The Way of the Heart..... footsteps: Schizophrenia

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Schizophrenia

It is interesting to consider the mind. Especially when you have been wacko. Trying to describe my experience with a mental illness is hedged in trying to find the right words. Not only that, we get into trying to convey in terms that speak to a common experience- which raise questions about how common is our experience. Nevertheless we press forward. First we erase the blackboard of all terms like schizophrenia. Then we throw out ideas that it is so complicated that only some big brained scholar could understand it. When I was enacting the mental illness I felt like I was coherent and understanding everything. My mind was hooking together information and coming to conclusions that were crazy- very rapidly. When I first experienced it I thought that I was aware of the world being affected by the spiritual world- good forces against evil ones. The subject is pretty much universal. Having those thoughts is not what made me crazy. My insanity was based on the fact that I felt that I was some major player in this event- that I was important. Plus the way my mind was computing. Here is an example. I used to get "messages" from the radio. One time I was turning the tuning knob back and forth and it stopped on an announcer's voice saying "he got us now" - I actually thought that he was referring to me. It felt that there was something very important that needed to be resolved and my mind was processing and 'solving'. Thing is that there was nothing like figuring out what is wrong with a car, or, how do I find a recipe for tacos, or, how do I get the affections of an attractive lass. One time I heard a person's shoe drag as they walked and immediately felt that this was a message dealing with me.
I often speculate as to how I came to be schizophrenic. The first episode happened in Alaska during the fall of 1974. I came really close to being killed while fishing that summer, real close. I had gone overboard with my leg wrapped up in the heavy part of the net. I pulled as hard as I could as I was in the water being pulled down- it wouldn't let go. It is hard to convey the absolute terror that I felt. This was death- here, now. I lost consciousness, it felt as if a bolt of lightnening went up my spine. Somehow I got free. This was less than a month before the psychotic episode. One way to explain it in theory is from the Scientology perspective. Traumatic experience is recorded and filed away in the mind. As beings who have existed for a very long time we have been structured, conditioned into the belief that we have one life with the fear of dying. This conditioning has happened via trauma. If you have a severe injury, like a broken arm, your body goes into shock so you can exist without the pain. This occurs in a similar fashion in the mind. It's hard to believe that we have lived benign lives, what with all the war and violence. Traumatic lives and deaths are walled off, the mind's protective mechanism. These walled off memories can be restimulated when something happens that is similar to them. Theory has it that a great deal happens in the mind and body that we are not aware of. This happens without discriminative intelligence. Below awareness there is only the threat of death- many deaths, the force of nightmare deaths get put into action, surfacing into our feeling, affecting our thought processes. If the mind's protective mechanisms don't go into action we can go crazy- and I did.

Scientology cured me of schizophrenia. It did this in auditing. I was led to see and be relieved of the trauma of some past deaths. I know that schizophrenia will never happen to me again.

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The Main Element: A Devotees Story

A Devotees Story

The year was 1997. I was in bed contemplating suffering. I had been doing this quite regularly. I was not trying to get out of suffering, though there was quite a bit of it in my life. I only wanted to understand it. I had the thought that if I was a Christian I was being punished for all of my sins. "Hmmm, that's pretty ridiculous." Then a form appeared in my mind viewed by my mind’s eye. It was in the shape of an “S”. It had qualities that appeared to be like smoke and electricity. The mind-form spoke in very clearly heard words. “It isn’t about you, it’s about me.” I shake my head as I recall my response to this. Silently I said “and who are you?” said in the emotion of resentment and offense- like “and who the hell are you?” As if I was challenged. The mind-form disappeared. I knew it was Adi Da. Some time later, I wanted to know about the philosophy that Adi Da taught. I asked a couple of devotees and never got an understandable explanation. One devotee handed me a couple of books. He told me that it was all there in Chapter One of The Method of the Siddas. I got home and opened the book. It was a bit hard to find Chapter One in that there was a lot of introductory material that I couldn’t relate to- a lot of flowery references. I was just interested in what Adi Da had to say. I finally found it and started reading. He spoke about a fundamental feeling of dilemma that motivates a “search”- That all of human existence is a form of this search. There were pages more that struck me deep as Truth. Truth that struck me so deep an event started to occur. Everything that I had read about as enlightenment started to happen. Forces deep within me started moving. A sense of understanding came forth. Everything made sense. I felt lifted, expanded. Emotionally I was beyond joy. Then I saw that in order for this event to continue that I would have to die. That set off something akin to a psychic domino effect. The moment of enlightenment went into reverse. I felt that enlightenment wasn’t possible. I collapsed into a dismal state both of emotion and mind. The next day I was receiving an acupuncture treatment. As I lay alone face down on the table I felt a distinct presence. Then the most incredible thing happened. It felt as if a hand were being pressed down on me. It felt as if an actual physical hand was firmly pressing down on me. Then I went into fear. I had only seen such things in horror movies. I felt that I had opened the door to something that I knew nothing of and it scared me. This obviously had something to do with Adi Da. I had spoken offensively to him in the vision. I felt vulnerable and afraid. My knowledge of what to do was limited. My first conversations with formal organizational devotees were disturbing, comforting and enlightening- elements of the ordeal of this true spiritual path. I took an introductory course, then another course. One time when I was first doing the practice this marvel occurred- An energy started to descend into me. The energy seemed to know. It was intelligent. It moved steadily. It wasn’t affected by anything I did. It must have taken about 30 seconds to go all the way down my body. It was the most amazing thing to feel. I felt love as I have never experienced it. It was pure love. It was not being loved by someone. Nor was it being in love with someone. It was simply that LOVE was all there was. All of reality was LOVE. I took my first vow in December of 1997. This is another thing that is unusual to an American- a vow. There are wedding vows that seem to not mean too much but there isn’t much in the way of a spiritual commitment for the ordinary person on the street. Vows are an important point in eastern spiritual practice. A vow establishes a psychic bond. That bond became active from the start. I felt drawn to Adi Da. I had an opening of a depth of feeling- Just feeling more of all of life. He lived at times on an island in Fiji. It is called Naitauba. I went on retreat on Naitauba in the spring of 1998. I was new but I had to go. The first time that I saw Him is a memory ingrained in me. The boat ride to Naitauba ends with a ride in a skiff to a beach. You prostrate there. I lay my face down in the sand and could immediately feel the spiritual energy that is unique to Adi Da. Then someone said “Beloved is coming. Come quickly for darshan.” (Darshan means “sighting”- it is more than that. Adi Da transmits His Spiritual Energy and His State with His Darshan) He was being driven and looked briefly at those lined up as He went by. Our eyes met. The look in His eyes in a moment became one of total recognition. I felt completely known. Everything about who I am was known by Him. He had driven by and we walked away. Then there was this unbridled happiness- Complete, unreasonable and unfounded happiness. This became a standard of being around Him- Happiness. A few days later I received the first formal Darshan from Adi Da. I hadn’t been a devotee very long and wasn’t really educated on what to do. I had some thought about an upright posture and resting the tongue on the roof of my mouth. I was seated directly in front of Him, about 10 feet away. It wasn’t too long into the event that something miraculous started to happen. His face started to change into the faces of others. This had the sense of an optical illusion, as if my eyes were playing tricks on me. So I tried to shake it off by looking away and blinking. The thing would start to happen immediately when I looked back at Him. It seemed to me that these were the faces of other spiritually enlightened beings, not that I would know what any of them actually looked like. There were Oriental, Middle Eastern, Indian, Caucasian, every continent, every race. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being fooled. The next day I was at the location where the Darshan had occurred. It was on a veranda. It was all cement. I looked for a possible way that there could have been a holographic image making device or some such. It wasn’t at all possible. There are different levels of participation, different congregations. I was in the 3rd congregation during my first retreat. Smoking is allowed in the 3rd congregation and I was hooked. One night I went out to the beach and had a smoke. As I was smoking I had this internal dialogue going “Smoking is OK, it relaxes me, lets me feel Adi Da” Then I heard His voice. It was as clear as a bell. “Bullshit, That’s egoic consolation!” I felt terrible. Guilty. Like I had been caught doing something terribly wrong. I had trouble going to sleep. Yet when I woke up the next morning I felt great. There is a term that is used in the fellowship of the Adidam Revelation. That term is “washed”. My guilt was “washed” by Adi Da. I became a part of His traveling party in the spring of the year 2000. Adi Da was in California. While Adi Da traveled He did not stop doing what He always did. He worked. He did His artistic photography. He wrote. He communicated His Revelation. He granted Darshan. He lived. On the road an RV was taken along. I became the RV driver. I started in Marin, California. Adi Da had gotten into photography while He was at the “Outshining Brightness” during the Kosovo War. I remember the first time I looked at the photos He took. I was drawn deep into feeling. It was both profound and tranquil. He had said that He combines Himself with what He is photographing and therefore to look at one of His photographs is His Darshan. When you become touched by Adi Da there are responses that happen at the sight of Him- physical, emotional, mental. An example- I was first approaching. This was the fall of 1997. I went to the Mountain of Attention in California. They were going to show a Darshan video. This is a video of Adi Da granting Darshan. I thought the proposition was a bit ridiculous. It was shown on a large projection screen. When Adi Da was projected on to the screen I had this intense physical response. My breathing went on automatic. My lungs turned into bellows! I wasn’t doing this- it was happening under some other control. Back to the year 2000. Adi Da was photographing in the sand dunes. We were all hiding so as to not interfere with the natural look. I was laying in tall grass behind the peak of one of the dunes. I saw Adi Da. He was facing the ocean. Maybe 20-50 yards away. I hadn’t been around Him much. I was peeking through the grass. As I lay there I was taken by the reality that I was looking at one who had no sense of separate self. Then He abruptly spun the tripod around and pointed the camera straight towards me. I cringed. I made sure that I was in the shadow of the grass. Then the space became something out of a science fiction or fantasy movie. It was if a form of watery-electrical energy moved the structure of the space. The sand and grass started to undulate. It felt as if my body was doing the same thing. It also felt incredibly blissful. The road trip make it’s way north through Oregon into Washington. Adi Da went to Lopez Island. I was in a rented house with Barbara Schonesse, Cecil Onodera, and Brenda Yeager. The talk was that Adi Da was having an enjoyable time. Then a call came that Adi Da was having the same symptoms that had occurred during The Divine Emergence (1986). This is when He goes into death. No one knows what will happen. We were called to His House and were to chant. The house was thick with the same spiritual energy that I felt on Naitauba the year earlier. It has a searing and piercing quality. One’s chest swells and gets real warm. The throat chokes. There is uncontrollable weeping. I was sitting next to Brenda Yeager. She had a very intense kriya. A kriya is when the body is affected strongly by spiritual energy. She was layed flat on her back. She was jerking uncontrollably. Later she told me of a very profound vision that she had. After some hours Adi Da was taken by ambulance to a medical facility. He started to recover. This was and continues to be a most profound yogic event. The Divine is coming into our reality in a way that we can relate to. The years that followed until 2007 I lived close to Adi Da all the time. I was part of the staff that attended Him- His life, His work and His comings and goings. This was sadhana. This is from Wikipedia - Sadhana (Sanskrit sādhanam) is a Sanskrit term for "a means of accomplishing something" or more specifically "spiritual practice". Sādhanā is a means whereby bondage becomes liberation." Normally we would view spiritual practice in terms of technique. One would perform specific meditations, rites, different exercises in whatever genre they had adhered to. Sadhana lived by practitioners of the Adidam Revelation is done by being in relationship with Adi Da. This is true yoga, meaning ‘yoke’, you are hooked up with the enlightened condition. The years could be summarized-. I received the Revelation of the Divine. It doesn’t amount to enlightenment. Yet the path to enlightenment is clear to me. Adi Da showed me that being a separate self is the unenlightened state. He did this by setting the stage where I could see this fact very clearly. He brought the Divine Condition into my awareness over and over. The Divine Condition is the One True Self. It is Love-Bliss. It is Consciousness. It is God. The Divine Self is the essence of everything that we see and that we are. Adi Da calls this is the “Bright”. The year of 2007 began. I was doing a sacramental ceremony at a very sacred place and had a stroke or it may have been a seizure- it was never ascertained. I knew that something heavy was happening to me. There is a family history of heart disease and that has always been hanging over my head. I thought that this might be IT. Fear arose. Then I was able to commune with Beloved Adi Da and the fear went away. This kind of thing happened over and over during the next 6 months. It was found out that I had a tumor inside my skull impacting the brain stem One surgeon said the tumor was in “pricey neighborhood”. I had it operated on. I almost died. I am still negatively effected- pretty much handicapped. Yet I am happy. I understand what I have always wanted to know about- God and Enlightenment. I feel Adi Da’s Spiritual Presence and Energy bringing me beyond the mortal condition. I have a handle on the path. That is my story.

Miracles

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Schizophrenia

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