This had me enthralled until the end, Nic. Fascinating stuff. Perhaps if I used my dowsing rod less, I might have experienced such a Voice! Thank goodness yours came to you- I don't like to imagine the alternative for you.
I have long thought that diagnoses such as bipolar are a bit of a copout on the part of the medicos. Yes, chemistry is out of whack- but why? I suspect it is almost always trauma.
Love you, Paula! Makes me so happy that you liked this one! Agreed on all these diagnoses as copouts - useless to put people in these boxes and throw meds at them without finding the root cause!
As someone who did 3000 psych evaluations for a living, I was SO unnerved and dissatisfied with "diagnoses" that I always included an ever-expanding paragraph or two warning people that a "diagnosis" was a snapshot, provisional, not anything defining.
But that was about 5 years ago that I stopped - I would go infinitely farther now, and say we have barely a clue of the vast network of subtle energies which our mental health profession has no idea of and misunderstands completely.
The recognition that even the most apparently unchangeable physical condition can be profoundly changed by our mind/heart (it's never just "mind" alone) is so crucial!
I just spent a wonderful morning the other day with a friend who is developing some visual/auditory immersive technology he wants to provide to mental health offices in our Asheville/Buncombe County area in Western North Carolina I'm hoping that we all can find ways to introduce practices even far beyond what you found in that book.
We're barely getting started. There's a whole universe of potentially radical new healing and awakening possibilities.
And it's kind of funny - the great part starts AFTER awakening, which is only the beginning of an infinite journey, not the end!
Thank you SO much for this, Don! I love hearing that people within these professions are working hard to change them from the inside out. I learned a lot about these diagnoses when my sister was in nursing school studying to be a Psychiatric nurse. How they were never meant to be used this way. And especially heartbreaking how the wrong meds could make someone so much worse!!! Scary stuff messing with our minds like this. Having been through it, I feel for younger people especially who are getting drugged up without even at least mandatory talk therapy. So backwards.
Glad to be able to give this feedback (I went into psychology in order to learn enough about it to provide a valid critique - so, well, there you go:>))
Same thing with IQ tests as diagnoses. If you know the very very small place they have, they're amazingly helpful. You can localize a brain injury if you know how to eradicate the IQ results correctly.
Similarly, if you only glance at the diagnosis in the context of a rich, poetic, loving, caring history, it can help (a little bit) put together some of the clues to get a richer sense of the person.
But seriously - and I assume you can feel this from all I've read - I always start from the Soul. One feels into the energy and heart at the core of the person you're with, and aspire throughout the time you're with them to stay in tune with that.
In light of THAT, you take whatever scintilla of usefulness there is from the IQ results and diagnoses and mix it in. Outside of a psych evaluation, I would never have use for IQ or diagnoses, except in VERY rare situations.
Meanwhile, I just saw two opportunities for really bad puns, if we may change the subject.
first, on an episode of "Bosch" (a rather well done but intense police drama) there was a great moment where one character, unable to find justification for arresting someone he was convinced was a criminal, said, "there's not one scin-fuckin-tilla of evidence for it! (hopefully, substack algorithms won't prevent this from going online)
The other, also totally irrelevant to the conversation, after I wrote "in LIGHT of that," i thought of an old Groucho Marx joke (hmmm, maybe you're too young to know how Groucho was - a comic from the old 1930s movies which i used see as a kid in the 1960s)
Anyway, be prepared to groan:
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
One more thought - imagine a metal health profession where love was the heart of all treatment (And maybe not even call it "treatment!?)
A new book just came out by my Sufi teacher, Llewelleyn Vaughan Lee. Jan (my wife) and I studied with him in the early 90s, and this book is a collection of his own favorites from 30 years of writing many books.
here's a particularly lovely passage: (so simple - just open our senses and our hearts and feel the Presence of love!!)
*********
Love is life’s greatest gift. We seek for love, and yet it is all around and within us. It belongs to the oneness of life, to every dewdrop on every leaf, to the spider spinning its web, the child looking at the stars.
If we open our senses and open our hearts, we can feel its presence.
Love is life speaking to us of its real mystery. And in that conversation so many things can happen, so many miracles can be born, the small unsuspecting miracles that we often do not notice — like momentary sunlight from behind a cloud, a flower where a seed unexpectedly sprouted, a smile from a stranger.
Despite all of its distortions, pain, and suffering, this world belongs to love, just as each of us belongs to love. And just to know that we are part of this love is enough.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this! You're so right too about awakening being just the beginning and how exciting that is. I always feel like the days are too short for me to read all the amazing books I keep collecting, lol. Maybe I can pull a Dr Strange (Marvel reference) and learn astral projection to read books while I sleep?😉
wait a minute - did I mention Dr. Strange before? One of my favorite comics in 6th grade (many centuries ago!) and James, in his early 30s, is a sci-fi comic book nut, is in our effortless living group, and is a great Dr. Strange fan.
He wants to write accessible philosophy, using comic books, myth, science fiction, etc, and I just wrote him an hour ago saying he should definitely use Dr. Strange as part of it.
Maybe our community can go out in our ectoplasmic bodies and meet somewhere in the subtle plane version of Tibet one day!
Lol. That's so cool! You did not mention it. I was not a comic book kid but Dr. Strange is def my favorite Marvel movie! I feel like Marvel has done SO much for modern society - Quantum worlds, powerful women and people of color! I've cried so many times at seeing progress on screen. And I would LOVE to read a philosophical treatise that incorporates popular culture figures like Dr Strange!
This had me enthralled until the end, Nic. Fascinating stuff. Perhaps if I used my dowsing rod less, I might have experienced such a Voice! Thank goodness yours came to you- I don't like to imagine the alternative for you.
I have long thought that diagnoses such as bipolar are a bit of a copout on the part of the medicos. Yes, chemistry is out of whack- but why? I suspect it is almost always trauma.
Love you, Paula! Makes me so happy that you liked this one! Agreed on all these diagnoses as copouts - useless to put people in these boxes and throw meds at them without finding the root cause!
As someone who did 3000 psych evaluations for a living, I was SO unnerved and dissatisfied with "diagnoses" that I always included an ever-expanding paragraph or two warning people that a "diagnosis" was a snapshot, provisional, not anything defining.
But that was about 5 years ago that I stopped - I would go infinitely farther now, and say we have barely a clue of the vast network of subtle energies which our mental health profession has no idea of and misunderstands completely.
The recognition that even the most apparently unchangeable physical condition can be profoundly changed by our mind/heart (it's never just "mind" alone) is so crucial!
I just spent a wonderful morning the other day with a friend who is developing some visual/auditory immersive technology he wants to provide to mental health offices in our Asheville/Buncombe County area in Western North Carolina I'm hoping that we all can find ways to introduce practices even far beyond what you found in that book.
We're barely getting started. There's a whole universe of potentially radical new healing and awakening possibilities.
And it's kind of funny - the great part starts AFTER awakening, which is only the beginning of an infinite journey, not the end!
Thank you SO much for this, Don! I love hearing that people within these professions are working hard to change them from the inside out. I learned a lot about these diagnoses when my sister was in nursing school studying to be a Psychiatric nurse. How they were never meant to be used this way. And especially heartbreaking how the wrong meds could make someone so much worse!!! Scary stuff messing with our minds like this. Having been through it, I feel for younger people especially who are getting drugged up without even at least mandatory talk therapy. So backwards.
Glad to be able to give this feedback (I went into psychology in order to learn enough about it to provide a valid critique - so, well, there you go:>))
Same thing with IQ tests as diagnoses. If you know the very very small place they have, they're amazingly helpful. You can localize a brain injury if you know how to eradicate the IQ results correctly.
Similarly, if you only glance at the diagnosis in the context of a rich, poetic, loving, caring history, it can help (a little bit) put together some of the clues to get a richer sense of the person.
But seriously - and I assume you can feel this from all I've read - I always start from the Soul. One feels into the energy and heart at the core of the person you're with, and aspire throughout the time you're with them to stay in tune with that.
In light of THAT, you take whatever scintilla of usefulness there is from the IQ results and diagnoses and mix it in. Outside of a psych evaluation, I would never have use for IQ or diagnoses, except in VERY rare situations.
Meanwhile, I just saw two opportunities for really bad puns, if we may change the subject.
first, on an episode of "Bosch" (a rather well done but intense police drama) there was a great moment where one character, unable to find justification for arresting someone he was convinced was a criminal, said, "there's not one scin-fuckin-tilla of evidence for it! (hopefully, substack algorithms won't prevent this from going online)
The other, also totally irrelevant to the conversation, after I wrote "in LIGHT of that," i thought of an old Groucho Marx joke (hmmm, maybe you're too young to know how Groucho was - a comic from the old 1930s movies which i used see as a kid in the 1960s)
Anyway, be prepared to groan:
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Ouch. Sorry.
One more thought - imagine a metal health profession where love was the heart of all treatment (And maybe not even call it "treatment!?)
A new book just came out by my Sufi teacher, Llewelleyn Vaughan Lee. Jan (my wife) and I studied with him in the early 90s, and this book is a collection of his own favorites from 30 years of writing many books.
here's a particularly lovely passage: (so simple - just open our senses and our hearts and feel the Presence of love!!)
*********
Love is life’s greatest gift. We seek for love, and yet it is all around and within us. It belongs to the oneness of life, to every dewdrop on every leaf, to the spider spinning its web, the child looking at the stars.
If we open our senses and open our hearts, we can feel its presence.
Love is life speaking to us of its real mystery. And in that conversation so many things can happen, so many miracles can be born, the small unsuspecting miracles that we often do not notice — like momentary sunlight from behind a cloud, a flower where a seed unexpectedly sprouted, a smile from a stranger.
Despite all of its distortions, pain, and suffering, this world belongs to love, just as each of us belongs to love. And just to know that we are part of this love is enough.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this! You're so right too about awakening being just the beginning and how exciting that is. I always feel like the days are too short for me to read all the amazing books I keep collecting, lol. Maybe I can pull a Dr Strange (Marvel reference) and learn astral projection to read books while I sleep?😉
wait a minute - did I mention Dr. Strange before? One of my favorite comics in 6th grade (many centuries ago!) and James, in his early 30s, is a sci-fi comic book nut, is in our effortless living group, and is a great Dr. Strange fan.
He wants to write accessible philosophy, using comic books, myth, science fiction, etc, and I just wrote him an hour ago saying he should definitely use Dr. Strange as part of it.
Maybe our community can go out in our ectoplasmic bodies and meet somewhere in the subtle plane version of Tibet one day!
Lol. That's so cool! You did not mention it. I was not a comic book kid but Dr. Strange is def my favorite Marvel movie! I feel like Marvel has done SO much for modern society - Quantum worlds, powerful women and people of color! I've cried so many times at seeing progress on screen. And I would LOVE to read a philosophical treatise that incorporates popular culture figures like Dr Strange!
We’ll meet some time on the astral plane and see how they put together the philosophic treatise there
- meanwhile, I’m working on one with another member of our effortless living group =- and it WILL include Dr. STrange:>>>>