Wednesday 14 December 2016

the ghost of christmas future

so im no scrooge but this time of year tends to , has in the past created an issue for me
I, in my own narrative, the story of my life as I would tell it, have been depressed a lot
This time of year, the darkness, the lack of sunlight, the cold and feeling of staying in.
I guess I also, I know in fact that i've been unemployed a lot at this time of year so I couldnt earn and spend money on christmas gifts, let's celebrate the fact that we're alive, have family, loved ones in the world and stuff but I also wonder how many of those in this country are actually Christian, we have Christian names, we go to church or the crematorium and have a service for the funeral of a loved one, or wedding or christening, few go to church much more than that and pay lip service to having their bands read to be able to be wed.

I guess, no i wonder, if there's such a thing as god, i contend that I was always interested, curious, of the opinion that there might be something, i can't remember the word for that, between nothing and everything, between believer and sceptic, open minded and sceptical in fact, as I went to spiritualist church to see mediums present evidence that there is life after death, which is the explanation for that they do given.  I went to receive comfort because I was hurting, and even then I heard a whisper, a thought in my mind not hearing to be honest, the thought was, something bad will happen if you go there, i won't say what, I've only ever felt good, only ever felt comforted when I've been there, in recent times have become quite emotional, especially when others are emotional too, the healing course I'm on means I get to connect to the spirit world, to allow spirit helpers to use me as a conduit for healing energies, it comes into me and through me to the patient.

So these whispers in my own voice, my own thoughts, were threatening, don't go there, don't do this, that.

I've given up drugs, i've fallen from the wagon a few times, because it was so deeply ingrained, I felt as though I was pulling a splinter slowly, that occasionally having a little go on a joint wouldn't hurt, especially as before I was smoking heavily every day, massive amounts of smoke, from very strong cannabis, the illegal type, i know it's all illegal, but the criminal funding stuff that is grown to be very strong, because that will sell, it gets stronger and stronger, is bred that way, because the thc, the stuff that gets you 'high' is desirable and the cbd, the stuff that counteracts, that balances it out, that is low in those strains, low in volume, in those plants, it's an anti psychotic, a natural one, it makes the cannabis plant, work in both directions one might say, it gets you high but grounds you in reality at the same time, perhaps from a spiritual point of view it takes you on a journey to freedom for your imagination, the ideas you come up with can seem immense, visions of a future you will surely enjoy where you will invent something, draw something, create something wonderful.

It gets your creative juices flowing in a way that alcohol certainly does not, and i imbibed both, one then the other usually, or at least at the start, by the end i was using one in the morning and the evening and weekends and drinking most nights, back in the day anyway, i quit my social group for the most part seven years ago, in an attempt to get away from drunken blackouts, again some call these a psychotic blackout, you are not aware of what you are doing, i would walk home from events, the pub, wherever, sometimes waking up en route, by falling into a ditch after leaving the summer solstice at avebury one year, off a bicycle, on the A4.

That woke me up, because it hurt, I came round, so i know what i was doing wasn't right, I quit the friends, quit the drinking to get drunk, it's a fine line between enough booze to get up and dance or lose your inhibitions and enough to black out and crash a car, not know what you're doing, become at the very least embarrased the next morning because you have no idea what you did the night before and no memory at all.

Not fun years those although I certainly laughed, i smiled a lot more, now, straight, as the term explains, straight not stoned, straight and clean and clear, I have these thoughts, I wish to express, explain, that and it's a scary thing, something I told someone about before, because I didn't like the idea that these thoughts weren't mine, I sought spiritual help because the medical help wasn't psychological counselling, it was self help groups, leaflets, antipsychotic medication, which is a slippery slope to complications and a diagnosis, the stigma of mental health, is strong, is prevalent, second only I would say to a criminal record, I'm glad no-one got hurt, when I was drinking, I certainly never seemed to do anything when blacked out that got me into any trouble, I hope I didn't do anything untoward, i'm in a very forgiving and wishing to be forgive state of mind.

This ghost of christmas future, visited me last year, i was on a high, stoned, writing a book, it's not true all of it, it's my take on my life, mixed with answers to questions I asked within my own mind, it ends up being of a nature I don't like or approve of, things were written that I would say the real me wasn't pleased with, but I felt I ought to write in there, because that was the answer I was getting, the questions I chose to ask at the time, I wonder about God and the opposite, are those folks who do awful things and suggest that someone told them to do them, are they on the same category, the same spectrum as i am?  For me, perhaps that is a truth a would rather avoid accepting because I wish to not hurt anyone, not even accidentally, it makes you want to curl up in a ball, find a cell somewhere and lock yourself in it, it's brought me to so much truth lately.

After christmas, I experienced a psychotic episode, i was acting out things that were completely a product of my own mind, or of these thoughts in my mind, not things I was hearing I wish to point that out, to me, all sorts of people I have met were contacting me in my thoughts, giving me advice, the result was that acting on this I felt under threat, that my family were under threat from an outside force, demons, devil worshippers, satanists is the word I used when i phoned the police, if this makes anyone who reads all this feel possibly quite rightly that they would rather not have me around, I understand, i would rather be honest, express the experiences, get it out there, understanding that the way i've taken what was happening so lightly makes no sense either, at the time I was acting in ways i was being encouraged to do so, and that makes it all the more likely and at the time understandable that those close to me wanted me to get help,  sought help, i got it.

I was ok when questioned by professionals, i snapped out of it I was told, but then i've been there for others, I've spoken to, held, comforted, calmed down and generally tried to be there for at least two folks experiencing something similar, one was talking about being violent, using the words that we know for the dark side of reality, is the talk within spiritual circles of a lack of a dividing line existing, does that make sense, that from an outside perspective of this place, there is no such thing as good and evil, just stuff, people, some good some bad, some very bad, some very good, and every mixture inbetween?  It's called dualism...

It's supposed to be the idea that like movies there is good versus evil, a black and white way of looking at things, that doesn't actually exist from outside this closed system, as though from a spiritual perspective, after this life, looking back on it, we might consider from that perspective neither to be good or bad, they just are.

I might be understanding it wrong, as the weeks have gone one, it's been coming up for a year since i quit, at least a year that is since i quit smoking every day, every week, i got rid of my paraphernalia, five years since i tried to quit the first time, felt it necessary anyway, since i was god from the beginning to the end of time...

Or at least i had an experience of being me, only i was god, everything, always having existed, forever, here, within this universe, then slowly i came from there, to here, becoming a lesser being, until becoming human.

Doing a talk for those around me at the time, who were caring for me, on impermanence, of experience.

Whatever they saw, i was asian, i was talking about how now you're smiling, now you're miserable, nothing lasts, everything changes and that's been my mantra, my life since then, to leave behind old habits, i got rid of my smoking devices, only smoked some joints, the more traditional method, with tobacco, changed to resin from the plant material, never bought any since last january, i've been told that a spirit sought shelter within me, that it may have liked what i was doing, may have liked the experiences i was living, because it could live through me, see through my eyes, that makes sense because that was my experience last jan / feb, i can't explain it all, don't wish to go on and on, just wanted to get it down on paper so to speak, i have thoughts, not daily, and less and less, facing my past, the actions, the choices, i have thoughts of ending it all to escape, to not have to face this presence in my life, my guilt and shame are one thing, i can cope with those, i knew i would face some kind of retribution, judgement at some point, i honour that, know that, feel like that would be the only thing to make sense of this life for everyone and everything, some kind of regress, i dont mean that word, redress?  the function of making right what was made wrong, i've done my best, am doing so.

I face the fact that I've done wrong, to those around me, they were caught up in my lunacy, idiocy, the feeling that i could handle what i was doing, that there was some kind of rightness to it, I know the difference, if is hurting someone, it isn't right, i know all the rules, the right and wrong, the dividing line, i find it hard to understand how i could get things so wrong, over time, i wonder how long it's been going on now?

How long has the person i was been depressed, under the thumb, under water, i used to stand up for what i believed was right, sought to get others to respect the people around me, don't let fireworks off here if you're going to, my neighbour has a dog, i had to compromise with friends to try to temper their excesses, i joined in too mind you, last year, at that time when my conscience was being ripped apart, my conciousness too, i was accused of all sorts of things within my own mind, that just weren't true but my memory couldn't back me up, i was sure I had never done any of the things I was being accused of, but it sought, the process, the ghost of the past, present and future, sought to make me face the idea of going to hospital, prison, wherever they stick people like me, so it brought me to my knees, sent me on wild ghost chases out into the wilds.

Getting me to look back on my life as though it was flashing before my eyes, as though i was about to die.

Not at my own hand, but I figured, if this is my last day, I would like to play scrabble with my mum.

That felt good, reconnecting with those around me, on a level not since childhood, being me.

So it's been hard to live since then, since it said you'll be a happy family before it's ruined.

Like a threat of times ahead, when our unit would be destroyed, by others?

At the time I was petrified, my conciousness sought a villain.

Sought to know who this was, what this was, all sorts of friends and aquaintance were on the line, in my mind i was being helped and hurt at the same time, re-educated in some respects, wash like this, clean like that, i suddenly started to do chores around the house, i don't do many, didn't, fought the idea that i ought to, as though i was doing something much more important, basically getting stoned and spending all my time with my mates, on computer games, something i sought to end a while ago, when i quit my old social circles.

I sought not to spend my money on frivolous things, i even experienced a vision, in a mushroom trip of a voice, or at least the idea that television, games, all of the things we are entertained with here basically are merely distractions from the real stuff, the truth of it all, going on in behind the bacground noise of the box.

I quit t.v. a long time ago, choosing to not start watching any new shows and finish those i was hooked on.

I quit all sorts of things to really give myself a chance of understanding more, learning more, stretching myself, so in some ways i was travelling in two directions at once, getting worse in some respects and better in others.  Wasting my money and time on things that seemed terribly profound at the time becoming less and less who i had been in the past, whilst also trying to extricate myself from those habits and people who i had on occasion the instinct to know, they are not your friends, they don't care about you, this is not right.

A learning ground, a lesson in everything, that's one of the spiritual assertions i've written about before.

As though this whole place, the answer to a question posed to everything, in my mind, was:-

This is a giant recycling centre for energy, it comes here to be turned into something good.

I may have paraphrased but I'm on a roll, facing the awful truth that I've written here.

The fact that when you feel different and not good, you feel unworthy of love...

Unworthy and guilty and ashamed and that makes you pull away from folk.

It makes you feel, quite rightly don't get me wrong, blowing hot and cold.

You pull away because you know what they don't, can't tell them.

So now I know, more and more of who Ive been and who not.

I know better and better what has been going on, it looks strange to me, feels stranger, to be unsure, to have experienced what i have experienced, to be shown what you're doing that you oughtn't to, to know it and decide to change, to question everything, to become less sure of everything too, to wonder, to get answers.

To feel as though when others say things like Christ!  I even did it myself the other day, i don't exclaim like that I just don't, I don't say oh my god, I don't say those things, I would say Oh my Goodness, I wonder, I hear folks use words like heaven and hell, quite without thinking, to have some experience of it is shocking.

I've written about this before, or perhaps I thought about doing so, I've got a post, a draft of a post, I never posted it, I look back on numerology, numbers are quite a thing, a slight obsession, worrying about them.

I was assuming I was doing good, experiencing things and writing about them, I would keep my posts one month to a certain number having assumed the information I was reading meant that was a good thing.

Spiritual people, those I have met of different faiths, traditions, they knw so much, they agree on so little, even between different branches of the same faith they find the slightest thing to be a cause for argument.

I was seeking to understand the basis for faith, the experiential basis, the eleusinian mysteries, the original faith, the original reason why people believed in god, gods, spirits, demons, daemons, angels, all of it.

Obviously I have become quite scared, the thoughts, now less so, less often, less conversations, no knowledge of the source, no knowledge of what, who this things is, that converses with me, that I have confessed myself to, unaware that it was anything not to trust in a naive way because of what i was given to believe, what i saw as the experiences i was having at the time, becoming a shaman, a healer, a believer.

Naive, stupid, careless, thoughtless, one of those who disappears with the fairies never seen again, don't want to upset anyone, im sure the good can take it, the bad don't care, it's not the worst thing ive done.

So if there is a god, my most recent mushroom experience, i just got the words, there is no god.

From whatever this presence in my life is, i ignore it for the most part, insulting though it is.

I need to be clear of it, you'll never be clear comes into my mind, that gets old fast.

It obviously doesn't like being ignore or basically the fact that I refuse to go back.

Refuse to treat myself or others with less than respect, am trying to do my best.

This is just one person in a huge world, with a massive population.

Don't ever read anything along these lines anywhere else.

Never hear anything other than the headline.

So and so did something, claims this.

We don't honour the truth.

Even my thoughts, when I think I must be mad, the answer, the thought next is, you are not mad.

Cursed then, I've thought that in the past, I wish everyone well, I smile for the living and loved.

We are really in a mess here, can't deny that our failings and failures have created this situation.

A shame but things could have gone so differently but the lowest common denominators won.

At one point, I was offered ultimate power, and I said back, no thanks, I would abuse it.

I would misuse it, I don't deserver it, I don't want it.  The reply to that was then earn it.

If that's what I'm doing having been through the initiation, the listing of all my wrongs.

At least this way I can't hide from the fact that I've got a lot to learn as i regrow.

I've noticed I'm more like i used to be, less good, less bad, in the middle.

More of my self seems to be back, while I hang in there, no pun.

I won't do anything to hurt others, or myself, thoughts are just that, thoughts, I can live with those, and learn to accept that years of numbing myself with drugs hid a lot of my subconcious from me, I battle with the assumption that I deserve what I am going through, and as jung would say if he hasn't been misquoted,

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” 

and

'No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell'


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