I think a lot of what I have been working with in this blog is the question of what I should believe about extra sensory phenomena, that can also be called natural sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of reality. I think I have been coming from a common materialist perspective whilst having ESP, and getting caught in doubt. I don’t really know people like me who have a lot of ESP and I have not had any kind of spiritual/psychic mentoring; certainly this has led me to be independent on my journey and make my own mind up about things.
In my part of the world, we are quite secular, meaning that many of us don’t live with a sacred sense of spirit in everyday life. I mean compared with other cultures in history I have read about where it is woven through the culture. A portion of people live with faith in spiritual things, but how much mystical or psychic experience are they having? My impression is that the mystical and psychic is often a taboo, not completely accepted if it is talked about. There are ideas that it is very much forbidden, or unholy, or dangerous, or just a sign of insanity.
How many people have extra sensory knowing of some kind? It is supposed to be that about one in ten people hear voices. Not one in one hundred, but one in ten. It would be nice if we could accept and welcome this fact and not hide or reject it, or deny it outright.
I like to read on Quora, the opinion website, and there the spiritual investigator Richard Martini writes about some people living with less filters on their experience. Richard Martini has done a lot of work looking at proof of reincarnation and talking through mediums with people living in Heaven, also saying we can all talk to them too. Biologically speaking, we have filters so that we can focus on what is essential to us, rather than have extraneous cosmic information distracting us. But some, like mediums, are born with less filters. Others he says reduce filters in meditation or when taking drugs like LSD. For myself, a medium told me recently that I am a medium, and she confirmed this with my spirit guides who were with her. I am someone with less filtering on my psychic awareness. Also, obviously extra openness due to having taken a lot of a drug called cannabis. Sometimes I have read writers saying that actually everyone is psychically sensitive, even that these are common human faculties that we lost in more recent history.
I don’t know how the materialist/atheist and ‘conservative’ mainstream psychology will adapt to integrate with a world made up of people who are predominantly believers in the spiritual. But something has to give. Scientific curiosity and weight of belief and the experiences people have when aware of the spiritual will direct our culture’s evolution, which should be interesting! But exactly how this will progress I am not sure. There is already some open minded research being done into mediumship to investigate the difference with schizophrenia.
I don’t think I have or have had schizophrenia. I think I had an organic psychosis from using a drug (cannabis). Lasting changes occurred to my brain. The drug, a psychoactive drug used for millennia in religious/spiritual contexts seemed to have opened my latent psychic faculties. So I have been dealing with some serious mental illness, brain changes/changes to self and difficult spirit interactions following sudden spiritual awakening.
I have been medicated for psychosis, that was broadly unhelpful, and two times when I stopped having the medicine I quickly became unwell with psychotic withdrawal symptoms. This withdrawal psychosis can happen and is not a sign that severe illness is my natural condition. I don’t like taking this medicine anymore and have reduced from 30mg to 10mg of Aripirazole in three years. I am hoping to go to 5mg for some time then one day reduce to a stop. This medicine is a brain medicine, it might do things to your mind, and you can’t just stop it when you don’t want to take it. I know from experience I have a brain very sensitive to withdrawal and need a very very gradual taper to stop completely. Not everyone needs the medicine, it doesn’t work for everyone, some are better without it.
I wonder how psychologists will view people claiming to have psychic experience in 140 years’ time and onwards. I hope they will look with more emotional sensitivity, more respect, more scientific open-mindedness. That would be better, it would serve us better.
Also, imagine what the medicines will be like then, or in 200 years! And the way we categorise illness will change, and the therapy given will be better, and the way we look at people who have mental health difficulties will hopefully improve. I think much of where we have been comes from collective habits; there is much each of us can do with gentle compassion.
Lastly, I am waking up to this: not to simply desire health of mind and body and soul for its own sake, for how good it feels, but to do something from the place of having health.
In a book by Doreen Virtue she talks for the angels, and the angelic realm say that you can focus on problems or purpose. I am waking up to looking not at my problems but at my purpose in Life, the ways in which I can fulfil my heart’s desire and make a positive difference on Earth. I have things to do.
I think this is a good reminder. To live for a reason and for light, not to be afraid of what appears dark or dwell on what is unhappy to us, but to will and intend to be constructive.
In writing this post I realise I have completed a large growth phase. I still have challenges to create health and get through living with some major psychological disturbance, but more than that I have a life mission to fulfil, things to create and achieve and do for the good of all.
I wish you all well, readers, wherever and whenever you may be reading this, and whatever your story is.
