as opposed to biochemical side of things) is, I still
believe in “loving the enemy”, even when the enemy is the Evil One and minions
(with, of course, the usual caveat of, “loving” does not include “aiding and
abetting” in this case). I still believe
this, because the evil entity known as “Elmer” left Roxanne alone, for 6 whole
years, when we did this. “Elmer” seemed
“flipped” over to the good side, as Roxanne’s mania (not noticed by us, her
parents, till apparently too late) increased.
Only in the throes of the peak of mania, was “Elmer” (or perhaps a mimic
of “Elmer”) not so clearly on the good side.
I don’t recall Roxanne ever stating that “Elmer” (or mimic thereof) was
clearly flipped back to being evil. I
cannot ask her about such things now, for fear of “brain fire”.
My
suicide-deceased brother “Franklin”, though, is another matter altogether! Essentially, he “visited” Roxanne, as she was
barely tripping “upwards” into mania, and told her that he had been “flipped”
to the good side! Despite the still,
small voice in the back of my head at least (not so sure of my wife’s head or
Roxanne’s head), which had some doubts, we wanted to believe the good
news! At the peak of the mania, and
early on in the hospitals, during her breakdown… There was “Franklin” (or mimic thereof), once
again, trying to get Roxanne to commit suicide!
Anyway, the SUMMARY
(below) of this summary (as above) is, NEVER HARDLY EVER take “messages from
beyond”, or from “voices in your head”, that may or may not really emanate from
who they say that they are, without some fairly severe questioning. We ALWAYS have to decide for ourselves! Think (pray) intensely on, “is this a good
message I am getting, or not”? Is there
any deception or malice going on here?
Roxanne and “Melissa” and I all got thoroughly hood-winked here! We wanted to believe in good messages, but as
the mania got worse, it all went to Hell in a handbasket! The mania (and deception) got worse and
worse, till Roxanne shut us out, and our words were no longer getting through to
her. The details will be spelled out
below.
Please excuse me for
these writings being, at times, poorly organized. But before delving into the latest episodes
of “the story” here, I want to repeat some things I wrote about earlier, with a
little bit of new, extra details added.
This is along the lines of, “what do I REALLY believe?”
I believe in biochemistry
and drugs, to include psychoactive drugs.
As mentioned before, I am not a Scientologist! But I also believe in what is today often
called “metaphysics” or the “supernatural”.
As others have said, the “supernatural” will someday be understood to be
natural, when we have learned more of the laws of the Universe… Laws that we can only dimly glimpse now.
For starters, please
search (in this document) for the search-string “But perhaps our brains are based on quantum computers”… Read that for starters. The summary of that (including 2 main links
given) is that our current science is starting to point in the exact direction
as is pointed out by the above search-string, AND that there may be quantum
links from our world to parallel worlds!
“Parallel worlds”, that is, that the “crazies” and “religious fanatics”
among us have glimpsed over the ages, and have variously called “Heaven”,
“Valhalla”, “Hell, “Hades”, etc.
I am NOT going to argue with those who say we are just
bags of biochemicals, with poorly organized chemistry taking place, and poorly
organized patterns of travelling waves of ionic depolarizations (on cell walls)
travelling hither and yon… And that this
is ALL that we are! I can see your
perspective, and acknowledge that it is possibly true. “Mental illness” thoughts might be just
random crap, and nothing more. But it is
also possibly true, what I believe…
Neither of us can absolutely prove our beliefs… And so it will remain, for now. So please hear me out.
Moving to ADD to what I wrote earlier (see above),
please see the March 2018 “Discover” science magazine, page 41, “Down the
Quantum Rabbit Hole”, by Steve Volk, concerning Stuart Hameroff (primarily),
and other researchers (including Roger Penrose). You may find the “Discover” article
here: http://discovermagazine.com/bonus/quantum
.
Some of the things that stuck in my mind the most, from
having read this article, is that “microtubules” are just about everywhere, in
living cells, and may be the REAL basis of our brains (and “souls”, whatever
“souls” may be). Synapses and travelling
patterns of cell-wall depolarization are NOT the be-all and end-all… As we can see by looking at parameciums and
other single-celled animals! They HAVE
no synapses or travelling patterns of cell-wall depolarization, yet they
“think” enough to chase food and avoid predators, noxious chemicals, and too
much heat or cold, travelling deliberately and with purpose! They DO have microtubules, though!
So microtubules may be a BIG part of our “seat of
consciousness”… And our
(quantum-physics-based) links to the “spirits” in the “beyond the beyond”!
Some of us “hear the voices” from the “beyond the
beyond” more than others. There is even
a specific set of brain circuits (or set of biochemicals) involved in “fencing
out” these voices… In allowing us to
call them “not real”, and disregard them.
As you can imagine, our ancestors (in the face of predators, starvation,
and other hazards) who were too busy “hearing the voices” to live effectively
in the real world, did not survive and pass on their genes. “Hearing the voices” must be kept to some
minimum… But that optimal minimum may
very well be more than zero! To see my
previous speculations along these lines, search here (in this much-too-long
document) for “related take on this is to note that Neanderthals” search-string.
The brain circuit to “fence out” the voices (AKA
hallucinations) is based on GABA, AKA gamma-Aminobutyric
acid. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Aminobutyric_acid
. As a sample write-up concerning the
idea that “defective” or
under-functioning receptors for “GABA” may be involved in hallucinations, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996210/
.
So in summary, I believe both theories: We are bags of biochemicals, AND we are
“spirits in a material world”. We have
to pay attention to both perspectives, to operate most effectively. The below continuing story (hashed up with
commentary) should help the reader to see WHY I think this is true.
I
have had fleeting hallucinations from time to time… Which I believe reflect some sort of
underlying reality. As one (very minor)
example, some few years ago I was driving to work. I was in an absent-minded, open-minded frame
of mine, just driving down the road. I
“saw” (about 50 yards ahead of me) a not-real “tumbleweed” bouncing across the
road in front of me! I knew as I saw it,
that it was not real, and that it was up to no good… A dark, jagged thing. Was I “allowed” to see it, for any particular
reason? Possibly, but I doubt it. I think I was just randomly in the frame of
mind to “see” it. I don’t think it has
anything to do with me. They say that
ghosts can travel through walls, you know.
But this thing clearly respected physical matter. It bounced along the ground, and did NOT
burrow down below, to escape the eyes of random observers like me.
Now
we segue to an instance that clearly has far more significance. My wife and Roxanne and I were on a family
vacation in the late spring of 2017, after Roxanne had already begun her slow,
undetected trip into mania. I was doing
my morning travel rituals, getting some ice from the hotel’s ice machine, for
our cooler. I “saw” a dark shape poking
around the corner of the very close-by hotel wall, taking a look at me. I looked, and it retreated. Back to the ice machine… And the darned thing did it AGAIN! I got my ice, and looked around the corner,
knowing full well that there would be nothing there (as was the case, of
course). I never got any “vibes”… No chills down the spine, no foreboding, and
no sense of good or evil. The only
things in common between here and the “tumbleweed” instance were, the shape was
dark, and it respected physical (matter) barriers.
My
wife and Roxanne and I were driving down the road, that very same day, and
Roxanne announces to us, that she “got the message” (or similar words) that my
suicide-deceased brother “Franklin” had had enough suffering in Hell, and had
converted or “flipped” over to the good side!
Who are we to doubt good news?!
Despite the nagging doubts in the back of my head, we went with the good
news! It was all good!
In
summary, this sort of thing (more details later) went on through the summer,
and it was all good! Till it wasn’t!
This was the slow trip into mania, not well noticed till too late, just
like the tale of the “frog in the slowly-being-heated water”… and by the time
my wife and I started sounding cautionary words (too softly probably), it
became too late. During her breakdown
and the stay at, first, a regular hospital, and then, a psych ward, there is
the supposedly-flipped-to-the-good-side, voice of my brother Franklin, urging
Roxanne towards suicide again! We had
all three been sold a bill of goods!
Of
course, this could all be random hallucinations… But I don’t think so! Having “seen” the dark shape, twice, that
very morning, influenced me as follows:
I was reminded that I, too, “see” things from time to time, and that
they seem very real to me. So I
shouldn’t off-hand dismiss what Roxanne “sees” or “hears”. I mentioned what I “saw” that morning, to my
wife and Roxanne, in that context. I
even specifically quizzed Roxanne as to WHY was the “thing” that I saw, a DARK
shape, and WHAT was it doing?
Roxanne
said that according to my deceased brother Franklin, “dark” does not always
mean “bad”. And what was this thing
doing? It was merely a “spiritual
tourist”, curious to take a look at the “Dad” member of this Roxanne-Mom-Dad
team, that (we) were up to some amazing tricks on the Earth plane! The nagging doubt in the back of my mind was
saying something about Roxanne’s ego getting at least a wee tad inflated here,
but I made no more of it.
Now
clearly I don’t know exactly what went on there, but my VERY best guess is, “dark”
in such matters clearly DOES equate with evil or at least malice! We’d been had! This dark shape was there specifically to
snoop out me and my mind at the time… To
see if I was ready to be hoodwinked! And
I was… At the time, I was blissfully
optimistic, generous, and forgiving…
Ready, at all times, to believe that “bad” had flipped to “good”!
I
will probably write in more details about this later, but for now, let me just
say that I harbor (at least!) a bit of resentment against “the spirits on the
good side” for what happened there, and the entire tale of what happened to
Roxanne during 2017. WHY did I not “get
bad vibes” off of the dark (but indistinct) shape that I saw TWICE that
morning? Why didn’t the good side of the
“beyond the beyond” do more to warn me, my wife, or Roxanne, of what was
happening, and why (especially the medications mistake), as Roxanne slowly went
into mania? As is SOOO often the case in
such matters, I do not know “why”, for sure, of course. But I do suspect that I have some strong
candidate reasons to answer this particular “why” question. Let’s save that for later.
As
late spring turned to early summer in 2017, Roxanne was doing well. Her “getting messages” from the “beyond the
beyond” turned into talking to dead people, a lot. Was this just random brain crap, or did it
reflect some sort of underlying reality?
We could all argue all day about this sort of thing, of course, and
never truly resolve anything, at anything near certainty. What I can tell you is that it was “all good”
at first. Who wants to argue with
something good? But here, I think, is
the central danger in bipolar disorder, and in talking to the spirits of the
“beyond the beyond”: The good turns into
bad, either slowly or rapidly. “Talking
to the angels” somehow slips on over into “talking to the devils”, and to the
person having the direct experience, it is ***NOT*** so easy to see exactly
when this happens! People around (“near
and dear to”) the person directly having the experience can more easily see the
change, but it is still not always a clear “slam dunk” here. Hit here in this
document (and then see the preceding 4 paragraphs) for a summary of a
historical case of where this change set in rapidly, as opposed to the slow
change in Roxanne’s case.
So
her “talking to the beyond the beyond” was all good, at first. She told us many interesting things… About the deceased spirits in Heaven and in
Hell being not just sprits of people, but also of animals, and sometimes even
of plants! Unlike previous approaches
into mania (into what we only later learned was mania), this time around, she
didn’t write much down. So I will now
write down a few thoughts and recollections along those lines.
She talked to the deceased
spirits of the likes of Muhammed, Hitler, Stalin, her grandparents, unknown
(non-historical) people only now and then, Vlad the Impaler, and an extinct
giant Irish Elk, are the ones that I can recall. I had always (or at least for a long time)
believed that people who commit suicide go to Hell, forever. Period.
Roxanne was clearly saying “no” to that, and, as I said, who wants to
reject good news? (Now, I just don’t
know, any more!). Roxanne was saying
that time runs forward both here and in the “beyond the beyond” (backwards time
travel is silly beyond impossible), but that it can run at different
rates. For example, the time that Hitler
spent in Hell, after he committed suicide, APPEARED to HIM as if it lasted just
about forever, but he finally busted free from that horrible place in about
1954, in the humans time-frame. Spirits
often some-how manage to be “split up” in some such manner as to be both
residing in the “beyond the beyond”, AND be recycled back on the Earth plane,
at the same time (I find this one to be credible or satisfying, somehow, for
whatever it is worth). Hitler got
recycled as a gay Jewish person in Israel, according to Roxanne! That would sound like some educational karma
to me!
Roxanne said that famous
and (politically) powerful people (like Hitler), when cycled through Hell (yea
verily most often for having committed suicide), will often get disgusted (have
“had their fill”) with all the lies and false promises (of power) that they are
given by the Evil One, in Hell. The
likes of Hitler will often learn their lessons, shake it off, and bust back
loose from the Evil One’s clutches (AKA, Hell) more quickly than rank-and-file
screw-ups who have never tasted much political power on planet Earth. Why?
Simply because they have experienced SOME semblance of real power on
Earth (I for one would dispute even the reality of much of THAT particular
“power”, since all dictators die eventually)…
And they, having a comparison point, more quickly learn that the Evil
One NEVER delivers ANY real power to ANYONE; the Evil One’s utterances here are
ALL lies! (That should be no surprise).
Again, excuse my poorly organized
writings here, but I’m trying my best to impart “lessons learned”, to include
(somewhat in this descending order) the “spiritual warfare” aspects of mental
illness, the biochemistry of it, practical mental strategies for fighting this
fight, and, to a small extent, metaphysical mysteries. As mentioned before, we cannot know any of this
(metaphysics) for sure, and any number of different viewpoints or cultures or
religions can be made to “work”. Pick
your bits and pieces that work for you…
Where “work for you” hopefully includes high doses of “loving your
neighbor”! … The last thing these writings would be
intended for, would be a “suspense story”.
I am “blowing the punch” as I go, and plan to continue to do so, in the
name of the higher priority of imparting “lessons learned”.
Along the lines of
metaphysics, as I mentioned, this time around, as Roxanne slowly went manic
(not sharply-enough noted by us), she didn’t write much down. But I will relate here, such points as I can
recall them. I do not probe Roxanne too
much along these lines, once again, for fear of stirring up “brain fire”.
I often wonder (as a
retired computer-industry geek) “what is God’s bandwidth”? How many people (animals, plants, atoms,
molecules, etc.) can God “talk to” at the same time? Is there some sharp limit here, is this part
of the reason why God doesn’t do more to “bail us out”? I know God can do it if He / She / It wants
to! “Whisper in our ears”, for example,
or give us dreams to clue us in. I had
at least 4 (night-time) dreams as Roxanne slowly went manic, and all 4 of them,
I interpreted as Roxanne “being in a good place”… And I sure never got any dreams to warn me of
the medicines mistake that her shrink had made!
(Adding anti-depressants on top of lithium, of course, that is.) So chalk up another reason that I’m a bit
torqued off at God these days…
Anyway, Roxanne said that
“bandwidth” is a wrong way to look at it.
A better way to look at it, she said, is that God shines on everyone,
but we accumulate junk and blockages (some more than others) that block the
light. It’s not a lack of bandwidth,
it’s gathering too much junk. When we
gather up enough junk to block the light so severely as to commit suicide (or
otherwise deliberately, intentionally chose Hell; I am not at all sure what
other routes these might be), then we cycle through Hell, for as long as it
takes to shed the junk. It is (need I
add?) a painful process! That’s
according to Roxanne during this time, of course.
Roxanne also said that
when people finally get tired of being tortured and lied to, in Hell, and
shedding the junk, and bust free, that some of the really brave and
torqued-off-at-Satan ones among them, will deliberately destroy some sort of
after-image or template (or like a snake’s shed skin, that a snake leaves
behind?) of themselves, there in Hell, before they high-tail it out of there! Other, more timid souls will leave this image
(template) behind, unfortunately allowing the Evil One and minions to exploit
it for their nasty purposes. So in
retrospect, now that we know that my suicide-deceased brother Franklin (after
having presented himself to Roxanne as having “flipped” to the good side) once
again viciously attacked Roxanne at the worst points of her breakdown, we are
left with un-answerable questions. Was
Franklin never “flipped” in the first place, deceiving us? That’s my suspicion. It is, however, possible that he WAS flipped,
and some other “left behind” evil entity exploited Franklin’s left-behind
image, to “play” or “portray” Franklin, to attack Roxanne. I cannot see what difference it makes to
us! The bottom line is, the entities
from the “beyond the beyond” (or voices in our heads, for those who discount
metaphysics) can flat-out NOT be trusted!
I still believe in
benevolence, including benevolence towards evil of all kinds. But in some cases, our benevolence needs to
be, um, “ruthless, without mercy”, or something along those lines. Certainly (in the face of ugly evil) NOT very
trusting! If you have thoroughly earned
your pain, and deserve your pain as the ONLY way to learn what you need to
learn, I should NOT prevent your pain and suffering!
As time went by,
Roxanne’s “talking to the dead” got worse and stranger. She saw it going bad, we discussed it, and it
kept on getting worse anyway. She
clearly believed in helping to “flip” the evil spirits (such as “Elmer” way
back when), over to the good side.
“Conversion warfare”, she called it, and I encouraged her. I hang my head in shame now, in retrospect,
that I did NOT do enough to warn her about deception! But what happened (by quite a few weeks
preceding utter breakdown) was that the “spirits” would mob her, begging for
her help… She saw it, we discussed
it! We told her NOT to play “Dear Abby”
to the spirits! By that I mean, I have
never been a fan of “Dear Abby” for her habit of reading two or three
paragraphs from a reader, knowing NOTHING else about the details of the full
context of the situation, and proceeding to tell the reader how to run their
lives. (I also cannot STAND her constant
habit of saying, “Seek counsel from a LICENSED (emphasis mine) therapist”, with
ZERO acknowledgement of the apparently RADICAL idea that a non-licensed but
loving (and personally already “in the know”) religious leader or friend or
relative might actually be a better choice.
But I digress).
Anyway, on Roxanne
getting “mobbed” by supposedly help-seeking “spirits”, and playing “Dear Abby”
to them… We discussed it with Roxanne,
who had already figured it out. “The
spirits” live in their world, not ours, so they know their scoop; we do
not. We might indeed help them from time
to time, as I still believe that we helped “Elmer”, way back when. But we can NOT help them when they are
insincere, and all three of us (Roxanne and my wife and I) saw that, and talked
of it, and talked of not playing “Dear Abby”.
I had thought we had that squared away.
At that time, I (really,
all three of us, I think) believed that Roxanne really HAD been of at least
some assistance to “the spirits”. But we
said (and I thought, agreed) that the whole thing had gone sour, and that Roxanne
needed to quit it. I came up with one of
those perhaps-too-complex analogies where the “good guys” are cast as “bad
guys”, but the whole situation still serves to illustrate a point. Suppose that Roxanne (“invading Hell” a wee
tad to help encourage captured spirits to set themselves free) was successful,
and the “bad guys” are insincerely “mobbing her” to falsely seek help (to
protect Hell from invasion). This is
analogous to Roxanne being a disease organism (say, a parasitical worm)
invading a host. The host’s immune
system will “mob” the attacker, sealing it off, in the manner of an invader’s cyst
(protective wall) being surrounded by macrophages (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843452/
for example). Macrophages surrounding
the infection equates mobs of demons (or bad thoughts) insincerely seeking
assistance, you see. I’m not sure
Roxanne absorbed that one too well! What
I meant was, quit the whole business of playing “Dear Abby”; the enemy was ON
to her and to her tricks! And defending
the body of the enemy!
In retrospect, the entry
into mania had progressed too far at this point, or shortly following this
point, such that we couldn’t get through to Roxanne any more, or she somehow
lost self-control in there at some point, or both. Things got even worse. Roxanne became convinced that the spirit of
Jesus had somehow “lost his way” after he died, and came back to help the
humans… That he’d gotten this whole
(post-death-of-Jesus) thing wrong, and Roxanne was helping him, and he was very
grateful for her help! This “bad” Jesus
was known as the “dark soul shards of Jesus”, and at one point she was calling
this entity “J-man” and telling my wife that “J-man” was Judas, while really,
in her mind (if the term “really” can be used here, with anything approaching a
straight face), “J-man” was the “dark soul shards of Jesus”! One other (far more minor) case of Roxanne
deceiving us happened at about this time, which was pretty far removed from her
normal character.
“J-man” once “appeared”
to Roxanne as a dark-tentacled thing under her bed! But she mentioned this to my wife, while
forbidding my wife to mention it to me!
My wife and I were clearly getting worried by this time… But not worried enough! “Helping Jesus” indeed! The whole thing reeks of arrogance, of
delusions of grandeur! Humility is an
antidote to this kind of thing, but I’ll save my comments about that, till later. At that time, I was afraid to harp on
humility v/s arrogance (other than grumbling to my wife, not Roxanne), because
Roxanne kept on talking to us about her “self-esteem problems”. We can’t criticize too harshly, you know, for
fear of tearing down self-esteem. In
reality, this whole thing is a tight-rope…
Somehow, we need the wisdom to know when to build up, and when to tear
down… When to “comfort the afflicted”,
and when to “afflict the comfortable”.
I’m still working on this, and I will NOT play “Dear Abby”, and try to
advise ANYONE on how to make this sort of judgment call, based on a few
paragraphs! But in retrospect, I should
have been screaming “bloody murder” over this thing, at that time.
At one point in there,
Roxanne discussed her “dark soul shards of Jesus” theory with my wife (I wasn’t
there), and my wife said something along the lines of, “OK, I understand that
you believe what you believe, but I’m not sure that I believe it.” (My wife was more into paying attention to
Roxanne’s “poor self esteem” at this point, than I was). A week (at most) goes by, and Roxanne
broaches the topic with Melissa again.
Melissa “lets it all hang out” a bit more, and flat-out says, something
along the lines of, “I’m sorry, Hon, but I just can’t buy it.” At that point, Roxanne goes at least a slight
bit ballistic… “HOW can you tell me that
you BELIEVE me, and then take it all BACK?!?
You LIED to me!!!” It upsets
Melissa a bit more than it upsets me, actually, strangely, at that time… I asked Roxanne if she was blaming Jesus for
abominations such as the Crusades, or the Spanish Inquisition. I never got much of a response. And she forbids us from bringing that
particular topic up again. She is
starting to “wall us out”.
Now once again, this is
from the “omniscient” perspective (or the “punch-line-blowing” perspective)
that I am writing from now, in view of what Roxanne told us after her
breakdown. But at this point, paranoia
had set in. Her “head voices” were
telling her to believe them, and not us!
I sure hope that THAT never happens again! This is how bad that “listening” to her “head
voices” got: Her “head voices” tell her
(in their multiple voices; her Grammy, the flipped-to-the-good-side voice of
Hitler, the flipped-to-the-good-side voice of my brother Franklin, etc.), that
her theory of the “dark soul shards of Jesus” is correct! They’ve got many votes, and they out-voted
us! It stuck in my craw, but who am I to
challenge the religious or spiritual views of my fellow adult human?! (She was 27 years of age, and I was not
enough willing to “judge”, which is too often a horrible word, in modern
parlance).
At this point, I simply
MUST interject a bit: Post-breakdown,
one of her psychotherapists (a psychologist, not a shrink) liked to talk to
Roxanne (and to all three of us, in “family” therapy) about his three-or-four-legged
“stool” analogy. If it works for you,
fine… If you want to stay sane, run your
thinking by some other trusted human “legs of your stool”, to keep you on the
level. My more-favored version of this
analogy is, we are a part of a team of humans walking across the glacier. Hidden under the snow, are crevasses, which
can swallow us up without warning. To
guard against being swallowed up, we separate from each other, with some
distances, but we are ROPED TOGETHER! If
anyone falls into the crevasse, we all grab our ropes, and we pull him or her
back out! Paranoia makes us “cut our
ropes”… We do NOT trust our fellow
humans, and we “go it alone”! Big
mistake! And that (we learned later) is
a mistake that Roxanne made! She let her
“head voices” convince her to follow them, and not us! This was in the 1 to 2 weeks preceding her
breakdown, and she only much later told us about the paranoia.
Allow me to divert (in
the name of tying together concepts rather than story line as being more
important) a wee tad more, and then we’ll get on with the story. About the “dark soul shards of Jesus” theory
of Roxanne’s… Mania has this habit of
taking a good idea, and slowly warping and twisting, and then it becomes
strange, unwieldy, and eventually it often becomes delusions of grandeur. As you may recall, I repeatedly told Roxanne
(in her college years, see very first parts), “Jesus
has come and gone, and has NOT fixed human nature. We still fight about religions; isn’t that the
stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of?”.
So if Jesus and all of the other past human saints didn’t fix it all,
HOW can YOU expect to fix it all? And
told her that same thing about ten billion times, it seemed. Then a few years later (spring 2017), we hear
from Roxanne, in her own words, something along the same lines… “Jesus came and went, and didn’t fix it
all. No one can fix it all, because 8
billion of us all have our own free will.”
Something along those lines… Or,
along the lines of what I wrote down, near the time that Roxanne said this; use
the following as search-string here:” “Hey look, Jesus and Ghandi and Martin Luther
King Jr. and who knows how many others, have already come and gone, and we are
STILL killing each other in the name of religion”!
So that, Roxanne said as she
(unbeknownst to us) was slowly slipping back towards mania. I was tickled pink! She has FINALLY listened to a darned thing
that we have been telling her, I said to myself! Little did I know, we were going to have to go
through another repeat of highly-highly similar ideas, through yet another
episode (this time admittedly aggravated by an unfortunate medications mistake
by an incompetent shrink). Hope springs
eternal in the human breast, but I actually do have high hopes that THIS time
around, Roxanne HAS finally, really learned!
A smaller point along this same line
(and in the same time-line) is that Roxanne had been writing fan fiction for
“The Last Airbender”, and associated fiction.
She got to the point… And she
pointed this out to us quite a few times…
That she did NOT like “Christ figures” in literature, in the sense of
“Christ figure” not so much meaning a morally-ethically perfect or near-perfect
one who suffers to help make things right, but in the sense of, a “Chosen One”
who can fix it all (often magically), while NO ONE else can “fix it all”! So Roxanne didn’t like the idea of “The
Chosen One who can fix it all”, and, frankly, I don’t either. If we find ourselves in a situation in which
we can fix a HUGE chunk of troubles (never “everything”), then by all means, do
it! But don’t expect these kinds of
once-in-ten-million-lifetimes opportunities to magically drop into your lap,
because you are “the Chosen One”. That
reeks to the Highest Heavens of delusions of grandeur, and I was glad that
Roxanne seemed to see it.
Anyway, later on, she claimed that
Jesus made mistakes, after Jesus died and came back (as a spirit, as the “Holy
Ghost”, many would call Him) to help us. He made mistakes. This was the “dark soul shards of Jesus” theory of
Roxanne’s, you see. And as mentioned,
Roxanne told us that Jesus’s spirit was grateful for her help! You can see the delusions of grandeur
creeping upwards, here, in retrospect…
To keep this “meme”
consolidated, I must now advance (or pre-advance) the story a bit. My wife and Roxanne and I travelled many hundreds
of miles to see the 21 Aug. 2017 eclipse.
We saw it (in the path of totality) from a public-park-like grassy area
that actually belonged to the VFW.
Across a chain link fence, there was a pond and some ducks or
geese. Later on, after her recovery was
well under way, Roxanne shared quite a few things that happened in her mind
during these times. That day, Roxanne
was actually mulling over in her mind, if she should perhaps jump over that
chain-link fence, and see if she could walk on the water.
So in summary, here is an
example of how the ideas go from good and true, to delusions of grandeur, but
slowly, in steps, as one travels into mania:
“Jesus came and went, and fixed little if anything, so I should NOT
expect that I can fix a whole bunch, either”.
… “The whole “Chosen One” thing
is a bunch of hogwash, since we are all just one out of 8 billion or so people
on the planet”. … “Jesus is / was one of these so-called (false)
“Chosen Ones”, who people expected entirely too much off, and He is falling
short, in His assigned roles in the after-life”. … “I
can help him in the afterlife, and He appreciates my help.” …
“Maybe I am some sort of Chosen One, and maybe I can walk on the water”.
The first step, jumping
straight to the last jump, would set off all sorts of alarm bells. But take the baby steps in between, and, to a
person slowly going manic, it makes a lot more sense. To more sane people, of course, it makes
little if any sense. And the therapy
industry’s legions of soft-talking psychobabblers may grit their teeth when I
say such things, but… Genuine humility
will help to guard you, when the delusions of grandeur-type thoughts come
creeping in! I suspect that when your
therapist starts calling you down, when he or she starts seeing delusions of
grandeur creeping in, that you will run off and go and find yourself another
therapist. Your ego will be offended. THAT is why talk therapy often does not work!
I hesitate to add this,
since it’s a bit tangential. But after
her several weeks in the psych ward, we were taking Roxanne home. We’re talking in the car, that is. She “got the message” from Jesus that at
first, in Jesus’s new role in the afterlife, of trying to shepherd us
humanoids, that He was doing it wrong, somehow (but implied was, that’s just
the name of the game; These things just happen). That people were too obsessed with empty
“sugar cubes” (like a horse eagerly eating sugar cubes with no real
long-lasting nutritive value, past an energy rush). I asked if that meant people are too
concerned about fancy cars, money, social status, etc.; if these were the
“sugar cubes”. No, Roxanne responded,
“sugar cubes” consists of trying to mindless find a list of “The Rules”, and
then robotically trying to follow “The Rules”!
(Mix it up a bit, since it’s all mixed up already anyway, and see what
you can learn, instead). OK, fine then,
I guess I can see the point.
The above (in which the
Spirit of Jesus initially wonders if He is really doing things right, in view
of the thick-headedness of the humans) can be seen to “wrap around” to the
whole chain of manic thinking that went bad; see only slightly further
above. At that point, Roxanne told us,
Jesus said that He wasn’t talking to her any more. She’s got to figure things out for
herself. It reminds me of Jesus telling
Roxanne much earlier, “Work on stilling My Voice”. Get those GABA circuits working right, and
you can rely on your INTERNAL “Jesus” (yourself, your conscience) instead! A BIG side benefit is, if GABA receptors are
working correctly, you won’t hear the demons (intruding thoughts) either! Haldol can help… Roxanne is still taking Haldol, by the way;
weaning THAT particular drug down any further, will have to wait…
I see one other “meme”
popping its head up here, so let’s smack that one down, before we go on with
the story. That is, effective, simple,
common-sense “testing techniques” to fend of delusions. If you start to wonder if you could walk on
liquid water, say to your stupid thoughts, “OK, stupid grandiose thoughts! You say that I could walk on liquid
water. Before I go to the trouble of
THAT, and maybe embarrassing myself, or drowning or getting washed away in the
flooding, then, here, demonstrate to me.
I am poking my finger into this cup of water. Make my finger meet TREMENDOUS
counter-vailing force, above and beyond normal “meniscus force”, and THEN I
will believe you!” And it ain’t gonna
happen, and you can laugh at your “stupid thoughts” or “demons” or both,
however you conceptualize them.
My “metaphysical
research” has told me that the “beyond the beyond” entities are NOT allowed to
help us “cheat”… For them to tell us
tomorrow’s winning lottery number, et al, is clearly selfish cheating, so “no
go” on that. “The Spirits” can help us
help OTHER people, though (I think it happened quite clearly to me once,
but… NOT gonna share that one). But no selfish cheating-assistance allowed,
from the good guys. The BAD guys? They NEVER help ANYONE, period! OK, I can buy most or all of that…
TESTING the “strange
thoughts” who claim to be from the “other side”? Have at it!
“Tell me the 5th through the 12th words in the body of the
main text in tomorrow’s newspaper”, tell them (or the next random web site that
I hit, or the next 10 coins that I flip, what have you). Harmless stuff that does NOT allow you to
cheat, to get ahead in the world, see…
And the “beyond the beyond” will NOT perform, so you can then BLOW THEM
OFF, as you should!
If they are mendacious,
nasty spirits or thoughts, they will do something along the same lines as has
been done by human liars and braggarts concerning the “end of the world”
predictors, and the excuses that they will make up afterwards. “Google” at will; here’s just a few that I
saw… https://culteducation.com/group/1289-general-information/8206-worst-end-of-world-predictions-and-the-embarrassing-excuses.html http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/top_ten_rapture_excuses/
… Working from memory, the more common
straight-faced excuses would be, “It didn’t happen ‘cause you didn’t trust in
MEEE, your Sacred Prophet”, or “It really DID happen, in a GOOD way, it was
just in an invisible way”, or “Well OK, I got it slightly wrong; it is now
re-scheduled for 3 years from now, after I sell yet some more doom-and-gloom-predicting
books”, or “It did NOT happen, in the BAD way, because JUST BARELY enough
people listened to me.” Your “intrusive
stupid thoughts” (AKA demons) will pull similar stunts and stupid excuses on
you. Keep on fending them off; keep on
fighting the good fight! Tell them to
enable you to levitate painlessly, near-effortlessly, in private… If they deliver, THEN maybe start believing! J (Actually, if that happened, I’d take a fresh
look at my medicines, and run the test repeatedly, and pause for a few days,
before FINALLY believing enough to have someone else double-check my
performance of the “strange little trick” that I have learned).
Back to story time
now… Stop making me digress! The following materials WILL be tested for!
Roxanne started to seem
very distracted. She was living downtown,
in an apartment, where she had worked for almost 2 years, post-graduation, but
too far from us to commute. She lost her
job when funding ran dry. So she was still
living there, unemployed for one summer, and visiting us on the weekends. She was supposedly working on a novel, with
original characters (not fan-fiction as before), while waiting for
same-downtown-located schooling to start in the fall. She never did get around to writing actual
action or dialog… Tellingly, on her
apartment grease-board, there was written, a note to herself: “Watching You Tube not = Novel Research”.
As mentioned, this time
around, unlike the episode in college, she didn’t write down much (besides
novel “doodles”). Here below, I import
one of the few things that she wrote, and emailed to her Mom and I, that
Roxanne was proud of. My wife didn’t
like it so well. I did not critique
harshly, because of Roxanne’s “low self esteem” that I was so often told about. There are few faster ways to shut down
communication, though, than to critique the spelling and grammar of an informal
email! But in retrospect, there was
perhaps a red flag, or at least orange flags, that might have indicated mania. Here is that email:
The world is partial
nonsense, and trying to make absolute sense of partial nonsense produces
absolute nonsense, aka flawed ideology of the world. Truth comes in accepting
that reality can be cruel, unintuitive and subject to the whims of both other
humans and random events, and unreality comes in trying to explain the
thunderstorm, the meaning of the burnt turtle shell, the specific holy book
verse, or why your aunt was killed in a car accident.
Certain things must be
adapted to and moved on from, or YOU die. Not only in a physical sense, but in
a personal/spiritual sense.
Mysticism of the numbers
is bogus. Mysticism of the relics of X person is bogus. Mysticism of the book
written by Y person is bogus. Mysticism of the animal parts is bogus.
Fundamentally, unreality,
the Dark Soul Shard, that which is evil within us, the Evil One, come from
trying to force reality and life to make sense, be safe, comfortable,
appealing, simple.
In doing so, civilization
moves away from Truth, what you may call kami, God, Allah, karma, and make the
world that much harder to deal with. And by attributing the power of reality to
a single being, or being that humans write of and their ideas of what it could
be, you create unreality. If you attempt to make this being make everything
make absolute sense, you enter unreality at a deeper level, and give the Evil
One earthly authority.
Authority that your faulty
perception and stubborn search for meaning where it does not always exist
created. Authority your blind faith, blind hope, blind search for answers to
cure all ailments, blind belief reinforces, until it far surpasses the Evil
One’s wildest dreams in authority.
For giving something so
unreal such a presence in your life enacts thought control of yourself. Thought
control is reality control, when nothing can control reality.
You do the Evil One’s work
for him, in your quest to make life perfect forever.
To misquote Benjamin
Franklin, “Those who give up their own sight of the Truth of the world to
obtain a little temporary comfort from its evils deserve neither Truth nor
comfort.”
But it is the “all
powerful” idea system that takes the Truth away, and the Truth that denies you
comfort because you have forsaken it. It wants you back. For
YOU have forsaken reality, that which is real.
Pain and suffering can
lead to Truth. If you attempt to end them, you will end Truth, instead of
finding pleasure in defying life’s trials, as any sentient being should.
Like an animal, fighting,
biting, grinning, howling and feasting on the kills that struggling against
inner death, unreality and life itself cause. You cannot kill yourself or Truth
- only unreality. And even that kill is a temporary one, as you must constantly
be on guard.
When unreality comes knocking,
greet it not with open arms, but bared armaments, to let it know that not only
are you not interested, you’ll fight it tooth and nail. Do not simply say “I
cannot help you, go to the Light” either, because he will not go away because
of pretty words.
Instead, you must question
yourself to figure out the reason he can stand on your doorstep in the first
place, and try, try again to eliminate that unreality from yourself by holy
war, internal struggle, true “jihad”, so that he has no energy that he can
exploit to lead you further astray…
And only finds energy that
is his bane.
I’ve now
re-read that, and must expound some more.
But first, here was my near-immediate, but perhaps shallow, response,
via email:
True Dat!
Sounds to me
like you’d be a fan of M. Scott Peck’s short aphorism, “Reality at all costs”.
I’d bet that you
are already aware of these things, but “truth” runs in shades and
degrees. Objective truth about the material world? Sure, clearly,
except to nut jobs! “This item weighs 15.97 grams; no more, no
less.” = Truth! Absolutely, to me at least!
Biological
world? “The females bear the unborn young”. Mostly true…
Except for sea-horses and pipe-fish… “Truth” now has more caveats…
Spiritual
world? Gets even more hazy! “Truth is better than lies, creation is
better than destruction.” I agree… But those are “value judgments”,
in the phrase that I heard a LOT when I was a newly minted (deleted)
youngster! “Which way is the best way to run society”, and “what is
fundamental human nature”, and so forth, can get very fuzzy.
But keep on
keeping on… “Just keep swimming”, and “I approve of your value
judgments”.
Love, (deleted) Dad
Implied above was, there is no “truth”
involved in a TON of what humans have fought over! Which is more “true”: Chopsticks are better than forks and
spoons? Chocolate tastes better than
vanilla, or even better than codfish oil? Math is better than poetry? Reason is better than piety? I was a bit unhappy to see “Truth” elevated above “Love”, to
tell MY particular “truth”, truth be told!
The
entirety of what she had written was bolded and underlined!!!! When you bold and underline the whole thing,
it is the same as bolding and underlining EVERYTHING and NOTHING, and it just
adds clutter to your view!!! See what I
mean? But actually, on
re-reading, I now see a lot of truth, and not quite as much mania as I had been
recalling. I never “called her” on the bolded
and underlined thing, because I didn’t want to be a nit-picker,
communication-shutter-downer. But a
writer should know that.
On re-reading
Roxanne’s line about … I can now see
perhaps a wee tad more of why my wife didn’t like this particular piece of
writing. This part here:
Do not simply say “I
cannot help you, go to the Light” either, because he will not go away because
of pretty words.
My wife once had a night-time dream
in which case she said the above quote to a threatening, evil, black, red-eyed
bird, and it shrunk and went away. I
have already told that story; use “Now, for just a
wee tad of foreshadowing, before I describe” as a search-string here in this
document. So maybe that hit my wife,
consciously or subconsciously. I
actually think Roxanne is technically correct…
There are no magic buzz-phrases or incantations. But if you have used the words before… Perhaps backed up by a certain sublime mental
or psychic energy… And they have
WORKED… Then by all means, use them
again! It might help!
The other thing
I remark on, when I read the above Roxanne writings, is that the allegorical
terms and it-them-their-they-us gets thrown around a lot, and one can easily
lose track of who is who. This is
perhaps indicative of mania, but my case here is not all that strong. Let me pick some cases from above, and throw
a (paren) clause in there, in black, to show where confusion can set it. I’ll sometimes throw those (paren) clauses in
there, after it-them-their-they-us gets thrown too much (after I get too
manic?), to remind the reader of which is which, and who is who, in my own writings. It makes the reading easier (less confusing),
and doesn’t add all that much clutter.
For giving something so
unreal (your inflexible ideology) such a presence in your life enacts
thought control of yourself.
Instead, you must question
yourself to figure out the reason he (unreality) can stand on your doorstep
in the first place,
I admit that I’m
nit-picking at least a wee tad…
On the car ride as we
left the mental hospital, I reminded Roxanne of this idea of, “Why can
unreality (the Evil One, intrusive thoughts, etc.) camp on my doorstep? Time to self-examine.” I suggested, at that time, that lack of
humility was why unreality started to camp on Roxanne’s doorstep. (Yes, medications mistakes added to it, but
we are talking about the spiritual side right now). Helping Jesus fix his “dark soul shards of
Jesus”, etc.! Come on now! Roxanne was very receptive to this input of
mine, at that time. My wife, now ½ years
or so on down the line from then, says that Roxanne was open to ANY ideas at that
time; just glad to get OUT of there, and back home! I’ll get back to the “humility as antidote to
delusions of grandeur” thing one of these days, and write some more details…
Back to story-time. In the week preceding the week of our
eclipse-viewing vacation, Roxanne got worse.
She was no longer much of a chatterbox about her theories… Later on, she told us that paranoia has
started to set in; that she started to think that she had to get away from us,
her parents. But we knew nothing of
that, at that time. Intrusive thoughts
were bothering her; she told us that much.
My wife went downtown to visit Roxanne Monday or Tuesday night, to talk
things over. Roxanne drove to our house
on Thursday afternoon. Unbeknownst to
us, that would be the last time she’d see her apartment, or drive a car, for a
handful of months. She seemed very
distracted. I told her to lock up her
car on our driveway, after we unloaded, that Thursday, as I went and checked
our snail-mail, mailbox. She didn’t lock
her car, but instead, followed right after me, and checked the mailbox, right
after I had checked the mailbox! That’s
how badly she was distracted. Just WHAT,
exactly, was she distracted BY? What
kind of “mental loop” had set in? To
this day, we don’t know… Roxanne cannot
recall. I didn’t rag on Roxanne about
the mailbox and car-locking thing… I
just called my wife at work, and she simply said, “Yes, I know”. We were getting worried.
Other examples of this
“distractedness” thing during our week of vacation were, Roxanne once went into
the wrong-sex public restroom, totally absent-mindedly. Once, while Roxanne and I had breakfast
(while Melissa was packing our room, for the day’s car trip), I pointed out
that my coffee cup had cream swirls on the top, looking like a VERY excellent
rendition of the Eastern Yin-Yang symbol.
Instead of looking at it, Roxanne takes a thoughtful sip or two, even
though she doesn’t like to drink coffee!
The
plan had been that Roxanne would stay by herself in our house, alone,
house-sitting and pets-sitting, while we went on vacation. In light of Roxanne’s mental condition, we
sat at the dining-room table, and talked it over. Roxanne did at least (thank God for this
much!) tell us that her intrusive thoughts were worse when she was alone, and
subsided when she was around other people.
So we fairly quickly changed our minds, and made last-minute
preparations to take Roxanne with us, instead.
I can still recall that I was thinking, “Here we are, wrestling with the
Evil One again, at least a wee tad.” But
our flexibility and benevolence will win the day, and we’ll just take Roxanne
with us. A change of pace will do her
good. Little did we know what was coming
our way…
Roxanne
said things like, “I am going to use my Mom-Dad ladder to climb out of my funk,
during this vacation”, early on. We told
her to NOT think about the “beyond the beyond”, and just to “live in the real
world”, and enjoy, for a while. She said
she was “getting some help” from the so-called “beyond the beyond”, too, and we
(or at the very least, I) took all that in, optimistically. Now any more, we “red-flag” it, when Roxanne
makes any mention of “getting help” from the “beyond the beyond”, or anything
along these lines.
This
latter thing can be called “taking therapy from your head voices”, to put a bad
spin on it. Yet have not the Saints of
the Ages “talked to God” for thousands of years? This is an important topic, so let me
interject a short and sweet take on it: Talking
to God is OK, so long as God is telling you to “Love your neighbors”. When God is telling you to “Smite the
unbelievers”, PLEASE stop listening to Him!!!
There are ten millions shades of grey in between those two things, and
it can become VERY difficult… So if you
have a bad temper, or any other mental or spiritual problem, PLEASE find trusted
advisors to “run things by them” before you take important steps! (Doing the same is a good idea, too, when you
are “perfect in every way”, or regard yourself as such!). And “Dear Abby” can take a hike; your trusted
advisor need NOT be “a licensed therapist”!
Also this: If you doubt that
“God” would tell you to “Smite the unbelievers”, then please read this book: https://infidels.org/library/modern/james_haught/holy.html
, AKA "Holy Horrors" by James
A. Haught.
During our long car ride to see the eclipse,
Roxanne continued to be distracted. There
were a few other things that worried me just a wee tad. One was that she got suddenly much more
long-winded than her usual recent mode of being a bit quiet, when she was
talking about the “background story” of “Worlds of Warcraft”. She had given up the game quite some time
ago. I am not one to endlessly rail
against computer games and role-playing (on-line shared games can teach you
social skills if you have little other social interaction). However, too much is too much! The other thing was when we were discussing
“humility”… I said that humility is a
much-underappreciated virtue. Roxanne
made some fairly big deal about accepting “humility” as a good thing, but not
“humbleness”, or some such hair-splitting.
In light of her “dark soul shards of Jesus” thing, I thought that
Roxanne needed to work on her humility, but I did NOT start a big fight… I let the whole thing ride, other than
saying, in general terms, that humility is a good thing.
On Monday the 21st of August, we saw
the eclipse. As we were waiting in the
heat, we’d pop into our car for some cool air now and then. I was worried about Roxanne’s distractedness
(her ability to focus). I reminded her
that in a mere ONE WEEK, she was supposed to start taking tough academic
classes; it was time for her to snap out of it.
I gave her a magazine article that I had just read, and asked her to
read it. No, she didn’t want to read
it. (I wanted to give her an informal
“reading comprehension test”, just to see how bad things really were). No, she says, she doesn’t want to read about
THAT. She’ll read an article about
nature, instead, in this science magazine of mine. She picked an article about whales, but never
did read it. I reminded here that she
would NOT get to pick and choose which articles she would read and not read, in
school, and that watching videos isn’t nearly as taxing as reading, to the
human brain… AND that her school
materials would be much-more-so, reading, with few videos. She called me some sort of mean “Lich King”
or some such term from “World of Warcraft”, for saying such things to her. Now I was getting even more worried.
I am now convinced that one should… Read-read-read! Read something reasonably difficult every
day, every two days at the most, and constantly check your reading
comprehension! This is an EXCELLENT way
to constantly self-check one’s own mental state, AND fend of mental decay (in
old age, for example). Plus, impress
people at cocktail parties, but I digress…
We
had planned to take one more day to “see the sights” locally, before heading
back home. Tuesday the 22nd
(post-eclipse) was rainy, was one thing.
The other was our worries about Roxanne’s condition. Both factors together (especially the latter)
rapidly changed our minds, and we burned gasoline all day long. I did most of the driving. Roxanne sat in the rear, and held her mother’s
hand a lot, as my wife was sitting up front.
Roxanne would keep unbuckling her seat belt, and my wife would nag her
to put it back on. In light of what
happened later, my wife and I have sometimes wondered, was Roxanne perhaps
contemplating jumping out of the moving car?!
Keeping herself from doing it, by holding her mom’s hand? We have never had the heart to ask Roxanne
about that, nor do we want to “set her brain on fire”. After she came back home, we’d make her sit
in the back, locked in like a child, for many weeks.
We
stopped for the night, just barely inside our home state, but still hundreds of
miles from home. Being in our home state
(for what followed) was a VERY good thing, medically-bureaucratically, by the
way. After some contemplation and discussion
with my wife, that evening in the hotel room, pre-bedtime, I mentioned to
Roxanne that I thought that there was just no way that she was going to be able
to successfully go back to school, in her current condition. She seemed to take it well. I have no idea to this day, whether that was
a good or bad thing for me to tell her that, at that time. We were now on the verge of Wednesday 23
August 2018, which I can unequivocally tell you, was the worst day in all three
of our lives.
My
wife and I are both bleary-eyed from being asleep. The hotel-room phone rings and rings. It stops ringing by the time we pick it
up. Meanwhile, I discover that Roxanne
is nowhere to be found! I get dressed
while my wife calls the front desk. We
learn that Roxanne wandered out in the nude, and was walking through the
parking lot. The hotel had called the
police. A policeman has her locked in
his car. The policeman was very nice
about it all… I met him at the door of
our hotel room. Melissa has gathered clothes
for Roxanne, and I accompany Mr. Policeman down to the squad car. Roxanne has been very polite and
cooperative. She puts on her clothes, I
chat with Mr. Policeman, and we write it all up to “sleepwalking”. Mr. Policeman is on his way, and I walk Roxanne
back to our room. Roxanne seems grateful
for our help. We discuss the new
appearance of this “sleepwalking” thing.
Roxanne tells us no different, that this wasn’t really
“sleepwalking”. We stack two ice-chests
against the hotel room door (on the inside, of course) to hopefully “wake
Roxanne up” if she starts “sleepwalking” again, and my wife moves to her bed,
to keep a closer eye on Roxanne. In
retrospect, that may have been a mistake, in light of what we later
learned: That Roxanne had become paranoid,
thinking that she needs to escape from us.
But me, being the one needing to be the “driving machine” for the next
day’s travels? I slip off to fitful
quasi-sleep, thinking that I mostly-merely have a new “engineering problem” to
be solved: How do we secure the doors at
home, against Roxanne’s new “sleepwalking”?
Much
later on, Roxanne told us that while she was out there, nude, in the parking
lot, she was touching the cars and trucks, trying to ? “faith heal” them or
some such, who knows?!? Crazy thinking
is crazy thinking; what else can you say?
She was thinking that the “phase change” or “singularity” or “the Return
of Jesus” or some such, was taking place.
When we had discussed “living in the real world” for a while, that had
taken hold of her brain, and slowly transmuted into some sort of thing she
called (to herself at the time, not talking to us about it) some sort of
ideology of “physicality”. So she was
out there in the parking lot, practicing or exploring “physicality”. This is how, in mania, ideas just (slowly or
rapidly) transmute from sensible to nonsensical, if you let them. And yes, I know; brain biochemistry apparently
just takes over at some point, and who knows where free will and self-control
go? All I can do is to offer some observations,
suggestions, and advice, to “fight the good fight”, here… Which is what this web page is all about.
Roxanne
stirs a lot, and goes to the bathroom three times, as my wife keeps an eagle
eye on her. Her third trip to the
bathroom, she stays in there a long time.
I think I recall my wife saying she heard some rumbling and grumbling in
there. By now, my wife is alarmed. There are shaving razors and what-not in
there, and who knows what Roxanne is thinking?
Roxanne
bursts out of the bathroom, and throws the two ice-chests in front of the door,
down to the ground. My wife tries to
stop Roxanne, and Roxanne throws her to the floor! I spring out of bed, and wrestle Roxanne back
onto a bed. Melissa places a cell-phone
call to the cops at 911. I talk Roxanne
down a bit, as I recall, and we get better dressed. My mind is hazy around SOME of this, but not
others, while my wife’s memories complement mine. We do not probe at Roxanne about this, but we
know that she forgot a lot. Probably
this is just as well…
At
some point in there, Roxanne escaped from us, and got to the hotel
elevator. We dragged and coaxed her back
to our room. We have her sitting there
quietly on a bench, when the policeman (a different one) shows up at our
door. We are quietly chatting it over
with Mr. Policeman #2, saying that we have a psychiatrist’s appointment for
Roxanne on Thursday, in our hometown, and are on our way home. Roxanne is sitting there quietly, still. I tell Mr. Policeman that we can dose Roxanne
with Valium, for the car trip. I hasten
to add to Mr. Policeman that we have a prescription.
At
that point, the real nightmare begins.
Roxanne suddenly springs up from her bench, telling Mr. Policeman that
he is the Evil One, and trying to assault Mr. Policeman! I try to block her assault, and a chase
ensues in the hotel halls. I try to trip
Roxanne, but fail. Mr. Policeman shoots
the both of us, pop-pop, with red-colored pepper spray. My wife thought that they were bullets and
blood, for a little while! We chase
Roxanne. She tells Mr. Policeman to
“just shoot me!” This was some sort of
haphazard, spur-of-the-moment “suicide by cop”, then. I cannot recall exactly how it happened, but
Roxanne fell down. I grabbed one of her
ankles with both hands, and clung on for dear life, turning myself into a large
“ball and chain”. I thought for a while
that I could not sustain the effort, with me being a weak and tired old man,
and Roxanne being a strong young girl.
But she went nowhere. Mr.
Policeman (being of slight build) and my wife also “piled on”, literally, to
subdue Roxanne, out there in the hall. Sitting
all over her, basically. A kind
middle-aged anonymous man came out of his room and helped “pile on” as well. It took a lot of effort from the 4 of us, but
we held her in place. Mr. Policeman’s
calls for assistance were answered at last, and many (8 or 10, who knows)
policemen showed up to restrain Roxanne in a stretcher, and take her off to the
local hospital.
I am
thankful that the police were restrained and professional, in all that I
saw. I am also very glad that Roxanne
did NOT escape the hotel! Being wrestled
to the ground and restrained on carpeting is a LOT gentler than having the same
thing happen outdoors! And who knows,
the whole thing could very well have ended with Roxanne and/or I getting shot
and wounded or killed. So things sure
could have been worse!
So
my wife and I clean ourselves up a bit…
I had to get a shower to rid myself of pepper spray… And we go to the local hospital, to help take
care of Roxanne.
She
stayed in a regular hospital for about 5 days, and was then transferred to a
mental hospital for about 3 weeks. I had
to return to our house to take care of the house itself, and our pets. My wife stayed close to the two hospitals during
all this time, “working from home” via the internet, and visiting Roxanne
regularly. Roxanne was quite the mess
for a while, but slowly recovered. I
cannot honestly see much value in relaying the things she did and said during
her hospitals stays… Craziness is
craziness, and there’s sometimes just not a whole bunch that we can learn from
it. I can tell you that, starting with
Roxanne’s third stay in the hotel bathroom that night, the
supposedly-flipped-to-the-good-side, suicide-deceased brother of mine,
“Franklin” (or “mimic” of him, it makes no difference to us) was back yet
again! And into the first days of
Roxanne’s hospital stays… Urging her
towards suicide again! So here, in case
you really need it, is more evidence to NOT trust “head voices”!
I
can’t dig up any deep and meaningful lessons or stories from these hospital
stays, other than, there’s some very, very, very dedicated, thoughtful, compassionate,
brave, and helpful people working in hospitals.
There’s also a few than are, um, not so much, but I won’t dwell on
that. There’s different kinds of folks
everywhere, it seems.
Some
of Roxanne’s hospital-stays things that she did and said were pretty scary, and
as I think it over, once again, I really don’t see much “percentage to be had”
in relaying much or any of it here, at this time. I wrote some daily computer notes for a
while, though, so I do have materials at hand.
My wife took hand-written notes.
If any reader REALLY thinks that they might learn useful things through
reading more details, I will consider it.
Best would be, I think, for specific GENERAL questions to be asked of
me… “Is this approach better than this
other approach, do you think, and why?”
In case my “cover is blown” (and with it, Roxanne’s), I am reluctant to
share many more specifics of what all happened.
But if you want, you can email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com .
I can generally say, “Be
patient and supportive, but do not support the bad thoughts. Keep it simple (what you say to them). Arm them with simple common-sense “back-talk”
to the bad thoughts. They will often
want to swing into wild and crazy thoughts and words, and you have to gently
remind them that they are in a mental hospital, and in no condition or
environment to solve the world’s troubles.
Be kind and gentle”, we kept on reminding Roxanne.
“Cooperate with the
staff. THAT is how you are going to get
better, and get out of here!”
And of course, if you are
bipolar, do NOT let your shrink add anti-depressants on top of a mood
stabilizer such as lithium!!! Sad to
say, we did not learn this till Roxanne was hospitalized. A simple “Google” search could have prevented
a lot of suffering here!
Almost a whole month
after we started our vacation, Melissa and Roxanne finally came back home. Roxanne continued to get better, and we are
now gradually reducing her medicines (as supervised by a DIFFERENT, more
competent shrink, now!). A few weeks
after Roxanne’s return, we cleaned out her downtown apartment. The plan now is for her to get set back up
downtown, and return to school, in late summer 2018. She has already been re-accepted into the
school program, and is taking a local community-college course to get warmed
back up. The medications are sometimes
two steps forward, one step back, repeat (on reducing the doses). Since it is totally clear to us by now, that
the “head voices” can never really be trusted, we are medicating them away, as
best as we can. Lithium, Seroquel, Ativan,
Haldol, etc. But never, ever, EVER,
anti-depressants on top of a mood stabilizer like lithium!
Roxanne
and my wife and I try to have a weekly “family meeting” to (mostly) review how
things are going for Roxanne, skipping it only when there’s really nothing new to
go over. To look for mental “drift”, and
to help prevent having to re-learn the same old lessons yet again, we have
developed a checklist or summary of some hopefully-helpful ideas. I will repeat them twice here, color-coded BLUE for the original list, with added comments
(added just for this document) kept to a bare minimum the first time, and then
more comments, the second time around.
The comments are sometimes needed to translate internal “family lingo”
here.
Humility is the
antidote to this cycle: Inflate
ambitions too high; come crashing down after inevitable failure to do or to
understand the impossible.
Added comment: This
one, I had to revise to the below. I had
to acknowledge that brain biochemistry makes this a LOT harder to do, than it
sounds.
Version 2: “the antidote” sounds too strong. Perhaps better: If we have to pick “humility is your friend”
v/s “humility is your enemy”, as one approaches or enters a manic phase, then
CLEARLY, “humility is your friend” is closer to the truth.
The voices from
beyond the beyond are NOT to be trusted!
They have never told anyone how to write C++ code, anyway!
READING something (of
at least moderate difficulty) every day, and self-checking for comprehension,
is an excellent way to keep tabs on one’s own mental state.
I am one of 8 billion
people on the planet, and each and every one of them has their own free
will. I cannot “fix” or even influence
them all! No one can!
The higher I fly, the
further I can fall. Mostly, fly low and
cautiously.
The best way to stay
sane, is to doubt my own sanity, on a regular basis. If I start to believe that EVERY thought that
I ever have, is perfectly sane, then I am dangerously insane! (The same applies to “righteousness”).
Example
of inflated ego and insanity: Adolf
Hitler, who said, “Who is to say that I am not specially favored by God?”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can
make you commit atrocities.”
(Voltaire) We can hold some strange beliefs for a little while,
sometimes longer, and still behave well. If our thoughts get too utterly
bizarre for too terribly long, some bad outcomes (in behavior) become more and
more likely.
“Dear Abby”
constantly makes the mistake of advising people, even though she knows next to
nothing about these people. Do not be
“Dear Abby”.
Do not take fiction,
especially fantasy-type fiction, too seriously.
The magical powers of “Harry Potter” are totally, fantastically unreal.
“Reality at all
costs”, as M. Scott Peck said.
Un-needed suffering
is pointless and stupid. “If you have a
headache, take an aspirin already”, per M. Scott Peck. If you need help, ask for it.
“Vengeance is mine,
sayeth the Lord” means that we as mere mortal humans needn’t usually worry too much about (the
revenge flavor of) justice. The “Being
of Light” or the Universe or karma, or some such, will take care of such
things. Just “live your life” is the
best “revenge” that is actually safe and reliable!
“Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.”, said George Santayana… So remember,
be on guard, and you’ll be less likely to repeat it!
“K.I.S.S.”
Is Keep It Simple, Stupid… Complexity is
a good thing only sometimes. For
moral-ethical-spiritual rules, KISS may be best… Remember, if all 8 billion of us humans
obeyed that one word commandment, “Love”, then most human-made problems would
pretty much vanish overnight…
“Absolute
power corrupts absolutely”, said Lord Acton.
That means, do not seek absolute power of ANY kind, not even this kind
of power to persuade! Others will be
persuaded (of anything) only if their free will allows it, and free will is
inviolable! (Inviolable in terms of, I
cannot really take your free will away from you. Mental illness may be able to take away your
free will, if you allow it to.) Real
“absolute power” is a myth anyway, just like the pot of gold at the rainbow’s
end. Every dictator dies eventually.
The
placebo that STILL works, even when the patient knows that it is a
placebo. Take away the pill as well? Now we have religion or confident belief in “free
will”, and it STILL works!
Be
a catalyst! You do NOT need to be a part
of the reaction (as in chemistry), but your example or template can STILL be a
HUGELY beneficial presence!
Rationality
test for voices from the “beyond the beyond”…
I can walk on water, you say?
Make my finger meet resistance in this cup of water!
Well
OK, added comments are maybe warranted in only a few cases. The above may be more self-explanatory than I
was thinking. Here are just SOME of them
repeated:
Humility is helpful to
break this cycle: Inflate ambitions too
high; come crashing down after inevitable failure to do or to understand the
impossible.
Added comments: The bad
thoughts or the Evil One and minions, take your pick, like to attack you by
telling you that you have to figure it ALL out, or fix it ALL!!! With true humility, you laugh that all off,
as the utter absurdity that it clearly is!
If you develop true humility (which does NOT mean that you have to be a
human floor mat; it just means you need to have a realistic grasp on your true
place and significance in this world), in every cell of your body, then the
drift towards mania can be arrested…
Especially if you get help and meds!
But, just as happened in my LSD trip (a much-distilled-down-in-time
version of an attack of mental illness, pretty much), the Evil One will tell
you that you are a HUGE, big deal, and can fix it ALL (or figure it ALL out),
if you REALLY try, and use the right “magic”.
Then when you inevitably fail to accomplish impossible miracles, of
course, you are utterly worthless, and deserve to kill yourself! Break this circular stupid logic with
humility… Laugh off the big-ego attack
for being as silly as it truly is. I am
disappointed in the “talk therapy industry” that this is not more harped
on. I bought 3 books about humility, in
hopes of learning more. Sad to say, all
three were “Christian” books full of God-Jesus-God-Jesus-God-Jesus pious talk,
with a few famous-minister-this-that-and-the-other, Bible-Bible-Bible talk, so
I didn’t learn much. Any genuinely
thoughtful reader of the Gospel can see the humility of Jesus, though, I would
add. I will resist the temptation to
write more about this… I am tempted to
PREACH IT!!!
The voices from beyond
the beyond are NOT to be trusted! They
have never told anyone how to write C++ code, anyway!
Added comment: I used to pray and pray for help at work, in
solving coding problems, especially via night-time dreams. I did not write C++ code; I wrote something
else, but need to keep up my disguise, you know… Anyway, the “beyond the beyond” never pitched
in to help out, as far as I can tell. We
are normally “on our own” down here in this often God-forsaken place, it seems…
READING something (of
at least moderate difficulty) every day, and self-checking for comprehension,
is an excellent way to keep tabs on one’s own mental state.
Added comment: Videos and television do NOT count here! Give your brain a REAL test!
“Dear Abby” constantly makes the mistake of
advising people, even though she knows next to nothing about these people. Do not be “Dear Abby”.
Added comment: Search this document to find “Dear Abby” for
more details about this. Don’t be “Dear
Abby” to people on the Earth plane, and for sure, don’t try and play “Dear
Abby” to the spirits in the “beyond the beyond”! They live where they live, and you do NOT!
“Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.”, said George Santayana… So remember,
be on guard, and you’ll be less likely to repeat it!
Added comments: After her college episode (of what we learned
was bipolar mania, and started the lithium), Roxanne, in her own words,
admitted to having “flown too close to the sun”. This was in spite of us reminding her my
proverbial “1,567,092
times, give or take 5.”… Use that as a
search-string here for the history of that…
Of us reminding here that she is one of 8 billion humans on the planet,
and cannot fix it all by herself, etc.
After her release from the hospitals, Roxanne admitted that this time,
again in her own words, she had “flown right into the sun”. Well, I sure hope that she learned a few
things this time around! I can think of
times that I had to repeatedly relearn and relearn and relearn something,
before I REALLY learned. There’s always
hope left that someday we really DO learn!
The
placebo that STILL works, even when the patient knows that it is a
placebo. Take away the pill as well? Now we have religion or confident belief in “free
will”, and it STILL works!
Added comment: Search this document (or Google) to find “Knowingly
taking placebo pills eases pain, study finds” for more
details about this. Right below here…
Be
a catalyst! You do NOT need to be a part
of the reaction (as in chemistry), but your example or template can STILL be a
HUGELY beneficial presence!
Added comment: Roxanne’s item that she has added here… The conventional real-world understanding of
this might be along the lines of, “Monkey see, monkey do”… We often do what we see other people do, for
good or for bad. One need not “be a part
of the reaction” (contribute time, effort, money, labor) for good, or do nasty
things to the person involved, for bad, to have an effect. Simply being observed (what kind of example
do you present to others, which they then assimilate as acceptable or possibly
acceptable behavior, speech, or attitudes) can make a BIG difference! But Roxanne, to this day, is thinking of this
in spiritual or “beyond the beyond” terms.
We have cautioned her about this.
In light of past slow changes setting in, what is good now, can slowly
go to neutral and then to bad. This goes
clear back to “Elmer”, and “flipping” the bad sprits or thoughts to become good
ones. I know now (unlike earlier) what
the dangers are, here. If it can be done
safely, I still think this idea of “flipping” the bad (Roxanne called it
“conversion warfare” in her last slow entry into mania) to good, is good! Or even great! With the emphasis on “safely”, and not
getting tricked, or going too far into mania (especially delusions of
grandeur). As before stated, do not play
“Dear Abby”. So Roxanne still seems to
think she can do this passively, as a catalyst.
I cannot prove that right or wrong, obviously. All that I can do (have done) is to caution
her to not let it get bigger or more active, or, God forbid, let it run away
with itself! I trust that now that the
medications have been fixed, that she will be successful.
Rationality
test for voices from the “beyond the beyond”…
I can walk on water, you say?
Make my finger meet resistance in this cup of water!
Added comment: Search this document to find “If you start to wonder if
you could walk on liquid water” for more details.
We
also talk to Roxanne about “metacognition”, which is a fancy shrink term for
“thinking about thinking”. Use your
highest top-level brain centers to THINK about what you are thinking or
feeling. Are these thoughts or feelings
rational, reasonable, and helpful? Do
they help you to live in the real world?
For the hot-tempered person, who wants to smash the face of the person
who accidentally stepped on his toes… Is
what you are thinking of doing PROPORTIONAL or “just”? Or is it just stupid? So… “metacognition” then, the $50-word here,
for high-brows…
The
middle-brow term that my wife likes here, is “self awareness”. “Self awareness” leads to “self control”, so
keep on reading… When she was younger,
and under what I regarded to be spiritual attack, I used to often tell Roxanne,
“Roxanne is the boss of Roxanne”. The
booger-thoughts can NOT take control of you if you don’t let them! Sad to say, Roxanne recently, for at least a
few days, stopped being the boss of Roxanne…
But she is recovering, and she needs to forgive herself, and we need to
forgive her.
“Count
to ten” is the low-brow phrase that’s been around forever. Just ‘cause it’s low-brow, though, does NOT
mean it lacks wisdom! Before you act,
think! Before you SPEAK, think! Before you even let some stupid thoughts just
go and go and go, and trample roughshod, unchallenged, through your brain and
soul, give them some back-talk!
Challenge them with rationality!
Which
brings me to what I consider to be psychobabble, or on the verge of being
psychobabble. Here is an out-take from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/breakingbipolar/2017/11/coping-with-intrusive-thoughts-in-bipolar-disorder/
… Words by NATASHA TRACY.
“Don’t judge your
thoughts. If you understand
that these thoughts are part of an illness, then you should understand judging
them is useless and inappropriate. For example, you wouldn’t judge a sneeze
when you have a cold, why should you judge a mental illness symptom?”
Now please let me back-pedal a bit and say that I think Natasha’s words
are overall good and wise. In context, I
think it is quite clear that she does NOT think that we should allow our bad
thoughts to run rampant. But if I were
to re-state what she is saying here, for more clarity, and for steering far
clear of psychobabble, then this is what I would
say: Do not judge yourself harshly for
thinking bad or insane thoughts. Some of
them are clearly related to bad biochemistry, to a malfunctioning brain. But, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US ON THIS PLANET
thinks bad or insane thoughts from time to time. The bad thoughts do not make us bad. Failing to judge them for what they are,
failing to prevent them from making us take bad actions, failing to prevent
them from making us say terrible, dishonest things that cause others needless
anguish or pain… Failing, even, to
prevent them from over-running our whole brain and soul, like weeds in a
garden… THESE things are what
really-actually makes us bad! Fight the
good fight; fight off the bad! For
example, “I should murder my Mom and Dad”, etc., are clearly bad thoughts, and
need to be judged as such. To believe
that TOTAL “non-judgmentalism” will fight off the bad, is to allow us to be
tricked! And I, for one, can tell you
about being tricked! And I hang my head
in shame for that, but I WILL buckle up and fight another day!
Here
is another take on the above: In NAZI
Germany, under Adolf Hitler and his regime, the authorities lusted after, and
grabbed, just about all the power that they could. They could (and did) punish your words and
deeds. But they couldn’t see, or punish,
your innermost thoughts! “Die gedanken
sind frei”; see http://www.metrolyrics.com/die-gedanken-sind-frei-lyrics-pete-seeger.html
or listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbwQXVcbkU0
for more. “The thoughts are free”, even
if much else of our lives aren’t! That
is why the “rank and file” common Germans of the day would whisper to one
another, if they trusted each other, that “Die gedanken sind frei”!
So… In every lie, there is almost always a germ
of truth! We almost always have to
decide for ourselves. We must carefully
consider even the lies, and sift out the germs of truth. That’s at least part of why we should NOT go
on “guilt trips” for having, and then carefully considering, our “bad
thoughts”… Consider them carefully, and
then… Chose freely! Pray to God or “benevolence” or “Love” or
what have ye, to be guided towards the good, but, chose freely! Do ***NOT*** be a “thought control NAZI” to
yourself, is one way to put it! Reject
the idea of turning the bad ideas into unjust violence, yes. But do not be a NAZI to yourself!
Just
in case the above is not clear enough, let me re-state it. Having the thoughts isn’t bad, and does not
make you bad. ACTING (or speaking) on
the bad thoughts, and lack of self-control, are what makes you bad! If you expect your bad acts and words to be
endlessly forgiven (by family, friends, co-workers, bosses, etc.), in the name
of “my biochemicals made me do it” or “the devil made me do it”, then don’t
forget, your husband or your wife… We
all have our thresholds SOMEWHERE, you know…
May eventually decide that “my biochemicals made me do it” or “the devil
made me do it”, and divorce you! What’s
a good excuse for the goose, is a good excuse for the gander! So practice some self-control! And when paranoia starts to set in, remember
not to cut your safety ropes to your fellow humans! Paranoia will destroy ya!
Under
which “belief system” am I going to have more self-control, and, hence, success
in my life? A) I am a helpless piece of flotsam, adrift on a
sea of biochemicals and thoughts that I cannot control, or B) I am a powerful
creature with a powerful free will, and I am the boss of me? The answer should be intuitively obvious!
But
yes, it’s complicated, and we should all have some sympathy for each
other. On the self-control v/s
biochemicals issues, I have some sympathy, because I pack more than a few extra
pounds. I have discovered… Surprise!
…That it’s not as easy as just snapping my fingers and saying to myself,
“Practice some self control”, and dumping some excess fat. So don’t tell me, “Portion control, diet, and
exercise”, as if you’re telling me something new. I know.
I’m working on it. When I stop
working on it, though, you ARE doing me a favor (though I might not like it)
when you remind me of these things!
“Fight the good fight”, I said a few paragraphs
above. So this brings to mind an
inspirational song, that might be appropriate to link to, before moving
on. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/triumph/fightthegoodfight.html
has “Triumph” lyrics to “Fight the good fight”; Listen to the song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT1ircqQklo
. And there’s another favorite
inspirational song of mine, a bit more poetic and less directly literal than
the “Triumph” song, but to me, is says just about the same things. Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”, lyrics at https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/brucespringsteen/badlands.html
, song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T_6Ua6fd5s
. OK, time to move on…
An up-front summary of my best guesses
here, somewhat in first-to-last order (in order of what I think might be my
best guesses, to my worst), will follow shortly. Obviously I do not know “The Mind of God”, so
these are wild guesses. As I think that
I understand God at least a tiny bit (or, as I have experienced God), I am
confident that God could have “whispered in my ears”, and given me (or any of the
three of us, Roxanne, my wife, and I) a preventative hint or two. “Hey, double-check your clueless shrink, and
see whether or not anti-depressants on top of lithium, is REALLY such a good
idea!” That would have been enough,
really! WHY all this suffering, that
COULD have been prevented?
Parenthetically,
for anyone who might be reading these notes in a haphazard fashion, if you want
to see what I mean by me personally KNOWING that God can whisper in our ears
when He / She / It wants to, go here to
see personal examples. Yes, of course,
these kinds of things are highly subjective, and cannot (currently) very well
be examined in the laboratory. I have no
“proof of God” to offer here… Else I
would be getting tortured under the bright lights of the TV shows!
GUESS
#1: This was the only way that Roxanne
finally, really, hopefully-the-last-time, could REALLY learn the truths that we
had earlier spoken to her about: You are
only 1 of 8 billion people on the planet, are not expected to “fix it all”,
etc. In short, “humility”. See all of the above notes…
GUESS #2:
This wasn’t all about Roxanne; it was about teaching who-knows-what to
who-knows-who, along the whole story line.
Maybe I or my wife or policemen or hospital worker(s) or
shrink-who-made-the-meds-mistake, or some combination of all of us, learned
something VERY critical here, that we wouldn’t (or couldn’t) otherwise have
learned. God doesn’t want to be a
puppet-master of all of us as robotic puppets, so “whispering in our ears” is
reserved for emergencies only. It’s
about LEARNING. Oh, it could even be
about someone “out there” reading the notes in these extra chapters I had to
add to this story…
GUESS
#3: This could possibly have been about
“tying up the bandwidth” of the Evil One and minions, to protect someone else,
who was even more vulnerable. Yes, to
agnostics and atheists, this may sound silly, superstitious, etc. But God may have known the pending outcome,
and given us this suffering, to prevent more suffering elsewhere. We just don’t know, and cannot know (for
now).
GUESS
#4: I hesitate to even include this one,
but in the name of completeness, here it is:
God whispered, but we didn’t listen.
I listen as best as I can!
Especially if God is anywhere near as all-powerful as some people seem
to think that God is, then this explanation seems near-worthless to me! It’s some sort of side-stepping of the
question, or “begging the question”. God
is all-powerful, but God couldn’t make us listen?! I tried to listen to my night-time dreams,
for example, but they variously told me lies, and babbled to me in an
incomprehensible language. As they
continue to do…
GUESS
#5: Some combination of all of the
above. If I tried to add more, at this
time, I think it would be totally worthless babbling. I just don’t know.
Random
associated thoughts… I suspect that I
was guilty of a bit of pride, early on in Roxanne’s most recent entry into
mania. My wife, I think, as well… We were thinking along the lines of, maybe
Roxanne’s talking to the “beyond the beyond” here, was in some sense real, like
the “Long Island Medium”, and that Roxanne was being rewarded with some sort of
“gift”, to compensate her for her previous sufferings. I for one am now far more tempted to think
that the “Long Island Medium” was / is just some kind of fake, telling people
what they want to hear. But we did, early
on, take some sort of pride in Roxanne, even while repeatedly telling her that
she could NOT “monetize” this gift, “Long Island Medium”-style, in any
way. For starters, because Roxanne is
mildly autistic, and lacks the required “people skills” to pull such a thing
off. So maybe my wife and I, as well as
Roxanne, needed to have some pride reduced off of us. Maybe this is some sort of “reason why” all
this happened.
I am
VERY disappointed in my night-time dreams!!!
I used to think that they were some sort of at least SOMETIMES reliable
way to “hear from God and the angels”, or some such. I had at least 4 dreams during Roxanne’s
early entry into mania, that seemed to tell me that all was well. They lied to me! Also, they literally babble to me at times,
using mostly words that I cannot understand…
Including the speech of “God”, in the small handful of dreams where I
really thought it WAS “The God” (not just angels). So my belief in night-time dreams has been
shattered, on a level comparable to what blows have been dealt to Roxanne’s (and
our) trust in the “head voices” or “talking to dead people”, whatever you want
to call it. Now, I take my dreams with a
grain of salt, at the very best, any more.
I
had been planning to write down more of my dreams. Scotch that, now that I know that they cannot
be trusted! Well, maybe I will write
down just the strongest impressions that I had, in these dreams, when I thought
I really WAS hearing from God… And the
questions and frustrations that I still have, now, with the latter being more
amplified. God says that He / She / It
“wants me to work for God”. OK, I am all
on board with that. WHY WON’T YOU TELL
ME MORE EXACTLY WHAT TO DO, THEN??! I
have read of my fellow humans asking that same exact question all the time, so
I know that others share my frustrations.
That doesn’t help as much as I’d like.
Oh, yes, I know: It’s all about
the learning, apparently. That STILL
leaves me frustrated. I am trained as an
engineer, so I want to build and “fix” things to make them “work” as well,
quickly, and efficiently as possible.
God apparently sees things from a different perspective.
So,
in these small handful of dreams that I thought I had straight from God… And I still cannot and hence do not fully
discount that idea, actually… The other
thing that I “got” was that God feels impatience or frustration at my
frustration and despair, and tells me that “Melvin! Don’t feel so abandoned! I (God) am INSIDE you!” As if I was a simpleton and/or a “doubting
Thomas” for not understanding that, and taking it to heart. Well, OK, then, message received. But, then, if “God is inside me”, then WHY am
I continuing to make SOOO many mistakes?
I thought that my intentions (after long, hard work) were generally
benevolent, so then, again, WHY the continued mistakes and failures (of all
sorts)? God is inside me, and God needs
to continually re-learn the same old things, from me making the same old
mistakes, over and over and over again?
That makes NO sense!
I
have to add a little story, so bear with me.
You’ll see the relevance soon enough.
In the summer of 2011, one evening, we found a baby blue jay in our
yard. We thought that Momma bird would
find him (or her, I am just going to call him a him) soon enough. So we sequestered our cats, and gave the baby
blue jay some water, through a dropper, and hid him in the bushes… Out of the sight of predators, but with Momma
Jay still able to hear him. In the
morning, there is baby blue jay again, out in the middle of the grass, visible
to predators, and saying, ”Eeep-eeep-eeep!
Feed me, water me, take care of me!”
No Momma Jay in sight. So we took
him in, and called him “Eeep-Eeep”, since that’s what he said quite often. In retrospect, we should have taken him in to
a wildlife refuge, but we thought we could handle it. Here is a picture of Eeep-Eeep, as we found
him in the grass.
For
a whole week, we (mostly I) fed and watered Eeep-Eeep, and played with him from
time to time, protecting him from our curious cats in a large box with a
wire-mesh top. Both my wife and I
worked, and Roxanne didn’t take a TON of interest in him, so he didn’t get fed
and watered more than 4 or 5 times a day.
I felt a tad guilty about that.
Worried that Eeep-Eeep might become dehydrated, I put a small cup of
water in his box.
Friday
night, I came home from work, and checked on Eeep-Eeep. His head is in the water cup! He’s still very much alive, and so I think,
“Wow! Good thing I caught him in
time!” I turn him upside down (head
down) and shake him just a tiny tad. He
seems totally alive and chipper, so I think that all is well.
I
put him on my finger and take him into the back yard, just to check on things
in the back yard. Maybe do some
very-very minor chores, I cannot recall.
I admire Eeep-Eeep and how he is growing, and he continues to be just
fine. I think of how cool it will be, in
just a little while, to let him fly free, and to feed a half-tamed free-flying
blue jay, now and then, till he’s really totally on his own. I am a proud Eeep-Eeep dad.
But
then pretty quickly, he takes a turn for the worse. I call my wife or she finds me, I cannot
recall. I pretty quickly surmised that
it must have been the near-drowning that did it. Eeep-Eeep is fading away before our very
eyes. We hold and comfort him as he
pretty quickly dies (maybe 5 minutes or so).
We never did explain to Roxanne that I consider it to be my fault that
Eeep-Eeep died (or why he died, basically).
We did give him a proper bird-burial, under a quite large bird feeder that
I had built out back.
So I
was (am still) “grumpy at God” for not whispering in my ears, to prevent
this. I had no intentions of bragging
about taking care of Eeep-Eeep, or putting up YouTube videos of him, or gaining
much of anything, other than the personal pleasure of seeing him fly free. Why no whispers in my ears? I know from personal experience, that God can
do this… See tales starting at this spot in this document… Anyway, non-water birds, I guess, because of
the way their lungs are built (a lot different than mammals, you know) can
drown easily. NOW I know that!
WHY
couldn’t or wouldn’t God (and/or the “good guys”) protect Eeep-Eeep from my
bumbling? Is that asking too much? He saved our pet bunny, “Margaret Thatcher”
(search on that), so then why not Eeep-Eeep, too? And why not whisper in our ears, about
incompetent shrinks who add anti-depressants on top of lithium, and drive
bipolar patients (like Roxanne) into mania?
I had (have) no firm answers, once again, of course, but the thought of
it crossed my mind that this (along with an unfortunate instance of some
squirrels drowning in an un-covered stock tank, water tank, of mine years
earlier) were just examples of warning me to be more careful in taking care of
my responsibilities. OK, then, I hear
that possibility, but it doesn’t take away the pain and regret.
Then
I read of parents accidentally driving over their toddler in their driveway, or
otherwise totally innocently, accidentally killing or maiming their beloved
offspring, and I know that I have nothing much to complain about. I have even had dreams telling me as
much. But I am pretty grumpy at my
dreams or dream-givers right now (for previously-described reasons; basically,
my dreams told me that Roxanne was OK, when she was NOT OK), so I have to pick
and choose very carefully, which dreams to listen to, and which to ignore.
In
summary of all my babblings above, we have to keep on keeping on, doing our
best. Even when we are grumpy with God,
we have to keep on fighting for God’s (Love’s) side. There’s really no other choice that makes ANY
sense at ALL! In the long run, and in
the aggregate, the only other choice is to work for the enemy, the Evil One! I’ve made my choice, and I am sticking with
it! Good luck to all!
6 July 2018 Update
Roxanne
continues to recover. She will take a
1-year college course (largely on-line) during the span of 2 years to get a 2nd
degree, which will actually enable her to make money (we hope and do believe). She still can’t handle much social stimulus
for very long. A whole ¾ of a year after
her episode, we now FINALLY hear from her, what her “mental loop” (search here
for that phrase) was, in the 1 week leading up to her breakdown. She was trying to figure out some sort of
“perfect system” to make everything perfect forever! Between Earth and Heaven and Hell! And only now does she finally tell us! Talk about mania and delusions of
grandeur… All of those things (like
humility) that we (especially I) have been telling her twenty million
times! Will she finally listen
now!? Who knows, stay tuned, but I am
being optimistic…
OK
so then this is a repeat from what I have said earlier, but I’ll add a bit to
it this time, bear with me here…
I
need to be sympathetic, I suppose, to those who can hardly ever seem to bring
themselves to actually listen to me, or to anyone else who speaks wisdom
and/or common sense. After all, I have
been told to eat less and exercise more, to lose excess bodily baggage, and I’m
still not listening, right? I’m giving
up to being the bag of biochemicals that I am; shame on me!
But
now check this out: We all need to
eat! Food is a legitimate need! I am just out of balance… But, hear this addendum: we have NO legitimate need for, ZERO need
for, delusions of grandeur!!!
NONE!!! Humility is a vital
nutrient for all of us, at all times!!!
The shrinks and the therapists don’t want to tell you (us) this thing,
because it hurts your (our) baby feelings!
And then we’ll go and find a different shrink!
Roxanne
also finally told us (1/2 year later) that at the beginning peak of this
episode, “God” and an “Angel” appeared to her, and told her she had failed in
her quest to make everything perfect forever, and so therefor, she needed to
commit suicide! I had to tell her that
she shouldn’t call the day, “night”, and that she shouldn’t call the Evil One
“God”. She still hadn’t completely
figured out that she had been totally deceived!
It takes humility to admit that we have been deceived, since we are all,
obviously, the smartest guy around!
Humility! Work on it!
The three of us saw a family therapist for a short while, and he
resisted this idea of mine about humility (as did my wife and Roxanne). But as time goes out, and more secrets
emerge, I do believe that I am being thoroughly vindicated.
I’ve
had a dream tell me that I need to work on forgiveness about this whole
thing. I am suspicious of all of my
dreams, but I am going to try and trust this particular one.
Update Added 11 Sept.
2018
Roxanne
is now back in school, mostly on-line, and should get her 2nd (more
remunerative) bachelor’s degree in 2 years.
All is going reasonably well so far.
The last and by-far most severe “episode” is now a year gone (the
beginning of it was more than a year ago).
Almost
a full year went by (post-episode) till Roxanne more fully confessed up to us,
what had been going on. She had become
paranoid, including being paranoid towards us, her parents! She wasn’t telling us anywhere near the full
truth! And after all this time, I had
been telling her that I was very curious about what she was thinking about,
during the week preceding her breakdown?
Was this some sort of endless “mental loop”? No, no, no, she says… But then finally, YES IT WAS!
It a
loop of ‘1) Believing that 1 person could come up with a “system” or “solution”
to ??? make everything perfect forever, or some such, to include circumstances
between Heaven, Earth, and Hell! And
‘2) Since this was / is possible, why shouldn’t
it be Roxanne that goes ahead and makes that final breakthrough?
Rampant
mania, paranoia, and delusions of grandeur had set in, and we had only SOME of
the slightest clues.
Her
psychologist tells us also that there’s this thing among bipolar people, where
good and evil slowly trade places, in their minds, as they approach mania,
sometimes. I have not seen this
mentioned in print. But it fits Roxanne,
with her supposedly talking to the (obviously dead) but now flipped-to-the-good
side, released-from-Hell, spirit of Hitler.
And talking to the spirit of “Vlad the Impaler”, and so forth. Then finally her theory of the “Dark Soul
Shards of Jesus”, and how she was going to “help Jesus” with his troubles in
the afterlife, and Jesus was grateful!
Then she even “saw” tentacles coming out from under her bed, and she
called it “J-man”, thinking that my wife would think it was Jesus, but it was
“really” (if we can use that word here) “Judas”… She lied about it a little while, to my wife,
and then finally ‘fessed up, but told Melissa not to tell me. This was a few weeks pre-breakdown. Melissa told me anyway… I was just about ready to go ballistic, but
one can’t go ballistic with information one is not supposed to have, right?
Well anyway, main points
are, beware of paranoia! Especially you
folks with bipolar… And HUMILITY is your
friend!
I know that I am supposed
to forgive, and I try. But I am still
full of resentment about how long (years!) I have been preaching humility to
Roxanne, and then she allows our family therapist (and to a lesser extent, my
wife) to rag on me… Because it’s not
very humble on my part, for me to lecture people about humility (tear them
down, “humiliate” them), and Roxanne’s got “low self esteem.” No she doesn’t, not when she gets manic! And only after almost a year later, NOW she
finally tells us that the “mental loop” was her trying to figure out some sort
of “perfect system”! I was right, and
the family therapist was flat-out wrong, about this whole humility thing! But Roxanne wasn’t ready to ‘fess up… I just hope and pray that she has FINALLY
learned this lesson this time around!
Once again, the things
she said and did while actually hospitalized, are so far gone and crazy, that I
see no value in discussing them. One
can’t pull ANY gold out of pure poop!
So now every 3 months, we
still have go-over-the-list time, of lessons learned. Discuss, revise if needed. I have no “cool quotes” or memorable or
catchy ways to put this idea of, do NOT let “good” and “evil” slowly trade
places in your mind, or HOW to not let this happen. So it’s not added to the list. Email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com if you have such an item
or quote please…
On the paranoia thing
(and other items), we have added these new points…
“Paranoia will destroy ya” (Album by “The
Assembly”) It is NOT good to tell (share
with) all things to all people, for sure…
HOWEVER, if we have a thought, share it with a trusted person (or even
say it out loud to no one)… And if it is
a bad or stupid thought, that will become more clear to you… Ditto for it being a neutral thought or a
good thought. And if you share it with
NO ONE, it will do no one any good! So
share, or at least say it out loud! AKA,
Winnie the Pooh: "When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you
Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside
you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people
looking at it."
Focus on the positive! Make yourself a gratitude journal, and don’t
just write it, READ IT and think about it!
Three-point test:
Does it have anything to do with me as a physical being in the physical
world? No? Then blow it off! Is it benevolent towards me and my fellow
humans and the puppy dogs and the bunny rabbits and the world? No?
Then blow it off! Is there
anything I can do about it? No? Then blow it off!
(Serenity prayer) God grant me the courage to
change the things that I can change, the serenity to accept the things that I
cannot change, and the wisdom to tell the difference. (This is somewhat similar to the item
immediately above).
We are both a bag of biochemicals, AND creatures
of free will! When our meds need
adjusted, it is best to think of ourselves as bags of biochemicals. HOWEVER, most of the rest of the time, to
feel strong and powerful, we must think of ourselves as powerful creatures of
free will!
Now for something
entirely different…
About that incompetent
shrink who prescribed SSRI anti-depressants (on top of lithium) for Roxanne, a
known bipolar patient… That was
basically malpractice, and none of us made a simple Google search to see that
what he was doing, was “experimental” at the very best. It has never been shown to be a good idea for
bipolar patients in general, and has driven many-many bipolar patients towards
(and into) mania. Many-many bipolar
patients have had the same experience, according to books we’ve now read… The patients constantly have to tell the
supposed “experts” (the pill-pushing shrinks) NOT to do this! But the arrogant “experts” (shrinks) can’t be
bothered to read the writings of mere patients…
They already know it all!
So I’ve written warnings
about this incompetent shrink, in Google reviews, Yelp, etc. Hopefully he won’t have another victim, in
exactly this same way.
I also wrote a letter of
complaint to the local (State) medical board that regulates or oversees
physicians (doctors including shrinks).
Here are slightly-tweaked excerpts from their response, after they investigated:
“The investigation
referenced above has been dismissed because the Board determined there was
insufficient evidence to prove that a violation of the Medical Practices Act
occurred. Specifically, the
investigation determined that (Dr. Blah-De-Blah the incompetent Duh-Head) was
appropriate in his care and treatment of (Daughter who has been highly
resistive to my advocacy of humility and other things). (Dr. Blah-De-Blah the incompetent Duh-Head)
appropriately prescribed conservative doses of (Daughter’s) medications and
monitored for signs or symptoms of mania.
The standard of care was met; therefore, no further action will be
taken.
“As such, this complaint
has been dismissed without prejudice. No
further action will be taken concerning this complaint.”
(End of excerpts).
What a bunch of
gobbledy-gook! Well, his action sure
doesn’t look “appropriate” to us, with Roxanne having had to be hospitalized
for almost 1 month! Roxanne will have to
fix herself, with the help of us (her parents) and her new shrink! No thanks to YOU, you Dr. Blah-De-Blah the
incompetent Duh-Head!
I am not surprised by the
outcomes… This is Doctors covering the
butts of other Doctors, same as usual.
Look up “regulatory capture” on The Google Who Knows All, if you want
more.
It is still worth the
time to file these kinds of complaints, in my opinion. It just MIGHT wake up some ignorant
practitioners, from time to time! “The
punishment is the process”. Also, if the
medical board gets 45,823,937 complaints about the same thing, about the same
practitioner, then they MIGHT even eventually take action! “Yelp” etc. are probably the more effective 1st
thing to do, though…
One last set of points
about this: Dr. Blah-De-Blah the
incompetent Duh-Head is NOT keeping up with the medical literature! Point (mistake) number 1 on that is, of
course, he added an anti-depressant on top of a mood stabilizer, for a bipolar
patient.
Point (mistake) number
two along these lines is, I wrote him a personal snail-mail letter, telling him
of his mistake, and the outcomes. I told
him that all I wanted is for him not to make this mistake again… I was NOT interested in suing, etc. I just want to know that he’s not going to do
it again. No response. It was only then that I “went semi-nuclear”
on him with Yelp etc., and the medical board.
Dr. Blah-De-Blah the
incompetent Duh-Head is NOT familiar with the ancient Biblical wisdom that “a
soft answer turns away wrath”… And THAT
wisdom has also been turned into scientific wisdom! But he’s too lazy to read (keep up with) the
scientific wisdom as well, here!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171002161222.htm After medical error, apology goes a
long way
“In patient injury cases, revealing
facts, offering apology does not lead to increase in lawsuits, study finds.”
I
bet that Dr.
Blah-De-Blah the incompetent Duh-Head probably consulted a lawyer, after I sent
a letter of complaint. Lawyer probably
said “do nothing”. But the lawyer makes
more money when there are lawsuits, right?
So Dr. Blah-De-Blah isn’t keeping up with the literature, he takes bad
advice, and he has no wisdom!
Now for something
entirely different, again…
(Book excerpt here)
From “Cracked, Why Psychiatry is
Doing More Harm Than Good”, by James Davies, see https://www.amazon.com/Cracked-Psychiatry-Doing-More-Harm-ebook/dp/B00B1B1VHI
...
This book
is mostly focused on the abuses and deceptions (excessive pill-pushing) of the
pharmaceutical companies, and on the totally made-up (not scientific or
rational) nature of the DSM, or “shrink’s Bible” of definitions of ailments. Mental ailments are radically differently
defined, from culture to culture, as James Davies shows, as well. Ailments, to some degree at the very least,
run in fashions and trends. For example,
bulimia and anorexia became MUCH more popular / fashionable / prevalent in the
era or Princess Diana. The whole thing
(mental illness) is less “scientific, biochemical” and more “social, in your
head” than we seem to want to think or admit.
Anyway,
I want to transcribe a section, and then discuss it. So here goes, starting at page 221 of the
paperback:
“So the
myth we embrace affects how we read and experience our psychological
states. This means that changing the
‘myth’ through which we understand such states can be just as therapeutic as
taking a pill or undergoing therapy.
Consider, for example, another significant change many patients report
once they reject the psychiatric view:
they often no longer experience the stigma that accompanies being
identified as psychiatrically unwell.
This is an important point, because a popular justification for the
biological vision of our emotional troubles is that it reduces the stigma of
mental disorder. After all, if a patient
has a biological disorder they cannot be blamed for the way they are.” (My Melvin insertion here: This is an important crux here… Some people think that if I go into a giant
manic fling of delusions of grandeur, I am completely NOT to be blamed for it,
because “my biochemicals made me do it”.
It would be too harshly judgmental and insensitive for me to be told to
“get a grip”, or “live in the real world”, or, “Fer Chrissakes, develop a wee
tad of HUMILITY, will ya?!?” The shrinks
and counselors are flat-out WRONG, here; these are EXACTLY the right things for
a person with “delusions of grandeur” to be told! OK, back to quoting the book).
“Groups
like the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the US and SANE in Britain take
this position: the biological myth helps sufferers because it indicates to
others that they are not responsible for their predicament. They are like anyone else with a medical
condition, and so should not be seen or treated otherwise.
“While
in theory this position is sensible enough, in practice things seem to unfold
very differently. Many patients
experience negative secondary effects from their diagnosis, either concealing
the diagnosis from others out of shame (which can compound their isolation) or
becoming so identified with their label that they regularly declare it to
others, which can in turn invite real rejection. For example, research now shows that today’s
most popular public perception of mental disorder is that it’s biological in
origin. This is particularly problematic
in light of recent research revealing that patients whose emotional problems
are believed to be caused by brain disorders are treated far more harshly by
the average person than patients believed to have problems caused by social or
psychological factors. A research team
at Auburn University revealed this troubling fact by asking volunteers to
administer mild or strong electric shocks to two groups of patients if they
failed at a given test. The results were
alarming: the patients believed to have
a brain disorder were shocked at a harder and faster rate than the patients
believed to have a disorder that was social or psychological in origin,
suggesting that we may attract harsher treatment when our problems are
considered in brain-based terms.”
Source
notes for the above section, Mehta, S. (1997), “Is being ‘sick’ really
better? Effects of disease view of mental
disorder on stigma” Journal of Social
and Clinical Psychology, 16(4): 405-19
Back to
the James Davies book, right where we left off…
“Results
like these are obviously alarming but not entirely unexpected. After all, we know from other research that people
who are believed to suffer from biological abnormalities are seen by the
average person as more unpredictable and dangerous than ‘normal’ people. Such perceptions have also been shown to lead
‘normal’ people to avoid interacting too closely with the ‘mentally distressed’
– an avoidance that can, once again, compound the sufferer’s isolation.”
(Above
is footnoted, too, but I am getting lazy…
Go buy yourself the book! Ditto
for section below, which immediately follows).
“Studies
like those above show that being diagnosed with a psychiatric condition – with
depression, anxiety, or one of the more severe disorders – often comes with
powerful cultural baggage, especially when our suffering is perceived as being
rooted in our biology. Paradoxically, then,
the worldwide psychiatric campaigns whose goals are to reduce stigma associated
with mental illness by asserting that it’s just like any other biological
disease may well have helped bring about the very opposite of what they
intended”.
(End of
book excerpts). Melvinistic
comments: One cannot hardly even change
anyone else’s mind about much of anything!
When is the last time you “corrected” someone’s opinion in online
commentaries, and they changed their minds, and thanked you for it? So, if you have a mental illness, do NOT go
around telling everyone that “it’s just like I have a broken arm”, or some
such! It’s not going to work! People should be more
compassionate and non-judgmental, OK then, but you can’t make them be that way,
even if they verbally agree with you!
More
generally, “political correctness” is something foisted BY the politically
powerful, UPON the politically weak. The
Congressmen and college professors will lecture us all day about women and
racial minorities needing more opportunities, but notice than none of them
resign their positons of power and appoint minorities and women to take their
places! And MOST certainly, ditto for
the mentally ill! They still almost ALL
fight like weasels in heat, to retain all their powers and paychecks, while
telling the lesser mortals to be politically correct, and share power,
prestige, and equal paychecks! Racial
quotas have been applied to teachers, students, firefighters, etc., but have
never been applied to Congressmen and CEOs!
To delve
only fleetingly into raw politics, this kind of thing (political correctness,
often very hypocritical) is what got Donald Trump into power. And for the record, I can’t stand The Donald!
So
anyway, back on track now, take your meds, by all means, if they help you! I am not into Scientology! But in addition to taking your meds, toughen
up, try your very best to remain in control of yourself! Believe in yourself and your own free
will! Your free will is more powerful
than your biochemicals! Tell only your
VERY most trusted inner circle about your mental troubles! If applying for a job, tell your bosses about
it, only AFTER you’ve got the job, if then!
And please don’t trot out any lines about it being the fault of your
biochemicals, not yourself! That line
will NOT work, with the vast majority of people! It is what it is, and may eventually change,
but only at a glacial pace, at best!
Update Added 26 Dec.
2018
She
continues to share openly with us (her parents), which is a good sign (better
than bottling it all up and then letting it loose in an explosion). Sometimes, though, what is shared is distressing… Such as nihilism and lack of empathy for
others. Some of us, sometimes, may feel
that life has dealt us a crappy hand, and so we may feel justified in not
helping others much, or even not caring much about them. Keep that in mind when reviewing the latest
slew of additions we have made (below) to her (???) “checklist” that we go
over, once every 3 months or more:
Beware
of grandiose thoughts; especially those of a mere puny mortal replacing
“God”. Not possible, not reality, not
part of OUR reality. My mental powers
can NOT always be trusted to tell good from bad.”
Overly
grandiose thoughts may often arise as a defense mechanism from having suffered
a failure or apparent failure, or from having been criticized.
The
bad thoughts want to get you off track.
If you have the makings to be a good pro golfer but not a software
programmer, they will tell you to become a programmer. If you have the makings of a good “boogologist”*,
but not a good preacher, they will tell you that you could be a GREAT,
world-changing preacher!
*Boogologist
= anonymized substitute for what Roxanne is studying now. Roxanne has had grandiose thoughts of “saving
the world” type ideas. WHO can “save the
world from itself”? Just MAYBE
preacher-type folks can teach us to not be evil… IF we will listen! But we tell Roxanne that she has autism (lack
of mirror neurons), so preacher-person is NOT her forte! NOT her idiom!
Never
be afraid to hurt the baby feelings of the bad thoughts; criticize them without
mercy! (When you’re sure that they are
bad thoughts, that is). However, fear IS
a tiny bit appropriate, when thinking thoughts of grandiosity! Don’t think them too much, and most
especially, don’t think them too much, along with thoughts of paranoia! Because at some point, those two things
combined may drive you past a “tipping point” of psychosis, beyond which there
is little hope, other than hospitalization or worse.
Keep
on swimming; keep on keeping on, and “you are doing very well”!!!
Positive
self-talk; Be nice to yourself!
Beware
of coping mechanisms that aren’t actually helping you to cope! Beware of apathy towards everything, AKA,
nihilism. You DO matter!!! To anyone or any thought that tells you
otherwise, say… “And WHY are you
bothering to tell me this, if me and my opinion do NOT matter at ALL”?!?!
If
you think that your life is missing something, try to add these things… Friends, art, music, certain kinds of reading
materials, what have you… There will
always be a risk (of “setting your brain on fire”, or other failure or
suffering)… But, no pain, no gain!
The
past was not perfect – So what? Nothing
was or is perfect! Everything and
everyone is a work in progress!
Make
peace with the unchangeable past, and with choices. Sometimes the cure is worse than the
disease. So accept the disease as being
better than the so-called “cure”. After
making peace with the choices you have made, then do NOT continue to agonize
over those choices, and coulda-woulda-shoulda!
Withhold
your judgments when there is no need to judge.
If you’re not picking a wife or husband, doctor, lawyer, or business
partner, you can afford to NOT judge!
And beware that if you become too harshly judgmental about others, you
may start to apply those same harsh standards to yourself, which is NOT good
for your self-esteem!
Nihilism
is related to (or includes) a lack of caring, a lack of empathy for anyone
else. Whether we realize it consciously
or not, we all desire empathy, AND, to expect or desire others to empathize
with us, while we do not empathize with them, means that we are a net drain on
empathy (caring) in the world. This
attitude will not help our self-esteem!
It will not help us in any way!
(End
of new checklist items). This very last
one above may deserve some comments. “The
yardstick that you apply to others, will be applied to you.” I think that’s Biblical, I’m pretty sure it’s
something that Jesus said. I am too lazy
to look it up… I have seen it in New-Age
spiritual-type writings as well. This dynamic
can be true WITHOUT invoking the afterlife or the beyond-the-beyond in any
way!!!
That
is, consciously or sub-consciously, as is expressed in the above item, if we
are a net drain on empathy in the world, we are going to know it, one way or
the other. It is NOT good for our
self-esteem to be this way!!! It is next
to impossible to make real friends if we have no empathy!!! If you have no empathy for others (perhaps including
a reason why being, you have no empathy for them because you think that THEY
have no empathy?!?!), then you are unlikely to have real empathy for
yourself! So work on your empathy!!!
I
know I have a valid thought going on here (above), but I am not sure that I am
babbling at it optimally. If you have
suggestions, please email me at EnemyLover@ChurchofSQRLS.com …
Later, I may add some
brief reviews of some other relevant books…
Then I am done!
To be continued
soon, or not-soon, or maybe not at all…
TBD…