Example: Alchemy

An example of using anxiety in discernment is how I felt when I was reading Jung's writings on alchemy.
Although I'm very interested in the symbolism of alchemy, the repeated references to the union of the opposites doesn't feel right for me as it reinforces the duality that is at the heart of Christianity and perhaps also at the root of our culture.
I prefer the Zen emphasis on transcending or moving beyond such duality, ceasing to label things 'good' and 'bad', or 'right' and 'wrong', rather, allowing things to be how they are right here and right now.

['"Union of opposites" photo of Laura Hollick with Mark Wedderburn wearing Laura Hollick's headpieces', downloaded 13th May 2010, from:
http://www.soulartstudio.com/wordpress/?tag=beauty].

Trust your Feelings!

I've realised in the last few days that this anxiety I've been whingeing about is actually something of a gift.

I've learnt a lot from it in the time since I started writing this blog.

I was told some time about the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, a method of discernment in which anxiety is used as an indicator that something is not right or true for the person doing the work. I've come to see my own anxiety in a similar light. I think it is intuition / wisdom / the higher self / God guiding me away from ideas or practices which are not healthy for me, or are not 'my truth,' to risk sounding like a flake!!

Much of the time I think the anxiety acts to prevent me from 'going over the top,' from getting too fundamental or extreme or overly zealous. But then I think my natural 'zeal' and spiritual hunger is a gift as well. It's as though I need both, working in tandem, balancing one another out. Too much spiritual zeal and I get anxious; too little and I lose touch with my spirituality altogether and experience a deadened, empty feeling - which is another indication given to me by my feelings and intuition.

'Trust your feelings, Luke!'

'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?'

When I was a teenager, my family moved overseas. At the time we moved, I was a hopeless romantic. I had a faith (I was brought up in the church) but it wasn't one I had to cling to, it just came naturally to me. I was also used to interacting with the Australian natural environment - I had a kind of romantic relationship to it. Just before we left, I went to the local market and bought an oil burner and some orange oil to burn in it. I would turn off the lights or close the curtains, and light the tealight candle, and warm light in the shapes of moons and stars would pattern my bedroom walls. There was magic in that dim, warm light and in the warm scent of orange oil. In the move overseas, my bottle of orange oil leaked, and perhaps the burner broke, because when we arrived in our new country, I bought both a new burner and some peppermint oil. The magic had somehow been left in Australia though. I had bought the peppermint oil because it was supposed to be calming, so perhaps I was already experiencing some anxiety about starting over in this new, strange land. I would lie on my bed, smelling the cold peppermint, and willing myself to feel that old magic, but my sense of panic would just escalate. I couldn't understand how the difference between orange and peppermint, or a mere geographical shift, could so alter my once magical experience.

It was in this strange land that I had my conversion experience (despite already being a person of faith) and became a bit of a fundo. I had come across the idea that one has to make one's own decision regarding faith, and be 'born again'. I had lost that natural, easy, magical faith I had as a child and younger teenager forever. And the landscape (or skyscape) in this new place troubled me. The sky was almost always grey, and even when it was blue, it had a kind of vacant look. By comparison, I think the Australian sky seems always possessed by something or someone, utterly full to the brim with a deep blue, or with sunshine, or with cloud or rain. I always knew God was 'in' the Australian environment. I remember asking a friend in the 'strange land' whether, given that God was everywhere, and God was therefore in the sky, and God loved me, you could actually say that the sky loved me. She looked at me like I was a lunatic! (and perhaps I was getting unwell. My last doctor believed that during this period I was experiencing the prodrome to my illness). To put it simply, I felt that God was absent. Perhaps my new fundamentalist faith was an attempt on my part to grasp and cling ever more desperately to the God who had gone so thoroughly missing from the places I usually found Her.

My delusions have always been about parallel worlds, about there being one 'good' or 'normal' world and one sinister world. Once I even had the delusion that in one world Christ had been born and died and in the other world, He had not. There is an undeniable logic to these delusions.

Before coming to this realisation, that God seemed absent in the parallel world where the Australian sense of 'possession' was absent, where there was only a small, vacant sky, I didn't really understand the psalm the title to this post is taken from (Psalm 137:4). Of course God is everywhere, in every land, however unfamiliar, I thought. On reflection now, I know exactly what the verse means. The physical is imbued with the sacred. When you lose the natural environment that your God has permeated, to some extent you lose (or lose sight of) your God.

Christmas Day

What does Christmas mean to me?
This year I have been thinking a little bit about the concept of incarnation, of the sacred and the physical being or becoming one entity.
Often when I'm unwell my delusions have to do with elements of nature providing me with signs or symbols that things are amiss, and at other times the physical (non-psychotic) world seems little more than an overlay, something superimposed over the deeper reality that is taking place, in the psychotic world.
Over the last few weeks, though, interaction with nature has come to represent something far more healthy and life-giving for me. In fact, my nature walks have been almost the only source of non-psychotic spirituality I've been able to find.

I suppose my use of the phrase "non-psychotic spirituality" needs further explanation.
The reason I have set up this blog is that recently my psychiatrist and I were talking about the notion that when you recover from a psychotic illness (as I have, although I'm still on medication), there are actually things you lose, along with gaining better quality of life, the ability to support yourself financially, in my case, the ability to sustain a long-term relationship.
So, having gained so much, what is it that I feel I have lost? I think that while it is frightening and debilitating, psychosis can lend one a sense of deep mystery, of connection with the "essence of things", even if that perceived essence may be sinister or scarey. In short, I believe there is a spirituality of psychosis (and of course I didn't just concoct this, much has already been written on the topic - some of which I hope to talk about later). My doctor (who will henceforth be known as Dr. I) suggested that people who have suffered a psychotic illness have almost a choice as to whether or not to be psychotic, that for some patients he has treated it has almost been a matter of willing the psychosis to come on, or willing it to go away (this resonates with me to a certain extent). He suggested that if one is to choose not to be psychotic, perhaps one has to find a way to be compensated for what is lost in becoming well. In my case, the loss of meaning that it represents dictates that I need to find a way to inject more meaning into everyday (non-psychotic) life.

Dr. I thinks I need to go back to church.

Well, there is another 42 posts at least just in the idea of going back to church. It's more complicated than that, Dr.I! But the idea of this blog is to go on a journey (cliche, cliche, cliche....) and to find out, through thinking and experimenting and experiencing, whether it is in fact possible for me to be "compensated". Whether I can shake off the feeling of emptiness and hollowness that has characterised my life as a post-psychotic person and find well-being.

Broad issues I want to look at also include: the idea of taking responsibility for one's illness (what do I do if everyday life doesn't get more meaningful??), methods of treatment, psychosis as illness versus a special kind of sensitivity, the nature of truth (just a piddling little matter, that), the link between psychosis, spirituality and creativity, and... lots more.

It's important to acknowledge that I know next to nothing about psychosis from a clinician's point of view, so this will be based on the experience of psychosis and spirituality, and the practice of art.

Hopefully I can avoid becoming too self-indulgent and confessional, and invite a couple of people along on the journey (there it is again) with me.

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy Incarnation Day...

Amber.