Archive Home Page *
"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens"
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
*
Brain Salad Surgery
I'm going to talk a little about my background and experiences. Except for what was required to gain "street credibility" in the forums that I posted in, I gave out very little personal information about myself, though there didn't seem to be any limit to the emotional content of my posts and emails. Rule of thumb was, does disclosure serve a purpose. I'm going to keep most of my personal narrative private. Still (as always) I'm writing this brief synopsis for a reason...
This whole thing started in 1987, when I was age 30, with the unexpected role that I played in helping a friend die of AIDS. That was when I started to experience synchronicities. Prior to then I had never had a religious or mystical experience in my entire life. By 1989 I quit my job and did some traveling, first in an old VW bus and then in Asia. It was during that travel that my understanding of what was happening to me started to scale, when I first started linking personal emotions and experiences to larger symbols.
Came back from overseas and uncorked child abuse memories. Was making good progress wretching thru that, until Labor Day of 1990 when the gloves came off and I went off an emotional cliff. That's when the voices started. Three years, and many many thousands of miles later , I was living with my parents and working again. From 1994 to 1997, the period of most of this online discussion, I was living on my own again and working for a large defense contractor. By 1998 I was back in private industry. Though my emotional volatility had long since subsided, it wasn't until late 2003 that I was finally able to make the "connections" necessary to begin to close out this difficult chapter in my life.
I was was really lucky to have a family that stood by me.
To my knowledge I never had a visual hallucination. Lots of voices, sometimes overt, usually at the edge of my consciousness. At one point the voices were horrific and punishing. It was as if I had stumbled into a sadist's lair. Torture, humiliation, shame, fear, blame, imminent rape, imminent death, more fear, more blame, and more imminent death. A total assault on my human personality. The reincarnation of who? Suicide was not allowed. This went on for three months. I have clear memories. No one touched me, yet I acted it out and felt it all.
One explanation for what was happening to me was that I was simply reliving memories from an earlier abuse. I have no doubt that this was partially true. I clearly had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (one of a number of diagnosis I earned). But there was more going on than feelings of personal trauma. Things were continuing to scale.
"...for when the mythological complex came crashing thru my conscious mind and played out synchronistically it was with such fury and intensity that I had no option but to graft those things upon my own identity." or "Impeccible logic cascaded hate and contradictions thru me at computer speeds."
While both of those statements are true, neither are totally representative of my experience. The first statement suggests a knowledge of classical mythology, and visual record, that I simply do not have. It is however a good metaphor of both the methodic progression, and the shear range, of the emotions that were invoked in me. The second statement is not a metaphor. I had very specific experiences with it. Madness however isn't always a frenzy. Perhaps saying glorious sounding things like that are easier to say than "I'm insane." Or maybe perhaps instead it's that tired old model of "coping, defending, fragmenting" that is missing a few things. Perhaps when the sledgehammer finally fell, I had already retreated into a different place. I guess it all depends on what you believe.
For now I'm going to skip talking about all the conspircy theories that I was dealing with as they delve too far into my personal narrative. Suffice to say I spent the better part of several years chasing them down before settling down and engaging in this conversation.
It would also be easy to conclude from my posts, that my mental condition gave me a kind of Messiah complex (otherwise known as delusions of grandeur), though it doesn't show up at all in my normal human interactions. I suspect it is a common experience when venturing really deep into what Jung termed the human collective unconsciousness (otherwise known as going crazy).
What's the difference between a person in a trance state and speaking gibberish on the street, and that same person in a trance state and speaking gibberish in a holy roller church?
Context.
Though I rarely had trance states and never spoke in tongues, I always had a context. At first very personal, later scaled into the beliefs and experiences that are presented on this web site.
Difficult boundary issues. Visceral reactions to remote events. Later visceral reactions to collective energies experienced online. Unusual range of emotions and identifications. Not surprisingly then, an unusual range of coping mechanisms. Vented emotions for years, though it would have been a rare person to have ever seen it. Had a little bit of that left lobe right lobe thing going on. Outside of strong emotional responses, the only other physical symptom of note was epileptic tremors. The tremors were very specifically focused, occured in very specific circumstances while interacting with other people, and did not bring about any kind to altered state or transcendent vision in me. That's all I'm going to say about that as well...
Several years into this I was compelled to discard most of my journals, letters, childhood memoriabilia, and photographs. It wasn't like I was filled with some kind of self loathing rage when I threw away all the mementoes of my past. It wasn't something I wanted to do. It was just something that I had to do.
Was told (voices) I would have to go thru everything twice. First time was really painful. Second time, often years later, more symbolic and not quite as emotionally devastating (certainly no fear by then). Was told (voices again) what specific event would need to occur before I would be free. I know the standard religious answer, mine had a twist, as so many of these things do...
Pretty good grab bag of psychotic delusions don't you think :)
That's not the way I see it though. What I see is a role that I played, in most respects no different than the varied roles that each of us play. Well OK maybe it was just a little bit stranger than most. What started out as an attempt to uncover the roots of an obscure form of slavery, as revealed to me by a dying friend, somehow scaled well beyond my own life.
"Just because we're gay doesn't mean that there aren't just as many of us who would rather die than betray a sacred trust."
OK, enough of that. I'm living a fairly normal if somewhat boring life now. Rarely engaged, except peripherally, in the role I once played. And just like everyone else I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do next and wondering, just like everyone else, if and when I'm ever going to get laid again :)
Sorry I couldn't resist.
Here's a little quiz that someone gave me on eWorld.
Subj: Questions > Answers. 95-09-05 15:56:23 PDT
From: Joe Uhrig
I'll give these a try, but they are my beliefs that ultimately carry no more weight than anyone else's beliefs. I'd much rather see religions find the courage to bring to life the the true potential of their own belief systems and I personally can't and won't be a part of that process. The assumed superiority of one set of beliefs as the basis for conquest or conversion is insane. The seed is in all religions and all peoples.
>>Aren't you a sinner ?<<
I don't believe in sin any more than I believe in enemies.
>>Do you believe in reletavistic morals ?<<
I'd rather see an infrastructure change that made morals irrelevant. Direct compassion is the ultimate form of personal responsibility. It facilitates positive cycles of existence instead of negative cycles of existence. If you had someone else's feelings pumped into you when you hurt them, I think it would negate the need to look up right and wrong from a book. Is this possible? My experience is yes. It is related to the power of Christ within you or from the Buddhist perspective it is being in touch with the bodisavta of infinite compassion.
>>Did you make yourself in your mothers womb ?<<
Sorry I'm not one one of those who has memories of my time in the womb. All I know is that I was brought into this world in Iowa and that I was conceived at West Point.
>>Why are you here ?<<
Everyone's got their own opinion. I believe it's about what I learned when I was doing volunteer work at the Sacramento AIDS Foundation. We're here to participate in the resolution of suffering. We're here to share the pain. God's pain.
>>Do you have all the answers ?<<
Nope, but I do know how to ask questions. "The limiting of questions is the beginning of tyranny, the asking of questions is the beginning of freedom". I don't believe in monolithic solutions. The solutions to the problems of mankind are as diverse as every person on this planet.
>>Why do parents punish their children when the do not obey ?<<
Some do it out of their own unresolved inner trauma. There is a big difference between installing discipline and structure and punishing. A big difference between a spanking and a beating. But since I don't have kids I go by the credos "If you don't play the game, then you shouldn't be making the rules". I did unfortunately have the experience of watching a mother repeatedly slap her baby and I didn't do anything about it.
>>Fear and punishment are not doctrines.<<
The evidence is pretty compelling that they are. The way I see it in the terms of Christianity, they are the power of the anti-Christ playing thru the foundation of your religious beliefs. They tarnish the message of Christ's love and twist it into fear and self loathing. Repent they scream over and over again. Repent or burn.
>>Where do our morals come from ?<<
Forgetting of course the arbitrary application of ancient customs,... Perhaps it is an extension of the better half of God. Perhaps the central question to be answered is the one Schopenhauer postulated it in his essay "On the Foundation of Morality", "How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own or my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that it moves me into action?"
>>I would consider your message Humanistic no heritical.<<
I've haven't ever stopped to consider a label for the diverse ideas I expressed. Richard Bach in opening pages of "The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" pretty well summed up my feeling on the packaging of beliefs and the delimas of those whose fate puts them on the edge of being foisted up on that cross. Sometimes very ordinary people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. But then that pretty much applies to all of us.