Thanksgiving From Within
If you look between the buildings you can see the sky and the trees I watch as the seasons change. There are bare branches in between the buildings there now.
But this afternoon my husband called me in to the other room see the leaves still on the tree outside the den window.
The leaves were ecstatically yellow today as I drank in their beauty from my window seat on a stationery bike.
The yellow leaves filled the room with a wondrous yellow light. Migraines and severe arthritis keep me in. But MUCH can be seen from the inside.
Time flew by as fast as the low lying clouds. I felt a form of ecstasy with Spirit and the world outside. A peace that nature gives and one that has been rare for me in these days of deep strife in the world.
The clouds zipping by and the fresh air from the window and the bright yellow brought me great joy that others racing by in their busy lives below do not see. I am blessed though mostly homebound… blessed with a loving husband and breathtaking beauty in the great beyond. I have much to be grateful for and I wish you all many such blessings and the urge to give thanks.
Mostly I give thanks for a sensitive and sensible husband who has stuck by me through thick and thin and my many moods and suicidal depressions– as a person with a major mental illness. Bipolar Disorder. It has not been easy for him. And he has helped many others in his career as a psychiatric social worker. I was able to help him understand some of his clients, yes, but he gave them the greatest gift of all by sharing with them his sense of humor and treating them as normal human beings.
On our first date, almost 40 years ago, a walk in the park, his sense of humor was what I first noticed about him. He scored the first home run. And then moments later, another, with his compassion. And that was the start of the love story of my life.
Today I send my deepest blessings to him, and, too, I want to wish each of you many blessings of love and nature on this fine, yellow day of Thanksgiving week!
Autumnal Septuagenarian Love
Waking to your touch
electricity in
your massive
healing hands
without a glint
of sexuality…
Waking to your smile
whispers sweetly
to my soul…
like the first time
so long ago
on our first walk
together
when your arm
brushed against mine
and shook our worlds
out of their solitary
orbits and
sent us to the moon!
Your grey fluffy hair
sparkling silver threads
entices every time
I sniff your fragrance
and inhale the heavens
the warmth
of your cheeks
in our fleeting
embrace
I would it
would last forever
like our love!
The smile lines etched
around your sky blues
alter the pulse
the course of my blood
and with each glance
reach for the stars
twinkling inside my head!
The wrinkles in your cheeks
and your furrowed brow
pluck at the strings
inside my bosom
for I know the hard times
and worries that
engraved them on your face!
As day turns to night…
On the doorway
to Orpheus
in pillowed embrace
your big hand
holds mine
and makes me
feel safe and loved
and little
as you drift off
leaving me wishing
for morning
to awaken once
more to you
fears tears
so long to wait
till morning!
We are old
How did this happen?
and we are in love
more than ever
youthful passion gone
replaced by years of fidelity
affection, quarrels, laughing,
teasing, crying
always sharing, caring
yet attraction still stirs
and the years of together
have sewn our souls to one!
Loss is inevitable
and unacceptable
In equal measure
The God I used to find
in nature
I now find in you
And the ecstasis
of gazing at the sky
now rests with the mystery
of you!!
A happiest of birthdays to the love of our many lifetimes together! Hope to continue our journey together to enlightenment!
May the rest of your seventies be healthy and happy and filled with love!
๐Your wife
Synchronicity
The Oxford dictionary describes โsynchronicityโ as โthe simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.โ
Wikipedia has a longer definition: “Synchronicity (German: Synchronizitรคt) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.”[1] In contemporary research, synchronicity experiences refer to one’s subjective experience whereby coincidences between events in one’s mind and the outside world may be causally unrelated to each other yet have some other unknown connection.[2] Jung held that this was a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind that can become harmful within psychosis.[3]“
As a Bipolar 1 woman who was not diagnosed, let alone medicated, until I was 28 years old, my life was full of synchronicity. I was working as a clerk in Columbia University libraries, cataloging art books. My family did not โbelieveโ in psychiatry nor in mental illness. I kept everything secret from them until I could no longer, when I had my breakdown at age 28. At that point I went for emergency care to the Columbia Counseling Service and was told to stay with my family for a week or go to hospital. I was lucky enough to be able to go to my parents for a week . I had begun therapy with the psychiatrist I would wind up staying with until age 74. But at the time I was all alone. I had a best friend from grammar school who was living in France at this time. She and I corresponded every week. We remained close until she died at age 39. I had a few friends at work, but I lived alone and was isolated. And I became psychotic at times. Synchronicity ruled my life. Parts of a song on the radio, or a program on the TV, a man singing in the street… they all had special messages for me. I thought of people in the street as โteachersโ for me to learn from and the people who worked with me, as โmystics,” who understood me, and who were trying to train me.
It was exhilarating when the teachers were happy with my progress but terribly depressing when I did wrong. There were โsignsโ for me to interpret all over the place. And at work, I regarded every book I catalogued as something that held secrets to help me get mentally well or learn truths about life. I would do my job faithfully, most of the time, but while doing it, I was on the constant look-out for special messages meant for me. I did what I called โreadingsโ. I would find some lesson in each book. One book I was working on held a special secret about the womb and the egg and the sperm uniting and becoming a zygote. I pictured the uniting of the egg and the sperm as fireworks. (Thirty years later, saner and married and actively creating art, and, writing a newspaper column upstate on the side, I created an abstract photograph called โConceptionโ.) But in the library, I did what I called “time travels.” I didnโt talk to people much during this period. I listened to co-workers and street people, read extensively and deciphered messages. People would come up to me at work to actually talk to me sometimes, to be nice, I guess, and I would leave the world of the womb, and zygotes or some such thing, and talk to them normally as if I were in their world. I was not!!
In other words, to put it in professional terms, I was WACKO!
That is all behind me now and fortunately, though I have had some hard times, but they have occurred within the realm of a marriage, to be 35 years long this May. It has offered me the only stability and deep love in my life. Gone is the world of readings and messages. Gone is the synchronicity. Sometimes I miss it but not the craziness that went with it. Now I have more meaningful, everyday experiences of sanity. There are still some epiphanies, but not like the old days.
Before I close I must add, there was at least one incident that was truly synchronicityโฆ that was not delusionalโฆ that felt distinctly like a message from God, the Universe. I was working at my desk and suddenly my scalp felt prickles all over it. I grew alarmed and so decided to go to the reference room for one of my โreadings.โ Clearly this warranted research. I went to the Reference Room of the library and found a one volume encyclopedia which I pulled off the shelf. In order for the reading to give answers impartially, I had to open it at random and then put my finger on the page. So thatโs what I did whilst my scalp prickled. My finger pointed to a picture. It was a print of Christ with a crown of thorns. I was stunned. I felt like it was a message from God. And to this day I think it was. It was a message of hope and love.
Yesterday I wrote to a fellow blogger, Anneta Pinto-Young, at Devotionalinspirations.com, who is a Social Worker and a Christian Minister and recounted this story briefly in response to her post on coincidences in her series on “Hearing God Speak.”ย She told me something very wise.ย She said that religion and science have always clashed over these type of things.ย Sure, I was delusional for much of the time, but I did have occasional experiences like this one.ย And, she said, that was God sending me a message of his love and encouragement.ย I felt that then and I feel it today.
Maybe I donโt need the secret messages any more. Godโs word comes through friends now and most definitely through my long-suffering husband.
What can I say but look out for synchronicities and see what message there is for you.
A Growing Movement on WordPress
(Click to enlarge)
My blog started out as a mental health blog because I am Bipolar. I started it to showcase my book on Amazon, “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” But I found little interest in mental health subjects and the blog soon morphed into a forum for my nature columns, photographs and paintings, recording the beauty of nature, trying to best describe and display God’s creation. Recently I have found that there are those who have used this platform to set themselves up as self-proclaimed experts, putting down others’ religious leanings and telling readers what they should do with their lives and what they should believe. In all fairness, everyone is entitled to say whatever on this platform although I don’t appreciate pornography which occasionally appears. Most bloggers have been tremendously responsive and I thank my many followers for their prayers during my husband’s surgery in whatever religion they subscribe to and their following. I thank them wholeheartedly and will not forget them. But recently I find posts putting down the religious practices of others. These comments and blog posts seem judgemental and possibly intolerant. Someone actually wrote all meditation is self-hypnosis, arguing against the many religions that use this in their practices, saying to follow his guidance. This sort of arrogance is astounding to me, and seems unduly prejudiced specifically against Hinduism. Another blogger told me to go out and heal the world… never mind that I no longer believe in the healing power of some alternative medical practices, have a major mental illness and am a recluse due to limited mobility. I had always thought WordPress to be a generous forum but apparently the growing conservativism across the planet has meant it is now okay to tell people what to do and how to live. I think in times of such utterly dreadful conflict and anger between peoples around the world, and in the spirit of the holiday season, we should refrain from such divisive comments. So to my 1, 120 followers, I am not following WordPress for awhile. I am really disheartened by these developments on this platform. I may visit to look at the posts I followโฆ or not. But I will think long and hard about posting again.
May you all be blessed this holiday season!
Alternative Realities
Recently, having had some trouble with mania, I wrote a post saying I had to take some time off from blogging. People on WordPress were so understanding and supportive! You guys were great! Things were heading in a wrong direction but nowhere near where I was long ago…
II am reposting and editing an old post found by a fellow Wordress blogger, Ronny, on “Ronnie’s Blog.” It is very humbling to look back but also interesting in terms of the nature of reality.
Not long ago, I was being prepped for a surgery and the surgeon asked me about the medications I take. When asked why I took Thiothixene, an anti-psychotic, I told him that I was Bipolar. He said, “I think we are all Bipolar.” Maybe it was an effort to relate to me but it hit me in a “sore spot.” Everyone has moods, it is true, but being Bipolar is not just being “moody.” If we who are Bipolar have to endure the stigma of mental illness, at least allow that it is different from being “normal,” and not just some self-indulgent form of self-pity. What is Bipolar Disorder?
Bipolar Disorder is a major, Axis 1, mental illness characterized by extreme highs and lows. It is a risky mental illness diagnoses because people can die from it. They suicide during a low. In Bipolar 1, the sufferer can become manic and, while manic, and even while depressed, can become psychotic. Normal people do not become psychotic except perhaps, in their dreams. Being psychotic means a major break with reality. It means entering another world that most don’t even know exists. So, no, to that surgeon, we are NOT all Bipolar.
And, yes, people have fractured views of reality. But some views are more fractured than others. There is another “reality” in psychosis. What interests me is that different people who are psychotic have similar experiences, making me question the reality that we call consensual but also the one called psychotic. When I had my one and only breakdown in my 20’s, before I was properly medicated, I entered some other reality.
In that other reality, the TV and radio gave you messages directly relevant to your life– so relevant that one began to think there was some mind-monitoring device in your TV or radio. And the AC had a microphone that allowed you to talk to the world outside one’s window, to the people in the street, and you could play as they responded to your silly commands. When one had the nerve to venture outside of one’s apartment, a cacaphony of voices of people in the street told you positive or negative things. People (I thought of them as teachers and/or psychics) did not come up to you and speak directly to you for they knew you could not handle that. Rather they spoke loudly to one another about your behavior so you couldn’t help but overhear. If they were pleased with your behavior at the time, the comments were your reward for “getting well.” And it was glorious. If they are displeased, criticism came from everywhere. Then there is nowhere to hide the shame you felt because negative feedback was coming at you from every direction. Then life became a hell that did not disappear when you got back home, because you could still hear voices next door or in the street. That was just one down side of this other “reality.” Everything had self-referential meaning. I never heard actual voices– it was either hearing voices that are the normal internal monologue gone haywire so you thought it is someone else, or you were one step away from that because the voices you heard were actually real, saying real things, but not to you although you could find special personal meaning in them. There was no safe place. No escape. No privacy. I was working in a library at Columbia University and living alone in an apartment in New York City at the time. How much worse would it be living in a shelter, hospital, prison or, worse, on the street where one is overwhelmed with every kind of stimuli possible!
Synchronicity was everywhere. SometImes the lessons were religious in nature. This was perhaps a lower form of altered consciousness. Life alternated between heaven and hell. One wonders if there was some divine intervention in these states because of the ubiquitousness of synchronicity. Was this a fractured peek at what Hindus call Maya?
My life is very different now. I have a husband I adore. I often lament to him now that I cannot see the world as a dream or Maya as spiritual writers describe and I feel so utterly unspiritual. And yet, now many, many years ago, I lived in another reality.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12. Not what St. Paul meant but it works.
Only now can I see a little hint that “reality” IS some sort of a consensual dream that appears on our retinas and ear drums and that our mind interprets in a similar fashion… or so we think.
For sure there are different realities. But I am striving towards a higher form of consciousness and have little time left in which to do it. In looking back over the post that Ronnie “liked,” I am VERY grateful to have survived thus far out of the hell I was once in. I got help and medication. And God sent me a wonderful husband who eventually became a psychiatric social worker. I thank God for bringing him into my life. And for giving me access to the common reality in which most people dwell… but also glimpses into other realities and levels of life… and perhaps a schematic feeling for Maya.
This entry was posted on September 8, 2023. It was filed under Abstract Photography, Bipolar Disorder, Depression and Mania and was tagged with Bipolar 1, Bipolar Disorder, Fragmented reality, Hearing voices, Maya, Mental illness, Mental illness advocacy, Psychosis, Reality, Stigma, Stigma of mental illness, Synchronicity. Edit.
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Mandatory Two Week Break from Blogging… and Most Other Things… Doctor’s Orders…
So,,, being Bipolar means sometimes you are manic and sometimes you are depressed and sometimes you are both. And sometimes you need to stop the stimulation from so many things and get threatened with hospitalization. I am not the fun, spendthrift, creative, on-top-of-the-world-manic but the irritable, really-can’t-do-this-anymore, depressed manic who is just barely functioning. I no longer know what I am doing. For example, I have bought so many bottles of the same things, my husband pointed out, that both of us will be dead before they are used up.
And, so, I am not to blog (and other things) at all for two weeks. I might peek at your posts but can’t do any responding or posting. A post will appear Labor Day weekend because that was written a long time ago and scheduled to go live by itself. I will answer any comments when back. Will be very curious about you all and your posts. It is a truly good group of people… the WordPress Bloggers. And I will miss most of you very much.
Happy Labor Day weekend!
Spring Green Intensifying
(Click to enlarge)
Welcome to samples of my work in various art forms showcasing โEye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.โ โEye-locksโ is a Bipolar/Aspergerโs memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
Eye-Locks, Namaste and God
Namaste!
Namaskar!
Namaskaram!
The Hindu greeting: “I bow to the God in you.”
I love this form of greeting– so much better than a handshake.
Christians believe God dwells within our souls. Perhaps other religions do as well. It seems Hindus do also if that is not too simplistic of me to express. Please excuse me if it is.
In some of the best of the old Bollywood classics love is portrayed without so much as a simple kiss. It is shown by gazing into the eyes of the beloved and saying “I see God in you.”
Eyes are the window to the soul. For people such as my husband and myself who are on the Autism Spectrum, eye contact is fearsome. It is threatening. And yet eye contact is precious beyond all fortune. Eye contact in love is wondrous and life-changing.
I have seen God in my husband’s eyes for a fleeting moment of eye contact on a walk in the countryside when we were being loving with one another… and on precious contact when I come in to talk to him while he is on the computer in New York City. I have seen God in my husband when he is telling a joke and I am laughing at him and he is so happy to make me laugh. He is child like, God like. It seems I hit the jackpot in marrying him. Looking deeply into another’s eyes, the “right” other, one finds God is Love, God is Joy. This is nothing new– just new to me.
One time I looked deeply into another’s eyes with a person I worked with long before I met my husband. It reached down deep inside both of us and it changed my life forever. It led me on a road to a complete breakdown and a long road back rebuilding my personality slowly in therapy until I was whole. And then I met my husband. And eye-contact with him is precious. It is special. Not frequent and in its rarity, powerful and sacred.
Eye-locks are powerful, potent conveyors of love, joy, sadness and finally, and most importantly, they can be a vehicle to God.
Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing โEye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.โ โEye-locksโ is a Bipolar/Aspergerโs memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
Overloaded Circuits
(Computer art by author)
I’m in somnia
with jackhammer brain
a buzzing mind
a humming with emotions
thoughts and pictures
memories of joys
lost to death
spirits close to my heart
seemingly worlds away
guilt, loss and happiness
sickness and death
as well as
breathtaking beauty
a bedfellow with
gnawing worries
and gnashing nerves
fleeting images from films and
music playing at high speed
in the library of my mind
voices of today, yesterday and
fears of tomorrow
vying for an ear
asking me to listen
to them all
all at once
a cacophony of sounds
in the humming silence
of the specter-filled
haunting darkness
with fearsome death dangling
its loathsome threats
before my darting eyes
afraid not for myself
but of losing him
as he lies beside me
breathing noises
breeding worry, sorry
dashingย thoughts of love, passion, doubts
a scarily-still lump beside
insomniac-hyper-racing-mind
manic me
finally arising out of
maudlin months
of dismal darkness
and deep, dark despair
when death smelled sweet to me
*
I get out of bed
to lay my face
upon the windowsill
to gaze at the mystery sky
full of twinkling stars
glittering to the rhythms
of the pulsing universe
my only hope for some
semblance of somnolence
my only chance for peace.
For info on my Bipolar memoir, please see:ย http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html
Eyes to Eternity
At age 35 I found someone who was more afraid of closeness than I was. I understood him almost from day one. This understanding came out of years of therapy that followed my breakdown at age 28. Before the breakdown, I didnโt know that I was depressed. Before the breakdown, I didnโt know that my failed relationships were due to my fear of closeness. Before the breakdown, I didnโt know I was Bipolar. I learned a lot of things in therapy that helped to change the direction of my life.
And then one day Thomas walked into the library where I had been working for 10 years. He got a job as a library assistant. He was a graduate student and wanted to work part-time. I took the first steps towards asking him out because it was obvious he never would. I had learned a thing or two after a stint at being gay. We bumbled our way into a relationship and, after 4 years, into marriage. We didnโt know that either one of us had Aspergerโs Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder on the Autism Spectrum, until much, much later. We just thought we were very, very shy.
After some 33 years of marriage we are still shy with each other. Our instincts are still to run away from closeness, but now we are able to override the first gut feeling. We have grown together, becoming very, very close. So close that now my biggest fear is of losing Thomas. So close that sometimes we communicate without talking, as if we are on the same radio frequency. In fact talking often confuses things.
We have pushed each other along lifeโs path. Tom became a clinical social worker and I became a writer and artist. The road has been bumpy in spots. My being Bipolar has been hard for Tom at times. Many times. But there have been many more moments of joy that make it all worthwhile. We both feel the other is the best thing that happened to us, and the journey continues. New lessons are learned. There are still new magical moments and new epiphanies.
It is 3A.M. I lay beside Thomas in bed listening to his breathing as I watch a silent light show outside our bedroom windows. This is not a 3A.M. awakening born of despair as some are. At the moment I feel the Presence and that Presence fills me with love.
The moonlight beckons to me, and I respond by getting up and gazing at the twinkling stars and the hushed light of flickering fireflies. In the quiet stillness of a country night I am stirred by the music of the silence. My ears hum, the sound of the nervous system according to my husband.
The cool air is intoxicating. I go to the den to write and sit in a moonlit cathedral, watching the seemingly random flashing flames of fireflies flying in a frenzy of love. The madness of desire. Well do I know how love possesses oneโs spirit and makes one fly through life, manic with emotion.
Yet sometimes, beneath the energy that stirs oneโs blood, lies a silent unionโa momentary glimpse of eternity in a loved-locked gaze into the eyes of oneโs beloved. It is fleeting, at least for me. Gone in a flash, and yet it leaves me wondering just whom I am seeing. The inner voice says that God has touched my soul through Thomas, for the best of human love is merely a sampling of the Divine. Eye contact, so problematic for both my husband and me, is wondrous in this context. For a second, eternity beckons like the moonlight, whispering of another life, another world, something beyond the here and now.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
Divine Romance
Our third decade together. And the love grows deeper against a background of eventual, inevitable loss. A loss more unimaginable than one’s own demise.
I look deeply into your eyes, my eyes linger, falling into your blue orbs, while you, in turn, delight in my gaze, going far beyond the polite looks people use in everyday conversations. We pause too long. I fall into the abyss of your sky blues and feel reverence. Reverence for your happy spirit, infectious mood.
It is not the Eros of our first decade that waned in the second and all but disappeared in the third. Attraction, yes, but of a different nature. Attraction of the heart, the soul, the spirit. We bring each other to pure joy, bliss, a sharing of spirit. We give each other a taste of oneness with all.
Notes from a Very Noisy Mind
Presence.ย ย Stay in present.ย Stop projecting into future.ย Stop the negative daydreams.ย Worse than nightmares.ย “What if”, “what if”,”what if” ad infinitum.ย Put ice yogurt on grocery list.ย Add potatoes.The Magic of Water
(Continuation of exhibit from previous post.)
“Jupiter”
“Rose Hills, Blue Trees”
“Summer Heat”
ย โWater in its natural state shows us how it wants to flow, and we must obey its wishes.โ
–Viktor Schauberger
ย Water is the medium.ย Water is my brush.ย Using watercolors on wet paper, I allow the waterโs capillary action to โsuggestโ an image from the natural world and then work with it, using a variety of methods. I have sought to capture scenes from nature with dazzling, bleeding color. The paintings are an exercise in โletting goโ and allowing the creative energies to flow, after preparing the mind through meditation.
As abstractions, the paintings are personal visionsโthe impressions of light and color and thus do not always appear as they exist in the natural world.ย However, since landscapes ย are my passion, the results most often appear within the realm of that genre.
Finally these paintings, as renditions of nature, are reflections of the magnificence of the shimmering wilderness and thus, in some small measure, are my own awestruck reflections on the majesty of creation.
The Magic of Water
(Scroll down to see some paintings from this exhibit.)
ย โWater in its natural state shows us how it wants to flow, and we must obey its wishes.โ
–Viktor Schauberger
ย Water is the medium.ย Water is my brush.ย Using watercolors on wet paper, I allow the waterโs capillary action to โsuggestโ an image from the natural world and then work with it, using a variety of methods. I have sought to capture scenes from nature with dazzling, bleeding color. The paintings are an exercise in โletting goโ and allowing the creative energies to flow, after preparing the mind through meditation.
As abstractions, the paintings are personal visionsโthe impressions of light and color and thus do not always appear as they exist in the natural world.ย However, since landscapes ย are my passion, the results most often appear within the realm of that genre.
Finally these paintings, as renditions of nature, are reflections of the magnificence of the shimmering wilderness and thus, in some small measure, are my own awestruck reflections on the majesty of creation.
“Acid Rain”
“Night Forms”
Spirit in Summer
Summer spirit
whispers to
the lowly weeds
dances round
the graceful trees
and sends peace
to pacify
an observant cow
It’s been a long, hard time since I wrote.ย But unlike the bird above I was not alone, thank the Lord. Beloved husband was at my side.ย I have thought of many of you and wondered how you’re doing, if you’re still blogging.ย Kit, Running Elk, Bert, Paul, Michael, Sue, Palestine Rose, Joshi, Ashley, Didi, Val and so many others.ย I check my hundreds of blog emails unread and see you are.ย Have not only not been blogging but not reading the blogs either.ย Been sick, selling our barn, moving and withdrawing from a major benzodiazepine, Klonopin, a “benzo” as they are called.ย My doctor got me addicted to it.ย And, while selling the house I took extra because it was so stressful and I had to function no matter how sick I was.ย Now I am paying the price.ย Withdrawal is at a snail’s pace and fraught with physical and psychological symptoms.ย It seems futile to be angry with my doctor.ย He didn’t force it down my throat but he did dispense a very dangerous drug.ย This is one of the seldom talked about pitfalls of being mentally ill.
The house is finally sold and all the headaches with it.ย We will miss the nature and our home in the depths of it.ย I have lost my inspiration.ย My muse.ย Pictures were everywhere.ย Now in New York City there is so much stimulation I cannot even see images to capture.ย But in many ways it isย good to be here.ย Although I remain sick and sick at heart with what is happening to our country, even so, my husband and I are blessed to have each other.ย But today, with the March for Our Lives, I finally have new hope.ย Perhaps the new generation can succeed at peace where we have failed.ย Perhaps the world can stop destroying itself.
And finally now, at last, I can find time now to look within.ย I continue to follow Sadhguru and his Inner Engineering.ย That is my priority now.ย So I don’t know if I can go back to blogging as I used to.ย Inspiration is at zero.ย But at least I hope to visit sites now and again. Let me take this opportunity to say hello and happy Spring to all of you!
Sadhguru’s Cure for a Spiritual Lobotomy
Another invisible illness silently
sapping quality of life
vertigo and acute nausea
now join
constant migraines
and, with Aspergers, I am
more of a recluse than ever
But my beloved stands by me
A few weeks ago
I wanted to die
Bipolar, too, you see
too sick to sleep
too long a wait
to see a doctor
My beloved, my savior
keeps me going.
But I must fight on my own
and have enlisted Sadhguru
an Indian mystic and Yogi and guru
who promises bliss.
Meditating and chanting every day
with my beautiful husband
whose love
pulls me through
My husband the healer
who worked
with the poorest of the poor
the dejected and rejected
the condemned
My husband who married me
despite my mental illness.
Sadhguru says my mind
can poison my body
Sadhguru, my last best hope
I meditate and chant Aum
with him daily
living the life of a hermit
in a 3 room box in New York City
rather than in a cave in the Himalayas
Desperately seeking
the spirituality of years ago
before antipsychotic medication
gave me a spiritual lobotomy
A trade off
it offered me
some sort of stability
to have a quasi normal life
with my devoted husband
of 28 years.
Why can’t you have
pharmacological sanity
that allows you to love
AND spirituality???
I am going to try…
With Sadhguru.
Stormy Weather
Taking a break from blogging for awhile. ย Following a class with the famous yogi, Sadhguru, on Inner Engineeringย which is quite wonderful and I plan on spending lots of time on. ย A sample of his way of thinking is below.
Messages from God
Sue at Silent Eye recently posted a discussion of bibliomancy on her blog…
As a former librarian, I had an experience of bibliomancy with an encyclopedia. It was at a time in my life when I was in a sort of parallel universe. In any case, I had the distinct feeling of a prickly scalp and I wanted to do what I called “readings” which meant basically opening a book randomly to anything looking for messages from God. So I did just that and opened to a page with a picture of Christ and His crown of thorns. I can’t remember how I interpreted it but I knew I was “connected” to something way bigger than my mind.
I had many such experiences and they are delineated in my book, Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.
Love Mentally Ill Style
This appeared as a feature in the “Modern Love” series in the New York Times. ย It could be the story of my marriage, a marriage of two mentally ill people, though my husband is way higher functioning than I am.
Out of the Darkness โ Modern Love http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/fashion/out-of-the-darkness-modern-love.html
Death of Fear and the Beauty of Death
Tears
over fears
of what’s to come
Husband such a
precious soul…
Stay in the present
Enjoy every moment
of together
It is fleeting…
Bipolar mind
medications
fight living
in the present
So unZen
Why can’t I
just be
like before
breakdown and
before medications
Why can’t I
be jolly with he
whom I worship
Why the constant
chatter of
loud thoughts
Would that I could
go with him
when it comes time
And if not
hope that I can
help with his
last breath
Secretly
I want to
be the first
to go
quite selfishly
He who cared
for so many
deserves that I
care from me
for him
and more
Would that
each moment
were not filled
with looking
at Illness
Old age
and Death
and the fragility
Of having a body.
Summer Inertia?
Am I caught in a web
like a fly in a drainpipe?
Or is it summer inertia,
The lazy, hazy daze?
Could it be
I have lost it totally
to a pharmaceutical lobotomy?
Or am I processing still
retreat with Mooji?
Anger is more controlled
and that is good
but creativity has taken a vacation and
kidnapped my muse leaving
no urge to make new words or pictures?
Anxiety rules
and love flows
making me bow my head in prayer
and that is good
but what has happened to me?
I do not understand what I read
and have trouble processing
and cannot even comment.
Perhaps I am empty…
MOONSIDE 
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