Crazy for You

In the next suburb west from my family home is an old tumbledown mental institution. We used to go on Sunday drives through it, checking out the broken windowed architecture of a dumping group of what society referred to as "refuse".

Driving these through grounds, sounds weird, however I could almost "feel" the anguish, torment, terror and hopelessness of the patients - patient in their captivity only due to being heavily drugged.

Contraversially and without academic qualification, I do not believe that is appropriate to label someone as Mentally Ill.

How many people do we all know whose thoughts and feelings and sensations live outside of the acceptable societal paradigm? How any of them have been labelled genius and innovative for pushing the boundaries and seeking to breath life into absurdity?

History shows that much of what psychiatry formally considered a disorder or illness was the result of a cultural norm or bias and this perception will vary over time and place.

We are all neurodiverse. That is why we have different personalities, strengths and talents. Some argue that untreated mental health conditions can get in the way of our expressing our US ness. On the other hand, neurodiversity advocates argue that there may be more positive potential in recognizing neurodiverse subjects outside the accepted framework. In other words, it might prove more helpful to acknowledge a broader spectrum of human variation rather than approaching these variations as "mental illnesses" in need of "cures."

My questions is if physical illness or symptoms are expressed when the body trying to talk to us and trying to heal, then what is mental illness? We all own fantasies which polarise what we identify as holding value. Intense focus and skewed polarity will present as mental illness. The mental processes are not at ease - not experiencing wellness - but a swinging polarity unfetered by societal benchmarks.

Could mental illness symptoms being expressed be clues and healing opportunities in this same vein?

The concepts of wellness and illness co exist on a pendulum, which swings back and forth.

How much freedom would one experience on this swing?

Playing the Choices Game

I think I make choices and that I have control over how I live my life!

Really? Is this true or an assumption?

Examine my daily actions. Every decision I make in every day is based on a lie that I tell myself.

I buy a $1000 Louis Vuitton bag because I “feel” better when I carry it. I believe it gives me power of a kind and upgrades my presentation making me look more professional. It also makes me feel successful and wealth.

Really? Is this true or are these assumptions based on responses to various beliefs and stories based on someone ELSE's value system who I perceive as having more power than me?

I can eat at a certain restaurant because I “feel” like I am eating good healthy food and this makes me a more responsible and healthier person.

Really? Is this true or are these assumptions based on responses to various beliefs and stories based on someone ELSE's value system who I perceive as having more power than me?

I buy groceries at the Woolworths at closer smaller older suburb up the road as there is easy parking and I can just walk in without queuing – and this buys me more time and makes my life easier.

Really? Is this true or are these assumptions based on responses to various beliefs and stories based on someone ELSE's value system who I perceive as having more power than me?

I bank with Westpac because they have looked after us for 20 years, both our families banked with them and they give us what we want. We feel safe and valued and know that our business is valued and our savings and investments are sound and guaranteed.

Really? Is this true or are these assumptions based on responses to various beliefs and stories based on someone ELSE's value system who I perceive as having more power than me?

I buy meat from an organic butcher to ensure my family eat meat that isn’t filled with hormones so I feel like a responsible caring parent and a socially just member of society who will not tolerate the cruel conditions that animals are kept in.

Really? Is this true or are these assumptions based on responses to various beliefs and stories based on someone ELSE's value system who I perceive as having more power than me?

Every decision I make in every day is based on a lie that I tell myself.

Where did these assumptions originate? Whose value system am I deferring to? Why do I consider this external source of power to be greater than my own?

Look at what you do in a 24 hour period and review the game you play while making daily choices and answer these questions for yourself.

Stand Tall

Silent sentinel I stand in a world that holds endless species of light.
I am Surya driving through the heavens.
You look up and imagine that you see a golden orb.
This sun is merely your own reflection.
It is your own heart.
It is your own light.
The light you seek is within you.
The light you seek is within me.
The sky of the old order fell when a bird was knocked from his perch and the deluge destroyed the people of the wood.
The sky of the new world could only be raised by an act of sacrifice.
I was the cosmic sacrifice.
I am earth and air and water.
I am fire – I burn my own wood.
I am Yggdrasil and I am the axis between worlds.
A world clock ticking endlessly: sometimes my breath is tired and rusty.
My breath can cut you as your language can kill souls.
I watch as another world rests within my bones, unseen and untouched by your kind.
I am a gateway, a lighthouse to others, a communicator for the between.
Like you.
You are the spiritual internet.
Like me.
I am both directed and yet directionless.
There is a hidden door – come closer you will see as no other can.
Enter.
Open.
There is nowhere else to go but here – yet here is everywhere.
I am Thor’s Oak. Bonafcius did not fell me but my purpose was all in the telling of his tale.
I am a wet nurse for your race, watching and supervising and protecting – you have no concept yet of how I keep you safe.
The Olympic rings were originally cut from my body symbolising the rings of truth that protect you from danger.
I am Sekhmet and I protect the land, destroying enemies with arrows of fire.
Yes I have committed crimes in the eyes of many yet I am remorseless.
I have carved death on many faces.
Sometimes death has as much a purpose as life.
You too have killed as much as you have birthed.
This is life.
I am Yax Imix Cheand, I am abundance raised in the middle of the world.
I raised the sky and I birthed what you see is the sun.
Watch me; watch how my roots are sent deep into this earth.
The deeper you root yourself the easier you will bend, ebb and flow with the tides of your time.
Like your heart, this earth upon which you walk, is kept alive by me for I hold its terrestrial intention.
This intention is a submission to the point of resistance.
I am Sól and I count the years of man.
Every particle of mine is a book in a library far reaching beyond your wildest imagination.
I am every case study you will ever need.
I am every page every written.
I am every scientific experiment ever conducted.
There is a frequency that I hold upon which this earth was formed.
A frequency that beats your very own heart.
I am Helios driving my chariot across the sky.
My faith in the magnetic force and my trust in the safety of the flow hold me firm in a constant evolution of tension oscillation.
I am Ain Soph Aur, the tree of life – without end and with light.
When I bend, I am stretching and expanding – creating more space in this illusion while contracting and nesting.
I am Freyr, the Maypole, and the phalloi that Isis could not find.
My colours are crafted in the dramas of birth and death in this forest.
My leaves grow without any thought from me.
Your heart loves without any thought from you.
It is not possible for either of us to ever be alone.
I am a circle, a never-ending line, keeping and standing where you left me so long ago.
I am Lugh and I hold all contracts written of this world.
If I so choose I can fade like a ghost and vanish. No one will ever know I was ever here.
But this will not end my life as I will live on through another seed, another pod, another root system, branching out and merging with more light.
I can be whatever I choose just like you.
You and I – we share a molecular structure so refined and complex yet so basic and simple.
Your digital world and formless currency are frequencies crafted and released by my leaves.
I am Kuker and my coarse and speckled bark forms part of my horned mask.
My reptilian skin is just one coat – just one aspect.
Every leaf that I lose is my gift to the earth.
It joins me at the base – never lost – only re engineered.
Every person that you lose from your life is your gift to humanity.
They are never lost always reappearing in another face in another time.
I am Ra and I command the sky, earth and the underworld.
Standing tall under Mintaka, his pulse is felt in my roots.
You were born under this star forever in between, in the middle of the two.
You are destined to strip my bark, shatter my myths and stand in between.
With one foot in both worlds you stand under Mintaka’s power.
Beings of light are the only words you can understand and they are around you now – watching and prodding without you even being aware.
Their home is here – not some far away planet.
The planets you see in the night sky are not real; they are your reflections – your hearts, minds, souls and bodies.
The organs in your body are the planets.
What you are seeing is a grand illusion.
When they said that God created the world in seven days, they were talking about you.
The stars that you see in the night sky are not real; they are your reflections – thoughts, feelings, purpose and intentions.
Your star burns bright.
Stand tall.

These words were written after a long conversation with a very ancient gum tree in Barkers Vale NSW on 23 April 2007.