Ghosts, Haunting, Spiritual Attack

Why is that at one point in history we abandoned a belief in spirits acting upon mankind? God became a superstition, and the idea that a person could be haunted was negated. That's by far the mainstream view in my part of the world. My worldview is the same as the old Christians had who wrote the New Testament, that we may be disturbed by spirits - and that we may heal that condition too.

Once upon a time, everyone would have believed in possession and exorcism as a possibility that affected some people. Now, I imagine, there are many people who are not being helped because of this dominant ignorance - I mean, the doctor continues to call you insane, when you are otherwise healthy, because he believes what you are saying is impossible, and no one does anything to help with the grievous irritation that may come from negative spirit attention.

Strangely, I know I may suffer a schizophrenic breakdown again in the future, through stress, for example. When I became schizophrenic originally, something else opened as well, I also became spiritually active and parapsychically sensitive. But there remains for me a core of mental perception unchanged by my medication, and I believe I am otherwise healthy in mind. It's a somewhat blurry region to define. The schizophrenia proper went away, but the apparent spiritual phenomena remained.

So, if anyone asks your beliefs, tell them they are traditional, rather than medical! I believe in the possibility of spirit harassment or possession.

Theory Of Having A Disposition To Psychosis AND To Psychic Sensitivity

A theory for the spiritual believers among the readership of Diagnosis: Schizophrenia!: here is a 'what if' scenario for you.


What if, just as some people have a natural disposition to psychosis, given the necessary circumstances and emotional conditions, maybe some of the same people also have a natural disposition to 'psychic' receptivity! Then you will have someone who will have a psychotic breakdown and psychic awakening at the same time [or psychic and / or spiritual awakening at the same time as a psychotic breakdown]. This would account for a dual situation of psychosis and psychic phemonena in the same individual.

This will be especially true if someone has been over-using spiritualising drugs, for example cannabis, as I did. (The really important thing to know about cannabis, for education and safety, is that it can be spiritualising, it can take you deeper - it's not just for fun and relaxation.) This is because any psychoactive drug can cause mental ill health - and if they are actively spiritualising as well, it makes sense that they will lead to an awakening of psychic receptivity. And that equates to a hard time - not just being misunderstood, but yourself misunderstanding and getting a bit lost by being 'delusional' and psychic at once, feeling self-doubt and possibly the negative situation of having an excess of sensitivity or having problems with negative energies or thought-forms.

I think all that sounds pretty reasonable, if you have a spirituality-inclusive world-view. It feels nice to 'talk' to the spiritually-minded! Usually I am defending my views, as if to "an unbeliever"! (Apologies if you are feeling left out, you who do not believe in an extra-sensory reality).

Feelings

Today I woke up late, which made me angry. How late? 1730. After about 16 hours of sleep.  (Why?)

I then proceeded to try and work on my writing, but my father seemed frustrated with this, and God-knows-how, interfered with and partially obstructed my mind to the effect that I could not think creatively about what I was doing. This made me angrier. Why does he obstruct me when I am already feeling low? Why don't my spirit helpers stop him influencing me like that?

So I called him 'every name under the sun', and am now "the son of an idiot"; there it is. Better to be angry than despair in ultimate ways.

I am not responding to this very constructively right now, but at least am not following a darker route, which has been flitting across my mind this evening.


Let's take a roll call of conditions:

• schizophrenic-type illness
• depression
• exhaustion/fatigue

That's a lot of stress.
But I have much to be thankful for - externally, things are as good as they could be!

I'm sorry to complain. I guess I'd rather be working happily on my writing. I'll let you into a secret: I am hoping to build a career in creative writing. I have a talent for writing.

Some months after he died (nearly 5 years ago), I was thinking about what to do with my life career-wise, and I heard my father's voice joyfully say that I am a born writer. So why does he obstruct me today (and on other days)?


Mysteries, mysteries.


I become very angry, hateful even (hence "son of an idiot"). Don't like.


Maybe this post is useful. A window into the world I live in.

Imagination And Schizophrenia: Ideas and Reflections

Hallucinations are like the dreaming self impressing itself on the waking self. Or like the unconscious self trying to be born through the waking self all at once, becoming a tragic failed birth.

Delusions are like the logical mind being unravelled by the unconscious' power of imagination. Again, interference from the unconscious places the waking self in a world of magic, though one for which it is 'ill-fitted', unsuitable. 'Creative thinking' and 'creative thinking gone wrong' are here associated like genius and madness. (Creative thinking - thinking that is different, imaginative, daring, accepting of errors, and yet ordered; creative thinking gone wrong is similar but misses errors on a grand scale, for all its pretensions of genius and confidence.)

Strange behaviours in public occur through a displacement, the waking mind being forced out and breaking its boundaries, so that it shows itself naked, and frightening in its strangeness - the irrationality and lost consciousness of propriety are apparent. The subject's mind has 'gone to seed', run wild, lost all sense of reality as governed by responsibility and social learning: the subject is a free agent and the boundaries are broken so that behaviour is governed mostly by will alone. A kind of expression of withdrawal, these behaviours represent overt individuality and individuation; if there was more 'space' for the person's mind, the behaviours would never come to light, would pass by as unnoticed dreams; a manifestation of stress, therefore?, of the brain part of the organism not having enough 'space' to rest and relax and reorganise?
[My strange behaviours were done without awareness that they were strange, and they were based on delusion. I know what it's like to act strangely; I think that it is especially frightening to other people; it is madness very much on display, a seeming powerful, unpredictable and unlimited force.]

Attack Psychology

In this post I ask, what is it that causes a person to seek to induce injury without just cause? This is a question that is likely interesting to most adults, because we all know of evil happenings in the world. The question has relevance to my Life because, in my interpretation of my experience, I am very often harassed by others - people who have died and who have avoided ascending to Heaven.

There may be many answers, such as 'envy', 'curiosity', 'need', 'drug addiction', even 'justice'.

The very nature of our existence on earth, spiritually speaking, leaves us open to this; it is said that in Heaven we review our lives and feel the effects of our influence on others' emotions - on Earth apparent separateness permits us to be unfeeling more easily. Causing injury can become a form of entertainment through not feeling another's pain directly, where direct empathy would make such actions unbearable.

Secondly, malevolence is simply one person using their power to affect another so that they notice them, or so that the other notices someone else when the malevolent person is undetected. This could be seen as a call for attention, a call to recognise dignity.

One of the most common causes for causing injury without just cause must in fact be a mistaken perception of justice - perhaps prejudice calls for a person to feel it is right to injure another. (And even regular connotations of justice can be seen as unjust when they extend to punishment, if we follow a Christian view - Jesus interceded to prevent the stoning of a woman who had been 'unfaithful' to her husband).

Spirituality can awaken within us a great concern and care for other living things, which prevents us from being heavy-handed with other Life-forms - in the absence of such a mindset, the will to cause injury unjustly has a free rein. Adulthood likewise often breaks off from a person inclinations to hurt others out of course. - And actually causing injury is usually only appropriate as part of medical procedures, as I see it, or also (by convention only), during war.

Human nature has a tendency towards charity, but it is easy for the innocence with which we emerge into the world to be conditioned towards other courses, merely through our own thoughts and reactions to circumstances. One person comes to freely persecute and torment another with a calm mind because they believe it is right. It must be the legitimating thought process that is key to the cause and solution of malevolence. We injure because we can, because we are free, and because it seems to be a fitting response to a given circumstance.

Just as to carry out the behaviours of malevolence cause the acting person satisfaction when he or she is successful, so is it also possible to be made joyful by causing pain - an interesting conundrum. And the greater the cause of consternation, the greater or more prolonged the attack will be.

I end this post with a teaching that appears in similar form throughout the world's religions: do to others as you would have them do to you.

What Is Health To Me?

Since becoming ill, I have had a setback in certain aspects of my health - in my sociability (emotions, speech and spontaneity), becoming quite withdrawn and being afraid of encountering my fellow human beings; I had a setback in the lucidity and accuracy of my thinking; I had a challenge to my world-view, which seemed to be disorientated and 'rebooted' (I literally felt like a new person). I also had these symptoms of apparent disturbances to my thinking and feeling, as if another person in spirit watches me and seeks to injure me through my mind.

All of my symptoms change and alleviate, barring the daily influx of low-evolved mentality - I mean barring the apparent malicious disturbances to my thinking and feeling that I believe involve an external and objective reality. So my speech improves, my social graces improve, my thinking has clarified and my world-view has re-emerged from innocence into grounded stability.

And still I am not in full health. The basic effect of the disturbance is distress, and generally, is then my being unnaturally put into 'depression', as we often call it, or heaviness of emotion, fatigue and reluctance to take part in the world. Whatever you define the reality of my condition as, these 'symptoms' of depression and frequent distress are how I, rightfully, earn the financial support of the British people in the form of disability benefits. But I do not accept these benefits of citizenship lightly, I accept them with humble gratitude, and hope to repay these favours in the future.

Health to me is not only feeling good and thinking in the same way as the consensus about the major things in Life it is being able to express this state of mind; as far as I am concerned, my health is good now, except as it is repressed by these overbearing forces of aggression - so to me health is being able to express myself, to live in the Light and to spread the joy I feel, and to be able to pursue my desires in the outer world.

Symptoms: Paranoia

I mentioned before that I had delusions of grandeur of a messianic variety extending into identifying myself as a prophet or saint. I'd like to write more about this now.


At the time of becoming ill I was using cannabis very intensively. I believe cannabis use brings on spiritual experience, though I had no understanding of this previously. I did not expect to have any mystical experiences, so when they came I was unprepared. The new experiences could not be integrated normally - I was left, being in a delusional state, believing that I was extra-special.

Before this episode in my Life, I was religious, but not spiritual, that is to say, I prayed and went to church, but I did not have a living, daily relationship with the great and greater being we call God.
The strength of holiness of my new experiences was such that I was left disorientated.
One day I was - and please excuse this - the Second Coming; another I was Moses, or a prophesied and universally loved saviour figure. I can still remember plunging an imaginary staff into the floor of my university bedroom to bring forth healing into the world, just as Moses broke a boulder with his staff to produce water for the Israelites. There is value in such experiences, still, I hold them special - they are valuable memories. If only I was an actor! I would have a wealth of feelings of grandeur to draw on.


Well, that was how I became paranoid, in my opinion.
I would like to add a note about sainthood. It is easy for someone spiritual in a delusionary state to believe themselves a saint. I did. (I'm glad to say that I no longer identify myself with any historical / biblical figure, nor think myself a saint).
I would now like to address the issue I see at the heart of delusions of grandeur: human worth. In short, I believe that it is impossible for someone to have delusions of grandeur! Our grandeur, as human beings and as Lifeforms is very great and very real.
OK, so this is an exaggeration, it is still possible to be delusional. What helps in those circumstances is this: not only do we have the word 'saint', we also have the word 'saintly'! There are degrees of saintliness. This helped me: that even though I may revere my wisdom, fortitude and spiritual wealth, surely I am not a miracle worker of full awareness, one of those people who we call saints - but can I not be 'saintly', still? This provides some satisfaction and consolation - and at the end of the day, this is an easier term to live with, than to try and live up to being a saint!

But where does the word 'saint' come from? The French for 'holy'! And is not all Life grand and holy and special! Admire its beauty, its ingenuity, its warmth even. From a religious perspective, we are all Created of One HOLY Creator, so we must have holiness and grandeur in relation to that Great One. In this respect, we are all saints! Yet still, the normal usage of the word 'saint' remains, and we are better off not confusing this usage.

How much better it would be for those of us experiencing breakdown if there were others there at the time who were able to say, "Yes! You are great!", to reassure a person of the grandeur they feel. Perhaps the central individual in question has had a spiritual awakening and has gained an intuitive feeling of their own true worth - wouldn't it be great to clarify this for them, and in the context of equality?
I have come to think that the worker ant can be equal with the queen ant, the foot soldier with the general, the subject with the monarch, and even the Christ with the follower. Always there are greater and lesser ones, but on one level there is equality still. You can identify yourself as great and not have to appropriate others' worth; you can identify yourself as great and remain humble.

I wish everyone who has difficulty assessing their worth the best of luck sifting truth from what is false. I hope this page has helped you.