Moderator: MagsJ
pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:An alarmingly accurate microcosm of the Western Psyche ... intentional or otherwise.
As implied ... the aberrations within the collective psyche may have advanced beyond the point they can be safely arrested and repaired.
Reminds me of an experience involving my son many years ago. At the time the medical community told me his brain had been rewired and bringing his mind back to normalcy involves considerable risk. As it turned out they were right.
Meno_ wrote:pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:An alarmingly accurate microcosm of the Western Psyche ... intentional or otherwise.
As implied ... the aberrations within the collective psyche may have advanced beyond the point they can be safely arrested and repaired.
Reminds me of an experience involving my son many years ago. At the time the medical community told me his brain had been rewired and bringing his mind back to normalcy involves considerable risk. As it turned out they were right.
Without pressing on boundaries would/could You be more detailed about how this happened to him and how it was resolved or left unresolved? If not I do understand.
Meno_ wrote:Ok thanks. Then I'm all wet. I grew up in Minnesota. Used to it. Bit its a good start.
You set the tone, the structure and the goal. In for it, I am keenly interested, it rains, I don't need umbrellas, its like fun , like singing in the rain.
Meno_ wrote:Contagion has a dark side, and it overwhelms its positive connotation. I still have hope against a duplicitous anomaly, that You are singularly focused on the bright side!
... and that the cracked mind of the schizophrenic may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people whose minds are closed. Ezekiel, in Jaspers's opinion, was a schizophrenic
Since I have not adopted Your format, style , or objectives , as I promised I would, could You feed back Your opinion , whether free associative of traditional format should be used, further on, if, we get there?
It happened in February 2000.
I woke up one morning and for some reason figured I should try to get help ... this was one of those occasions where I went to seek help for my mis-fitness.I was living in Guelph at the time and Guelph is home to the Homewood Health Centre ... One of the largest mental health and addiction facilities in the country offering programs that are specialized, unique, and national in scope.
Background data:I was living with my son ... 19 years old ... in a small house in Guelph ... my son had some very difficult experiences a few months earlier.
I had been unemployed for about 3 months prior to my visit to the Homewood
a short but intense relationship had terminated weeks before.
I had recently quit smoking and was taking zyban to help with the withdrawl symptons.
I decided to drop in and ask for help. A few hours later I was "signed in" ... by "signed in" I mean if I left the place I would be arrested and brought back. The doctor who made the diagnosis obviously figured I was a threat to myself or others. A very scary moment ... I was headed for the padded cell and the mind altering drugs program!
Soon after I learned of my "signed in" status I started to regain my "sanity" ... maybe the shock of being in such a perilous situation triggered a return to sanity ... who knows. Around the same time I asked my sister ... at some point her and her husband had come to the Homewood to see what was going on. I asked my sister to go call my lawyer ... not really "my" lawyer ... more on this later.
I asked my sister to call my lawyer because this particular lawyer had a legal document signed by me giving her responsibility for my affairs should I be declared incapable/insane. How did this come about? About 6 months earlier I had made a trip to Israel. Before this particular trip ... incidentally not my first trip to Israel ... I decided I should get a Power of Attorney ... suppose I was thinking it would be helpful in the event I didn't return from Israel ... no idea where this temporary fear/paranoia came from. At the time I had no lawyer ... decided to approach the company's lawyer ... at that time I worked for a small accounting firm in Guelph. While making arrangements for this Power of Attorney the lawyer asked me if I wanted a second legal document ... a document that could be used in the event of mental incapacity to handle my affairs ... insanity I suppose. Seemed weird to me at that particular moment ... but I agreed and appointed her ... the lawyer ... as my representative. Begs the question ... was this lawyer trying to increase her billing ... or was she unconsciously prescient?
Back to the Homewood event ... the doctor came back into the room and I asked him his name. He said my name is Doctor Kennedy. Oh! I replied ... any relation to Diane Kennedy? He replied ... "She's my wife."
Guess who held this legal document ... "in the event of insanity document"? ... Diane Kennedy the doctor's wife. What are the odds eh!
I'm guessing Diane Kennedy called her husband to find out what was going on ... there was some private conversation between the doctor and my sister.
Eventually I was released in my sister's custody with an agreement that I would visit a certain psychiatrist until the doctor was satisfied I was OK.
I started a new job a few days later ... at the time of the Homewood experience I had no job prospects.
The psychiatrist turned out to be a big help ... felt I was interviewing him more than the other way around. I learned ... at least I understood him to say at some point in our discussions ... and I may well have misunderstood him ... that in some cases somewhat experimental drugs are used because they seem to help some people ... yikes! I also learned that this particular psychiatrist who handled some of the most challenging cases believed some types of mental disorders have a spiritual component ... which of course psychiatry can't understand or treat.
My Homewood experience may all correctly be chalked up to a convergence of stressful factors. Who knows eh!
OTH ... if not ... who/what was my tether?Certainly my sister was helpful but she played no part in arranging for the legal documents 6 months earlier.
Four months later I went on my first long walk ... about 1,400 kms.
PS No subsequent visits to psychologists, psychiatrists, priests or anyone. Never felt the need for help again. Maybe I developed a morbid fear of asking for help after the Homewood experience.
pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:Since I have not adopted Your format, style , or objectives , as I promised I would, could You feed back Your opinion , whether free associative of traditional format should be used, further on, if, we get there?
I'm most comfortable with a fluid approach ... no boundaries ... no rules.
Paraphrasing your post ...
Human life embodies a spectrum of color ... black to white and countless shades of gray in between. For me, how does one traverse this spectrum? Is it always via conscious/intentional decisions/actions.
Let me share a personal experience:It happened in February 2000.
I woke up one morning and for some reason figured I should try to get help ... this was one of those occasions where I went to seek help for my mis-fitness.I was living in Guelph at the time and Guelph is home to the Homewood Health Centre ... One of the largest mental health and addiction facilities in the country offering programs that are specialized, unique, and national in scope.
Background data:I was living with my son ... 19 years old ... in a small house in Guelph ... my son had some very difficult experiences a few months earlier.
I had been unemployed for about 3 months prior to my visit to the Homewood
a short but intense relationship had terminated weeks before.
I had recently quit smoking and was taking zyban to help with the withdrawl symptons.
I decided to drop in and ask for help. A few hours later I was "signed in" ... by "signed in" I mean if I left the place I would be arrested and brought back. The doctor who made the diagnosis obviously figured I was a threat to myself or others. A very scary moment ... I was headed for the padded cell and the mind altering drugs program!
Soon after I learned of my "signed in" status I started to regain my "sanity" ... maybe the shock of being in such a perilous situation triggered a return to sanity ... who knows. Around the same time I asked my sister ... at some point her and her husband had come to the Homewood to see what was going on. I asked my sister to go call my lawyer ... not really "my" lawyer ... more on this later.
I asked my sister to call my lawyer because this particular lawyer had a legal document signed by me giving her responsibility for my affairs should I be declared incapable/insane. How did this come about? About 6 months earlier I had made a trip to Israel. Before this particular trip ... incidentally not my first trip to Israel ... I decided I should get a Power of Attorney ... suppose I was thinking it would be helpful in the event I didn't return from Israel ... no idea where this temporary fear/paranoia came from. At the time I had no lawyer ... decided to approach the company's lawyer ... at that time I worked for a small accounting firm in Guelph. While making arrangements for this Power of Attorney the lawyer asked me if I wanted a second legal document ... a document that could be used in the event of mental incapacity to handle my affairs ... insanity I suppose. Seemed weird to me at that particular moment ... but I agreed and appointed her ... the lawyer ... as my representative. Begs the question ... was this lawyer trying to increase her billing ... or was she unconsciously prescient?
Back to the Homewood event ... the doctor came back into the room and I asked him his name. He said my name is Doctor Kennedy. Oh! I replied ... any relation to Diane Kennedy? He replied ... "She's my wife."
Guess who held this legal document ... "in the event of insanity document"? ... Diane Kennedy the doctor's wife. What are the odds eh!
I'm guessing Diane Kennedy called her husband to find out what was going on ... there was some private conversation between the doctor and my sister.
Eventually I was released in my sister's custody with an agreement that I would visit a certain psychiatrist until the doctor was satisfied I was OK.
I started a new job a few days later ... at the time of the Homewood experience I had no job prospects.
The psychiatrist turned out to be a big help ... felt I was interviewing him more than the other way around. I learned ... at least I understood him to say at some point in our discussions ... and I may well have misunderstood him ... that in some cases somewhat experimental drugs are used because they seem to help some people ... yikes! I also learned that this particular psychiatrist who handled some of the most challenging cases believed some types of mental disorders have a spiritual component ... which of course psychiatry can't understand or treat.
My Homewood experience may all correctly be chalked up to a convergence of stressful factors. Who knows eh!
OTH ... if not ... who/what was my tether?Certainly my sister was helpful but she played no part in arranging for the legal documents 6 months earlier.
Four months later I went on my first long walk ... about 1,400 kms.
PS No subsequent visits to psychologists, psychiatrists, priests or anyone. Never felt the need for help again. Maybe I developed a morbid fear of asking for help after the Homewood experience.
pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:Since I have not adopted Your format, style , or objectives , as I promised I would, could You feed back Your opinion , whether free associative of traditional format should be used, further on, if, we get there?
I'm most comfortable with a fluid approach ... no boundaries ... no rules.
Paraphrasing your post ...
Human life embodies a spectrum of color ... black to white and countless shades of gray in between. For me, how does one traverse this spectrum? Is it always via conscious/intentional decisions/actions.
Let me share a personal experience:It happened in February 2000.
I woke up one morning and for some reason figured I should try to get help ... this was one of those occasions where I went to seek help for my mis-fitness.I was living in Guelph at the time and Guelph is home to the Homewood Health Centre ... One of the largest mental health and addiction facilities in the country offering programs that are specialized, unique, and national in scope.
Background data:I was living with my son ... 19 years old ... in a small house in Guelph ... my son had some very difficult experiences a few months earlier.
I had been unemployed for about 3 months prior to my visit to the Homewood
a short but intense relationship had terminated weeks before.
I had recently quit smoking and was taking zyban to help with the withdrawl symptons.
I decided to drop in and ask for help. A few hours later I was "signed in" ... by "signed in" I mean if I left the place I would be arrested and brought back. The doctor who made the diagnosis obviously figured I was a threat to myself or others. A very scary moment ... I was headed for the padded cell and the mind altering drugs program!
Soon after I learned of my "signed in" status I started to regain my "sanity" ... maybe the shock of being in such a perilous situation triggered a return to sanity ... who knows. Around the same time I asked my sister ... at some point her and her husband had come to the Homewood to see what was going on. I asked my sister to go call my lawyer ... not really "my" lawyer ... more on this later.
I asked my sister to call my lawyer because this particular lawyer had a legal document signed by me giving her responsibility for my affairs should I be declared incapable/insane. How did this come about? About 6 months earlier I had made a trip to Israel. Before this particular trip ... incidentally not my first trip to Israel ... I decided I should get a Power of Attorney ... suppose I was thinking it would be helpful in the event I didn't return from Israel ... no idea where this temporary fear/paranoia came from. At the time I had no lawyer ... decided to approach the company's lawyer ... at that time I worked for a small accounting firm in Guelph. While making arrangements for this Power of Attorney the lawyer asked me if I wanted a second legal document ... a document that could be used in the event of mental incapacity to handle my affairs ... insanity I suppose. Seemed weird to me at that particular moment ... but I agreed and appointed her ... the lawyer ... as my representative. Begs the question ... was this lawyer trying to increase her billing ... or was she unconsciously prescient?
Back to the Homewood event ... the doctor came back into the room and I asked him his name. He said my name is Doctor Kennedy. Oh! I replied ... any relation to Diane Kennedy? He replied ... "She's my wife."
Guess who held this legal document ... "in the event of insanity document"? ... Diane Kennedy the doctor's wife. What are the odds eh!
I'm guessing Diane Kennedy called her husband to find out what was going on ... there was some private conversation between the doctor and my sister.
Eventually I was released in my sister's custody with an agreement that I would visit a certain psychiatrist until the doctor was satisfied I was OK.
I started a new job a few days later ... at the time of the Homewood experience I had no job prospects.
The psychiatrist turned out to be a big help ... felt I was interviewing him more than the other way around. I learned ... at least I understood him to say at some point in our discussions ... and I may well have misunderstood him ... that in some cases somewhat experimental drugs are used because they seem to help some people ... yikes! I also learned that this particular psychiatrist who handled some of the most challenging cases believed some types of mental disorders have a spiritual component ... which of course psychiatry can't understand or treat.
My Homewood experience may all correctly be chalked up to a convergence of stressful factors. Who knows eh!
OTH ... if not ... who/what was my tether?Certainly my sister was helpful but she played no part in arranging for the legal documents 6 months earlier.
Four months later I went on my first long walk ... about 1,400 kms.
PS No subsequent visits to psychologists, psychiatrists, priests or anyone. Never felt the need for help again. Maybe I developed a morbid fear of asking for help after the Homewood experience.
Your experience sounds like a desperate attempt to break free of that constraint, of compression, we all feel at times, relatively speaking.
seems to me that I started out on this 'rope bridge' 10 years ago ... many times since I have stopped ... looked back ... maybe even went back several times ... but for some strange reason I must keep going forward ... 'ultreya'.
When you get out near the middle of the 'rope bridge' and it starts to sway back and forth and the wind picks up and you stare at the bottom less black pit of a chasm beneath you ... it's scary and all you want to do is get on your hands and knees for more security and crawl back ... seems even when you do this ... start to crawl back and feel a bit more secure about the world you know vs. the world you know nothing about.
So I am crawling back to safe ground ... the city of man ... after some time ...never the same lapse of time ... something happens inside and I abruptly get back on my feet and start making my way across the bridge again. Somehow being able to handle the fear and the loneliness ... yup! This 'bridge' is a single lane rope bridge ... one way traffic only!
I remember sharing with several people I meet and spend a little time with who seem interested in climbing onto the rope bridge and having a 'go' at crossing the chasm. In all cases they either went back or 'froze' still at some point.
Meno_ wrote:But back to Your anecdote:
Under duressit seems You probably lost connective ties as to who talked to whom, and seeing it only in its final destination, the doctors wife, you started to think magically, imputing some serious underhanded attempt to commit you and subject you to who knows what kind of medical experiment: in sum, lack of facts about a series of events made you prone to paranoiac thoughts , because you only saw althe beginning and end of the route the document took. Might as well thought that its arrival heralded in a new and mysterious age, for which you were responsible. But that would have been too much even for Your very suspicious state of mind.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
~ Steve Jobs
pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:Meno_ wrote:But back to Your anecdote:
Under duressit seems You probably lost connective ties as to who talked to whom, and seeing it only in its final destination, the doctors wife, you started to think magically, imputing some serious underhanded attempt to commit you and subject you to who knows what kind of medical experiment: in sum, lack of facts about a series of events made you prone to paranoiac thoughts , because you only saw althe beginning and end of the route the document took. Might as well thought that its arrival heralded in a new and mysterious age, for which you were responsible. But that would have been too much even for Your very suspicious state of mind.
A valid perspective.
Steve Job provided an alternative perspective in his 2005 speech:“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
~ Steve Jobs
An exciting post ... feels like we're moving forward ... maybe just an illusion.
It happened during my first Camino in June 2000 ... my second day of walking in Spain … after walking a week or so in France.. It's important to remember that I have no itinerary and almost no information about the Camino Santiago. I met a man in Jaca ... where I arrived on my first day in Spain. He was like an 'angel' ... he shared his meal and some wine with me ... he left me the Spanish word 'ultreya' ... he helped me find some medicine for my blisters ... and finally he showed me a pamphlet in Spanish that would lead me to where I would stay the next night.
His name was Brother Joe of Holy Cross Family Ministries http:/www.hcfm.org"... at the time he was living in Los Angeles and he was vacationing in Spain ... he would move to a town near Boston a few years later. First a few words about the word "Ultreya" and it's connection to Brother Joe. The word 'Ultreya' has become one of my mantras ... I have three ...
1) Ultreya ... keep going
2) Morning has Broken ... a new day has dawned and the City of God is just around the corner.
3) Seek comfort in nothingness
My 'angel' in Jaca introduced the word 'Ultreya' to me ... I would see the same word painted on stones ... written on bulletin boards at Refugios etc all along the Camino Santiago. Several times I asked some Spanish people who spoke English what the word meant. I had the feeling this word was important. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I would learn the meaning of the word ... in ... near Boston. I was visiting Brother Joe and one of his fellow Brothers explained to me that it basically means ... "keep going ... don't give up". Oh ... how appropriate eh!! At the same time Psalm 139 would be firmly planted in my memory ... the same Brother who explained the meaning of ultreya sang his version of the Psalm at a prayer meeting. Psalm 139 deals with the notion of predestination. All of this thanks to Brother Joe. Hmmm!
pilgrim-seeker_tom wrote:I'm listening ... waiting for your response to my second last post ... starts with the sentence ...An exciting post ... feels like we're moving forward ... maybe just an illusion.
Now I may be crazy, but I am not insane, and there is a distinction and I can't really say wether I can as of yet decide to get naked or stay dressed for I wpuos not want to go from crazy to truly crazy or insane
”Woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who can stand against you?”
St Augustine 354-430
"So what will happen when we I, get to a point where a decision has to be made in this regard?"
We are talking boundaries here and You Yourself drew around when pushed to the inquiry about Your son.
"we are game to such purveyors of objectivity who expressly state that its not good form to shed too much biography , especially the bad kind, for it invariably create a sense of self victimization for any and all to gawk and chatter about."
"You are obviously implying organization and spelling difficulties on my part, but got to go its almost 11 pm and my wife is demanding attention"
By for now. You are probably Eastern Standard Time and most likely shut eye
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