I just want to make it clear that I am NOT a depressed person - I am usually happy and silly.  Almost always the optimist.

When I first became genuinely depressed (i.e. suicide thread), it is because something new and dreadful finally entered my life.  Later on, in the midst of all this ridiculous activity which I was seeing/hearing/interacting with every day, I found solace in my creative abilities and, after some mentoring from an artist/teacher and other support in that sense, I felt much better about myself, and still do.  It is the constant discouragement that is a problem.

To Kardec:  I do ignore it - but it's still there.  I don't let it eat me up - I don't have any panic attacks in public.  I do accept it, but at the same time, I don't leave my house much lately.  Having a slight movement disorder makes it hard enough to be in public, but eruptions of rhythmic/orchestral tactics to irritate me when I'm out there don't help.  I've been called a waste before by some of them - of course it could have been my imagination!  It's just not as easy to "ignore" as some people may say.  Fortunately, I enjoy solitude. 

I can list the U.S. patent numbers on real sound projection devices.  The first successful remote transfer of sound through someone's skull with such a device occurred in 1974 at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research by a Dr. Joseph C. Sharp.  A lot of time has passed since then!  I'm just sayin'...

I haven't had an onslaught of sound in a very long time, and hopefully I never will again - during that period it seemed to be most likely a attempt to drive me crazy... I know better than that, though!  I am trying an anti-psychotic medication this weekend, only to humor my psychiatrist... it won't kill me.  None of this has... and they say that which doesn't kill you... you know the rest.  This is getting too soap opery - I think I'll can the paranoid confessions thing for a while.

Thanks for all of the comments, and I appreciate the feedback/support.

"imaginating" would be the right word I would say.

madsketcher,

I know a lot of people don't like the "P" word because of its association with a lot of belief systems, but PRAYER is how you do it. Guides and helpers will hear your prayer, starting with your own. It must be sincere, though. Don't play around.

If you are not intuitive (Psychic, another "P" word) or lack the ability to change the focus of your consciousness to actually meet your guide(s), then find someone who can, making sure you test him or her. Then you can communicate with them and verify your prayer has been answered and how. Worked for me. Be prepared to hear what you don't want to hear, as well as the good stuff. Guides don't mess around. And they don't argue. That's my experience.

Bob

How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change.    Hint, hint.

Kardec
I thought your comments were interesting. The part about not being able to "hear" something from a higher level because of the difference in vibrational level makes sense...too much noise to get a good signal.

I don't feel like I have a guide, but years ago when I was reading Seth, the question was asked "where do ideas come from?" and "can you see where they come from?", a question I have never successfully answered. I did notice that when I was thinking things over, many things, that it seemed like there was a conversation I was either imagining I was part of or listening to. And I have never answered the question as to who the other participants may be. I guess we usually assume we are just talking to ourselves. But sometimes I wonder if this is the case, especially when an especially brilliant idea pops into my head from out of the blue. Where does that come from!

Madsketcher, I think you are looking for solace and I keep going off in another direction or two in my own mind.  I don't know the best path for you but I trust that you can find your own way if you continue to work at finding your own answers.

I don't see paranoia as a cut-and-dried pathological state. I'm not sure what is going on. Surely, something has been grossly exagerated for some people, and that makes it difficult for them to function in this culture. But what if, underneath the exageration, there is a shred of truth in what they say or feel?

John Mack built a body of evidence to show that people who thought the had been abducted by aliens were not crazy. He found consistency in what had previously been considered just, well, madness. I'm not sayin ghe proved aliens are physical beings, but he did demonstrate that the people he worked with who made this nutty claim that they had benn abducted had undergone at least a psychical experience if not a physical experience. Could there be a correlating experience for paranoia?

I have days when I go out and it seems like everyone is rude to me! I do notice if I wear my "ugly" glasses instead of my "chic" ones that this is more likely to happen, or at least I get less eye contact and it is less pleasant. What if I were particularly sensitive to this (well I am, but I mean even more sensitive than I am!) but the way I talked about it came out in ways that didn't make sense to others? I am reminded me of a line from I Never Promised You a Rose Garden  to the effect of "You don't cut bangs with a hatchet." Well, duh! But I never understood why the speaker used such an exaggeration to make a point. But I think that is a significant thing...the loss of proportion. Maybe that happens if no one is listening to the person's concerns, so it gets blown out of proportion...then somebody has to listen!

One person who has examined alot of mental phenomena from the inside is Robert Pirsig. He has two books that indirectly talk about how it feels to crack up. The first one is a classic best seller. Wikipedia lists this trivia about it:

"Trivia: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the bestseller that was rejected by the greatest number of potential publishers (121)."

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is quite a book. But it was the sequal that I was thinking about today,Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. Somewhere in there Pirsig looks at how Native cultures viewed different mental states...they didn't necessarily view them the way we do today (or view them the same tribe-to-tribe). I was thinking there is at least one tribe that viewed schizophrenia as a possibly inspired state. What are the implications of that? So I thougth Pirsig's work might interest you if you like to read (and his ideas on Quality might interest you as an artist).

ps Bruce has his name on a couple of patents. did you see those too?

My impression from reading your story was that it is real, and I
got this impression right at the start. I think it is a fascinating
story and I would like to find out what is really going on.

The first thing I would do is continue your work to demonstrate
that it is real, like the tape recording. It would be good if you
had a tape recording of the fake commercial. Then, I would try to
get around you, people who are capable of dealing with things like
this, and can look at evidence objectively, like me, and who would
really engage this mentally, instead of shrugging it off.

I am familiar with schizophrenia and can tell the difference
between it and something else.  When people want to tell you that
you are crazy, let that blow by. They don't know. Maybe you are off
on a few things, maybe not. The first job is to establish that it
is really happening, as you describe, if that is the case.
You need the strength of people around you who can tell what is real
and what is not.

Emily strikes me as someone who would be capable of odd things.
She might have access to special equipment, that is being tested.
You appear to such people as someone who would make a good victim.
This could bring out in others, behavior that you sometimes see in
school children where someone is chosen as the victim. Your
sometimes drug use puts you at a disadvantage, could make you a
more vulnerable target. To defeat this, you must cease to be a good
victim. This would not happen to me because I have a
confrontational personality in such situations. I can't explain all
this in one post. But it is about being a strong person that people
will be afraid to tangle with, like me.

If this a real conspiracy, the people involved deserve to be
confronted, and that takes some preparation, and a lot of preliminary
study.

Then the idea is to find what is really going on, and who is behind
it and what their motivation is. They may be merely entertaining
themselves, or there may be more to it.

Also, there could be a paranormal element in it. Maybe you have
abilities that you don't know about yet. Maybe they can be put to
good use.

You can email me if you want to talk further.

Mental Health and SA

Fascinating thread introduced by Madscketcher and beautiful sensitive thoughtful responses.

Becoming immersed in the dual diagnosis (substance abuse & mental illness) Mental Health field for the past 3 years, I am becoming more and more impressed by my client’s uniquenesses’ and less impressed by the labels placed on them for political disenfranchising funding purposes under the guise of helping them.  It never did feel right within me to put labels on people and I was always confused when I would see the division between so called sane and insane.  Like the thing about hearing voices and seeing visions being produced by chemicals in the brain as opposed to them being real to an individual who has access to different vibrational levels within/without our the physical/non-physical worlds.  Not that the brain chemistry can’t be fooled around with to the degree to where the visions and/or voices are suppressed or brought out, but the brain itself, IMO, could never be the source.  Like the thing about being obsessed with something.  I get obsessed about understanding the afterlife and get accused of being weird. Einstein got obsessed about the time thing and won a prize for his brilliant formula. Joe Sod, down the street, gets obsessed about his alien abduction and gets put into a mental institution.  Each equally obsessed or fascinated but each labeled with a different tag-from brilliant to crazy.  Each is guided by something that the imagination can be used to expand on and none alien to way humans think and operate. 

We dabble, as humans, in all sorts of things whether our dabblings are viewed as brilliant or horrible.  That’s why I love Monroe’s ROTE (the special one-3rd line down) so much: There is no good, there is no evil, there is only expression. (UJ, pg 217 & Voyage to Curiosity’s Father by Bruce, pg.257).  As for substance abuse, I can’t imagine someone using anything that alters the mind for no other purpose than to alter the mind. Duhh?  Even though its use might be limiting or dangerous.  We are all grand experimenters, adventurers, and questioners and will continue to be so as we bump along throughout our many lives. Hooray for us!!!         

Why do we insist on putting a label on others and requiring that we confine ourselves/them to that label?  Because it makes for a more efficient system-by no means an ideal system but a theoretically more controllable/workable one.  But in spite of all our attempts, the truth is that we each are so unique and can only decide the way to go within ourselves by whatever action we deem necessary with or without the guides which surround us whether the come in the forms of web sites, books, commercials, angles, or angels to learn whatever we need to learn while in the physical.

Anyhow, these are my thoughts for this time and place and I just love the way that we try to continue to share ourselves with each other and to help with no strings attached.

Love to all, Jean   
     

Hi there MadSketcher,

I had a psychotic episode some years back. I'm not saying that you're mental case either.

Just that, from my experience, there are periods when you open up or in other words become sensitive.

Then you get a lot of made-up stuff streaming in along with the real stuff. As Alysia said you're maybe telepathic (like me - just a little) but you must stay off the substance abuse, talk (just talk) to a doctor and then you'll filter out the rubbish from the pearls.

- C K Yap

Hi Madsketcher,

I am tagging on late on this thread because I really know nothing about professional mental health issues.  But, frankly, I think you come across as just a pretty nice person with some rather unusual ideas.  I know that in my early twenties I went through some bizarre times, experimenting with certain drugs with little discretion.  It was part of my learning process.  I always considered myself to be on my own personal path to happiness, even though there were times when I isolated myself and felt actual despair.  The point is, I survived. 

Life is not always easy, but you sound like someone who is simply looking for new directions.  You asked in your initial post for new reading materials, etc., but no one offered them to you.  Everyone kind of got all excited about your unusual perceptions and seemingly downward spiral.

I'd just say, keep focused on the positive.  See a doctor if things seem out of control but know that you are a good person and will get through this.  I'm rooting for you.

love, blink