Be Not Afraid

Ecstasy = Agony, Awakening = Crisis, Prophecy = Paranoia

Born a slave in 1984

Discovered that my life is just a record they performed

A maze where I was placed

– This is Fucking Ecstasy, by Say Anything

My first psychiatrist told me I’d never stop believing my paranoia. I was stuck forever wondering whether I was the victim of gang stalking by CIA informants planted in San Francisco’s organized crime scene. Instead, I’d simply stop caring. This pledge against mind control brought at least a touch of comfort. I didn’t want to lose myself. My beliefs were an identity. What I knew to be true had to be, or else, how could I justify burning nearly every bridge in my life? 

Max Bemis wrote the words quoted above in apparent disbelief that his Bipolar diagnosis was legitimate. The paranoia, at least in a straightforward reading of that song and others from the same time period, still seemed real to him. 

Like hoards of mentally ill folx before and after him, he seems to have endured a period where the diagnosis didn’t seem to fit. Where the stories we told ourselves prior to the meds still seemed true. 

So much more true. Emotionally true. Experientially true. Just True.

That shit that our psychiatrists call paranoid delusions and hyper-religious grandiosity exudes a shiny aura of Perennial Truth. Awash in the ecstasy and leprosy of manic Belonging—belonging in the body, in the collective, in Truth, and in Source—we know with utter certainty that the way we perceive reality is the only correct interpretation. 

I refused to admit the pattern of paranoia. 

1. Crisis: The pattern’s inciting trigger.
2. Agony: The physical emotions that arise as a response to the crisis. Tingly and buzzy; floaty and potent.
3. Doomscrolling: A period of compulsive information gathering. 
4. Red Yarn, Push Pins, and Chain Smoking: I can’t decide what to call this stage, but it should be familiar to you from any movie where a character loses their mind exploring a mystery. RYPPCS is the dopamine-fueled search for connections and syntheses of disparate data points.
5. Paranoia: The narrative that arises from Paranoia that you just can’t help but believe. A narrative that often comes packed with a compulsion to convince others like some cursed Cassandra.

I’m sorry to report this pattern kicked off once again over MLK weekend due to a crisis involving one of my closest friends. I panicked, gathered information, formed a conclusion, and sought the catharsis of sharing it.  

Caught off guard (again) by my shadow, I did some damage to my relationships through exploring this paranoid territory. It got me. Not because I haven’t tried to contain it but because I was unable or unwilling to admit that despite the meds, therapy and meditation, I continue to contain a Part that wants to scurry around collecting clues and screaming the sky is falling. I was already deep into step four before I even surfaced from the murky panic long enough to notice I had been submerged.

You’re reading my attempt to alchemize the pattern. To own it so it can’t own me. To love that part of myself and make it into something I can be proud to claim.

To do that, I am going to use this essay as a kind of Shadow Work exercise. I’m going to explore the gold that is hidden in the coal of that pattern. I’m going to explore the ways that—in a nondual, everything is all good because it’s All God, judgment arises from preference sort of way—the pattern of Paranoia is indistinguishable with the pattern of Prophecy.

1. Crisis is identical to a moment of Awakening. 
2. Agony, when closely examined with inner aversion abandoned, is just a really powerful physical sensation. When you “kill the part of you that cringes,” it turns out it’s identical to Ecstasy.
3. Doomscrolling is really just Research if you remove the judgment about the uncomfortable emotions that fuel it.
4. RYPPCS is probably easier to remember by it’s Light quality, rather than its Shadow acronym. It’s generated by an urge toward Metabolism. It’s a similar stage of seeking synthesis, but in positive-coded terminology, you’re simply breaking down the fuel you ate in the Research stage and turning it into energy. Consciously creating, not fan fiction about reality, but enlivening metaphor and myth.
5. Paranoia, a rose we may find ourselves less afraid to sniff when it goes by the name Prophecy.

Who wants to be a prophet?

Are you new here?

The answer is “no one who’s sane.” But I’m not sane. Not according to the DSM V. 

Not that I want to be a prophet. I’m neither doing anything special nor tapping into any current that any god damn Papal one of you couldn’t.

But I seem to have been blursed with certain inclinations.

According to Ram Dass, in a different time and place, I might have been declared “godsick” while overcome with my connection to source. I’d have had my every need attended to while I recovered from psychosis and then I could return to the community with valuable wisdom,

In a different culture, perhaps our presently stigmatized mentally ill folx would have been plucked from the rough and polished into diamonds, becoming shamans, monks and mystics.

I’ve decided to commit to householder mysticism, endeavoring to swim as gracefully as possible in those psychological waters Joseph Campbell famously observed the poor psychotics drowning in. Sure, I still sometimes splash about ineptly through a too-charged connection to, or withdrawal from, Source. 

But I’m trying.

And part of that effort is the study of mysticism. Part of it is accepting and honoring what appears to be a downright genetic calling to create and share conclusions cobbled together from sources that ping off and glom onto each other in my storming subconscious.

These last few months, that study has involved the exploration of the concept of shadow work. The Creekmasons are just finishing up our fifth book on the subject, Debbie Ford’s The Dark Side of Light Chasers. Previous to that, we also read Ursula K LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea, Robert Jordan’s Own Your Own Shadow, Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious and Deborah Eden Tull’s Luminous Darkness.

Sure many of us did little more than give a deep sniff of the copies we bought of some of those books, but the collective’s understanding of Shadow has been vastly improved.

I’m going to attempt to apply that understanding here. The intense emotions of shame, derealization and terror that I went through as a result of this MLK Weekend Incident are an indication to me that there is ample grist for the mill available through this experience.

So what can I do with this urge toward paranoia that springs pie into my face when I’m caught unaware?

I can love the pattern it represents. And through that love, I can hopefully gain the rapport with this Part that I need in order to have it work for me instead of demanding my attention by acting out and screwing with my life.

Let’s dive in.

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Awakening = Crisis 

I am word through the knowledge that crisis and awakening are identical when they’re stripped of the residue of preference. Word, I am Word through this intention. Word, I am Word

(I’ll be peppering this exercise with the Paul Selig inspired incantations, which I have found help implant ideas into my subconscious with firmer certainty.)

What is the difference between Awakening and Crisis? Simply how pleasant or painful the experience is judged to be.

Don’t all Angelic Visitations begin with the aliens saying “Be Not Afraid?”

The writers of the Bible apparently recognized that a dramatic gasp of The Big Air can be good or bad depending on the emotional context, just like anything. Of course, also like anything else, it really just is. Beyond dualism, this moment of exstasis is just a powerful, mind-blowing insight. 

The bubble we call a Self contains swirling, smokey motes of thoughts, memories and emotions. The Dawkins-esque memes that tally up to egregores of culture eddy about within our semi-permeable boundaries and sometimes blip through the boundaries of another bubble when we share a compelling idea. 

And sometimes, our bubbles’ boundaries briefly dissolve entirely and temporarily swallow a chunk of the Soul Field composed of all consciousness. The ontological primitive that projects the material universe, in the language of analytic idealism.

That moment of total excitatory overload when the Big Air merges with our bubble (metaphorically) literally is a crisis. It calls us to respond. It demands full attention.

But why not love my incarnation’s tendency toward chronic crisis? Why do I feel weighed down by it?

Every crisis, stripped of preference, is simply a highly charged call to learn what I came here to learn.

Every crisis can be reframed as a moment of awakening. 

Ecstasy = Agony

I am word through the realization that Ecstasy and Agony are merely an alchemical reframe apart and are composed of the same essential visceral sensations. Word, I am Word through this intention. Word, I am Word.

I write about the alchemical reframing that can transform the attitude of “Why bother?” into a rallying cry of “Why not?” from the nondual whole of “Fuck it” in another essay. The same observation applies here. 

As Ram Dass was often wont to quote, the third patriarch of zen said, “The great path is not difficult for one who holds no preference.” 

I don’t think this is meant to inspire us to not care what kind of stimulation we’re receiving from the universe. We can still flirt with our personality selves’ sacred desires and try to rig the simulation to give us the kind of life we’re interested in exploring. It just turns out that you get more manifestation juice through being unattached to outcomes than you do by trying, driving and striving. 

You author the reality you want much more effectively when you don’t cling to pleasure and panic about pain.

And it turns out, the difference I’ve experienced in meditation between the two is simply one of posture. When I’m internally cringing away from it due to the narratives I’ve built from context, the intense electric sensations that follow after Awakening/Crisis can be dysphoric. Dropping the narrative and boldly looking without judgment, those rippling tingles are indistinguishable from euphoria. 

It’s the exact same feeling, just a different internal orientation toward them.

Ecstasy is the same as Agony.

Research = Doomscrolling and Metabolism = Red Yarn, Push Pins, and Chainsmoking

I am word through the understanding that I am simply drawn to the behavioral patterns of performing Research and Metabolizing the data that I imbibe. Word, I am Word through this intention. Word, I am Word.

When Paranoia trickles to this stage, I have my first taste of agency in the process. It’s typical for me to first become aware that I have begun to travel down that path around the time that I am obsessively googling for news stories that will give me more information about whatever Crisis provoked a reaction I labeled as Agony.

Usually, I am able to remind myself of my commitment to Media Hygiene and stop my masochistic habit in its tracks. Usually, I can tear myself away and refocus on some sort of “eyebleach” as reddit calls it. A cute dog video to regulate my nervous system.

Part of me still feels that biting off a chunk of the unfathomable Horror of the world, and chewing it into something that makes a little more sense, perhaps with a taste of rhyme and meter, is actually a service to the world. Creating order or beauty from the chaos and suffering forever available one google search away is a small way to energetically assist those whose crises you otherwise have no agency to resolve.

That would be the positive-coded version of the same behavior. Doing a bit of research and finding ways to metabolize what you encounter creates what Layman Pascal calls surplus coherence in the systems to which we belong. And that surplus coherence helps manifest The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, as Charles Eisenstein wrote.

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Prophecy = Paranoia

I am word through the awareness that prophecy and paranoia are potentially indistinguishable when viewed through the nondual light of pure being. Word, I am Word through this intention. Word I am Word.

The difference here seems to come down to how desirable it is for you to be right. 

Is that cynical?

People are uncomfortable with hyper-religious grandiose Truth and just want you to calm down and shut up, but they really try to talk you out of the negative counterpart of paranoia. It seems to feel dangerous to others that paranoia might be taken seriously.

Maybe the story is different for people who are surrounded by religious fundamentalists, but when I share the gnosis I’ve just downloaded with my friends and family, I’m mostly met with bemused, tolerant, half-smiling head nods. 

Occasionally, in the Creekmason Discord, the other ‘masons will shower each other’s musings, TED Talks and ponderables with emoji react explosions of love and praise. 

I don’t know how the Creekmasons might react to my paranoia, which I still get from time to time despite doing everything medical science recommends to avoid it. I suspect it would be nearly as threatening to them as it is to the normcore friends I had in college whose exasperated counter arguments I sometimes still hear springing up from my own internal parts. At this point, only my closest confidants get a taste of how dark and terrifying my internal landscape can become.

I know better, after a dozen years of a bipolar diagnosis, to try to convince anyone of anything. I know better than to overshare my paranoia. I know better than to press the point of what I might consider prophecy.

Just because I’ve apparently received some kind of gnostic download, that doesn’t mean that the people I want to share it with have the right combination of karma and life experience (same-same?) to experience the same wonder I’m experiencing.

That’s ok. 

It’s best to keep your dispensation coded as a self-deprecating joke. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t seek internal validation.

Share with only the people who invite your sharing.

By the way, won’t you please sign up for my substack newsletter?

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You might say I overcorrected and went too far in the other direction.

Fair. 

Here’s two other examples that fit the same general pattern: 

Any of these could be the Light that casts a shadow of Paranoia. Really, it just comes down to what I feel most drawn to.

I’ve discovered that these Shadow Work exercises work much better when I have an emotional reaction to the reframing of a shameful characteristic I’ve just uncovered in myself. For the magick to function, it needs to feel vibey.

What a comfort to have these positive-coded behavior patterns to celebrate. 

Here’s to hoping I find freedom through embracing the tendency of my peculiar neural wiring to act as rapids that my personality self tumbles down. I love that I am creative, project oriented, and perhaps, occasionally, just a little prophetic. 

I love all that I am.