The Glass Doors
CHAPTER 7-14
CHAPTER 7
Intention
After the Mike and Dan debacle, I was messed up and the people around me were beginning to figure it out. It was impossible to hide it. There were two major problems to face up to: my outer presentation of mental life had radically altered through my conspiratorial beliefs in mass telepathy, and my inner presentation of mental life was now splayed out and laid bare for review by myself, and I feared by everyone else as well.
Imagine for a moment how you would get through your day if you were also believing that everyone you encountered directly could hear what you were thinking as if you were speaking those thoughts aloud. It is maddening.
My inner mental life was disturbed through my burgeoning awareness of intrusive thoughts, or what I term, “reflexive thoughts”. When not introspective, I believe that people will develop mental heuristics – or mental shortcuts – to get through challenging social experiences more efficiently and successfully. For example, a person may have been randomly attacked by a black dog when they were a child. The trauma of the experience dominates when encountering related stimuli, such as other dogs, black-furred animals, or perhaps even, dark-skinned people. The child must do what they can to survive despite not having the mental tools or experience to make proper sense of what happened when the dog attacked them.
This child may begin to articulate a distinct visual thought, or a set of words, that becomes a mental heuristic device for queuing an action to protect themselves when faced with situations that remind them of the dog attack. The child becomes an adult, and they still rely on these heuristic devices which they now perceive to have been effective, when perhaps, the original dog attack was simply an unlucky experience and one which was not destined to be repeated.
Now, the adult is uttering the words, “ugly black bastard” in their mind as a heuristic device for whenever they encounter external stimuli which reminds them of the childhood dog attack. This confrontational exclamation serves as an alert to bring greater awareness to an environmental change that could signal danger. When the person is not truly introspective these kinds of reflexive thoughts will not be perceived with self-awareness, and they will not be checked for validity or appropriateness, much like how we exit a building when a fire alarm sounds before we check for an actual fire. A highly conscientious person, on the other hand, may have developed pro-social values that have the effect of redefining or suppressing these kinds of reflexive thoughts and mental alerts. Any of us can overcome our personal fears to become more conscientious and less automatic in our response to stimuli.
However, once becoming truly introspective, the inner mental life is splayed out akin to an anatomical chart. The reflexive thoughts are audible mentally, just as the lungs or heart of a body are now visible through the anatomical chart. These reflexive thoughts simply “kick in” triggered by the relevant external stimuli. The previously mentioned adult who was attacked by a black dog as a child may find that they utter the words “ugly black bastard” in their minds when faced with dogs, black bulls, or even dark-skinned people – it’s reflexive. An introspective realization for this adult would require that they address the issue as to whether they should recognize themselves as a bigot based on the derogatory mental utterance. This revelation can be quite disturbing because it challenges affirmations of self-image that were once taken for granted, such as, “I am not a bigot”.
It takes years of hard work mentally to “unfuck” yourself and undo all the damage that was caused through the non-introspective heuristic reflexive thoughts that had been developed as alerts to potential danger across a lifetime. I can imagine that some people becoming truly introspective may be so shocked by this experience that they would sooner fob off the reflexive thoughts as the doing of an external “demon” than take full responsibility for the offensive utterances, especially if they lacked this understanding of mental heuristics that I have laid out. Essentially, this buck-passing would reinforce paranoia for a person who had become introspective. Blaming an external demon, otherworldly cosmic force, or even conspiratorial human forces would become more compelling if one also believed in telepathy and that others could hear the exclamation, “ugly black bastard”, in thought form – maybe “they” could have put the words in the person’s mind as well.
I have not considered myself a bigoted person, not truly so. I have prejudice and I believe in prejudice as a reasonable approach to how you understand differences in the world that don’t jibe with your personal values. If I smelt it, then I probably dealt it – it wasn’t an impish creature whispering the prejudiced thought into my head. However, when becoming truly introspective, the reflexive thoughts were compelling, and they caused me to question my ability to handle what had happened to me. I turned to others, which ended up not helpful at all because neither friends, family, nor mental health professionals understood what had happened to me.
After the night with Mike and Dan, I was searching for answers. Mike had great composure and I would say he was a highly conscientious person, while Dan was comfortable in his own skin and also seemed conscientious. Perhaps, the pair had answers regarding what had happened to me. Had becoming introspective reflected me merely being a “late bloomer” to a more universal phenomenon of gaining self-awareness for human beings? It turned out that this reasonable wishful thinking was incorrect.
As mentioned, Mike and Dan were too close to it and they were repelled by my “bad trip”, especially the fact that it had carried over into the next day, and following weeks. They backed out of my life promptly. However, I turned to their older brothers who inevitably had been informed by Mike and Dan some detail of what had happened on that fateful night with the magic mushrooms.
Dan’s brother, Gary, had been a great friend for many years. He was a natural athlete and in the time that I had known him he showed me how to throw a football spiral properly and do a kickflip on a skateboard. Gary and I had similar tastes in music, enjoying Wu-Tang Clan Staten Island rap as much as we did Credence Clearwater Revival classic rock ballads. We even traded porn magazines, and that meant a certain kind of trust among young men.
I was desperate for answers and turned to Gary for help. However, every time I described what had happened to me, Gary was noticeably uncomfortable, and he wanted to tune it out. His good friend was unraveling before his eyes. I had to find an encoded language to use to get my answers from him and others. To that end, I began asking Gary about cotton swab Q-tips and my “hearing”. I presented to Gary that perhaps my hearing wasn’t working properly because I had used Q-tips too much and gone in too deep with them. It was a coded language that I was using with Gary in hopes that he would provide me an answer when I was being more veiled in my inquiries about introspection and telepathy. Perhaps, the phenomenon of becoming introspective was like the legend of Santa Claus – you didn’t talk plainly about it for fear of ruining the experience for others not yet in the know.
Of course, Gary answered my questions about hearing literally. I took that answer for what I needed it to be – my “hearing” would be repaired over time if I stopped using Q-tips so much or going in so deep into my ear canal with them. I interpreted this answer to mean that my introspective thinking would get better over time, that I would learn to suppress intrusive and disturbing reflexive thoughts, and that I would eventually learn how to make my inner mental state private from others, and perhaps hear their thoughts in a telepathic conversation that could be trusted as genuine – but, only if I stopped probing the issue deeply, directly and so often with others.
These basic ideas about mental self-improvement were not a problem in themselves, but rather, I had now committed to the conspiratorial notion that the world was indeed telepathic and that I was most likely a late bloomer who had become introspective in my early twenties instead of during puberty like most people. It was an intuitive conclusion based on Gary’s advice. My outer mental life was now geared for the presumption that others were telepathic, that they could hear my thoughts, and that they recognized me as a neophyte in the ESP game, but that I was trying hard to improve and should get credit for that effort. There would be growing pains.
The expectations that I created for myself were overwhelming. The human race is not telepathic, there is no secret culture of introspective people, and this all became obvious to me over the years as I checked the logic of my “cosmic” beliefs. Today, I fear that if others are truly introspective, they might remain stuck in the conspiratorial thinking mode and simply be misrecognized and misdiagnosed as schizophrenic.
Ironically, the conspiratorial thinking mode is quite useful at first because if you are most disturbed by the inappropriate reflexive thoughts that you have developed over a lifetime, then believing that they are audible to others is a guaranteed way to work like stink to suppress and silence them. That is to say, you will make progress with your inner mental life if you believe that you are being evaluated on it by others in the world. Of course, exhaustion in that regard may lead to mental breakdowns, psychotic breaks, and perhaps, even madness. This is why anti-psychotic medication may be absolutely essential for some individuals, even if what they are going through was based in a transformation to true introspection, and nothing more. It is taxing to do so much mental work under the gun, as it were.
The humiliation experienced when believing that everyone on the bus or in the bar heard you say, “ugly black bastard” in your thoughts, is devastating. However, when you don’t get punched in the face for it, you begin to believe that the human race is extremely enlightened. That sets up terrible expectations that will result in a total collapse over time. The mass telepathy cosmic paradigm and belief system is untenable long term, even though millions of people believe in the reality of some form of telepathy.
Intention
After the Mike and Dan debacle, I was messed up and the people around me were beginning to figure it out. It was impossible to hide it. There were two major problems to face up to: my outer presentation of mental life had radically altered through my conspiratorial beliefs in mass telepathy, and my inner presentation of mental life was now splayed out and laid bare for review by myself, and I feared by everyone else as well.
Imagine for a moment how you would get through your day if you were also believing that everyone you encountered directly could hear what you were thinking as if you were speaking those thoughts aloud. It is maddening.
My inner mental life was disturbed through my burgeoning awareness of intrusive thoughts, or what I term, “reflexive thoughts”. When not introspective, I believe that people will develop mental heuristics – or mental shortcuts – to get through challenging social experiences more efficiently and successfully. For example, a person may have been randomly attacked by a black dog when they were a child. The trauma of the experience dominates when encountering related stimuli, such as other dogs, black-furred animals, or perhaps even, dark-skinned people. The child must do what they can to survive despite not having the mental tools or experience to make proper sense of what happened when the dog attacked them.
This child may begin to articulate a distinct visual thought, or a set of words, that becomes a mental heuristic device for queuing an action to protect themselves when faced with situations that remind them of the dog attack. The child becomes an adult, and they still rely on these heuristic devices which they now perceive to have been effective, when perhaps, the original dog attack was simply an unlucky experience and one which was not destined to be repeated.
Now, the adult is uttering the words, “ugly black bastard” in their mind as a heuristic device for whenever they encounter external stimuli which reminds them of the childhood dog attack. This confrontational exclamation serves as an alert to bring greater awareness to an environmental change that could signal danger. When the person is not truly introspective these kinds of reflexive thoughts will not be perceived with self-awareness, and they will not be checked for validity or appropriateness, much like how we exit a building when a fire alarm sounds before we check for an actual fire. A highly conscientious person, on the other hand, may have developed pro-social values that have the effect of redefining or suppressing these kinds of reflexive thoughts and mental alerts. Any of us can overcome our personal fears to become more conscientious and less automatic in our response to stimuli.
However, once becoming truly introspective, the inner mental life is splayed out akin to an anatomical chart. The reflexive thoughts are audible mentally, just as the lungs or heart of a body are now visible through the anatomical chart. These reflexive thoughts simply “kick in” triggered by the relevant external stimuli. The previously mentioned adult who was attacked by a black dog as a child may find that they utter the words “ugly black bastard” in their minds when faced with dogs, black bulls, or even dark-skinned people – it’s reflexive. An introspective realization for this adult would require that they address the issue as to whether they should recognize themselves as a bigot based on the derogatory mental utterance. This revelation can be quite disturbing because it challenges affirmations of self-image that were once taken for granted, such as, “I am not a bigot”.
It takes years of hard work mentally to “unfuck” yourself and undo all the damage that was caused through the non-introspective heuristic reflexive thoughts that had been developed as alerts to potential danger across a lifetime. I can imagine that some people becoming truly introspective may be so shocked by this experience that they would sooner fob off the reflexive thoughts as the doing of an external “demon” than take full responsibility for the offensive utterances, especially if they lacked this understanding of mental heuristics that I have laid out. Essentially, this buck-passing would reinforce paranoia for a person who had become introspective. Blaming an external demon, otherworldly cosmic force, or even conspiratorial human forces would become more compelling if one also believed in telepathy and that others could hear the exclamation, “ugly black bastard”, in thought form – maybe “they” could have put the words in the person’s mind as well.
I have not considered myself a bigoted person, not truly so. I have prejudice and I believe in prejudice as a reasonable approach to how you understand differences in the world that don’t jibe with your personal values. If I smelt it, then I probably dealt it – it wasn’t an impish creature whispering the prejudiced thought into my head. However, when becoming truly introspective, the reflexive thoughts were compelling, and they caused me to question my ability to handle what had happened to me. I turned to others, which ended up not helpful at all because neither friends, family, nor mental health professionals understood what had happened to me.
After the night with Mike and Dan, I was searching for answers. Mike had great composure and I would say he was a highly conscientious person, while Dan was comfortable in his own skin and also seemed conscientious. Perhaps, the pair had answers regarding what had happened to me. Had becoming introspective reflected me merely being a “late bloomer” to a more universal phenomenon of gaining self-awareness for human beings? It turned out that this reasonable wishful thinking was incorrect.
As mentioned, Mike and Dan were too close to it and they were repelled by my “bad trip”, especially the fact that it had carried over into the next day, and following weeks. They backed out of my life promptly. However, I turned to their older brothers who inevitably had been informed by Mike and Dan some detail of what had happened on that fateful night with the magic mushrooms.
Dan’s brother, Gary, had been a great friend for many years. He was a natural athlete and in the time that I had known him he showed me how to throw a football spiral properly and do a kickflip on a skateboard. Gary and I had similar tastes in music, enjoying Wu-Tang Clan Staten Island rap as much as we did Credence Clearwater Revival classic rock ballads. We even traded porn magazines, and that meant a certain kind of trust among young men.
I was desperate for answers and turned to Gary for help. However, every time I described what had happened to me, Gary was noticeably uncomfortable, and he wanted to tune it out. His good friend was unraveling before his eyes. I had to find an encoded language to use to get my answers from him and others. To that end, I began asking Gary about cotton swab Q-tips and my “hearing”. I presented to Gary that perhaps my hearing wasn’t working properly because I had used Q-tips too much and gone in too deep with them. It was a coded language that I was using with Gary in hopes that he would provide me an answer when I was being more veiled in my inquiries about introspection and telepathy. Perhaps, the phenomenon of becoming introspective was like the legend of Santa Claus – you didn’t talk plainly about it for fear of ruining the experience for others not yet in the know.
Of course, Gary answered my questions about hearing literally. I took that answer for what I needed it to be – my “hearing” would be repaired over time if I stopped using Q-tips so much or going in so deep into my ear canal with them. I interpreted this answer to mean that my introspective thinking would get better over time, that I would learn to suppress intrusive and disturbing reflexive thoughts, and that I would eventually learn how to make my inner mental state private from others, and perhaps hear their thoughts in a telepathic conversation that could be trusted as genuine – but, only if I stopped probing the issue deeply, directly and so often with others.
These basic ideas about mental self-improvement were not a problem in themselves, but rather, I had now committed to the conspiratorial notion that the world was indeed telepathic and that I was most likely a late bloomer who had become introspective in my early twenties instead of during puberty like most people. It was an intuitive conclusion based on Gary’s advice. My outer mental life was now geared for the presumption that others were telepathic, that they could hear my thoughts, and that they recognized me as a neophyte in the ESP game, but that I was trying hard to improve and should get credit for that effort. There would be growing pains.
The expectations that I created for myself were overwhelming. The human race is not telepathic, there is no secret culture of introspective people, and this all became obvious to me over the years as I checked the logic of my “cosmic” beliefs. Today, I fear that if others are truly introspective, they might remain stuck in the conspiratorial thinking mode and simply be misrecognized and misdiagnosed as schizophrenic.
Ironically, the conspiratorial thinking mode is quite useful at first because if you are most disturbed by the inappropriate reflexive thoughts that you have developed over a lifetime, then believing that they are audible to others is a guaranteed way to work like stink to suppress and silence them. That is to say, you will make progress with your inner mental life if you believe that you are being evaluated on it by others in the world. Of course, exhaustion in that regard may lead to mental breakdowns, psychotic breaks, and perhaps, even madness. This is why anti-psychotic medication may be absolutely essential for some individuals, even if what they are going through was based in a transformation to true introspection, and nothing more. It is taxing to do so much mental work under the gun, as it were.
The humiliation experienced when believing that everyone on the bus or in the bar heard you say, “ugly black bastard” in your thoughts, is devastating. However, when you don’t get punched in the face for it, you begin to believe that the human race is extremely enlightened. That sets up terrible expectations that will result in a total collapse over time. The mass telepathy cosmic paradigm and belief system is untenable long term, even though millions of people believe in the reality of some form of telepathy.
CHAPTER 8
Diagnosis
After the transformation to true introspection and genuine metacognition, my inner mental life was a complete nightmare. I was tackling all the intrusive reflexive thoughts that had been developed and catalogued over a lifetime, and which then surfaced with the particular relevant external stimuli. There were many unpleasant surprises in that regard and there was no way to predict the trigger stimuli. Part of coping with that change in my inner mental life was to buy into the cosmic paradigm regarding mass telepathy, however, the conspicuous absence of credible resources or references in the world about the phenomenon led to paranoia and conspiratorial beliefs.
I turned to friends for help, but they were confused which I took for secrecy. My outer mental life was becoming unmanageable because while people were speaking to me, I was ignoring the “mundane” human interaction, and I was completely engrossed in my mental monologue. For me at the time, the monologue was audible for others, and I was looking for cues in my conversation partner’s body language or in the words they chose within the mundane topics that were being discussed aloud. In time, friends and family recognized that I was “zoned-out” and that I was not able to focus on real verbal conversations aloud. I had unrealistic expectations on others which they found unnerving because they didn’t understand the nature of my beliefs.
Some friends thought that they were helping but in fact were making things much worse for me. Alex was a social butterfly who I had known all through high school. He prided himself on having hundreds of “close” friends and his greatest goal was to spend the weekend seeing as many of those friends as possible even if it meant that my time with him was less than an hour and involved us sitting in his car smoking a joint and listening to a mixtape. In time, I determined that Alex was a flake and I tried to back away from spending time with him.
While I was going through the paces of constructing a cosmic paradigm based on a conspiratorial belief in mass telepathy, Alex was genuinely concerned on behalf of all my friends. We met near his house one night and were hanging out at a high school nearby. I asked my veiled questions which had become my habit and I sought to clarify my encoded external language with what I believed were my audible thoughts. There was no time to be properly engaged in the mundane conversation that was being spoken between two people aloud. If we were talking about local sports or new movies, then for me, the conversation was simply conducted as a medium for a secret conversation about mass telepathy and the structure of society in that regard.
I asked Alex a hypothetical – if there was a janitor on the other side of the wall, sleeping in his cot because he was too broke to afford a home, then would he also be “in” on our conversation outside? Could he “hear” us? Alex didn’t understand the implications of my question as it related to telepathy and ESP. Alex believed that I was asking, rather cryptically, whether people were pro-social by nature – was the janitor a swell guy that would enjoy smoking a joint with us, if he actually heard us banging on his window? As such, Alex affirmed that the janitor was “in” on our conversation, given that Alex believed in pro-social behavior and attitudes.
I went one step further and asked Alex if he thought that in the skies above there was a social “sense of being”, and whether people around the world could be tapping into what we were doing outside the high school that night and connect with us. Who knows how Alex was reinterpreting the confoundingly convoluted question, yet once again, he affirmed that the human race had a collective unconscious that was an “active” sense – people actively wanted to connect with each other in life. I interpreted his answer to me as confirmation that “connection” was the significant term to substitute when discussing the reality of telepathy in conversations aloud. It fit and I ran with it.
I decided after that night with Alex that I should commit to my beliefs in mass telepathy and show my shame to the world as I worked through my mental problems which were indeed transparent to all people. My family saw things a little differently.
My parents were unsure how to address the changes in me. Perhaps, they were shocked at how sudden the transformation was. Maybe, they hoped that things would go back as abruptly as they had begun. Yet, they suggested I speak with some mental health professionals about my new ideas on life.
I visited a psychologist through the referral of my family doctor. This psychologist was not equipped to handle my capacious mind and the structured cosmic paradigm that I had crafted which fit neatly overtop of the real world like a second skin. She caved within a few sessions and referred me to a psychiatrist. This is when I experienced the cruelty of a system that is designed to mask critical moments of professional ignorance, and sometimes, protect professionals who are pervasively and perversely, self-loathing. In my years of addressing my own issues and getting somewhere with it, I have concluded that too many psychiatrists go into the field to diagnose others as a deferral of dealing with their own mental problems.
Psychiatrists all too often rush to diagnose, and they try to fit individuals into known categories. They receive various forms of kickbacks and incentives from the pharmaceutical industry which keep their practices economically viable. Admittedly, there are responsible mental health professionals alongside the reckless ones, however, it often seems as if it was a crapshoot to find the good ones. But the good ones are out there and people who are having mental trouble have an obligation to seek out those responsible and trustworthy mental health professionals. Nevertheless, the relationship with a psychiatrist is predicated on trust and they are medicating you with sometimes glorified sedatives and tranquilizers, therefore, it may become difficult for a patient to break away from a “bad” relationship with a psychiatrist and seek out one that makes better sense for the unique mental issues of that individual. Just as the police have an internal affairs department, psychiatry must develop a similar entity that is more involved in the process of review than what we currently have in place.
I experienced the gamut of what doesn’t work with psychiatrists when your problems are not understood in the psychiatric community or canonized in their DSM guide. The diagnosis I received was “acute schizophrenia”, which was sort of a cop-out and catch-all. This diagnosis represented that the shrink hoped that my problems would sort themselves out over time, or that a low dosage sedative might regulate my problems across my lifetime and sweep my mental issues under the proverbial rug.
Something had to change, because the anti-psychotic medication was a mere sedative that sapped my creative energy and did not suppress my cosmic thinking. The anti-psychotic medication made it difficult to be active mentally and therefore I didn’t “bother” other people with my ideas about mass telepathy, and such. On anti-psychotic sedatives, I remained in low-energy mode and did my mental work and conspiratorial thinking privately. To be fair, the medication wasn’t for me, but instead, it was for the sake of everyone else who might be disturbed with how I was thinking.
I was still thinking in a disordered and dissociative way.
I tried buying into the idea that I was sick in the head. I spent six months vowing off of pursuing belief in mass telepathy. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it and kept returning to real life experience which suggested my transformation to introspection was legitimate and significant. However, given the powerful influence of the sedative medication, I wasn’t getting anywhere with anything else in life. I was effectively zombified.
Diagnosis
After the transformation to true introspection and genuine metacognition, my inner mental life was a complete nightmare. I was tackling all the intrusive reflexive thoughts that had been developed and catalogued over a lifetime, and which then surfaced with the particular relevant external stimuli. There were many unpleasant surprises in that regard and there was no way to predict the trigger stimuli. Part of coping with that change in my inner mental life was to buy into the cosmic paradigm regarding mass telepathy, however, the conspicuous absence of credible resources or references in the world about the phenomenon led to paranoia and conspiratorial beliefs.
I turned to friends for help, but they were confused which I took for secrecy. My outer mental life was becoming unmanageable because while people were speaking to me, I was ignoring the “mundane” human interaction, and I was completely engrossed in my mental monologue. For me at the time, the monologue was audible for others, and I was looking for cues in my conversation partner’s body language or in the words they chose within the mundane topics that were being discussed aloud. In time, friends and family recognized that I was “zoned-out” and that I was not able to focus on real verbal conversations aloud. I had unrealistic expectations on others which they found unnerving because they didn’t understand the nature of my beliefs.
Some friends thought that they were helping but in fact were making things much worse for me. Alex was a social butterfly who I had known all through high school. He prided himself on having hundreds of “close” friends and his greatest goal was to spend the weekend seeing as many of those friends as possible even if it meant that my time with him was less than an hour and involved us sitting in his car smoking a joint and listening to a mixtape. In time, I determined that Alex was a flake and I tried to back away from spending time with him.
While I was going through the paces of constructing a cosmic paradigm based on a conspiratorial belief in mass telepathy, Alex was genuinely concerned on behalf of all my friends. We met near his house one night and were hanging out at a high school nearby. I asked my veiled questions which had become my habit and I sought to clarify my encoded external language with what I believed were my audible thoughts. There was no time to be properly engaged in the mundane conversation that was being spoken between two people aloud. If we were talking about local sports or new movies, then for me, the conversation was simply conducted as a medium for a secret conversation about mass telepathy and the structure of society in that regard.
I asked Alex a hypothetical – if there was a janitor on the other side of the wall, sleeping in his cot because he was too broke to afford a home, then would he also be “in” on our conversation outside? Could he “hear” us? Alex didn’t understand the implications of my question as it related to telepathy and ESP. Alex believed that I was asking, rather cryptically, whether people were pro-social by nature – was the janitor a swell guy that would enjoy smoking a joint with us, if he actually heard us banging on his window? As such, Alex affirmed that the janitor was “in” on our conversation, given that Alex believed in pro-social behavior and attitudes.
I went one step further and asked Alex if he thought that in the skies above there was a social “sense of being”, and whether people around the world could be tapping into what we were doing outside the high school that night and connect with us. Who knows how Alex was reinterpreting the confoundingly convoluted question, yet once again, he affirmed that the human race had a collective unconscious that was an “active” sense – people actively wanted to connect with each other in life. I interpreted his answer to me as confirmation that “connection” was the significant term to substitute when discussing the reality of telepathy in conversations aloud. It fit and I ran with it.
I decided after that night with Alex that I should commit to my beliefs in mass telepathy and show my shame to the world as I worked through my mental problems which were indeed transparent to all people. My family saw things a little differently.
My parents were unsure how to address the changes in me. Perhaps, they were shocked at how sudden the transformation was. Maybe, they hoped that things would go back as abruptly as they had begun. Yet, they suggested I speak with some mental health professionals about my new ideas on life.
I visited a psychologist through the referral of my family doctor. This psychologist was not equipped to handle my capacious mind and the structured cosmic paradigm that I had crafted which fit neatly overtop of the real world like a second skin. She caved within a few sessions and referred me to a psychiatrist. This is when I experienced the cruelty of a system that is designed to mask critical moments of professional ignorance, and sometimes, protect professionals who are pervasively and perversely, self-loathing. In my years of addressing my own issues and getting somewhere with it, I have concluded that too many psychiatrists go into the field to diagnose others as a deferral of dealing with their own mental problems.
Psychiatrists all too often rush to diagnose, and they try to fit individuals into known categories. They receive various forms of kickbacks and incentives from the pharmaceutical industry which keep their practices economically viable. Admittedly, there are responsible mental health professionals alongside the reckless ones, however, it often seems as if it was a crapshoot to find the good ones. But the good ones are out there and people who are having mental trouble have an obligation to seek out those responsible and trustworthy mental health professionals. Nevertheless, the relationship with a psychiatrist is predicated on trust and they are medicating you with sometimes glorified sedatives and tranquilizers, therefore, it may become difficult for a patient to break away from a “bad” relationship with a psychiatrist and seek out one that makes better sense for the unique mental issues of that individual. Just as the police have an internal affairs department, psychiatry must develop a similar entity that is more involved in the process of review than what we currently have in place.
I experienced the gamut of what doesn’t work with psychiatrists when your problems are not understood in the psychiatric community or canonized in their DSM guide. The diagnosis I received was “acute schizophrenia”, which was sort of a cop-out and catch-all. This diagnosis represented that the shrink hoped that my problems would sort themselves out over time, or that a low dosage sedative might regulate my problems across my lifetime and sweep my mental issues under the proverbial rug.
Something had to change, because the anti-psychotic medication was a mere sedative that sapped my creative energy and did not suppress my cosmic thinking. The anti-psychotic medication made it difficult to be active mentally and therefore I didn’t “bother” other people with my ideas about mass telepathy, and such. On anti-psychotic sedatives, I remained in low-energy mode and did my mental work and conspiratorial thinking privately. To be fair, the medication wasn’t for me, but instead, it was for the sake of everyone else who might be disturbed with how I was thinking.
I was still thinking in a disordered and dissociative way.
I tried buying into the idea that I was sick in the head. I spent six months vowing off of pursuing belief in mass telepathy. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it and kept returning to real life experience which suggested my transformation to introspection was legitimate and significant. However, given the powerful influence of the sedative medication, I wasn’t getting anywhere with anything else in life. I was effectively zombified.
CHAPTER 9
Recovery
The thing to do was to stop taking the anti-psychotic medication and I had to do so cold turkey. To this day, it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Anti-psychotic medication is like narcotics, in that it has built-in dependency effects which are extremely powerful. One of the subtle forms of dependency is felt through photosensitivity. Some medication makes you less sensitive to light and therefore when you are going off those meds you become hyper-sensitive to light.
As I quit the medication cold turkey, the photosensitivity withdrawal effects kicked in and I found that it was difficult to look up when I was walking around outside during the day. It was physically difficult – almost impossible – to look up and hold my head up high. However, I interpreted the effect as mental shame, and I had distinct thoughts about running back to the medication because of the shame I was experiencing.
Whether the effect was intended by the pharmaceutical industry or not is absolutely irrelevant, as I was being tricked by my own body and I was persuading myself to believe that my thoughts should correspond with my physical body’s condition. If my body was reacting poorly to going off the medication then probably my mind would as well, ergo, go back on the meds. Yet, I persevered with the powerful withdrawal effects.
Three months after quitting the medication, I was feeling entirely better physically. My body had survived and there had been no true need for panic on behalf of my body’s health. The zombification of my life was over. The cosmic thinking had never ceased and now with renewed mental energy, I pursued the higher mysteries of my cosmic paradigm and abnormal belief system.
My sister gave birth to her first child, and I visited the hospital to meet my niece for the first time. When I got home, I decided that it was perhaps the case that I didn’t understand mass telepathy properly and that the human race may not find me as transparent as I had once believed. However, there were cosmic-based answers and a cosmic-based explanation for why I had been transformed mentally to an introspective state. I made a commitment to building a sustainable paradigm that would explain everything. And so began the “Tricks of the Trade”.
Recovery
The thing to do was to stop taking the anti-psychotic medication and I had to do so cold turkey. To this day, it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Anti-psychotic medication is like narcotics, in that it has built-in dependency effects which are extremely powerful. One of the subtle forms of dependency is felt through photosensitivity. Some medication makes you less sensitive to light and therefore when you are going off those meds you become hyper-sensitive to light.
As I quit the medication cold turkey, the photosensitivity withdrawal effects kicked in and I found that it was difficult to look up when I was walking around outside during the day. It was physically difficult – almost impossible – to look up and hold my head up high. However, I interpreted the effect as mental shame, and I had distinct thoughts about running back to the medication because of the shame I was experiencing.
Whether the effect was intended by the pharmaceutical industry or not is absolutely irrelevant, as I was being tricked by my own body and I was persuading myself to believe that my thoughts should correspond with my physical body’s condition. If my body was reacting poorly to going off the medication then probably my mind would as well, ergo, go back on the meds. Yet, I persevered with the powerful withdrawal effects.
Three months after quitting the medication, I was feeling entirely better physically. My body had survived and there had been no true need for panic on behalf of my body’s health. The zombification of my life was over. The cosmic thinking had never ceased and now with renewed mental energy, I pursued the higher mysteries of my cosmic paradigm and abnormal belief system.
My sister gave birth to her first child, and I visited the hospital to meet my niece for the first time. When I got home, I decided that it was perhaps the case that I didn’t understand mass telepathy properly and that the human race may not find me as transparent as I had once believed. However, there were cosmic-based answers and a cosmic-based explanation for why I had been transformed mentally to an introspective state. I made a commitment to building a sustainable paradigm that would explain everything. And so began the “Tricks of the Trade”.
CHAPTER 10
Deception
It was imperative that I understand what had happened to me. My mental life had been altered utterly and completely. No one around me was explaining it to me. The psychologists and psychiatrists had no ideas. There were no clues on the internet either. I felt completely alone, yet I knew that what had happened to me was for a reason. The transformation to introspection was important and it had taken me out of auto-pilot mode and imbued me with real willpower and free choice. There was going to be an answer, even if it relied on a cosmic paradigm that I crafted on my own.
There were some ideas that were at the fore: minds could be enlightened, yet people were capable of incredible cruelty. It seemed clear that the human race was not telepathic. I had tested it by uttering mental statements in public that were far worse than, “ugly black bastard”. There had been no overt response from people around me that I believed could hear me insulting them. I had to conclude that my inner mental life had an important element of privacy. However, events were happening around me which went beyond mere coincidence in my estimates, and this had to be caused by cosmic forces. It was time to pull back the curtain and have a look at the wizard.
I was watching a Hollywood award show one night when I made a realization about the cosmic game centering on me. Watching television had become a vexing experience since I had begun believing in mass telepathy. My understanding was that the people on television were privy to my thoughts and could hear them in their own minds. This implied that my transformation to introspection had an element of celebrity to it. I mattered on a world stage.
It seemed that I must be someone that had a special role to play for the human race. During that award show and in the red-carpet segment, one of my favorite actors, Johnny Depp, strolled along cool as a cucumber. A distinct thought emerged in my introspective mind, “do not give him an inch”. The notion was that Johnny Depp was not a swell guy, but rather he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Johnny Depp was part of a forum of malevolent characters who were masquerading as human beings and destroying the life experience for real people. Conversely, I conjectured that there must also be a forum of good characters. My role would be to decide which were the black hats and then condemn them. This would be the cosmic game, referred to as, “the Tricks of the Trade”.
I went to the basement of my parent’s home and made my first gesture to initiate the cosmic wager. In the furnace room, there was an old yearbook from my grandfather’s undergraduate days in the 1920s. I perused the pages and looked upon the visages of proud students from a time so foreign to me as to render these people almost alien. But then, I noted their human familiarity and there was a sense of the sublime – I could be in touch with these “dead” people. It seemed to me that they were souls trapped in the pages of the yearbook and so I released them. The first heroic deed was to open up Heaven and Hell which had been closed in anticipation of my pivotal role in the cosmic wager. Humans that had lived and died on Earth had been stuck in a purgatory until my deed released them to their appropriate eternal fate – and they understood the nature of this cosmic wager while locked in the pages of that yearbook.
It wasn’t relevant to ask myself why I thought myself so important. Putting myself at the center of events had become intuitive based on there being no textual or cultural references to the process that constituted my transformation to introspection. Perhaps, children would still believe in Santa Claus as adults if not for a surfeit of movies and books which purport that it is a ruse conjured up by grown ups for all children. I could not find the references I needed to explain what had happened to me and so I explained it in my terms, which effectively put me at the center of cosmic events as well as placing me in the most prominent position of all – the judge.
Johnny Deep became “Johnny’s Inch” and it was a nickname with pejorative connotations regarding his manhood. I reasoned that he deserved to be berated for being caught pretending to be a good guy as well as for the damage that he had done to humanity as a false idol. I reasoned that Johnny was part of the forum of evil cosmic beings and there were many other celebrities that were with him. He and his cohort were responsible for all the evil deeds on Earth, including the rape of women and the murder of children. They were like the little devils nestled on the shoulder of pondering characters in the old Looney Tunes cartoon segments. They influenced people to act wrong, and they had been doing so from the beginning.
The cosmic wager, Tricks of the Trade, occupied all my time, and I stopped university studies as well as working paid jobs in order to immerse myself in the grand task. My family supported me being alone because in recent years my mental state had resulted in interpersonal conflicts which they feared might escalate and soon involve intervention from the law. They did not fully realize what I was doing with my time and how my mental life was developing through this cosmic quest.
The leader of the evil forum was identified as Clint Eastwood and this was because he had performed the role of a nonchalant machismo rapist in one of his spaghetti Western movies, and I happened to see that movie scene while channel surfing one night when I was searching for the black hats in the cosmic wager. It seemed to me that Clint was sufficiently renowned to hold a prestigious position in a forum of evil cosmic beings. Other celebrities figured prominently, including Sharon Osbourne as the “Wicked Witch”, Vince McMahon as “Rape Boy”, and my own best friend, Ethan, as “Archibald Mayer… who had no hair”. Being bald meant a certain impotency within the forum of evil characters and was thus mock-worthy. I had nothing against bald men, but the thought was that evil characters did and that hierarchy among evil characters was based in petulance and pettiness. Effectively, I was speaking their language through these base insults and droll designations that I devised.
If Tricks of the Trade had been a fictional tale akin to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then perhaps, a few people would like the story and even buy it as a book. The problem was that this was reality for me at the time. I could watch Clint’s movies or see Vince on his pro wrestling TV show, and I would berate them and threaten them, all while believing that they heard my words of condemnation. The judge was sentencing them. Eventually, it was easier to just speak aloud rather than articulate the words in thought. My verdicts required verve if the whole world was watching. I yelled at the TV a lot. And so, it would seem I had gone mad.
The first part of the Tricks of the Trade went on for one full year. I articulated the hierarchy of evil characters and proclaimed that their cosmic home-world was “Kerplunck”. Kerplunck was a land of oozing excrement and animated disembodied genitalia, and such. It was an embarrassment, yet an apt environment for creatures of ill-will who had sought to ruin the lives of humans through promoting rape, and a full range of other heinous violations. These malevolent beings had been whispering into the human subconscious and had been interfering in human lives through how social institutions were founded and developed. They had even been using human bodies for their nefarious pleasures and depraved vanity.
By the end of the year I had identified hundreds of Kerplunckians – perhaps, even a thousand – and mapped out the land where they originated. They had a “daddy” as well – their creator, “Markis Kleineschwarzwurst”. Markis had used an influential human body and presented as Adolf Hitler, the human race’s consummate boogeyman. Markis’s unwieldy German moniker referenced his burnt micro-penis, and again the name I chose was intended to humiliate him in front of his people because the presumption was that all the cosmic beings – good and evil – had been watching my entire life, intimately. They watched me masturbate, and clean up after an upset stomach, and they watched when I had sex with romantic partners. I just had to accept this fact as one of the many “tricks of the trade”. I had to perform my duty for the good of humanity and the forum of good cosmic characters. So now, they watched me judge them – that was my trick in the trade, and it seemed fair compensation for a time.
Deception
It was imperative that I understand what had happened to me. My mental life had been altered utterly and completely. No one around me was explaining it to me. The psychologists and psychiatrists had no ideas. There were no clues on the internet either. I felt completely alone, yet I knew that what had happened to me was for a reason. The transformation to introspection was important and it had taken me out of auto-pilot mode and imbued me with real willpower and free choice. There was going to be an answer, even if it relied on a cosmic paradigm that I crafted on my own.
There were some ideas that were at the fore: minds could be enlightened, yet people were capable of incredible cruelty. It seemed clear that the human race was not telepathic. I had tested it by uttering mental statements in public that were far worse than, “ugly black bastard”. There had been no overt response from people around me that I believed could hear me insulting them. I had to conclude that my inner mental life had an important element of privacy. However, events were happening around me which went beyond mere coincidence in my estimates, and this had to be caused by cosmic forces. It was time to pull back the curtain and have a look at the wizard.
I was watching a Hollywood award show one night when I made a realization about the cosmic game centering on me. Watching television had become a vexing experience since I had begun believing in mass telepathy. My understanding was that the people on television were privy to my thoughts and could hear them in their own minds. This implied that my transformation to introspection had an element of celebrity to it. I mattered on a world stage.
It seemed that I must be someone that had a special role to play for the human race. During that award show and in the red-carpet segment, one of my favorite actors, Johnny Depp, strolled along cool as a cucumber. A distinct thought emerged in my introspective mind, “do not give him an inch”. The notion was that Johnny Depp was not a swell guy, but rather he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Johnny Depp was part of a forum of malevolent characters who were masquerading as human beings and destroying the life experience for real people. Conversely, I conjectured that there must also be a forum of good characters. My role would be to decide which were the black hats and then condemn them. This would be the cosmic game, referred to as, “the Tricks of the Trade”.
I went to the basement of my parent’s home and made my first gesture to initiate the cosmic wager. In the furnace room, there was an old yearbook from my grandfather’s undergraduate days in the 1920s. I perused the pages and looked upon the visages of proud students from a time so foreign to me as to render these people almost alien. But then, I noted their human familiarity and there was a sense of the sublime – I could be in touch with these “dead” people. It seemed to me that they were souls trapped in the pages of the yearbook and so I released them. The first heroic deed was to open up Heaven and Hell which had been closed in anticipation of my pivotal role in the cosmic wager. Humans that had lived and died on Earth had been stuck in a purgatory until my deed released them to their appropriate eternal fate – and they understood the nature of this cosmic wager while locked in the pages of that yearbook.
It wasn’t relevant to ask myself why I thought myself so important. Putting myself at the center of events had become intuitive based on there being no textual or cultural references to the process that constituted my transformation to introspection. Perhaps, children would still believe in Santa Claus as adults if not for a surfeit of movies and books which purport that it is a ruse conjured up by grown ups for all children. I could not find the references I needed to explain what had happened to me and so I explained it in my terms, which effectively put me at the center of cosmic events as well as placing me in the most prominent position of all – the judge.
Johnny Deep became “Johnny’s Inch” and it was a nickname with pejorative connotations regarding his manhood. I reasoned that he deserved to be berated for being caught pretending to be a good guy as well as for the damage that he had done to humanity as a false idol. I reasoned that Johnny was part of the forum of evil cosmic beings and there were many other celebrities that were with him. He and his cohort were responsible for all the evil deeds on Earth, including the rape of women and the murder of children. They were like the little devils nestled on the shoulder of pondering characters in the old Looney Tunes cartoon segments. They influenced people to act wrong, and they had been doing so from the beginning.
The cosmic wager, Tricks of the Trade, occupied all my time, and I stopped university studies as well as working paid jobs in order to immerse myself in the grand task. My family supported me being alone because in recent years my mental state had resulted in interpersonal conflicts which they feared might escalate and soon involve intervention from the law. They did not fully realize what I was doing with my time and how my mental life was developing through this cosmic quest.
The leader of the evil forum was identified as Clint Eastwood and this was because he had performed the role of a nonchalant machismo rapist in one of his spaghetti Western movies, and I happened to see that movie scene while channel surfing one night when I was searching for the black hats in the cosmic wager. It seemed to me that Clint was sufficiently renowned to hold a prestigious position in a forum of evil cosmic beings. Other celebrities figured prominently, including Sharon Osbourne as the “Wicked Witch”, Vince McMahon as “Rape Boy”, and my own best friend, Ethan, as “Archibald Mayer… who had no hair”. Being bald meant a certain impotency within the forum of evil characters and was thus mock-worthy. I had nothing against bald men, but the thought was that evil characters did and that hierarchy among evil characters was based in petulance and pettiness. Effectively, I was speaking their language through these base insults and droll designations that I devised.
If Tricks of the Trade had been a fictional tale akin to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, then perhaps, a few people would like the story and even buy it as a book. The problem was that this was reality for me at the time. I could watch Clint’s movies or see Vince on his pro wrestling TV show, and I would berate them and threaten them, all while believing that they heard my words of condemnation. The judge was sentencing them. Eventually, it was easier to just speak aloud rather than articulate the words in thought. My verdicts required verve if the whole world was watching. I yelled at the TV a lot. And so, it would seem I had gone mad.
The first part of the Tricks of the Trade went on for one full year. I articulated the hierarchy of evil characters and proclaimed that their cosmic home-world was “Kerplunck”. Kerplunck was a land of oozing excrement and animated disembodied genitalia, and such. It was an embarrassment, yet an apt environment for creatures of ill-will who had sought to ruin the lives of humans through promoting rape, and a full range of other heinous violations. These malevolent beings had been whispering into the human subconscious and had been interfering in human lives through how social institutions were founded and developed. They had even been using human bodies for their nefarious pleasures and depraved vanity.
By the end of the year I had identified hundreds of Kerplunckians – perhaps, even a thousand – and mapped out the land where they originated. They had a “daddy” as well – their creator, “Markis Kleineschwarzwurst”. Markis had used an influential human body and presented as Adolf Hitler, the human race’s consummate boogeyman. Markis’s unwieldy German moniker referenced his burnt micro-penis, and again the name I chose was intended to humiliate him in front of his people because the presumption was that all the cosmic beings – good and evil – had been watching my entire life, intimately. They watched me masturbate, and clean up after an upset stomach, and they watched when I had sex with romantic partners. I just had to accept this fact as one of the many “tricks of the trade”. I had to perform my duty for the good of humanity and the forum of good cosmic characters. So now, they watched me judge them – that was my trick in the trade, and it seemed fair compensation for a time.
CHAPTER 11
Betrayal
While identifying Kerplunckians, I made my personal woes considerably worse. It was decided that half of the people I had known in real life were malevolent characters from Kerplunck and they were pretending to be good guys, or just normal humans. If Kerplunckians survived my purge through me misidentifying them then they would be saved and they would continue interference on Earth for humans. These were the stakes of the wager, and so it was imperative that I correctly identify all the bad guys and never misrecognize an ally as a villain. Otherwise, my life and this world could not be expected to improve.
I had rejected half of the people in my life and the other half who were considered “good” noticed and this made them extremely nervous. It was a radical act on my part, but I took it for granted that I was performing my cosmic duty as planned. In fact, it dawned on me that I must be a member of the forum of good characters. The game was about me having been memory-wiped and started anew on Earth – I was using a human body as well, despite my true nature being cosmic. It was a messianic mission for me on behalf of humans and my people, the forum of cosmic good guys. I truly believed that this was correct because it explained everything. This conceit explained why I had become introspective but not others, and why there were so many “uncanny moments” whereby my private thoughts were responded to with fidelity in the world around me as well as through programming on television, or even music playing on the radio. Things just seemed to come together in improbable ways to reinforce the Tricks of the Trade as a real and legitimate event.
There were too many coincidences for it to not be considered evidence.
Meanwhile, my real life was becoming more and more isolated. I determined that my parents were good characters, as well as my sister and her family. There were others in my family and circle of friends, even coworkers, past and present, who were also identified as trusted. They were constructed into an official Forum of Gods. Mike and Dan were considered “Angels” within that deified hierarchy. Gary was my guardian angel, whereas Alex had been condemned and was considered Markis’s consort in Kerplunck.
I had taken my positive and negative feelings to their extremes and manifested them through characterization that was then projected onto other real people. This is a dangerous undertaking, and I presume that many tragic stories of psychotic minds have considerable crossover with what I was going through at the time.
The year ended and I was now dealing with “straggler” Kerplunckian characters – outsiders who had only oblique importance to the overall cosmic wager. I was resenting that the game had not ended and that the good guys – the Gods – were not sticking up for me and coming to my rescue. My life clearly didn’t work, and I suspected that it never would again. I needed major change or removal from Earth, and the sooner the better. I wanted to go home.
My impatience ran out after a horrifying nightmare I suffered on New Year’s Eve. The year of Tricks of the Trade had been taxing and I slept poorly during that time. I experienced extremely vivid nightmares, and this had been one of the ways that I had uncovered sneaky Kerplunckians – from learning new things in my dreams. That year, there had been many times where I stayed up for three days straight before finally collapsing. The New Year’s nightmare crossed the line in how I was violated, and I determined that these good Gods should have already helped out and that it was time to identify them as villainous and judge them accordingly.
Six months later, no one was left. I had whittled down my list of trusted characters to a barebones skeleton crew of personalities that I truly believed in. Everyone else was fodder for the real Hell. Their time on Earth had ended. Their chance to ruin humans was finished. I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Additionally, I was no longer asking my cosmic skeleton crew to rescue me, nor did I believe that it was worth staying on Earth – I was not truly human.
The suicide attempts began and there were a variety of methods undertaken. The opening salvo of self-destruction was notable for its naivety. I drew a bath and plugged in a toaster. I dropped the toaster into the bathtub while sitting in water up to my chest. I had seen it in a movie – a romantic comedy of all things. However, in my tub the fuse immediately blew, and dramatically, the lights went out, yet no electric current reached the water. I felt cheated.
The suicide attempts were not performed from a state of despair, but rather, from a duty to reunite with that skeleton crew watching over me in the cosmic – my real family and friends. I wanted to see my real dad, Carl, and hang out with lovable Uncle Lou. I needed my sweet pets Mindy and Mandy around. At the time, I truly felt that I should be in the cosmic. It was time to be rewarded for the great job I had done during Tricks of the Trade. The world would become a better place with all the evil characters vanquished, and I could watch over that transition from above with cosmic vantage.
My suicide methods were leaving too much room for error. I vowed to get it right and so I prepared for my camping trip to Algonquin Provincial Park. But Algonquin Park had brought me to the brink and after what happened there, I realized that if I was going to commit to living, then there needed to be a new plan for a normal, mortal experience.
Betrayal
While identifying Kerplunckians, I made my personal woes considerably worse. It was decided that half of the people I had known in real life were malevolent characters from Kerplunck and they were pretending to be good guys, or just normal humans. If Kerplunckians survived my purge through me misidentifying them then they would be saved and they would continue interference on Earth for humans. These were the stakes of the wager, and so it was imperative that I correctly identify all the bad guys and never misrecognize an ally as a villain. Otherwise, my life and this world could not be expected to improve.
I had rejected half of the people in my life and the other half who were considered “good” noticed and this made them extremely nervous. It was a radical act on my part, but I took it for granted that I was performing my cosmic duty as planned. In fact, it dawned on me that I must be a member of the forum of good characters. The game was about me having been memory-wiped and started anew on Earth – I was using a human body as well, despite my true nature being cosmic. It was a messianic mission for me on behalf of humans and my people, the forum of cosmic good guys. I truly believed that this was correct because it explained everything. This conceit explained why I had become introspective but not others, and why there were so many “uncanny moments” whereby my private thoughts were responded to with fidelity in the world around me as well as through programming on television, or even music playing on the radio. Things just seemed to come together in improbable ways to reinforce the Tricks of the Trade as a real and legitimate event.
There were too many coincidences for it to not be considered evidence.
Meanwhile, my real life was becoming more and more isolated. I determined that my parents were good characters, as well as my sister and her family. There were others in my family and circle of friends, even coworkers, past and present, who were also identified as trusted. They were constructed into an official Forum of Gods. Mike and Dan were considered “Angels” within that deified hierarchy. Gary was my guardian angel, whereas Alex had been condemned and was considered Markis’s consort in Kerplunck.
I had taken my positive and negative feelings to their extremes and manifested them through characterization that was then projected onto other real people. This is a dangerous undertaking, and I presume that many tragic stories of psychotic minds have considerable crossover with what I was going through at the time.
The year ended and I was now dealing with “straggler” Kerplunckian characters – outsiders who had only oblique importance to the overall cosmic wager. I was resenting that the game had not ended and that the good guys – the Gods – were not sticking up for me and coming to my rescue. My life clearly didn’t work, and I suspected that it never would again. I needed major change or removal from Earth, and the sooner the better. I wanted to go home.
My impatience ran out after a horrifying nightmare I suffered on New Year’s Eve. The year of Tricks of the Trade had been taxing and I slept poorly during that time. I experienced extremely vivid nightmares, and this had been one of the ways that I had uncovered sneaky Kerplunckians – from learning new things in my dreams. That year, there had been many times where I stayed up for three days straight before finally collapsing. The New Year’s nightmare crossed the line in how I was violated, and I determined that these good Gods should have already helped out and that it was time to identify them as villainous and judge them accordingly.
Six months later, no one was left. I had whittled down my list of trusted characters to a barebones skeleton crew of personalities that I truly believed in. Everyone else was fodder for the real Hell. Their time on Earth had ended. Their chance to ruin humans was finished. I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Additionally, I was no longer asking my cosmic skeleton crew to rescue me, nor did I believe that it was worth staying on Earth – I was not truly human.
The suicide attempts began and there were a variety of methods undertaken. The opening salvo of self-destruction was notable for its naivety. I drew a bath and plugged in a toaster. I dropped the toaster into the bathtub while sitting in water up to my chest. I had seen it in a movie – a romantic comedy of all things. However, in my tub the fuse immediately blew, and dramatically, the lights went out, yet no electric current reached the water. I felt cheated.
The suicide attempts were not performed from a state of despair, but rather, from a duty to reunite with that skeleton crew watching over me in the cosmic – my real family and friends. I wanted to see my real dad, Carl, and hang out with lovable Uncle Lou. I needed my sweet pets Mindy and Mandy around. At the time, I truly felt that I should be in the cosmic. It was time to be rewarded for the great job I had done during Tricks of the Trade. The world would become a better place with all the evil characters vanquished, and I could watch over that transition from above with cosmic vantage.
My suicide methods were leaving too much room for error. I vowed to get it right and so I prepared for my camping trip to Algonquin Provincial Park. But Algonquin Park had brought me to the brink and after what happened there, I realized that if I was going to commit to living, then there needed to be a new plan for a normal, mortal experience.
CHAPTER 12
Placating
Algonquin Park had been an eye-opening experience even for someone in my condition. Upon returning to Toronto, I remained mixed-up about many things, including, mass telepathy, the cosmic forum of characters watching over humanity, and even as to whether the rat poison had worked. I conjectured that the effects of the poison had been negated through a temporary suspending of the laws of the physical universe. In essence, I questioned whether I had in fact died, and then been resurrected.
Despite these messianic ideas dominating my thoughts, it was time to recognize that the world met no one halfway, and that time stopped for no one. If I was going to continue a mortal first life on Earth among human beings, then I was also going to have to act human. It was time for the “fake it until you make it” approach.
Fitting in wouldn’t be easy. Although, I had worked through many of the ideas about telepathy and concluded that the human race was not telepathic, there were still no other people who could identify with my transformation to introspection. For everyone else, introspection was a matter of degrees and people became more introspective (what I term, conscientious) over time based on concerted effort. That did not jibe with my experience. For me, the alteration was sudden and profound. It was all or nothing. And without answers to the transformation process, I had to continue holding the cosmic story of the Tricks of the Trade in high esteem.
There have been ideas in this text you are reading regarding the partitions of the mind and the continuity of the external and internal mental life experience. This kind of existential philosophy was very helpful for me. It didn’t seem to matter that I was a dilletante in psychology, or that I had limited knowledge of the history of developments in the philosophy of the mind. I knew enough of these topics to generate some answers and give myself the opportunity to make positive changes for my mental life.
After Algonquin Park it was important to work through more of these philosophical “meditations”. The meditations centered me, and I began to convert my active sense of conspiratorial paranoia to a more passive basic faith in otherworldly forces. The meditations helped transition my ideas from subversive and confrontational, to spiritual and private. My belief system would become a kind of religious faith, although admittedly, it was unlikely that I would ever have any disciples among human beings.
My parents expected me to recover quickly and then decide whether I would work a paid job or re-enroll in university. I chose both for a time. While flipping pizzas at a gourmet pizzeria and sitting in lecture halls for a course on ancient Greek literature, I also worked on my existential meditations. My mental life was still uncomfortable, and I remained focused on my introspective dialectic as opposed to what was being said in the world around me. I bounced from job to job, and my grades in school were nothing to write home about. Yet, my meditations brought a new sense of truth and reality, and one that no longer goaded me into raging against the machine.
The meditations on the conscious-unconscious partition, emergence of the subconscious, as well as the continuity of internal-external mental life were not the first meditations which I developed during this time. Instead, my first meditation was most basic and sought to answer the important question, “why something?”.
Why is there something, instead of just nothing? Why something out of nothingness? Here we are and it is self-effacing that something happened. Presumably, at some point in time there was nothing. So, why something then?
I concluded that the potential for something was a significant something in meaning. Ergo, there had never truly been nothing and the inception of things happening as well as time being a relevant measure had been based in the potential for something being a something. To have something was to also have creative expenditure (not a form of physical energy per se). However, that first moment of creative expenditure through the potential of something being a something then produced an imbalance in the creative-destructive matrix.
At this point in the meditation, I surmised that imbalance in the creative-destructive matrix was a significant problem. There was a thrust toward balance because balance brought peace, and peace implied rest, with rest being an ideal state. I concluded that forces in time should come into play such that the things that existed would also be active things and capable of bringing about a balance in the creative-destructive matrix, even if it never quite reached a moment of equilibrium (peace and rest).
Our physical universe, made up of particles, such as, hydrogen atoms, or electrons and quarks, constituted raw material. This is a material universe based in physical laws which seem unbendable and unbreakable. Pigs will not start flying, and night will not suddenly turn to daylight. Space and time in the physical universe adhere to strict laws. Magic is not experienced as real.
Raw material (for example, a physical universe) had happened because it provided the possibility for bringing about balance in the creative-destructive matrix after that initial imbalance when the potential for something being a something became a creative expenditure happening. The physical universe provided a means of destruction in order to balance out the matrix. The physical universe would become a creche for the emergence and development of personalities because it was individual personalities that can produce creative and destructive happenings, liberally.
With all that creation, how can balance be restored? There must be a source of destruction that is more destructive than it is creative. But what was destruction with respect to the creative-destructive matrix? I concluded that personalities were generators of creative and destructive happenings through the thoughts of the mind. Creative happenings were generated through novel action – originating in thoughts of concepts, notions, ideas, etc. Destructive happenings were generated through bunk action. To be bunk was to be redundant, for example, it was bunk action to think a single idea ad nauseam such that nothing novel was added to that discourse. If someone sat in the corner of a room and let only the thought, “I’m hungry” express itself in their mind, then hours or days later this happening in thought was a bunk one and thus adding to the destruction in the creation-destruction matrix.
Bunkness was redundancy and it was opposed to novelty. For me, the definitive bunk action was to rape because the act of forcing one’s sexuality on another meant that the rapist was forcing the victim to understand sex – a wild discourse rife with creative potential – in only a singular, simple term. Essentially, rape would render a victim to that person in the corner whose only thought became, “I’m hurt”. As such, bunkness was associated with evil, and this brought me back to thoughts about “veggie” Clint, bunk Markis, and the malevolent characters of Kerplunck.
I reasoned that if the mandate of Existence was to realize the possibility of balance in the creative-destructive matrix then good personalities had to dominate existence. To allow a bunk evil character to be ruler would be to ensure that bunkness dominated and thus balance would never be achievable. However, the good personality (one geared for novelty in thought and action) could rule and bring about a surfeit of creative happenings while at the same time creating evil personalities that would be controlled by good and also produce destructive happenings for the potential of balance in the matrix. Peace was achievable through a ‘Good over Evil’ cosmic paradigm.
‘Good over Evil’ was what I determined as the dominant cosmic paradigm. ‘Good versus Evil’, or ‘Evil over Good’ would not setup the conditions for potential balance in the creative-destructive matrix. This conclusion for my existential meditation brought me great peace of mind. I used this meditation to turn a cheek when I was dealing with wicked behavior of others in the world. I acquired a patience and sense of resolve which quelled my moral outrage about humans treating each other so poorly. I could see that the grandeur scheme was the creative-destructive matrix, whereas cosmic wagers such as, Tricks of the Trade, were merely one event within the ‘big picture’ scheme.
I, Will Strange (yes, that was my name), born in 1981, residing in Toronto, might be important in the grand scheme, but it was unlikely that my messianic status was valid or of practical import to my mortal first life as a human being on planet Earth. These realizations through that first existential meditation helped to alter my mental life and perception of reality so that I could function better within the status quo of society.
Placating
Algonquin Park had been an eye-opening experience even for someone in my condition. Upon returning to Toronto, I remained mixed-up about many things, including, mass telepathy, the cosmic forum of characters watching over humanity, and even as to whether the rat poison had worked. I conjectured that the effects of the poison had been negated through a temporary suspending of the laws of the physical universe. In essence, I questioned whether I had in fact died, and then been resurrected.
Despite these messianic ideas dominating my thoughts, it was time to recognize that the world met no one halfway, and that time stopped for no one. If I was going to continue a mortal first life on Earth among human beings, then I was also going to have to act human. It was time for the “fake it until you make it” approach.
Fitting in wouldn’t be easy. Although, I had worked through many of the ideas about telepathy and concluded that the human race was not telepathic, there were still no other people who could identify with my transformation to introspection. For everyone else, introspection was a matter of degrees and people became more introspective (what I term, conscientious) over time based on concerted effort. That did not jibe with my experience. For me, the alteration was sudden and profound. It was all or nothing. And without answers to the transformation process, I had to continue holding the cosmic story of the Tricks of the Trade in high esteem.
There have been ideas in this text you are reading regarding the partitions of the mind and the continuity of the external and internal mental life experience. This kind of existential philosophy was very helpful for me. It didn’t seem to matter that I was a dilletante in psychology, or that I had limited knowledge of the history of developments in the philosophy of the mind. I knew enough of these topics to generate some answers and give myself the opportunity to make positive changes for my mental life.
After Algonquin Park it was important to work through more of these philosophical “meditations”. The meditations centered me, and I began to convert my active sense of conspiratorial paranoia to a more passive basic faith in otherworldly forces. The meditations helped transition my ideas from subversive and confrontational, to spiritual and private. My belief system would become a kind of religious faith, although admittedly, it was unlikely that I would ever have any disciples among human beings.
My parents expected me to recover quickly and then decide whether I would work a paid job or re-enroll in university. I chose both for a time. While flipping pizzas at a gourmet pizzeria and sitting in lecture halls for a course on ancient Greek literature, I also worked on my existential meditations. My mental life was still uncomfortable, and I remained focused on my introspective dialectic as opposed to what was being said in the world around me. I bounced from job to job, and my grades in school were nothing to write home about. Yet, my meditations brought a new sense of truth and reality, and one that no longer goaded me into raging against the machine.
The meditations on the conscious-unconscious partition, emergence of the subconscious, as well as the continuity of internal-external mental life were not the first meditations which I developed during this time. Instead, my first meditation was most basic and sought to answer the important question, “why something?”.
Why is there something, instead of just nothing? Why something out of nothingness? Here we are and it is self-effacing that something happened. Presumably, at some point in time there was nothing. So, why something then?
I concluded that the potential for something was a significant something in meaning. Ergo, there had never truly been nothing and the inception of things happening as well as time being a relevant measure had been based in the potential for something being a something. To have something was to also have creative expenditure (not a form of physical energy per se). However, that first moment of creative expenditure through the potential of something being a something then produced an imbalance in the creative-destructive matrix.
At this point in the meditation, I surmised that imbalance in the creative-destructive matrix was a significant problem. There was a thrust toward balance because balance brought peace, and peace implied rest, with rest being an ideal state. I concluded that forces in time should come into play such that the things that existed would also be active things and capable of bringing about a balance in the creative-destructive matrix, even if it never quite reached a moment of equilibrium (peace and rest).
Our physical universe, made up of particles, such as, hydrogen atoms, or electrons and quarks, constituted raw material. This is a material universe based in physical laws which seem unbendable and unbreakable. Pigs will not start flying, and night will not suddenly turn to daylight. Space and time in the physical universe adhere to strict laws. Magic is not experienced as real.
Raw material (for example, a physical universe) had happened because it provided the possibility for bringing about balance in the creative-destructive matrix after that initial imbalance when the potential for something being a something became a creative expenditure happening. The physical universe provided a means of destruction in order to balance out the matrix. The physical universe would become a creche for the emergence and development of personalities because it was individual personalities that can produce creative and destructive happenings, liberally.
With all that creation, how can balance be restored? There must be a source of destruction that is more destructive than it is creative. But what was destruction with respect to the creative-destructive matrix? I concluded that personalities were generators of creative and destructive happenings through the thoughts of the mind. Creative happenings were generated through novel action – originating in thoughts of concepts, notions, ideas, etc. Destructive happenings were generated through bunk action. To be bunk was to be redundant, for example, it was bunk action to think a single idea ad nauseam such that nothing novel was added to that discourse. If someone sat in the corner of a room and let only the thought, “I’m hungry” express itself in their mind, then hours or days later this happening in thought was a bunk one and thus adding to the destruction in the creation-destruction matrix.
Bunkness was redundancy and it was opposed to novelty. For me, the definitive bunk action was to rape because the act of forcing one’s sexuality on another meant that the rapist was forcing the victim to understand sex – a wild discourse rife with creative potential – in only a singular, simple term. Essentially, rape would render a victim to that person in the corner whose only thought became, “I’m hurt”. As such, bunkness was associated with evil, and this brought me back to thoughts about “veggie” Clint, bunk Markis, and the malevolent characters of Kerplunck.
I reasoned that if the mandate of Existence was to realize the possibility of balance in the creative-destructive matrix then good personalities had to dominate existence. To allow a bunk evil character to be ruler would be to ensure that bunkness dominated and thus balance would never be achievable. However, the good personality (one geared for novelty in thought and action) could rule and bring about a surfeit of creative happenings while at the same time creating evil personalities that would be controlled by good and also produce destructive happenings for the potential of balance in the matrix. Peace was achievable through a ‘Good over Evil’ cosmic paradigm.
‘Good over Evil’ was what I determined as the dominant cosmic paradigm. ‘Good versus Evil’, or ‘Evil over Good’ would not setup the conditions for potential balance in the creative-destructive matrix. This conclusion for my existential meditation brought me great peace of mind. I used this meditation to turn a cheek when I was dealing with wicked behavior of others in the world. I acquired a patience and sense of resolve which quelled my moral outrage about humans treating each other so poorly. I could see that the grandeur scheme was the creative-destructive matrix, whereas cosmic wagers such as, Tricks of the Trade, were merely one event within the ‘big picture’ scheme.
I, Will Strange (yes, that was my name), born in 1981, residing in Toronto, might be important in the grand scheme, but it was unlikely that my messianic status was valid or of practical import to my mortal first life as a human being on planet Earth. These realizations through that first existential meditation helped to alter my mental life and perception of reality so that I could function better within the status quo of society.
CHAPTER 13
Reification
My first meditation on the road to recovery after Algonquin Park was about answering the question, “why something”, instead of nothing at all? Why did I even exist to then be burdened with a sense of duty to answer big questions about life? My conclusion from that first meditation was that good personalities dominated evil personalities, but that the existence of both provided the possibility of novel and bunk happenings such that the creative-destructive matrix had the possibility for balance, and thus a state of peace and rest.
This meditation required that I walk away with a strong belief in a philosophical understanding about creative and destructive forces in life. But is it reasonable to believe in anything strongly if you cannot confirm or prove that the particular belief is valid or important? This musing provoked another meditation. The second meditation regarded belief and it asked the question, “to believe, or not to believe?”
For this second meditation on belief, I referred to Pascal’s Wager, almost entirely. There was no risk in believing strongly, and there was potential payoff, whereas there was nothing to be gained from not believing strongly, but there was a risk of eternal shame (or despair, for Pascal). For me, atheism was simply an exotic form of traditional faith, and the atheist affirmation that there was nothing of significance cosmically to believe in, was also a belief fundamentally based in speculation and uncertainty. Essentially, the “non-belief” of atheism was no different than the belief of religion, and both were speculative and without certainty.
For me to believe in cosmic interference in my life would answer many questions that non-belief never could. More importantly, belief in cosmic interference could answer my most pertinent questions regarding my transformation to introspection. I had nothing to lose in believing in a cosmic paradigm because if it turned out to be right then I would have eternal pride, and if I was wrong then there was no more me existing to face the shame of misguided belief. Whereas, to not believe gained nothing if indeed there was no cosmic purpose – I’d be dead with no possibility for reflection on my decidedly wise choice. Whereas, if I turned out to be wrong when choosing to not believe then I would have an eternity of shame. Worse than that, not believing despite cosmic purpose being real, then potentially excluded me from participation in existence after my mortal first life. Essentially, my lack of faith would disqualify me from realizing a greater purpose in existing, and this was justifiable by a higher authority because I had merely reaped what I had sown in choosing disbelief. Major religions are all predicated on similar reasoning featured in Pascal’s Wager.
Religion and atheism are collectivist-based ideologies where what to believe is proscribed. However, I had an opportunity to develop my personal faith and Moral Paradigm. This moral paradigm would be designed to answer the questions which religion, atheism, and science could not – what happened that night with Mike and Dan, and what was my transformation to introspective consciousness all about?
There were two other meditations which were important for my life at that time when I was rebuilding it after Algonquin Park. The third meditation pertained to understanding the quality of Otherness (what is other?), and the fourth meditation regarded the nature of Otherness (is other benevolent or malicious?).
The third meditation concerned the quality of otherness and asked, “what is other?” Rene Descartes’s rational approach to philosophy was based in a method whereby one would acknowledge all the reasonable possibilities for a phenomenon and not exclude any possibility based on prejudice alone. Moving forward with an answer must account for all explanations which were reasonably possible. For example, I am in San Francisco and at a pool hall. I turn to notice that a ball is rolling across the felt of the billiard table. What caused the movement? The rational Cartesian answer would factor in all possibilities that are reasonable, for example, someone just hit the ball with their cue stick, or there was a small earthquake which I didn’t happen to notice perhaps already being acclimated to such things as a longtime resident of San Francisco. Descartes would not include the possibility that a leprechaun crawled out of the pocket of the table and moved the ball before disappearing back into the pocket – an unreasonable possibility.
The Cartesian rational method would dictate that I refrain from applying a prejudice that would have me conclude that it was a person that hit the billiard ball and made it move across the table simply because that explanation made the most sense to me in a self-effacing way. This is to say, the Occam’s Razor principle should not be guaranteed at the outset of the observation and analytic process. For the billiard ball problem – why exclude the possible answer being rooted in a small earthquake, simply because of a prejudice based in earthquakes scaring me, or making me nervous? Why exclude the reasonable possibility simply because earthquakes are a less likely answer than the self-effacing Occam’s Razor explanation for a more common cause of billiard ball movement?
The Cartesian rational approach would be to move forward with understanding the situation through both possible explanations and then seeking more facts or evidence to provide a rational means for rejecting one of the two possibilities. Thus, upon further investigation, I should be prepared to observe players at the table, and earthquakes under my feet. That is what it is to be rational-minded.
How the Cartesian rational method applied to my third mediation on the quality of otherness, was related to understanding what otherness could be, and what it could not be. I organized in my thoughts the full range of possibility of other and boiled it down to four options with one being deemed unreasonable. I did not apply a prejudice against the less likely possibilities being true.
I was, Will Strange, a human being, male, in my twenties, a thinking-thing, brown hair, blue eyes, etc. Around me I perceived otherness. The television was not a thinking-thing, the dog barking in the backyard across the road was not in her twenties, the toilet paper roll didn’t have blue eyes. These components of otherness were not me in a self-effacing way.
Otherness could be me, however. Perhaps, my own unconscious mind had put together the entire life experience internally, similar to how dream worlds are constructed. Perhaps, I am all the elements of otherness in my experience, similarly to how we tend to believe that dreamworlds are purely constructed from our own unconscious minds. One thing can be sure about that – I do not perceive the TV set, dog, or TP roll as me, and that form of otherness. Even if that otherness was me, it would not be a unified otherness that includes me in that unification. The unified-other self option was invalid as a possibility to explain the quality of otherness.
There were three other possibilities for otherness that might be valid and thus reasonable: unified-other unself, fragmented-other self, and fragmented-other unself. The unified-other unself was the idea of a God otherness. This God otherness could be the TV set, dog, and TP roll in significant ways. It could also be all other people. Everything that wasn’t perceived as me could be God. It was a valid possibility although nothing existed in my life to confirm it.
The other possibility for otherness was that it was a fragmented-other self. This tricky condition suggested that otherness was me, but not in a truly unified way. Perhaps, I was the TV set, but only through some manipulation of time and space. The TV set wasn’t presently me in my perception. This fragmented-other self possibility was valid but was predicated on an understanding of multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality – the ability to enter into a single moment of time from a variety of moments in the personal timeline.
For example, perhaps, I started my life eons ago as a deified personality and then created the physical universe, Earth, and the human race, for whatever reason. I experienced being the TV set, dog, and TP roll. Then, I memory-wiped myself and rebirthed as a mortal human entering the physical universe at a particular point in time, 1981, the year of my inception as a human being on Earth. Later in that experience, I might die and then enter the cosmic where through multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality I will return to moments in my first life and perform as other TV sets, dogs, and TP rolls which had no impression on my memory up to that point. I will be all otherness either through performance in the past before a memory-wipe, or performance in the future when there is no distinct memory of that otherness, and I can genuinely freely perform as that otherness.
This albeit bizarre possibility on otherness seems alien, however, it is still reasonable and cannot be disproven simply because I can’t relate to it the same way I can to the idea that God is all otherness. The final possibility is that otherness is fragmented-other unself. This option is intuitive because it implies that other people are just like me, but also genuinely ‘other’. I notice other humans and they appear as thinking things, and some have brown hair, and some have blue eyes – they are like me, but not me. Perhaps, all otherness has character and personality although I cannot perceive it. Perhaps, in some other significant way, the TV set or TP roll have character. It cannot be disproven from my mortal first life as a human on Earth.
Therefore, there are three possibilities for otherness which are valid and thus reasonable: otherness can be distinct personalities such as other people in the world, it can be a creator force such as God, and it can be myself from some other time period and circumstances as it relates to action taken through multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality. None of the options can be disproven necessarily, and so I decided to be rational within the Cartesian methodology and I excluded none of the possibilities which could not be disproven. I concluded that otherness was likely a mix of all three possibilities. Therefore, otherness was people like me and maybe that meant that other humans were just like me and living their mortal first lives. Also, otherness was some creator force, but not necessarily an omnipotent old-man-with-white-beard-father-proxy figure. Finally, otherness was me either past or future. I would continue with my belief system understanding otherness in this way.
Worth noting, is that the multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality concept is of import when theorizing how space and time are organized fundamentally. The multicursal aspect refers to time and space featuring multiple actors forming the events and happenings in time and space (i.e. many timelines). The recursive aspect refers to those multiple actors being able to interact with other actors in time and space (i.e. interconnected timelines).
Imagine time as a blank sheet with an indefinite number of holes punched through it. Now, a personality is a single thread (subjective timeline) that passes through those holes of the sheet (objective spacetime) many times with each pass representing a significant moment for that person in time and space. An individual thinking-thing while existing and living creates a crochet of stitching through the sheet of time and space. However, other individuals can feed their thread through the same holes within their own unique pattern of experience. Technically, the visual I have conjured through the analogy produces a sense of a tangled mess, yet it is an interconnected web putting individuals in touch with each other and themselves throughout time and space. The subjective timeline of individuals is linear, however, objective spacetime is not.
Reification
My first meditation on the road to recovery after Algonquin Park was about answering the question, “why something”, instead of nothing at all? Why did I even exist to then be burdened with a sense of duty to answer big questions about life? My conclusion from that first meditation was that good personalities dominated evil personalities, but that the existence of both provided the possibility of novel and bunk happenings such that the creative-destructive matrix had the possibility for balance, and thus a state of peace and rest.
This meditation required that I walk away with a strong belief in a philosophical understanding about creative and destructive forces in life. But is it reasonable to believe in anything strongly if you cannot confirm or prove that the particular belief is valid or important? This musing provoked another meditation. The second meditation regarded belief and it asked the question, “to believe, or not to believe?”
For this second meditation on belief, I referred to Pascal’s Wager, almost entirely. There was no risk in believing strongly, and there was potential payoff, whereas there was nothing to be gained from not believing strongly, but there was a risk of eternal shame (or despair, for Pascal). For me, atheism was simply an exotic form of traditional faith, and the atheist affirmation that there was nothing of significance cosmically to believe in, was also a belief fundamentally based in speculation and uncertainty. Essentially, the “non-belief” of atheism was no different than the belief of religion, and both were speculative and without certainty.
For me to believe in cosmic interference in my life would answer many questions that non-belief never could. More importantly, belief in cosmic interference could answer my most pertinent questions regarding my transformation to introspection. I had nothing to lose in believing in a cosmic paradigm because if it turned out to be right then I would have eternal pride, and if I was wrong then there was no more me existing to face the shame of misguided belief. Whereas, to not believe gained nothing if indeed there was no cosmic purpose – I’d be dead with no possibility for reflection on my decidedly wise choice. Whereas, if I turned out to be wrong when choosing to not believe then I would have an eternity of shame. Worse than that, not believing despite cosmic purpose being real, then potentially excluded me from participation in existence after my mortal first life. Essentially, my lack of faith would disqualify me from realizing a greater purpose in existing, and this was justifiable by a higher authority because I had merely reaped what I had sown in choosing disbelief. Major religions are all predicated on similar reasoning featured in Pascal’s Wager.
Religion and atheism are collectivist-based ideologies where what to believe is proscribed. However, I had an opportunity to develop my personal faith and Moral Paradigm. This moral paradigm would be designed to answer the questions which religion, atheism, and science could not – what happened that night with Mike and Dan, and what was my transformation to introspective consciousness all about?
There were two other meditations which were important for my life at that time when I was rebuilding it after Algonquin Park. The third meditation pertained to understanding the quality of Otherness (what is other?), and the fourth meditation regarded the nature of Otherness (is other benevolent or malicious?).
The third meditation concerned the quality of otherness and asked, “what is other?” Rene Descartes’s rational approach to philosophy was based in a method whereby one would acknowledge all the reasonable possibilities for a phenomenon and not exclude any possibility based on prejudice alone. Moving forward with an answer must account for all explanations which were reasonably possible. For example, I am in San Francisco and at a pool hall. I turn to notice that a ball is rolling across the felt of the billiard table. What caused the movement? The rational Cartesian answer would factor in all possibilities that are reasonable, for example, someone just hit the ball with their cue stick, or there was a small earthquake which I didn’t happen to notice perhaps already being acclimated to such things as a longtime resident of San Francisco. Descartes would not include the possibility that a leprechaun crawled out of the pocket of the table and moved the ball before disappearing back into the pocket – an unreasonable possibility.
The Cartesian rational method would dictate that I refrain from applying a prejudice that would have me conclude that it was a person that hit the billiard ball and made it move across the table simply because that explanation made the most sense to me in a self-effacing way. This is to say, the Occam’s Razor principle should not be guaranteed at the outset of the observation and analytic process. For the billiard ball problem – why exclude the possible answer being rooted in a small earthquake, simply because of a prejudice based in earthquakes scaring me, or making me nervous? Why exclude the reasonable possibility simply because earthquakes are a less likely answer than the self-effacing Occam’s Razor explanation for a more common cause of billiard ball movement?
The Cartesian rational approach would be to move forward with understanding the situation through both possible explanations and then seeking more facts or evidence to provide a rational means for rejecting one of the two possibilities. Thus, upon further investigation, I should be prepared to observe players at the table, and earthquakes under my feet. That is what it is to be rational-minded.
How the Cartesian rational method applied to my third mediation on the quality of otherness, was related to understanding what otherness could be, and what it could not be. I organized in my thoughts the full range of possibility of other and boiled it down to four options with one being deemed unreasonable. I did not apply a prejudice against the less likely possibilities being true.
I was, Will Strange, a human being, male, in my twenties, a thinking-thing, brown hair, blue eyes, etc. Around me I perceived otherness. The television was not a thinking-thing, the dog barking in the backyard across the road was not in her twenties, the toilet paper roll didn’t have blue eyes. These components of otherness were not me in a self-effacing way.
Otherness could be me, however. Perhaps, my own unconscious mind had put together the entire life experience internally, similar to how dream worlds are constructed. Perhaps, I am all the elements of otherness in my experience, similarly to how we tend to believe that dreamworlds are purely constructed from our own unconscious minds. One thing can be sure about that – I do not perceive the TV set, dog, or TP roll as me, and that form of otherness. Even if that otherness was me, it would not be a unified otherness that includes me in that unification. The unified-other self option was invalid as a possibility to explain the quality of otherness.
There were three other possibilities for otherness that might be valid and thus reasonable: unified-other unself, fragmented-other self, and fragmented-other unself. The unified-other unself was the idea of a God otherness. This God otherness could be the TV set, dog, and TP roll in significant ways. It could also be all other people. Everything that wasn’t perceived as me could be God. It was a valid possibility although nothing existed in my life to confirm it.
The other possibility for otherness was that it was a fragmented-other self. This tricky condition suggested that otherness was me, but not in a truly unified way. Perhaps, I was the TV set, but only through some manipulation of time and space. The TV set wasn’t presently me in my perception. This fragmented-other self possibility was valid but was predicated on an understanding of multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality – the ability to enter into a single moment of time from a variety of moments in the personal timeline.
For example, perhaps, I started my life eons ago as a deified personality and then created the physical universe, Earth, and the human race, for whatever reason. I experienced being the TV set, dog, and TP roll. Then, I memory-wiped myself and rebirthed as a mortal human entering the physical universe at a particular point in time, 1981, the year of my inception as a human being on Earth. Later in that experience, I might die and then enter the cosmic where through multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality I will return to moments in my first life and perform as other TV sets, dogs, and TP rolls which had no impression on my memory up to that point. I will be all otherness either through performance in the past before a memory-wipe, or performance in the future when there is no distinct memory of that otherness, and I can genuinely freely perform as that otherness.
This albeit bizarre possibility on otherness seems alien, however, it is still reasonable and cannot be disproven simply because I can’t relate to it the same way I can to the idea that God is all otherness. The final possibility is that otherness is fragmented-other unself. This option is intuitive because it implies that other people are just like me, but also genuinely ‘other’. I notice other humans and they appear as thinking things, and some have brown hair, and some have blue eyes – they are like me, but not me. Perhaps, all otherness has character and personality although I cannot perceive it. Perhaps, in some other significant way, the TV set or TP roll have character. It cannot be disproven from my mortal first life as a human on Earth.
Therefore, there are three possibilities for otherness which are valid and thus reasonable: otherness can be distinct personalities such as other people in the world, it can be a creator force such as God, and it can be myself from some other time period and circumstances as it relates to action taken through multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality. None of the options can be disproven necessarily, and so I decided to be rational within the Cartesian methodology and I excluded none of the possibilities which could not be disproven. I concluded that otherness was likely a mix of all three possibilities. Therefore, otherness was people like me and maybe that meant that other humans were just like me and living their mortal first lives. Also, otherness was some creator force, but not necessarily an omnipotent old-man-with-white-beard-father-proxy figure. Finally, otherness was me either past or future. I would continue with my belief system understanding otherness in this way.
Worth noting, is that the multicursal-recursive spatiotemporality concept is of import when theorizing how space and time are organized fundamentally. The multicursal aspect refers to time and space featuring multiple actors forming the events and happenings in time and space (i.e. many timelines). The recursive aspect refers to those multiple actors being able to interact with other actors in time and space (i.e. interconnected timelines).
Imagine time as a blank sheet with an indefinite number of holes punched through it. Now, a personality is a single thread (subjective timeline) that passes through those holes of the sheet (objective spacetime) many times with each pass representing a significant moment for that person in time and space. An individual thinking-thing while existing and living creates a crochet of stitching through the sheet of time and space. However, other individuals can feed their thread through the same holes within their own unique pattern of experience. Technically, the visual I have conjured through the analogy produces a sense of a tangled mess, yet it is an interconnected web putting individuals in touch with each other and themselves throughout time and space. The subjective timeline of individuals is linear, however, objective spacetime is not.
CHAPTER 14
Morality
The fourth and final meditation which I developed after Algonquin Park was a second meditation on otherness, this time focused on the nature of otherness. In the third mediation, I concluded that otherness was a complex community of three primary elements: myself, others like me, and some creator force. However, it was unclear if these elements of otherness were benevolent or malicious. Was life out to get me?
Morality had been a major concern throughout my life. I had been a privileged person in my childhood and was fortunate to truly choose good over evil. Many people who are victimized at a young age feel compelled toward wicked thoughts, ideas, and actions because for them turning the tables and becoming a perpetrator is a defense mechanism that promotes a strong sense of survival. Being a victim in life means that you live desperately always. My childhood had not been traumatic.
For me, morality was about a personalized value system of right and wrong. On the other hand, ethics was about a value system that society constructed based around a Social Contract and through a utilitarian mandate. So, it might be ethical to masturbate, but a particular individual might find the act of self-gratification immoral based on a personal value system. My Moral Paradigm was founded in my personal value system, and it accounted for the nature of otherness.
Otherness had a plural quality, and this claim seemed to be a rational and reasonable conclusion based on the third meditation. However, otherness could ultimately be part of a moral paradigm, an immoral paradigm, or an amoral paradigm. The moral paradigm would be where I stated what otherness was and what my life was for, purposefully. For me, the moral paradigm was about ‘Good over Evil’ because that is what I wanted. I wanted my skeleton crew of real family and friends waiting for me in the cosmic. I wanted a cosmic wager whereby I vanquished evil characters to a Hell dimension. I wanted to be given the chance to make Earth a better place to live and do so from a cosmic vantage point after my mortal first life ended. That was all part of the moral paradigm – my paradigm. Even serial-killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, or mass-murderer, Mao Zedong, would be said to have developed a “moral” paradigm when it reflects their personal value system. For them, killing was a moral choice. Whereas, for most of us, killing isn’t a choice at all, and could not feature in our moral paradigm.
However, there was the possibility that the nature of otherness constituted an immoral paradigm. For me, the immoral paradigm was about ‘Evil over Good’, and it was defined as being any ultimately dominant belief system that was not my own. The immoral paradigm would have been atheism and religion if they proved correct. The immoral paradigm was the structured and intentional omission of references to my transformation to introspection and this omission being justifiable. The immoral paradigm was my systemic torture through living alien among my own species also being a cosmic trifle. The immoral paradigm coming to pass was conceived of as wicked types, like the Kerplunckians, not in fact going to Hell but instead getting their way, and most of all, having their way with me.
Finally, for me, the amoral paradigm was about ‘Good versus Evil’, and it involved understanding life as ultimately a haphazard and random happening. Perhaps, the creative-destructive matrix was indeed a true concept and it explained why there was a physical universe, matter, and personality. Yet, an amoral paradigm rendered raw material to a purposeless state, morally. For the amoral paradigm, consequence was reckless and if Good ruled, then fine, or Evil could rule as well, and both situations would be bringing about the possibility for balance in creative and destructive happenings. There was no ultimate judgment, morally. In fact, within the amoral paradigm, it was entirely possible that the overall thrust of existence was indeed that of a ‘Good over Evil’ gambit, however, my life was too small fry to be implicated in those larger schemes, and I would be subject to an overall negligent caretaking by Existence, or whatever other force turned out to be my creator and master.
For this meditation on the nature of otherness I decided to not adhere to Cartesian rationalism when deciding what to believe because to make decisions based on all three paradigms being valid and possible was to also be dishonest to myself. I wanted the Moral Paradigm to be true and so my thoughts, ideas, and actions should reflect that belief and faith. This was the conclusion I had for the fourth meditation.
Through my existential meditations, I had developed a personalized faith that provided the potential to co-exist with status quo ethical values of the human race such that I might successfully rejoin society. Blending in wouldn’t be easy given that I thought too much about the purpose of life, and I was livid when faced with human brutality and acts of injustice. I did not have the habit of turning my cheek when dealing with malevolent and malicious people, which in this world can be quite dangerous to your health.
Morality
The fourth and final meditation which I developed after Algonquin Park was a second meditation on otherness, this time focused on the nature of otherness. In the third mediation, I concluded that otherness was a complex community of three primary elements: myself, others like me, and some creator force. However, it was unclear if these elements of otherness were benevolent or malicious. Was life out to get me?
Morality had been a major concern throughout my life. I had been a privileged person in my childhood and was fortunate to truly choose good over evil. Many people who are victimized at a young age feel compelled toward wicked thoughts, ideas, and actions because for them turning the tables and becoming a perpetrator is a defense mechanism that promotes a strong sense of survival. Being a victim in life means that you live desperately always. My childhood had not been traumatic.
For me, morality was about a personalized value system of right and wrong. On the other hand, ethics was about a value system that society constructed based around a Social Contract and through a utilitarian mandate. So, it might be ethical to masturbate, but a particular individual might find the act of self-gratification immoral based on a personal value system. My Moral Paradigm was founded in my personal value system, and it accounted for the nature of otherness.
Otherness had a plural quality, and this claim seemed to be a rational and reasonable conclusion based on the third meditation. However, otherness could ultimately be part of a moral paradigm, an immoral paradigm, or an amoral paradigm. The moral paradigm would be where I stated what otherness was and what my life was for, purposefully. For me, the moral paradigm was about ‘Good over Evil’ because that is what I wanted. I wanted my skeleton crew of real family and friends waiting for me in the cosmic. I wanted a cosmic wager whereby I vanquished evil characters to a Hell dimension. I wanted to be given the chance to make Earth a better place to live and do so from a cosmic vantage point after my mortal first life ended. That was all part of the moral paradigm – my paradigm. Even serial-killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, or mass-murderer, Mao Zedong, would be said to have developed a “moral” paradigm when it reflects their personal value system. For them, killing was a moral choice. Whereas, for most of us, killing isn’t a choice at all, and could not feature in our moral paradigm.
However, there was the possibility that the nature of otherness constituted an immoral paradigm. For me, the immoral paradigm was about ‘Evil over Good’, and it was defined as being any ultimately dominant belief system that was not my own. The immoral paradigm would have been atheism and religion if they proved correct. The immoral paradigm was the structured and intentional omission of references to my transformation to introspection and this omission being justifiable. The immoral paradigm was my systemic torture through living alien among my own species also being a cosmic trifle. The immoral paradigm coming to pass was conceived of as wicked types, like the Kerplunckians, not in fact going to Hell but instead getting their way, and most of all, having their way with me.
Finally, for me, the amoral paradigm was about ‘Good versus Evil’, and it involved understanding life as ultimately a haphazard and random happening. Perhaps, the creative-destructive matrix was indeed a true concept and it explained why there was a physical universe, matter, and personality. Yet, an amoral paradigm rendered raw material to a purposeless state, morally. For the amoral paradigm, consequence was reckless and if Good ruled, then fine, or Evil could rule as well, and both situations would be bringing about the possibility for balance in creative and destructive happenings. There was no ultimate judgment, morally. In fact, within the amoral paradigm, it was entirely possible that the overall thrust of existence was indeed that of a ‘Good over Evil’ gambit, however, my life was too small fry to be implicated in those larger schemes, and I would be subject to an overall negligent caretaking by Existence, or whatever other force turned out to be my creator and master.
For this meditation on the nature of otherness I decided to not adhere to Cartesian rationalism when deciding what to believe because to make decisions based on all three paradigms being valid and possible was to also be dishonest to myself. I wanted the Moral Paradigm to be true and so my thoughts, ideas, and actions should reflect that belief and faith. This was the conclusion I had for the fourth meditation.
Through my existential meditations, I had developed a personalized faith that provided the potential to co-exist with status quo ethical values of the human race such that I might successfully rejoin society. Blending in wouldn’t be easy given that I thought too much about the purpose of life, and I was livid when faced with human brutality and acts of injustice. I did not have the habit of turning my cheek when dealing with malevolent and malicious people, which in this world can be quite dangerous to your health.