Those words belong to the band DISTURBED, and although I am not angry enough much these days to listen, one cannot deny that the first three tracks were amazing on that debut album, including STUPIFY. They remind me of how myself and others drift into the vast unknown wastedland of hopelessness and how some force brings us back.
“He saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge… I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought… Few people travel here. What is the truth and how do you know it when you have it?” Mr. Pirsig’s words there – but relevant to my train of thought this Sunday morning as I prepare to leave California again. He was looking for what we all are, truth – and it nearly cost him his life, as it did me. Perhaps I was running away from it. In the second book LILA, Phaedrus takes Peyote with Indian Americans and realizes that all of his intelligence is insignificant compared to the heart of the people around him and the beauty of the Earth we live on. His search for truth is actually simplified, you might say.
Fairfax is lovely today but inside me all turmoil spins like heat lightning in clouds off the coast of Florida. They are stunning to look at, but contain “a power to great and terrible to imagine.” They come from some place greater than the clouds or the sky, and that place I call Heaven, for lack of a better word. I can see it in the darkness while Angels spin around me with the silent reminder that I am protected. Why this is I do not know. There is an event happening to me and I am not the only one. Something good, really good is happening to me. If I were to explain it to you fully you might think me crazy, and perhaps I was at one point, thinking myself alone in this world and that life was not worth living, that I was separate. This was an illusion created by thought and circumstance.
As I write this, my home state of Tennessee has been ravaged by mother nature and her floods. A man with an MBA had a failed attempt at blowing up Times Square and will never taste freedom again, as I have no doubt the FBI will keep him in jail for the rest of his life and Hillary Clinton is telling Iran that they need to chill on their “nukes.” These are the headlines – but the headline should read this:
“An unending world of energy and limitless possibilities sits in front of all humanity, but only the few can see it, as if God is holding our entire universe in the palm of his hand and Angels dance and fly upon fountains of dreams the spiraling arms of God with beauty and inspiration, showing themselves briefly to a certain few and protecting us from ourselves. This world is believed to be the true home of all creation and everything in it and time and space and future and past and death and life have little meaning here, because they are merely words and perceptions that men create to attempt to define their limited glimpses of reality. This unmanifested world sees us as the temporary, the illusion. Here’s Phil with sports.”
This is the really funny part. Our Bipolar friend in New Zealand says she can see dead people. And get this… I believe her. Her mother, who also has “mental illness,” is considered a powerful psychic/shaman among the Mauri people she knows. I have met psychics/shamans/mediums here in America who have told me that they have loved ones with mental illness who can tap into the “other side” on a level that would both frighten and exhilarate most people. There seems to be a connection with “mentally ill” people being able to see powerful glimpses of spiritual entities and when we are the sickest, is when we can see the MOST. A strange irony, to be sure, but that is the way it is in some cases. I have experienced this truth first hand and keep saying to God, “what are you up to?” But what I see and what I experience takes the suffering away and heals me. Instead of asking “is God real?” – these days I simply say “Thank you.” I have been shown a beauty beyond comprehension, as the swirling air in front of me lights up and enters my body. I don’t expect most will believe me, but that is okay. There are two types of madness and I have been down the dark one. This, is the good side and I have been waiting for it all my life. Thank you, God.
Like Johnny Depp says to Alice with that devilish grin of his, in the new Tim Burton’s film – after she says “you’re completely mad…”
“ONLY THE BEST PEOPLE ARE.”
