True Forms

I think one of the scariest things when I went to the hospital was that I could briefly see people’s true form, and so during my time in emergency I recognized two workers as Nazi’s from a past life, I don’t remember what they were doing in the last life, but I could see them really clearly, and I could recognize that they were only attracted to the job because it utilized the same power structure as the camps. They got to order us around and stay in the relative safety of the nurses station. It was so horrifying, and then people kept wondering why I was so upset with where they put me.

I remember I kept trying to get transfered to Jewish General, because a native friend of mine had seen a psychiatrist there who knew that aboriginal people commonly see spirits. I knew it would be a safer place for me to be, but they refused to transfer me out. It was so frustrating. And I had to renounce everything I knew to be true in order to get out, so frustrating.

People still sometimes recommend taking people in spiritual emergency to psychiatric wards and I would have to say DON’T FUCKING DO IT! You have no idea what power installed those structures. I think we need to make safe houses OUTSIDE of psychiatry, I don’t think the dominant medical model knows how to take care of people, in fact I know they don’t. People are really naive about the darkness. And that’s the problem with living in a polarity structure, light and dark can be used interchangably, and people can get confused really easily. Look at any fundamentalist religion. Psychiatry itself is also a fundamentalism, it’s horribly resistant to new ideas, even new ideas which work.

I think right now I’m attracted to Buddhism over other spiritual practices, but mostly because it’s based in a scientific method. I mean, Buddha didn’t try to explain other worlds too too much, he just lay out a map for enlightenment. He even said he didn’t want to because he would be disappointed. It’s more of a spiritual experiment, like an empty vessel, and people tend to find the same place if they follow the parameters. But even so, once you get deeper into it Buddhist teachers do talk about all the other things.

I suppose you might wonder why I’m not following aboriginal spirituality completely, and I can explain why. A lot of colonialism instilled very fundamentalist christian ideology into native spirituality and wrapped it up in a “Traditional” package. I’ve heard all kinds of bizarre “truths” which I tend to dismiss just based on my own critical thinking. Either way, it’s very hard to find a spiritual advisor who’s coming from aboriginal spirituality who isn’t tainted with colonialist interferance. Not to say they don’t exist, there are people who kept it going, but you have to be aware enough to tell the difference. Plus some spiritual leaders teaching tainted knowledge get pissy if you tell them it’s bunk.

My cousin is being used as a psych med guinea pig. He was stabilized on a medication sort of so they thought they would put him in a drug study for a new injectable. He’s been in nearly every drug study that comes along. He’s really messed up from it, his eyes are wide in horror all the time, it’s hideous. And the family is still naive enough to believe Canada’s medical system actually cares about the sanity of an aboriginal man. I’m worried he’s slipping into akathisia and is going to hurt someone or himself. But I feel so helpless, no one will listen to me anyway.

Oh yes, and currently I am listening to Bjork’s Medulla album, which doesn’t make any sense if you’re not in the right frame of mind yet, but it has all kinds of really useful chants and throat singing. She’s got a new one coming out in May. Ancestors is my favorite song right now. I’m also attracted to octagonal structures these days, which is interesting because not only is it the same shape as the Mayan calendar, but it’s also the same shape as magnetite crystals in the brain and there has even been a recent discovery that DNA can transform into an octahedron form.