I find the strength to carry on, through a life that has often seemed committed to breaking me, in despair. This is not the self-pitying heartache of the love of your life breaking up with you or having failed some important task and feeling bad for yourself because you think you weren't good enough to succeed. This is a powerful philosophical concept that looks deep into the mystery of life and finds nothingness and finds its triumph in that very nothingness.
We all get wounded by life. Someone we love dies. We lose an important job. Our closest friends betray us. We have moments of hopelessness, spiritual barrenness, times when nothing seems to make sense. There are remedies for this ranging from religion to the bottle. But few people seek the answer to the problem in the problem itself. Despair is its own victory, when it is taken in one's hands and heart and kept close and used as a guide through what comes after.
When you suffer from severe depression, you learn very quickly that nothing, not the love of family and friends, not drugs (legal or otherwise), not the God or Gods that we all want to believe in, nothing will just take it away. So, if you want to transform the experience of that depression from something negative to something positive, you've got to work with the depression itself. Despair is more than just an emotion. It is a worldview, as comprehensive as Medieval Roman Catholicism or Marxism. Just ask Nietzsche or Cioran. It colors everything you experience. You go from cooing over how cute a young child is to knowing that someday it will die and sometime after that, unless it's one of the chosen few, will be forgotten, as we all end up forgotten (if, again, we're not of that chosen few) when those who loved us are also gone. This is all-pervasive. You begin to see death and life's powerlessness everywhere. You come to doubt and outright despise the idea of any spiritual agencies who would act to "save" you from the suffering in this world. You know that medicine can take away the edge but, once you've glimpsed into the abyss, you can never un-see what you saw. Hopelessness is something we merely cover up with hope, just as underneath our clothes, we're all naked. Take that away, and you become yourself, bare and defenseless, against the reality of a life that does not love you, does not care one way or another what becomes of you. This is where you find the power in despair.
When you've come to the point where you know for a certainty that life will never deliver what the cliches promise it will, you come to a point where the only thing you trust anymore is yourself. You are the one who survives the slings and arrows. Nothing divine or human survives them for you. And nothing in this life will give you peace; it can only be won, after long struggles, inside oneself. If you think marriage or children or your first home or a new car or some blessed spirituality GIVES you peace, you are underestimating your own power to be the one thing that can be truly relied upon from day one to day final of your existence. A wife or husband can die. So can children. They can decide they hate you, whoever may be at fault. Homes and cars... well... we all know how impermanent those are. And spirituality is only as useful as it applies to practical, everyday life. I have no time for a spirituality that teaches me how to live to be happy in a world after this one. THIS is the life I am living. THIS is the life I am concerned with. If there is anything beyond THIS life, then I blame it for making me so easily overcome by emotional agony. I have made many choices in my life. Depression was not one of them. I do, however, believe in the power of choice. And taking responsibility for oneself involves accepting oneself as the only savior there is. We are each responsible for what gets us through the day. It doesn't come from material things or on high.
Despair hates life because it sees life as either the architect or the idiot god ultimately responsible for suffering. If there were no life, there would be no suffering. That hatred for life contains the seed of strength. Because, if you hate life, you strive to overcome it. Make no mistake, life is a brutal affair. Every time someone speaks admiringly of someone else who rose to a higher state in life through their own efforts, they are tacitly acknowledging the fact that life is cruelly unfair and that success in life only comes by fighting against the odds. If you have everything handed to you, you haven't done a thing. If you never strive for anything better, you also haven't done anything. So, the secret is in not having and fighting for what you do not have. Fighting. Fighting against whom? Against life, of course. Against the life that did not give you what you seek. Fighting to attain that which you seek but do not yet possess.
Hatred for life sounds so negative to many people. They want to say they love life. But, if they have accomplished, truly accomplished, anything, they have done so in a struggle against the entropy and decay that is the end result of life. And, if they haven't accomplished anything, watch how quick they are to blame life. We all know life is the enemy when we're feeling broken.
Only in despair do these insights come. And yes, despair can result in things like suicide. But, a philosophical despair will ensure that one does not impulsively commit suicide based on emotional disturbances that may go away after a few hours, days, weeks, months. Philosophical despair will only permit suicide when one can rationally see that either the pain will not get better or that one's time is truly at an end, that one has accomplished and experienced all one can or wants to in life. I make no one any promises that I will never take my own life. But I will not do so rashly and I will not be unaware of the consequences of such an action. And, I will fight. I will fight for the best life possible for myself because I know that life itself will never give that to me. It must come from my own efforts. And, if I triumph or if I ultimately fall, I will do so as a sovereign being, truly free and truly filled with the unlimited power of despair.
Mystical nihilism, heathenry, chaos magic, theistic Satanism, endless music and books and a passion for the poles of the human experience
Friday, November 11, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Philosophy Instead Of Faith
In my last post, I ranted about nihilism. I'm still attached to certain ideas in nihilism, so what I'm going to write here is not a rejection utterly of that. But it is a different perspective. Not a completely new perspective for me. I've spent a lifetime dangling over this chasm between nihilism and faith. Sometimes I swing over to one and then back to the other after some time. I don't really know what is happening to me currently. It's hard to explain but I will try in the following paragraphs.
I have started to feel the need to pull my conflicting thoughts together and see what I can make of the whole, godawful mess. And I have been studying various religious and philosophical texts during this process. For years now, I have been aware of the Temple of Set. I won't go into their history or all their beliefs here but I own a Set statue and have spent many hours meditating on the mysteries of this Egyptian deity. I didn't know much about the Temple of Set except that they were a very exclusive organization and didn't accept just anyone who applied. So, in a very self-limiting fashion, I kind of ignored them and what they had to say because I felt they'd never accept me and therefore I didn't need to worry about what they had to say about things. This was a bad move and kind of a cop-out on my part. I should know by now that anything can be learned from.
However, in one of my swings between nihilism and faith, I got to thinking about Set quite a lot and just jumped from there to thinking of the Temple of Set. I decided to refresh my memory about what I'd read about them. And what I found seemed like the answer to my... I don't pray... so maybe my hopes. I found a school of thought that seems to make the act of thinking intelligently, long and hard on important matters, holy. Philosophy as a sacred rite. Art as a sacred rite. All the things I love are being called sacred in the writings of various folks associated with the Temple of Set. I don't know how I overlooked that before.
Before I go any further, I should say that I do not know if I will even attempt to join the Temple of Set. They are reluctant to accept people with mental illnesses, as some of what the Temple teaches can bring people face to face with inner "demons" that an unstable person may not be able to cope with. If I study more and really like what I find, I may request to be put in contact with a Priest or Priestess and discuss with them whether I'd really like to join the Temple and if I'd even be accepted if I tried. But, in one of the Temple's podcasts, the founder specifically says that many of their core beliefs are open to all of humanity just by virtue of being conscious beings. This struck a chord with me because even though I might never be a "Setian" in the sense of belonging to the Temple of Set, I could potentially be living a Setian life and, the more I read, the better that was starting to sound.
Philosophy and art and magick and not blind faith and countless rules about your behavior. Couldn't be more perfect. Morality as something you determine rationally. As one of the members said in a podcast, "The good is very often synonymous with the intelligent." Or something to that effect. Brilliant! So, I'm reading up on philosophy, both explicitly Setian and other things as well, reading as much as I can, meditating as much as I can, contemplating. This isn't a long, endless rant and rave blog. Much more concise than I am accustomed to writing. However, I wanted to get some feelings down about yet another journey I am embarking on. Don't know where it will lead, but I will profit from it. I know that.
I have started to feel the need to pull my conflicting thoughts together and see what I can make of the whole, godawful mess. And I have been studying various religious and philosophical texts during this process. For years now, I have been aware of the Temple of Set. I won't go into their history or all their beliefs here but I own a Set statue and have spent many hours meditating on the mysteries of this Egyptian deity. I didn't know much about the Temple of Set except that they were a very exclusive organization and didn't accept just anyone who applied. So, in a very self-limiting fashion, I kind of ignored them and what they had to say because I felt they'd never accept me and therefore I didn't need to worry about what they had to say about things. This was a bad move and kind of a cop-out on my part. I should know by now that anything can be learned from.
However, in one of my swings between nihilism and faith, I got to thinking about Set quite a lot and just jumped from there to thinking of the Temple of Set. I decided to refresh my memory about what I'd read about them. And what I found seemed like the answer to my... I don't pray... so maybe my hopes. I found a school of thought that seems to make the act of thinking intelligently, long and hard on important matters, holy. Philosophy as a sacred rite. Art as a sacred rite. All the things I love are being called sacred in the writings of various folks associated with the Temple of Set. I don't know how I overlooked that before.
Before I go any further, I should say that I do not know if I will even attempt to join the Temple of Set. They are reluctant to accept people with mental illnesses, as some of what the Temple teaches can bring people face to face with inner "demons" that an unstable person may not be able to cope with. If I study more and really like what I find, I may request to be put in contact with a Priest or Priestess and discuss with them whether I'd really like to join the Temple and if I'd even be accepted if I tried. But, in one of the Temple's podcasts, the founder specifically says that many of their core beliefs are open to all of humanity just by virtue of being conscious beings. This struck a chord with me because even though I might never be a "Setian" in the sense of belonging to the Temple of Set, I could potentially be living a Setian life and, the more I read, the better that was starting to sound.
Philosophy and art and magick and not blind faith and countless rules about your behavior. Couldn't be more perfect. Morality as something you determine rationally. As one of the members said in a podcast, "The good is very often synonymous with the intelligent." Or something to that effect. Brilliant! So, I'm reading up on philosophy, both explicitly Setian and other things as well, reading as much as I can, meditating as much as I can, contemplating. This isn't a long, endless rant and rave blog. Much more concise than I am accustomed to writing. However, I wanted to get some feelings down about yet another journey I am embarking on. Don't know where it will lead, but I will profit from it. I know that.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
The Freedom of Meaninglessness
In pure theory, nihilism should produce death, both actual and philosophical. Anything that attempts to answer "What does it all mean?" with the response "It doesn't mean anything" is a killing force. Life is meaningless, so why live? Philosophy is meaningless because it can't answer anything with certitude, so why think? And I, to an extent, subscribe to a kind of nihilism. I put on various religions and philosophies for a time and think within those terminologies and mindsets without ever completely subscribing to them. I live a life of mental and spiritual convenience. That sounds extremely meaningless. Why bother? Why even bother to continue in an existence that I don't feel has any point or any true worth? There have been gods, there has been God, there have been new gods of politics and humanism and ideas that are invested with all the power of the absolute. Those who live with or beneath these gods can't see what I am doing, don't understand. To them, even to Nietzsche, nihilism was the downfall of civilization as we know it. Nearly everyone elevates some principle or concept to a divine status. Nearly everyone exists with a certain perception of relativity but their relativity does not permit them to tear down their own deities and moral codes. I think mankind has a terrible fear of believing that their own thoughts might be wrong or, even worse, pointless. This may not be absolutely true but the way we live life is as a stream of thoughts and sensations and emotions. To cast those into doubt casts into doubt everything we believe about ourselves. Terrifying prospect.
There's the old song and dance about how if you say it is true that nothing is true, you've just contradicted yourself and what you said is a lie. That's an easy way to try to trip up relativists and nihilists and postmodernists and all sorts of nasty folk. But it doesn't hold water. It's a word game that people have been playing since the time of the ancient Greeks, possibly before. The fact is that underlying every statement about something not being "true" is the assumption that it is not absolutely true. We are born believing in the evidence of our senses and, as we grow, we come to trust completely the evidence of our thoughts about our senses. Part of what is so frightening about feeling you are going mad is that you have torn from you that security that you know and think about the world around you correctly. But one doesn't have to be slipping into psychosis to find evidence that the world around us is not what we think it is. Most people have experienced something along the lines of catching movement out of the corner of their eye and nothing being there or thinking their name was just called and turning around and no one did so. Just one such experience should be enough to cause us to discount the so-called "evidence" of our senses. And if we can't trust something as basic as our eyeballs seeing correctly, why are we supposed to put complete faith in an ancient holy book or some random philosophy or Marxism or Rush Limbaugh or anything else that we are expected to just accept as true? People talk about their various beliefs and frequently resort to attempting to prove its reality by claiming they experienced directly that it is true. God speaking to them, watching a town apply a new political philosophy and it works miracles, etc. I am not convinced by such arguments. It is the need for security and stability and trust in the world as we know it that causes us to give so much weight to what we experience. Because if we were to admit that we might be mistaken about the causes or our perception of our experiences, we might just become a little more nihilistic and that's not good. But, in spite of what Dr. Phil says about "Would you rather be right or happy?" I would rather be right than clutching to what makes me feel secure even if it is completely off-base. Many is the time in history that a general looked across the battlefield and saw a small force of enemies and rushed in to attack and found out that the rest of the opposing force was hidden somewhere and rushed in and flanked him and his soldiers and won the day. Our senses and experiences, no matter what our hearts may wish for, are like the crafty enemy general who knows how to divide his men and flank his foe and find victory.
So, I've just spent two run-on paragraphs demolishing what is, in my view, the grave error of clinging to the notion of absolute truth. We can try to deceive ourselves but, in the end, we will all reach the end of our sojourns in this world without the slightest clue what it was all about than we had when we showed up. So, what about my opening question about why do I carry on if I believe in a universe that is, as far as I can ever know, completely meaningless? Why do I read philosophers and why do I not put a bullet in my head or start running pedestrians down in my car? Simple. I do not know if freedom exists. I do not know if we are not predetermined to do everything we do by genetics and environment. So I don't claim to be preaching freedom. But, I have found that in a functionally meaningless existence, freedom is the greatest prize to be found. You are free to interpret the evidence of your senses and thoughts and emotions however you choose. If there is no overarching font of ultimate morality, then we are free to invent our own moral codes. Some people view that idea as a harbinger of the apocalypse. I'm fine with bringing about the end of the world as we know it. Because the world as we know it hasn't worked in eons. Those who see decadence and Babylon and Armageddon around every corner don't seem to realize that people have been saying that for thousands of years. It hasn't come yet, why do you think it will pop up tomorrow because some poor teenaged girl got an abortion or a dude got high or someone you didn't vote for got elected anyway? It's a kind of hubris to think that the end times have just been holding off until WE showed up to smash the wickedness of humankind.
This freedom we find in meaninglessness is the freedom to assign meaning as we see fit. Despite Nietzsche not being a nihilist, he did see the end of meaning foreshadowed in his day and, very wisely, set about constructing his own meanings. Whether we realize this or not, nihilist or devout Muslim, we all go about creating our own meanings anyway, in the unceasing stream of our thoughts and emotions. We won't stop finding meanings until we die and, despite anyone's evidence that their beliefs are true, we will never know how factual our beliefs are unless we die and suddenly find ourselves face to face with God and in his infinite wisdom, he deigns to tell us what we wish to know. I do not personally believe that but I use my freedom of choice to allow that I could be wrong to doubt it and I may show up at the foot of his throne one day, facing judgment or love or whatever other motivations could cause a divine being to create such a wonderful, flawed, dreadful and beautiful race as we humans. So, believe what you will but do not ask yourself or me why I think what I do and still keep on keeping on. It's abundantly clear that where I find my enlightenment is in the utterly free world of knowing I can think anything I wish and eventually, I may have thought everything there is to think and lived more lives than there are people on this earth.
There's the old song and dance about how if you say it is true that nothing is true, you've just contradicted yourself and what you said is a lie. That's an easy way to try to trip up relativists and nihilists and postmodernists and all sorts of nasty folk. But it doesn't hold water. It's a word game that people have been playing since the time of the ancient Greeks, possibly before. The fact is that underlying every statement about something not being "true" is the assumption that it is not absolutely true. We are born believing in the evidence of our senses and, as we grow, we come to trust completely the evidence of our thoughts about our senses. Part of what is so frightening about feeling you are going mad is that you have torn from you that security that you know and think about the world around you correctly. But one doesn't have to be slipping into psychosis to find evidence that the world around us is not what we think it is. Most people have experienced something along the lines of catching movement out of the corner of their eye and nothing being there or thinking their name was just called and turning around and no one did so. Just one such experience should be enough to cause us to discount the so-called "evidence" of our senses. And if we can't trust something as basic as our eyeballs seeing correctly, why are we supposed to put complete faith in an ancient holy book or some random philosophy or Marxism or Rush Limbaugh or anything else that we are expected to just accept as true? People talk about their various beliefs and frequently resort to attempting to prove its reality by claiming they experienced directly that it is true. God speaking to them, watching a town apply a new political philosophy and it works miracles, etc. I am not convinced by such arguments. It is the need for security and stability and trust in the world as we know it that causes us to give so much weight to what we experience. Because if we were to admit that we might be mistaken about the causes or our perception of our experiences, we might just become a little more nihilistic and that's not good. But, in spite of what Dr. Phil says about "Would you rather be right or happy?" I would rather be right than clutching to what makes me feel secure even if it is completely off-base. Many is the time in history that a general looked across the battlefield and saw a small force of enemies and rushed in to attack and found out that the rest of the opposing force was hidden somewhere and rushed in and flanked him and his soldiers and won the day. Our senses and experiences, no matter what our hearts may wish for, are like the crafty enemy general who knows how to divide his men and flank his foe and find victory.
So, I've just spent two run-on paragraphs demolishing what is, in my view, the grave error of clinging to the notion of absolute truth. We can try to deceive ourselves but, in the end, we will all reach the end of our sojourns in this world without the slightest clue what it was all about than we had when we showed up. So, what about my opening question about why do I carry on if I believe in a universe that is, as far as I can ever know, completely meaningless? Why do I read philosophers and why do I not put a bullet in my head or start running pedestrians down in my car? Simple. I do not know if freedom exists. I do not know if we are not predetermined to do everything we do by genetics and environment. So I don't claim to be preaching freedom. But, I have found that in a functionally meaningless existence, freedom is the greatest prize to be found. You are free to interpret the evidence of your senses and thoughts and emotions however you choose. If there is no overarching font of ultimate morality, then we are free to invent our own moral codes. Some people view that idea as a harbinger of the apocalypse. I'm fine with bringing about the end of the world as we know it. Because the world as we know it hasn't worked in eons. Those who see decadence and Babylon and Armageddon around every corner don't seem to realize that people have been saying that for thousands of years. It hasn't come yet, why do you think it will pop up tomorrow because some poor teenaged girl got an abortion or a dude got high or someone you didn't vote for got elected anyway? It's a kind of hubris to think that the end times have just been holding off until WE showed up to smash the wickedness of humankind.
This freedom we find in meaninglessness is the freedom to assign meaning as we see fit. Despite Nietzsche not being a nihilist, he did see the end of meaning foreshadowed in his day and, very wisely, set about constructing his own meanings. Whether we realize this or not, nihilist or devout Muslim, we all go about creating our own meanings anyway, in the unceasing stream of our thoughts and emotions. We won't stop finding meanings until we die and, despite anyone's evidence that their beliefs are true, we will never know how factual our beliefs are unless we die and suddenly find ourselves face to face with God and in his infinite wisdom, he deigns to tell us what we wish to know. I do not personally believe that but I use my freedom of choice to allow that I could be wrong to doubt it and I may show up at the foot of his throne one day, facing judgment or love or whatever other motivations could cause a divine being to create such a wonderful, flawed, dreadful and beautiful race as we humans. So, believe what you will but do not ask yourself or me why I think what I do and still keep on keeping on. It's abundantly clear that where I find my enlightenment is in the utterly free world of knowing I can think anything I wish and eventually, I may have thought everything there is to think and lived more lives than there are people on this earth.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Psychosis
This is a challenging blog post to write. In it, I will admit to some things that are either embarrassing or not at all flattering. I just told one of my adopted little sisters about some of this last night and breaking the barrier of not really telling anyone about it has sort of inspired me to really open up about it. I honestly don't know what my motives for writing this are. I think it has something to do with the fact that I want people to have a better idea of exactly what's wrong with me. I don't want to be completely defined by my illness but I also want people to really be aware of the fact that there's damned good reasons why I am on Disability and not being a normal, productive, independent, responsible adult. Most people don't understand at all how profoundly disturbed I am because I'm better than most at hiding it. No longer. This is to tear down the misconceptions that I'm just a regular guy who gets sad and anxious sometimes but is mostly okay other than that. It's time to be understood and see who accepts the real me and who doesn't want to have anything to do with me any longer.
I see a psychiatrist I believe on the 19th. I am not 100% positive I will make it that long. I may have to check myself into a hospital at some point before that. I don't feel that I badly need to right now. However, that could change at any time. I may need to change my meds in the near future. I don't think my old meds are doing the trick as well as they used to. Kind of sad, I had developed a great deal of loyalty to Risperdal. Maybe it's odd to have customer loyalty to a drug, but it probably saved my life. I need to talk to someone about something new because I think my body has adjusted too much to the meds I'm on now and they are no longer at optimal effectiveness. I have noticed some of my psychotic symptoms coming back. That is what this post is about.
I have always been paranoid. I have been afraid of people for as long as I can remember. I have thought that when someone laughs they are laughing at me for just about the same amount of time. I can be very nosy because I am always worried that people are trying to bring me down behind my back. My wife (yay that she's now my wife since my birthday!) has remarked on how nosy I am. I have a compulsion to look at her computer screen when she's using her computer. I am normally not paranoid about her but that is essentially the reason I do that. I also listen carefully whenever I hear conversations near me because I'm positive they are about me. At some point, years ago, these paranoid inclinations blossomed into full-blown psychotic delusions.
My mother used to get angry at God and scream at him to strike her dead whenever anything went wrong. I believe I inherited my inclination to paranoia from her but somehow learned from her the specifics. I don't even really believe in God, at least not in a monotheistic sense of one absolute all-powerful king of humanity. But I blame God for my misfortunes because the madness in my mind believes that only an omnipotent deity is capable of manufacturing the conspiracy that is operating against me. I also don't demand that God strike me dead when things go awry. Instead, I scream at him to come down from on high and, essentially, do battle with me so that either I can kill him or he can kill me and thus end the torment. Yes, when the insanity bursts through the dams of my mental defenses, I honestly believe I'd have a chance to kill the almighty Creator in one on one combat. I told you you wouldn't think I was normal after this. It gets worse.
So, I think God has it in for me. He has a plan too. He wants to drive me to suicide. I am convinced of this. I can't really explain why but I know it in my soul. God created me solely to (perhaps) get some kind of sick pleasure out of crushing me beneath his heel. Delightful. I am locked in a mortal struggle with the Divine. The Divine I only believe in when I am out of my gourd and convinced I am being persecuted unto death. So, how does God go about his evil plot? That's where it gets really nuts. See, God knows how much I want the stuff I order online. I buy myself stuff compulsively to make myself feel better when I am unhappy. That's a whole other post by itself. It's part of my whole sickness. But I digress. So, he knows I feel like I need those items I buy for myself to save my sanity. We've already established that he seeks to destroy my sanity. Thus, it makes perfect sense that he'd try to keep those packages from me. He goes about this by collaborating with African-Americans in the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. to delay, damage or lose my shipments. Yes, blacks in the shipping industry take orders from God to not deliver me my stuff in a timely fashion in order to deny me the satisfaction I derive from it and to ultimately drive me to kill myself.
I told you I was embarrassed and not proud. I don't even know where to begin with this. I mean, first there's the plain insanity of this thought. I could also point out the racism involved, even though I fight against being that kind of person with all my might when I'm not in the grip of psychosis. It doesn't make me feel any better about myself when I remind myself that I did, after all, vote for a black man in the last Presidential election. That isn't enough proof that I'm not a racist to my disgusted self. I don't know why my brain picked blacks specifically to be afraid of in this instance. No clue. Anyway, it's a mad, racist, sick thought. And I can't get it out of my head lately. And this delusion goes back years. Medication made it go away for a long time but I'm slipping back into it lately. Maybe, as I said, it's my body adjusting to my drugs. Perhaps it's the fact that I've been under a lot of stress lately. Stress amplifies mental illness out of control. Whatever is the cause, I think it's quite understandable why I have been considering checking myself into the hospital. I get anxiety attacks when I check the mail in case something I'm expecting hasn't arrived yet. Definitely not sane.
That's not everything. I wish it was. Sunday night, I was convinced I wasn't real. I didn't think anything was real. That's a common symptom of psychosis. I also have been terrified of all of my friends conspiring behind my back to break me and then abandon me in my time of need. I can't just trust my friends, I'm always so very suspicious. This is one reason why many schizotypals, schizoaffectives and schizophrenics don't like to make close relationships with others. They are too paranoid and afraid of what will happen. I decided some time ago to force myself to take the risk and it has been good for me but I can't honestly say there aren't times I regret it. If you are reading this, odds are, at some time in the not-too-distant past, I have been deathly afraid of you and what you will someday do to me. Sorry.
If you hate me or are afraid of Crazy Chris now, don't worry, I was prepared for that. You're just confirming my fears of people. If you pity me, don't. I fight this shit with all my might and don't want to be your favorite victim. If you support me, bless your heart. That's what I need. I fear someday taking my own life or ending up as a permanent resident of a hospital or possibly being a madman living on the streets ranting to himself. But I haven't given up. I will have to lose my marbles completely so that I can't even contemplate fighting before I give up. If you read all of this, thanks. It's a sign you care. Or else you're morbidly curious. I would be too. Madness isn't pretty, but it sure as hell is interesting.
I see a psychiatrist I believe on the 19th. I am not 100% positive I will make it that long. I may have to check myself into a hospital at some point before that. I don't feel that I badly need to right now. However, that could change at any time. I may need to change my meds in the near future. I don't think my old meds are doing the trick as well as they used to. Kind of sad, I had developed a great deal of loyalty to Risperdal. Maybe it's odd to have customer loyalty to a drug, but it probably saved my life. I need to talk to someone about something new because I think my body has adjusted too much to the meds I'm on now and they are no longer at optimal effectiveness. I have noticed some of my psychotic symptoms coming back. That is what this post is about.
I have always been paranoid. I have been afraid of people for as long as I can remember. I have thought that when someone laughs they are laughing at me for just about the same amount of time. I can be very nosy because I am always worried that people are trying to bring me down behind my back. My wife (yay that she's now my wife since my birthday!) has remarked on how nosy I am. I have a compulsion to look at her computer screen when she's using her computer. I am normally not paranoid about her but that is essentially the reason I do that. I also listen carefully whenever I hear conversations near me because I'm positive they are about me. At some point, years ago, these paranoid inclinations blossomed into full-blown psychotic delusions.
My mother used to get angry at God and scream at him to strike her dead whenever anything went wrong. I believe I inherited my inclination to paranoia from her but somehow learned from her the specifics. I don't even really believe in God, at least not in a monotheistic sense of one absolute all-powerful king of humanity. But I blame God for my misfortunes because the madness in my mind believes that only an omnipotent deity is capable of manufacturing the conspiracy that is operating against me. I also don't demand that God strike me dead when things go awry. Instead, I scream at him to come down from on high and, essentially, do battle with me so that either I can kill him or he can kill me and thus end the torment. Yes, when the insanity bursts through the dams of my mental defenses, I honestly believe I'd have a chance to kill the almighty Creator in one on one combat. I told you you wouldn't think I was normal after this. It gets worse.
So, I think God has it in for me. He has a plan too. He wants to drive me to suicide. I am convinced of this. I can't really explain why but I know it in my soul. God created me solely to (perhaps) get some kind of sick pleasure out of crushing me beneath his heel. Delightful. I am locked in a mortal struggle with the Divine. The Divine I only believe in when I am out of my gourd and convinced I am being persecuted unto death. So, how does God go about his evil plot? That's where it gets really nuts. See, God knows how much I want the stuff I order online. I buy myself stuff compulsively to make myself feel better when I am unhappy. That's a whole other post by itself. It's part of my whole sickness. But I digress. So, he knows I feel like I need those items I buy for myself to save my sanity. We've already established that he seeks to destroy my sanity. Thus, it makes perfect sense that he'd try to keep those packages from me. He goes about this by collaborating with African-Americans in the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. to delay, damage or lose my shipments. Yes, blacks in the shipping industry take orders from God to not deliver me my stuff in a timely fashion in order to deny me the satisfaction I derive from it and to ultimately drive me to kill myself.
I told you I was embarrassed and not proud. I don't even know where to begin with this. I mean, first there's the plain insanity of this thought. I could also point out the racism involved, even though I fight against being that kind of person with all my might when I'm not in the grip of psychosis. It doesn't make me feel any better about myself when I remind myself that I did, after all, vote for a black man in the last Presidential election. That isn't enough proof that I'm not a racist to my disgusted self. I don't know why my brain picked blacks specifically to be afraid of in this instance. No clue. Anyway, it's a mad, racist, sick thought. And I can't get it out of my head lately. And this delusion goes back years. Medication made it go away for a long time but I'm slipping back into it lately. Maybe, as I said, it's my body adjusting to my drugs. Perhaps it's the fact that I've been under a lot of stress lately. Stress amplifies mental illness out of control. Whatever is the cause, I think it's quite understandable why I have been considering checking myself into the hospital. I get anxiety attacks when I check the mail in case something I'm expecting hasn't arrived yet. Definitely not sane.
That's not everything. I wish it was. Sunday night, I was convinced I wasn't real. I didn't think anything was real. That's a common symptom of psychosis. I also have been terrified of all of my friends conspiring behind my back to break me and then abandon me in my time of need. I can't just trust my friends, I'm always so very suspicious. This is one reason why many schizotypals, schizoaffectives and schizophrenics don't like to make close relationships with others. They are too paranoid and afraid of what will happen. I decided some time ago to force myself to take the risk and it has been good for me but I can't honestly say there aren't times I regret it. If you are reading this, odds are, at some time in the not-too-distant past, I have been deathly afraid of you and what you will someday do to me. Sorry.
If you hate me or are afraid of Crazy Chris now, don't worry, I was prepared for that. You're just confirming my fears of people. If you pity me, don't. I fight this shit with all my might and don't want to be your favorite victim. If you support me, bless your heart. That's what I need. I fear someday taking my own life or ending up as a permanent resident of a hospital or possibly being a madman living on the streets ranting to himself. But I haven't given up. I will have to lose my marbles completely so that I can't even contemplate fighting before I give up. If you read all of this, thanks. It's a sign you care. Or else you're morbidly curious. I would be too. Madness isn't pretty, but it sure as hell is interesting.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Music And Poetry And Luciferianism And My Desire To Create
Well, last night I was pretty distraught. I hope no one thinks I was being a drama queen. I was really fraying at the edges. This move is taking a major toll on me. But I'm not as nuts tonight as I was last night. So, tonight, I'm going to babble about some things that are important to me and are helping me through this process.
First, musically, it's been all about The Cure. Old Cure, new Cure, in-between Cure. Everything from despair to psychosis to giddiness to humor. I have loved them since Disintegration, which was already well into Robert Smith's career. But it's been 22 years, so I guess I can say I'm a real fan. I have every full length they ever released. I saw them in Nassau Coliseum on the Wish tour and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in an arena. I generally prefer the more intimate settings of a club and, generally, the bands I listen to only play clubs because hardly anyone has ever heard of them. But Robert Smith and co. lit up that arena that night. It was magical. There is a lot of pain in many of the songs but listening to it can be so cathartic. No one has musical depression down like The Cure.
I've also gotten inspired to read poetry and stuff about poets again. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Georg Trakl, and, more recent poets, Louise Glück, Galway Kinnell. All geniuses. Of them all, my favorites are Sexton, Berryman and Glück. Anne Sexton wrote to tear your guts out. She usually succeeded. Very raw. The words are filled with the sense of agony and losing one's grip becoming an imminent threat. Berryman is less easy to understand. He wrote very obscure but emotionally powerful poems. He's probably one of the poets to blame for the fact that most modern people think poetry is completely inscrutable. But I love him. The puzzle, the reward of figuring out a line or two, the sheer ecstasy and anguish he went through in the writing. Brilliant. So, two insanely genius poets who took their own lives. Louise Glück is still among the living. I love her work just as much as the others. She's my favorite living poet. She has a more delicate style while still writing about powerfully emotional subjects. She also likes to use simple words to convey deep thoughts, something a lot of poets think is beneath them. I tend to find many possible meanings in her works. Her books tend to follow a theme. She has built a body of work that is highly esteemed by critics and regular readers of poetry alike.
Also reading (and practicing) Luciferian path stuff. I wrote last night about how it didn't seem to be helping but that's not entirely true. It didn't help last night. But I don't think I'd be getting through this whole move situation without it. I am generally stronger now than I was before I discovered it. Identifying with a God rather than kneeling and begging for forgiveness and mercy and love appeals to me a great deal. I think there is a chance that there are real spiritual entities in this universe but I do not believe in approaching them like a slave. I want to be more like them. That is the essence of the Adversarial path. Identifying with the beings who would not bend their knee before any God and thus were branded as enemies of goodness. Adversaries. Those who walk their own path at all costs, willing to go into the dark places and find the light within. The Gods do not demand faith or love. They don't demand anything. They simply wait and see if you are worthy of their respect. It's entirely up to you what you make of your life. Last night, I obviously wasn't doing too well with that. But I think I haven't squandered all my opportunities and one day, after much invocation and meditation, I will come to see myself as the living embodiment of those deities. It is the path for those who reject the idea that those who remain true to themselves over any other being are damned. Rather, they are the ones who are truly saved.
All of this ties into me feeling like I want to start writing again. Creative writing, not blogging. Blogging is helpful but I want to express my ideas either as poems or stories or poetic stories. I won't have the chance until the move is over but after that, I will have time. I am looking forward to it. In Thelema, Ceremonial Magick, Luciferianism, there is the concept of one's true will. It is what you are in this world to do. Without that will, you are less than fully yourself. For me, I feel that my true will is to write, to create. When I am not writing, I am miserable. When I am writing, I feel that kinship to the Gods. The act of forcing my will and heart upon a piece of paper or a document screen on a computer monitor and making it into whatever I desire it to be, that is divine for me. I need to get back to it, for the sake of my sanity.
Well, hopefully, this is a bit more cheerful than last night's wrist-slitting festival. I am focusing on growing and expanding my personal strength and beating down the depression with both fists. I *will* make my way through this life and I *will* become the person I want myself to be. I simply have to.
First, musically, it's been all about The Cure. Old Cure, new Cure, in-between Cure. Everything from despair to psychosis to giddiness to humor. I have loved them since Disintegration, which was already well into Robert Smith's career. But it's been 22 years, so I guess I can say I'm a real fan. I have every full length they ever released. I saw them in Nassau Coliseum on the Wish tour and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in an arena. I generally prefer the more intimate settings of a club and, generally, the bands I listen to only play clubs because hardly anyone has ever heard of them. But Robert Smith and co. lit up that arena that night. It was magical. There is a lot of pain in many of the songs but listening to it can be so cathartic. No one has musical depression down like The Cure.
I've also gotten inspired to read poetry and stuff about poets again. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Georg Trakl, and, more recent poets, Louise Glück, Galway Kinnell. All geniuses. Of them all, my favorites are Sexton, Berryman and Glück. Anne Sexton wrote to tear your guts out. She usually succeeded. Very raw. The words are filled with the sense of agony and losing one's grip becoming an imminent threat. Berryman is less easy to understand. He wrote very obscure but emotionally powerful poems. He's probably one of the poets to blame for the fact that most modern people think poetry is completely inscrutable. But I love him. The puzzle, the reward of figuring out a line or two, the sheer ecstasy and anguish he went through in the writing. Brilliant. So, two insanely genius poets who took their own lives. Louise Glück is still among the living. I love her work just as much as the others. She's my favorite living poet. She has a more delicate style while still writing about powerfully emotional subjects. She also likes to use simple words to convey deep thoughts, something a lot of poets think is beneath them. I tend to find many possible meanings in her works. Her books tend to follow a theme. She has built a body of work that is highly esteemed by critics and regular readers of poetry alike.
Also reading (and practicing) Luciferian path stuff. I wrote last night about how it didn't seem to be helping but that's not entirely true. It didn't help last night. But I don't think I'd be getting through this whole move situation without it. I am generally stronger now than I was before I discovered it. Identifying with a God rather than kneeling and begging for forgiveness and mercy and love appeals to me a great deal. I think there is a chance that there are real spiritual entities in this universe but I do not believe in approaching them like a slave. I want to be more like them. That is the essence of the Adversarial path. Identifying with the beings who would not bend their knee before any God and thus were branded as enemies of goodness. Adversaries. Those who walk their own path at all costs, willing to go into the dark places and find the light within. The Gods do not demand faith or love. They don't demand anything. They simply wait and see if you are worthy of their respect. It's entirely up to you what you make of your life. Last night, I obviously wasn't doing too well with that. But I think I haven't squandered all my opportunities and one day, after much invocation and meditation, I will come to see myself as the living embodiment of those deities. It is the path for those who reject the idea that those who remain true to themselves over any other being are damned. Rather, they are the ones who are truly saved.
All of this ties into me feeling like I want to start writing again. Creative writing, not blogging. Blogging is helpful but I want to express my ideas either as poems or stories or poetic stories. I won't have the chance until the move is over but after that, I will have time. I am looking forward to it. In Thelema, Ceremonial Magick, Luciferianism, there is the concept of one's true will. It is what you are in this world to do. Without that will, you are less than fully yourself. For me, I feel that my true will is to write, to create. When I am not writing, I am miserable. When I am writing, I feel that kinship to the Gods. The act of forcing my will and heart upon a piece of paper or a document screen on a computer monitor and making it into whatever I desire it to be, that is divine for me. I need to get back to it, for the sake of my sanity.
Well, hopefully, this is a bit more cheerful than last night's wrist-slitting festival. I am focusing on growing and expanding my personal strength and beating down the depression with both fists. I *will* make my way through this life and I *will* become the person I want myself to be. I simply have to.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The End Of The Line
This isn't a suicide note. Which isn't to say I haven't been having suicidal thoughts because I have but I don't want anyone getting worried that I'll be checking out in the immediate future. What this is, I'm not entirely sure, except an outpouring of the fact that I am shrieking and tearing myself to pieces inside.
I wrote a post about how deep depression is true despair and not just sadness or "the blues." Well, there's a point beyond that, a point where you really start to lose your grip on reality. My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder but I've also been labeled with "Major Depression with Psychotic Features." Depression can reach the level of a psychosis. Common symptoms are hallucinations, paranoia, feeling like the person responsible for bad things that have nothing to do with you at all. I am reaching that point. I do my best to hide it, I do not want my dad to see me falling apart in the midst of this move. I know he's probably going to read this but I have to write it. I have to get it out somehow.
One of my meds, Risperdal, is keeping me from a full blown psychotic break. It may be the most important medication I take. But my soul is being put through a shredder. I am so overwhelmed that it paralyzes me. I've been trying my best to work on this move and people have been telling me how proud they are of how I've been handling it but they don't all see that I feel like it's killing me. I blame myself for how much there is still to do. I blame myself for not being able to work and maybe find a way to keep the place. I blame myself for my dad's cancer, in an odd way. I don't know how that works, but the feeling is there. I have been reading up on this Luciferian path and trying to follow it and yet my old and seemingly eternal self-hatred arises in the midst of attempting to meditate on self-love. And having inner strength.... if I have any inner strength at all, it's completely used up in trying to keep my mind from just rending into dozens of pieces and leaving me shattered and even more useless than I feel.
This isn't the worst I've ever been. Not by a long shot. There was a time when this pressure would have probably resulted in me killing myself. Thanks to modern medicine and a lot of support from friends, family and Coco, I'm not that far gone. But I see the fractured edges of myself scraping together and the shards from the friction lodge in my heart and mind and leave gaping wounds. I am not the person I want myself to be. I am just a faint shadow of that person. A faint, extremely distorted shadow. I want to say that this won't break me... but I honestly don't know. The people I love seem to think I can make it. But I don't have the confidence in myself to fully accept that.
I am haunted. I am haunted by the ghosts of loved ones passed on and failures I've been responsible for and mistakes made and lessons learned too late and the specter of the child I once was, looking at me, sad and angry; sad that we share the same pain, angry that I let all that potential go to waste. Not only am I not the person I wish I was, I never have been the person I wanted to be. I have always been let down by myself. Some people think my expectations are too high. I always thought expectations should be high, aim high, don't aim low. But I've achieved low. I have people who care a great deal about me and that means a lot. But I so frequently have nothing to offer them. I don't feel like I bring anything to the table. While they talk about jobs and friends they have in real life and some of them about their own families that they've started, wives, husbands, children... I look at myself and think "What have I done with my (almost) 39 years?" I can think of a lot of stalled projects, plans given up on, people hurt, jobs I screwed up, possibilities squandered. All because I have this depression. Something that some people don't even consider a real medical condition.
I honestly don't know any other life than this. Whether it's a real medical condition or not, depression seems to be the core of my being. It has carved out a niche in my soul and taken up permanent residence. Either that or the depression actually IS my soul. That feels more likely. My spirit is a spirit of despair and hopelessness.
We have a few days before we have to move and leave this house behind. I can't get my mind around the enormity of that reality that is looming so close. What I'd really like to do is pack up my mind and move and leave Chris Ropes behind and just be someone, anyone, else.
I wrote a post about how deep depression is true despair and not just sadness or "the blues." Well, there's a point beyond that, a point where you really start to lose your grip on reality. My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder but I've also been labeled with "Major Depression with Psychotic Features." Depression can reach the level of a psychosis. Common symptoms are hallucinations, paranoia, feeling like the person responsible for bad things that have nothing to do with you at all. I am reaching that point. I do my best to hide it, I do not want my dad to see me falling apart in the midst of this move. I know he's probably going to read this but I have to write it. I have to get it out somehow.
One of my meds, Risperdal, is keeping me from a full blown psychotic break. It may be the most important medication I take. But my soul is being put through a shredder. I am so overwhelmed that it paralyzes me. I've been trying my best to work on this move and people have been telling me how proud they are of how I've been handling it but they don't all see that I feel like it's killing me. I blame myself for how much there is still to do. I blame myself for not being able to work and maybe find a way to keep the place. I blame myself for my dad's cancer, in an odd way. I don't know how that works, but the feeling is there. I have been reading up on this Luciferian path and trying to follow it and yet my old and seemingly eternal self-hatred arises in the midst of attempting to meditate on self-love. And having inner strength.... if I have any inner strength at all, it's completely used up in trying to keep my mind from just rending into dozens of pieces and leaving me shattered and even more useless than I feel.
This isn't the worst I've ever been. Not by a long shot. There was a time when this pressure would have probably resulted in me killing myself. Thanks to modern medicine and a lot of support from friends, family and Coco, I'm not that far gone. But I see the fractured edges of myself scraping together and the shards from the friction lodge in my heart and mind and leave gaping wounds. I am not the person I want myself to be. I am just a faint shadow of that person. A faint, extremely distorted shadow. I want to say that this won't break me... but I honestly don't know. The people I love seem to think I can make it. But I don't have the confidence in myself to fully accept that.
I am haunted. I am haunted by the ghosts of loved ones passed on and failures I've been responsible for and mistakes made and lessons learned too late and the specter of the child I once was, looking at me, sad and angry; sad that we share the same pain, angry that I let all that potential go to waste. Not only am I not the person I wish I was, I never have been the person I wanted to be. I have always been let down by myself. Some people think my expectations are too high. I always thought expectations should be high, aim high, don't aim low. But I've achieved low. I have people who care a great deal about me and that means a lot. But I so frequently have nothing to offer them. I don't feel like I bring anything to the table. While they talk about jobs and friends they have in real life and some of them about their own families that they've started, wives, husbands, children... I look at myself and think "What have I done with my (almost) 39 years?" I can think of a lot of stalled projects, plans given up on, people hurt, jobs I screwed up, possibilities squandered. All because I have this depression. Something that some people don't even consider a real medical condition.
I honestly don't know any other life than this. Whether it's a real medical condition or not, depression seems to be the core of my being. It has carved out a niche in my soul and taken up permanent residence. Either that or the depression actually IS my soul. That feels more likely. My spirit is a spirit of despair and hopelessness.
We have a few days before we have to move and leave this house behind. I can't get my mind around the enormity of that reality that is looming so close. What I'd really like to do is pack up my mind and move and leave Chris Ropes behind and just be someone, anyone, else.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Continuation Of The Self Or Dissolution In The Void?
The Luciferian books and articles I've been reading lately, mostly from The Order of Phosphorus, have caused me to face an interesting philosophical conundrum. The Order includes, as I have said before, both atheistic Luciferians and more spiritual, Theistic Luciferians. They take a very hard stance against the dissolution of the self, and that individuality and self-hood should be protected at any cost. They view the Christian doctrine of turning one's will over to God and entering an afterlife spent in devotion to that God as spiritual dissolution. The atheists want control over their selves and individuality while in this life and don't pay much heed to any life after. The theists want their spiritual life to extend their earthly individuality into whatever lies beyond. They want to maintain their uniqueness and personal paths.
The quandary for me is that I have speculated and put forth many opinions and educated guesses that we are all dissolved into the Void after this life. Is this the same as being dissolved into God? Does a reflecting pool of consciousness, when absorbed into an ocean, still retain any iota of individuality? If I keep to the atheistic principle, that of maintaining total individuality in this life, then it doesn't matter much what I think if I believe this little thing we call consciousness becomes absorbed into an eternal void and vanishes. But if I take a spiritual view... a theistic view... it matters a great deal. I have permitted myself to think that the Void contains a kind of mystical consciousness. Perhaps the reflecting pool dissolved in the ocean remembers and can still reflect the images it reflected before being swallowed by the ocean. Perhaps through strength of will and the proper meditative and magical practices, some notion of self survives outside the Void. In this case, my interpretation of the Void as Satan would be wrong. The Void would be God, who calls unto Himself an endless multitude of souls that are created in His image and gives them an eternity to worship Him. That, to me, would be a Void.
Perhaps I will find the answers to my questions in further meditation and ritual practice. I do not claim to have achieved the highest possible consciousness available to humanity. There is much that remains a mystery to me. All I offer are ideas and those ideas change as I discover new parts of myself and stumble upon new ideas. To want this self, this being I am, to survive death and not be dissolved in either a Void or a Divine Rapture, but to think and feel and act completely independently requires a great deal of self-love, something I have never been very good at. It requires wanting this being I am to survive into unforeseeable ages into the future. Perhaps my practices will bring me to the point of this self-love, where, seeing myself as the only God, I will wish to reign over my own personal Heavens and Hells for as long as time allows. It is an intriguing prospect. I must first conquer my depression and anxiety and my "Worship of Death" I wrote about in an earlier post. I must learn to love not just life... but life as me. And want that existence to go on and on. The journey continues and no one knows where it may lead.
The quandary for me is that I have speculated and put forth many opinions and educated guesses that we are all dissolved into the Void after this life. Is this the same as being dissolved into God? Does a reflecting pool of consciousness, when absorbed into an ocean, still retain any iota of individuality? If I keep to the atheistic principle, that of maintaining total individuality in this life, then it doesn't matter much what I think if I believe this little thing we call consciousness becomes absorbed into an eternal void and vanishes. But if I take a spiritual view... a theistic view... it matters a great deal. I have permitted myself to think that the Void contains a kind of mystical consciousness. Perhaps the reflecting pool dissolved in the ocean remembers and can still reflect the images it reflected before being swallowed by the ocean. Perhaps through strength of will and the proper meditative and magical practices, some notion of self survives outside the Void. In this case, my interpretation of the Void as Satan would be wrong. The Void would be God, who calls unto Himself an endless multitude of souls that are created in His image and gives them an eternity to worship Him. That, to me, would be a Void.
Perhaps I will find the answers to my questions in further meditation and ritual practice. I do not claim to have achieved the highest possible consciousness available to humanity. There is much that remains a mystery to me. All I offer are ideas and those ideas change as I discover new parts of myself and stumble upon new ideas. To want this self, this being I am, to survive death and not be dissolved in either a Void or a Divine Rapture, but to think and feel and act completely independently requires a great deal of self-love, something I have never been very good at. It requires wanting this being I am to survive into unforeseeable ages into the future. Perhaps my practices will bring me to the point of this self-love, where, seeing myself as the only God, I will wish to reign over my own personal Heavens and Hells for as long as time allows. It is an intriguing prospect. I must first conquer my depression and anxiety and my "Worship of Death" I wrote about in an earlier post. I must learn to love not just life... but life as me. And want that existence to go on and on. The journey continues and no one knows where it may lead.
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