Faith is a stronger force than will.
-theothersid3
Faith vs Will
Tag: spirituality
God String
There is a direct line to God. It is what I call the “God string.” Give it a pull and you see the world from your own eyes the way God intended us to see the world, in that particular moment or bigger time periods. How did I pull the string? I asked God to do his will, not my own. Then, after my eyes were open, I was dead and born again.
-theothersid3
Dark Inheritance
My inheritance…
Their generational sins,
mouth and hands alike.
Darkness seeps through me,
cracks in my subconsciousness,
dark energy’s Wombs.
My words, actions, are
in ways just like my father’s,
just like my mother’s.
The bedrock walls of
my mind turn to ashes; I
cross the veil as One.
A tri-braided cord:
Trifecta of love, God, us –
a gift from heaven.
We swallow, it binds.
Devour bitter, little scrolls,
forbidden knowledge.
Dark puppet strings pop:
severed from our mind-hearts; we
take up wings and fly.
-theothersid3
June 20, 2016
The best chaplain I ever met is a humble janitor working in a mental institution.
-theothersid3
A Sonnet of Death by Psychosis: Part 1
I look back inside my psychotic death;
mind, none fathomed my plane exists, being
in the moment. All seemed natural, loving.
Left my body in these moments’ deep breaths:
A fully conscious veil of living death,
touched and healed by the Light’s power teeming.
I fly through the ward, without much speaking.
Peers react to thoughts/intentions, confess:
Faces, actions all spiritually declothed:
their thoughts, emotions, intentions, I see.
She briefly comes to mind while I fly high.
In my asylum room, we’re befuddled,
We see our empty vessels, flesh and be,
Our flesh journals on her, our being thrives.
-theothersid3
photo credit: marfis75 Im Schacht. via photopin (license)
It takes one to know one
If number 1 did not exist, nothing could exist other than fundamental chaos. Mathematics would collapse. Our solid ground never could be, as it would give like quick sand in the absence of 1.
Everything physical is a distinct object made of atoms on different levels. Underneath in the subatomic realm, it is chaotic and exceedingly complex. However, all physical objects arrive to our perception as 1 from the chaos, intact.
For there to be single atoms, molecules, cells, larger physical objects, etc, there must be order in the first place. Any number can be multiplied by 1 and equal the same number. Well, we all take that for granted. Without 1, there is no reference for anything, including every word and letter you are looking at now.
Where did the original 1 come from? The infinite regression of the universe’s origins such as number 1 in particular, necessitates a starting point. Coincidentally, there is a being who calls xemself “I AM,” the origin of existence. Yahweh my God is 1.
Thinking about and experiencing the number 1, knowing God is the ground we stand on, allows me to know myself and others better, and see the world more clearly.
To deny the necessity and origin of 1 is to deny yourself and others of existence, resulting in a Cartesian self – some more so than others.
-theothersid3
photo credit: andreas.klodt Atomic model – Christmas ball ornaments via photopin (license)
The Elusive Voice of God
Looking back, I now realize that God has been silent in my mind for a very long time… years, in fact. I have heard God’s voice before in spirit, and I know my Lord’s voice. However, it is apparent I don’t know them well. I’ve been deceived by a number of different spiritual presences since, and I suspect the most pervasive one is my own inner voice.
In June 2016, when I drove myself to the mental health facility to be admitted as an inpatient, I was following something destructive. I ended up writing a few hundred pages in my journal while I stayed there, which I am still not ready to review as of today. That spiritual voice led me down some very strange rabbit holes. This included taking on the identity of the Angel of Death, drinking from cups signifying various things including the tears of the saints, and encouraged the notion of soul mates.
However, in the process of all this madness, I had a profound moment of deja-vu. I cannot tell whether I was sleeping or awake, but I remembered with utmost clarity a religious experience I had in 2003 after I blacked out then. A few months later, this recollection precipitated a chain reaction in my psyche. Under the guidance of my therapist, I revisited many angles of these experiences in my journal and have begun the process of unraveling the twisted rifts in my mind.
Why, I ask myself, is God silent now of all times? I can only speculate. I trust God will make it clear when He speaks to me again and reveal himself when I am ready. He must have a lot of confidence in me to be silent while I sort out a magnitude of burdens with the help of my friends, family, and therapist. While these are burdens, they are also some of my richest blessings and provide me with much wisdom and understanding.
Whether you are spiritual or not, what are some tools you have for sorting out your mind?
-theothersid3
Psychosis Needs to Steep.
If I could do everything over again, I wish I had set aside my mission of interpreting my psychotic experiences aside for later to work on after I had recovered more. Think of it as allowing the fresh, immature flavors of the experience to steep for a while and come back in a truer form that turns into something remotely consumable.
A psychotic experience is inherently an experience so great that I can’t wrap my mind around it. As every month passes, I understand more of it, and every few years, my interpretation of it may completely shift in certain aspects of it. Not only can I not wrap my mind around it, I have no frame of reference within my experiences in real life to contain it or frame it or allow my mind to interpret it.
The stories of my psychotic experiences have taken years to unravel as much as they have and allowed me to start understanding them. I liken these stories to a fractal. I can zoom in on any part or aspect of it and it has a seemingly infinite number of interpretations and implications, no matter where I look, and I find myself getting lost in the beginning.
If I need to revisit my experiences before I’m ready to, I do it in two ways.
The first is to talk about it with people I trust, to vent and to describe to them what happened. This helps me expose some air to all those experiences I had.
The second way is to deal with them more in my journals. If I have problems obsessing about them, I write down the content in my journals, and develop a mental plan of action as to how I can ignore these thought patterns in the future and explain to myself why I need to do so. I need to focus on what is important, recovery, and deciphering fractals of psychotic experiences right after they happened is not the road to recovery. It only leads to more grief.
That being said, after I get to a point where I can handle doing so without triggering my bipolar symptoms, I find it helpful to write down snippets or stories in great detail of what happened during my episodes. This serves two purposes: 1. It helps provide a fresh look later on when I reflect on my journals and look to see and remember what actually happened during my breaks in the forefront of my mind. 2. It helps me process the experiences at face value and understand what content there is in my psychotic breaks to allow me to recognize thought patterns I need to avoid.
In both of my psychotic breaks, God did not abandon me. He was there on every level each step of the way. Sometimes I was aware at the time, sometimes I wasn’t. In any case, God gave me a lot to handle but never anything more than I could. The same is true today. Always.
-theothersid3
photo credit: Borderline Biennale 2011 – L’Histoire de l’Oeil, François Moncarey & Kevin Ramseier (CENC) acting performance IMG_4165 via photopin (license)
Why I Try to Forget about God
You may expect the typical responses – the problem of pain, organized religion, God doesn’t exist – but that’s not why I try to forget about God (or the higher power if you will).
To me, God encompasses more than any religion cares to touch on, both our universe and beyond its mysterious origins. God manifests deeper than every subatomic particle to beyond every supercluster of galaxies in our universe. The perspective God has is mind-boggling, but not beyond our capacity to always understand more of it. This God has a deeply personal nature as well, and I find at some points in my life, God’s voice is silent while during others it’s very present.
The tendency I had when I thought about God a lot is to try to interpret every little thing that happens as something divine. When I do that, I start to go crazy. Little details here and there begin to form conversations and possible predictions in my head and I start to believe them to be straight from God. Maybe some were, maybe they weren’t at the time, but it’s something I do not live my every day life in. Seeing God in everything has its place, and it’s not in the present.
My advice is to forget about God when you live your every day life. Instead, focus on you and other needs around you. Thank God and experience his voice during that time you set aside in prayer and meditation. If something truly urgent comes up, you will know. Don’t try to force God’s hand in everything like I did.
photo credit: an untrained eye via photopin cc
theothersid3 