Sanity Defines Spirituality as Mysticism

To see God in a moment of madness is not revelation but merely a hallucination.

Though the mad do not know God any more than the faithful. Were one to ask the mad about seeing God, there might not be a coherent answer. If the mad could write about their experience, their journals would remain incoherent.

Yet, to see God is truly a wondrous thing if it transcends all madness, leaving one absolutely sane.

Rare is such a person who has been granted by God to see Him. Few of us know how this blessed event occurs. Some of them even call the event a mystery.

Though the mystery is no hallucination to the person who has come upon this mystery. He may even be inspired to speak about it, and perhaps write his thoughts about the mysticism known as "seeing God".

This is the difference between mysticism and religious obsession.

Other terms for "seeing God" include "experiencing the divine", "being blessed", "satori", and "quiet abiding." Few people will share this experience with other people who are not open-minded to such matters.

Instead, such mysticism can only be appreciated by like-minded people who encourage it.

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Originally posted: August 28, 2007 6:19 PM PDT

What If the Mad are Actually the Sane Ones? (satire)

What if madness is when common sense calls to us but we forgot how to listen to ourselves because our fragile connection to reality is broken temporarily?

Then medical intervention comes to the moment of psychic healing when we either remain in fear, unable to rise above madness, or we boldly go on to heal, and to become whole, using humility to reconnect to reality.

Mere mortals would confuse the mad for those people who have risen above madness, due to their fear and ignorance about madness.

What if the State assumes that madness should be controlled by medication because of that same fear?

Then these same medications are administered not only to relieve the mad of their affliction but also to relieve the fear which "normal" people feel when faced with the mad.

How absurd that we subject the mad to medication to relieve our own fears about madness itself!

Is this not the height of madness itself, that we subject others to medication to control them so that we ourselves may feel less fear towards them?

Even so, we do not take medication to relieve our own fears about madness because of the delusion that we ourselves consider ourselves sane while assuming that the mad are insane.

In doing so, we prove how insane society truly is! Perhaps then the truly mad are kept safe from society in psychiatric wards so as to be protected from society.

Then the purpose of medication is to calm extremely nervous people so that they may function in a society that has yet to overcome the stigma of mental illness.

Sometimes I ask these questions with the insight that the majority of people with mental illness are mostly non-violent people. Anyone who is violent and legally insane are excluded from this definition of sanity as madness. This is because their behavior forms part of the etiology of the psychopath.

Rather this so-called argument is satire designed to de-stigmatize mental illness.

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Originally posted: May 20, 2005 08:18 PM

Being Stoned, Drunk, High or Psychotic

Being stoned while seeking the Divine is like being caught in religious ecstasy where one is in awe of the realization that

1. we are just a tiny insignificant part of the cosmos,
   

2. all the usual trials in life cannot remove that wondrous moment of awe found in that almost spiritual higher state of mind called "divine madness", and
   

3. merrily laugh away all our trouble before that madness quickly fades and is forever forgotten when a tiny voice suddenly cries, "I'm hungry! Let's go eat!!"

Although our physical hunger is barely satisfied while moved by such madness, the origins of that hunger is spiritual, and motivates the sublimation of the libido, which is the root of all human creation. Only with unconditional love are we able to better appreciate this madness, whether its genesis is due to intoxicants or our physical condition. With respect of love's power to transform such madness into that sense of awe of the divine, we seldom fall prey to fear. Once fear is appeased, it no longer perverts our memory of the very first time we were transformed by the state of unity with the Divine itself, be it God or the Absolute Body of the Cosmic Buddha. Thus is being at one with the Divine, be it through madness or religious ecstasy, a vital part of the human condition. For all of us who are born human are especially privileged to don this form and play out our roles in the human realm. "Rare is it to be born a human being and even rarer to have heard the message of the Buddha."

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Originally posted: May 26, 2010 at 7:08 PM

Marilyn Monroe: Unwitting Victim or Witting Agent of Destiny?

Does Marilyn Monroe represent a healthy ideal of American womanhood or hide a fear of hysteria among young American women today?

IMO Monroe presented a false facade of childlike innocence which actually hid her own personal fear of ending up in a mental hospital like her mother.

Thus, she is representative of a small minority of women whose mothers were taken advantage of by men.

However, Monroe's strategies that she employed through her many characters movies actually represents the fantasies of men about sexual stereotypes of women.

As well, her "dumb blonde" stereotypes are actually a clever facade designed to fool men, and sometimes women, into believing her to be more naîve than she actually was.

Yes, it was all an act. However, it is more likely that she was being taken advantage of by men, and doing tit for tat subtly.

I also see self deception at work in some of her characters, which suggests willingness to deceive oneself about the reality of the situation in order to escape anxiety about one's place in the world.

Even though Monroe appears to be a witting pawn of men, she too is a witting manipulator of men whose demeanor is a beautiful distraction from the fear all women have to face about destiny.


For Marilyn Monroe was especially afraid that she might end up mad in a mental hospital like her mother. My theory about why her mother ended up there is simplistic: she was taken advantage of by Marilyn's father and was not emotionally supported by her own mother (Marilyn's grandmother) due to her lifestyle.

Indeed, there is enough evidence to suggest her behavior from puberty to her death as indicative of child abuse. Furthermore, even though Marilyn's mother Gladys Baker was known to be mentally unstable, the etiology of her mental illness was never mentioned, probably due to a health respect about privacy of women with obvious signs of madness.

My guess is, Gladys Baker too might have been abused as a child. However, a clue appears in the early life of Marilyn Monroe when her maternal grandfather, Otis Elmer Monroe died of syphilis of the brain in 1909. He had been institutionalized at a mental hospital the previous year.

Thus the root of Gladys Baker's madness is syphilis, which was common around and before the turn of the 20th Century. As well, the death of a sibling may have been a childhood trauma which affected her deeply, and lead me to suspect that her own family were affected by their son's death.

As well, a history of depression runs in the family as Gladys' brother committed suicide after being let out of a mental asylum, and a grandfather committed suicide after struggling with depression.

Evidence of little or no emotional support appears when young Norma Jean Baker is rejected by her grandmother Della when Gladys Baker is rebuffed by her attempts to get her mother to look after the child.

As well, Marilyn Monroe's later characterization as thinking her first foster father, Albert Bollender, was a woman either indicates a hilarious story played for laughs, or the possible evidence that the foster father might have been either a cross dresser or closet homosexual who married in order to keep up appearances.

In actual fact, there is no Albert. Mr. Bollender's name was actually Wayne Bolender. Thus, the wikipedia entry below is full of inaccuracies.

Overall, Marilyn Monroe's early life as a child of the 1930s and early war era lacks a strong father figure, which is essential to a woman's character and adult emotional stability. Indeed, a healthy relationship with men may be maintained when a girl is free of childhood abuse and trauma, and a father or substitute father figure establishes and maintains a healthy role in her life.

I see little evidence of this occurring in young Norma Jean Baker's life before puberty. However, I see evidence that the future Marilyn Monroe adapted well to the lack of a father in her life.

Even so, the victimization of Monroe by her doctor led to her death from barbiturate poisoning. Her difficulties before her death are indicative of drug abuse, abuse that was facilitated by a doctor who may have overprescribed.

Merci Marilyn! Tu as joué le partie bien.


Reference:
Early life of Marilyn Monroe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Marilyn_Monroe

50 Playboy pictures of Marilyn Monroe hid from us: http://coed.com/2012/11/19/50-rarely-seen-marilyn-monroe-playboy-photos-in-celebration-of-the-nude-marilyn/#photoid=44

Marilyn Monroe on Marilyn documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyWW0bDnY28
In this documentary, you hear Marilyn Monroe's story in her own words.

Curing Madness With Creativity (poem)

Those who suffer needlessly
may make it all worse
by describing their suffering.
How foolish! To cure
suffering, create non-suffering.

Non-suffering consists of
focusing one's thoughts
and actions on creativity,
distracting one from
mental unrest until calm.

Those who do not suffer act
without hesitation,
and are free of anxiety.
Their life is serene,
for they have conquered madness.

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Original post: June 24, 2010 0844H
Update posted: March 15 2013 2331H

The Samadhi of sageb1 (poem)

Since no sanity can be observed "sanity" is just a name.

Since only lies can be observed "lies", too, is just a name.

The same goes for "nutbag", and other names for what one perceives about others.

Ultimately the phantasm called "sageb1" is empty of these fallacies.

In being empty of them, he is free of the power of names by letting go of them.

In being free of that power, he just is, neither mad nor a liar.

YMMV