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lb_leeMori: I textually transcribed this zine I raved about earlier! It's a mad pride manifesto with influences from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Icarus Project, Inner Family Systems, and anarchist concepts like mutual aid and collective liberation. Its beautiful imperfection means a lot to my hothead self, so here it is!
This zine is anti-authority and anti-medical. You may not want to read it, especially if you're in a place mentally where your brain is causing you a lot of havoc and doesn't seem at all your friend. Paris Williams's Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift In Our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis covers some similar territory with more research, page count, and moderation.
Knocking from the Inside: Breaking Free from Mental Imperialism
by Jimmy Dunson
(Mental Liberation Wish)
(BEGINNING)
Humanity is profoundly sick. This hydra has many heads, but at its root is the same mental illness: the belief in one’s superiority, another’s inferiority, and thereby the right to dominate. We see this in every axis of oppression: race, class, gender, ability, species, nationality, immigration status, age, sexuality, body type, educational attainment, language, attractiveness, color, religion. We see this in colonizer’s relationship to indigenous peoples. We see this in humanity’s relationship to the Earth. We see this in the sane’s relationship to the insane. And if we take an honest look inward, we have internalized this way of being and how this disease is present even in our relationship to ourselves and our different parts.
There is a predator, a dominating spirit in our being. It is doing a predatory interview to see if we will be its victim. Our different parts get loud and emphatically say, "No! We are fre!" Then the police or the doctors, or others outside the self, see this uproar and side with the dominating spirit. Isolating the parts within oneself [leads] to further abuse and silence. If a domestic violence victim yells no when she is hit[,] and the police come and tell her to obey her abusive husband or else they will lock her up and drug her, how can she heal? She needs allies and accomplices who can listen to her, maintain her safety, and help her out of the situation when she is ready to leave. Likewise, so do our depths need liberation from the dominating spirit within.
(Overcome Power)
There is a part in us that wants to dominate all other parts of us, and it would rather turn all the different parts against each other than give up its power.
Our society is sociopathic and pathological. Our culture is inflicted with a highly communicative spiritual pandemic. There is a word we use for bodies who move with no heart or spirit, eyes that can't see, ears that can't hear, hearts that can't love, creatures whose light within has died even though the physical body is still moving: zombies. We are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. When this way of being finds its way into one's consciousness, and this disease tries to stamp out the human spirit, the only response to this predatory soul violence is to get loud, to scream from the depths of one's soul, to refuse with every fiber of our being, our spiritual and relational annihilation. Is this easy to witness? No. It's chaotic, it's full of rage, it's violent psychologically. But the alternative is letting the sickness in. What do we do when a Nazi shows up, organizing for genocide? We punch him in the face. Our grandfathers taught us that we do whatever it takes to not let authoritariansim win over humanity. It doesn't matter if we have fighter jets or if we are in the Warsaw Ghetto, when the pathological disease of domination and superiority shows itself, we resist with all we have because to not do so would be the death of our spirit, and our joining the ranks of the sociopaths.
(Do not go gentle)
Just as in disaster capitalism, predators use the disaster and the shock that comes with it to entrench Power and economic policies that favor the interests of the powerful, so too when somebody goes through a psychological disaster, a psychosis, the response from those who believe in Power Over is to retrench what is powerful and in control in our psyches. But that spirit of domination is what created the conditions for the diaster--the psychosis--to arise to begin with. Just as in a disaster, there are those impacted who have more of a vested interest in their well-being and survival than elites, and want more than a return to pre-disaster conditions[;[ they want a just recovery. So too, in psychosis, our deeper parts know what is needed. The role of outside support, the ego, is to listen, step aside, and help facilitate the self-determined needs of one's depths, especially those parts that are most marginalized or suffering.
(There's a difference between living and existing.)
This mindset of domination might blast and ruin my sense of self before it exits my being, but I am not in the last afraid of my psychological ruins. I carry a new world within. That world is growing in this moment.
The dominating life before madness was the real psychosis--the rigid roles, the meaningless drudgery of the work, the loss of authentic social relationships, the destruction of the depths and everything we needed to survive and thrive. In some ways, even though a psychosis is immensely devastating, it also in a sense washes away the unnameable disease that is everyday life under a half-lived life. But with madness, without coercion from above, the different parts within us default back to meaningful relationships based on mutual aid. Dorothy Day said, "while the crisis lasted, people loved one another." We want that love to last. We want to stretch out these temporary autonomous zones where we reimagine who we can be and how we relate to others in an authentic way instead of how we were conditions.
At the same time that psychoses cause so much devastation and loss, they also act as a personal wake-up call. They are moments of possiblity wherein our different parts reject the ethos of Power, spontaneously break through to care for themselves and affirm their worth. Suddenly, a spell is broken, a crack in the borders that divide myself from myself widens, and I can see myself through those cracks. My different parts connect, share, and that better and more whole self I am constantly fighting for isn't a distant hope, but a current reality, if only temporarily. This is a microcosm of the person I want to be. It is an echo from a future me that I bring closer into existence through each small simple act of kindness and courage, through loving and being loved.
In ordinary consciousness in our society, people look at the world through the scope of a gun. It gives focus, but misses context and the large picture. Those of us who are neurodiverse (labeled schizophrenic or autistic, for example) are aware of and in communication with a universe of beings, not just the consciousness of humans.
I've been taught by others, especially the psychiatric industry and religious institutions, that what I do, say, think, and believe is diseased, broken, wrong, and inferior. When in actuality, the deep, dark, ancient parts within me know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing so for my healing, wholeness, and liberation.
Five hundred years ago the "curch" called us "possessed by demons" and "witches" and tortured us in the name of "God". Now "doctors" call us "psychotic" and "mad" and torture us in the name of "medical science."
(Psychological collapse --> Liberation)
(Moon Struck: This year when the moon is full, we will put aside our devices and go out into the world. Like generations of human beings and animals before us, we will revel in the moonlight and be as wild as our spirits move us to be.)
Marching from one area to another to eat, kept in line, surrounded by barbed wire, forced to take mind-altering drugs, medical professionals committing all manner of violence towards me--from the inside, mental hospitals feel like concentration camps. The only way we get out of these institutions is acting like we don't have something in our depths rattling its cages. We play the part of the zombie.
Their exorcisms, whether fire at the stake, electrocution, lobotomy, or poisonous chemicals, is meant to remove what is still alive in us, to remove the God in us, who we are united with at our core.
Psychosis is our psychopath antibodies. It's the human spirit, crushed, abused, ready to be annihilated, ready to fall under the spell, in survival mode, revolting, screaming for life, for its own continued survival, knowing that in order ot stay alive, to keep its soul, it must fight. This spirit can never be extinguished. It can only be hidden. It is the source of life. The mad have held onto their humanity, their spiritual depths, and have experienced every manner of torture, degradation[,] and evil for this "crime." Instead of calling them diseased, we should be learning from their spiritual alchemy. The mad have a cure to the real disease. May we listen to their words, may we see their visions. And may the dead arise and be born again.
Through listening, working with, and supporting my different parts, especially the parts most marginalized, ot lead their own healing process, I build a long-term, more sustainable, resilient, and pwoerful sense of self. I don't need to save myself. I need to listen, support, and be in solidarity with my different parts.
(Submit to love without thinking, as the sun this morning rose recklessly, extinguishing our star-candle minds.)
(THE EXTRAORDINDARY ARISES)
I need accomplices who can help me with my transformation and gradually growing wholeness, not self-appointed saviors who try to make me do, be, or believe what they think I should do, be, or believe.
I am building a new self in the shadow of the old. Individually, we prefigure who we strive to become--we magically imagine ourselves into being.
Everything is talking to you, everything is voicing your depths. You are lover, beloved, and the wedding party. And so is everybody else.
You remember. There is meaning in everything. The magic is all connected. You understand the pieces and how they fit, but don't let the ego puff you up to hide your smallness. Stay humble. Make it about others' self-actualization, awakening, liberation, and enlightenment; not just your own. Help others achieve their own realizations.
In darkness, in emptiness, is the secret of life found. And only in those brave spirits who sail down tot he black depths at times fearful, but yet pushing on, is the heart reached. Like diamonds, with the pressure of outside forces and a little time, we sparkle and shine, and will continue to do so though our bodies turn to dust and our words become but the faintest echo.
I dream of a listener, another soul with openness and willingness to hear without preconceived notions.
(Mindful Magic)
I dream of an end to not only military, economic, and cultural imperalism, but to mental imperialism as well. The idea that we have to conform to the majority held opinion of what reality is and how we are supposed to perceive and experience that reality.
I dream of a world that recognizes that to be alive is more than to just digest food or breathe in oxygen, but to radically confront reality in the name of all that isn't but yet could be.
I dream that those who have had the courage to dive into their own shadows will be acknowledged and thanked for their part in closing the gaps that were left by those of us too afraid to look ourselves in the eyes.
I dream of being understood and loved for the untamed, wild, and beautiful creature that I am.
I dream of a world in which we, the mad are free to define ourselves for ourselves, have the courage and the necessary space to articulate our inner worlds.
I dream of a world wherein people don't rush to label every new abnormality a "disease" to be cured, but look inquisitively at every case and recognize not only the dangers, but also the truths held within the psyche.
I dream of a world that not only celebrates differences of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and so on, but also differences of mental perception.
The differences between you and I don't need to translate into the poison of superiority and/or inferiority, but can be like the space between two lovers' hands, full of recognition, acceptance, and even passion. Our differences, the spaces between us, are where we begin to love and understand each other, and in so doing, learn to love and understand ourselves. Even if the space between us is farther than that between the sun and moon, and even if our differences outnumber the stars in the sky, I know that my knowing and your knowing will find the places wherein we intersect and connect. Those collisions and the illusions they destroy is worth living for, fighting for, going insane for, and if need be, dying a thousands death for. May our differences always exist, and may our comings and goings always awake the dreams inside our dreams where we recognize the dark hidden beauty within us all.
We escaped conventional reality to a hidden world of unlimited possibility and magic. We rushed heaven's gates like it was a police barricade and we were one hundred thousand revolutionaries.
We were born to be free, and caging us in concrete or the more powerful prison of societal expectations could never smother the wildness in our chests. We fly with the birds. We dance with the rain. Our blood shouts with the thunder. And our feet kiss the earth. This is madness, to live beyond human reason, to inhabit other, truer worlds. To live with an excess of passion and love, and to feel completely and totally in a world devoid of feeling, in a world that it would be worse than madness to adjust oneself to.
(In transfroming ourselves, we transform the world. In transforming the world, we transform ourselves.)
There has to be some way to reach into the future, into a place of possibility, beyond what is. If all that already is is all there is, life would stop. We must go to another side, a realm beyond. This beyond is a place of darkness, of chaos. And madness is the means. We reach behind, to nonexistence, and the pain of becoming. And we reach into the future, impregnating ourselves with what we discover there.
There's a power in madness, in living on the edge. There's a power existing between worlds, wrestling with demons, and making love to gods. Our psyches can exist on a borderland between what is and what is not, but yet could be, between reality and possibility. But there is a mental imperialism every bit as violent, inhuman and egocentric as political, economic and cultural imperialism. While others are denied their sovereignty or their livelihood by the powerful, we are denied our reality, our experiences. Our experiences tell us there is still magic in the world. And when we dance to the rhythm of the creative impulse of the universe, our lives can be inufsed with that magic.
(Jars of springwater are not enough anymore. Take us down to the river. The face of peace, the sun itself.)
(Image of plants growing up around the words: What can we grow from crisis)
In madness, wings can touch the Sun. We may come back singed or scarred, but what true angel has ever remained untouched and unharmed? Who is to say [that] scarred wings are worse than no wings at all? Perhaps to be divine is to feel, to refuse to be anesthetized, blocked, or cut off from the rest of existence. Perhaps the pain others push down rises up in those of us open to it. Maybe there isn't so much of a gap between humanity cutting down the forests and some of us carving our wrists. When the land, sea, and sky are poisoned, maybe it's natural that a part of us dies as well.
(Be Sanctuary)
We have abandoned the dreamless dogma of sane society. We wander beyond the limits imposed by reality, to a world of connection and potentialities. Who's to say that a kiss can't save a life? that a dance can't destroy an invading army? that making love doesn't create new worlds? Our bodies are bridges from nothingness to eternity. What the sane don't realize is that the first single-celled organism is trying with all its might to be, and it's not guaranteed that it will. It exists parallel to us. All growth, all evolution exists in the madman's eyes. And when she dances, she dances against everything that would destroy or cage life. And she dances for her twin kindres souls who, although divided by space and time, are also fighting a battle against both non-existence and all who would carve out existence from the top down, forcing, violating, raping, so that their version of "life" can replicate itself, can alone eixst. When she dances, when she sings, when she cries, an echo of the movements and voices we refuse to see and to hear, she does it for us all.
(break the spell)
You are mad, my love--creative, passionate, universe-creating and -destroying, you warrior, healer, poet, mystic, trickster. They cannot stand for one moment your ultimate sin, your abandonment of their mass psychosis. You become wild, feral, untamed for an instant and there is no limit to the violence they will inflict upon you. You separate yourself from the narrow tunnel vision of dominant humans and open up to the wider ecosystem of life all around you, and they cannot allow it. How dare you turn your back on colonization, on domestication, in favor of a right relationship with all other beings inside you and all around you? Your dancing and singing and crying and praying, your magic, induces such rage in the sane. Their insistence on dominating all of life, their religion of superiority, they must defend at all costs and they cannot tolerate you for a moment.
(Picture of doves, with partially unreadable text: How do birds make great sky [unreadable] of their freedom
They fall and falling, they are given wings)
(Building Power While the Lights Are Out (within))
[LB notes: Building Power While the Lights Are Out is the title of the mutual aid anthology Jimmy Dunson edited and published]
Oh, but I see you, Holding the invisible threads that maintain life. Being the immune response, the white blood cells, in response to the disease of their soullessness. You are beautiful and sacred. So full of life. You have found such treasure within yourself. And they, in their ignorance, would prefer you unfeeling, unloving, dead inside, overmedicated. And patronizingly tell you, you are diseased, ill, but in reality you have broken free of their mass psychosis.
You have lost your mind? So? There are worse things to lose. You have found the heart and soul of the universe. You simply stopped being the false god to the universe within you, you stopped being the dictator to your differing parts. And reuniting with those parts of yourself was such a homecoming. You felt so much joy. At last, you were whole. There was a glorious revolution inside you. You died and were reborn again, in haromny with all existence, except for those who will do anything to try to make sure their world is the only one that exists. They are the lost sheep and when you return home, they say you've come the lost sheep. Their compulsion to dominate all life, their unquenchable, all-pervasive thirst for Money and Power is psychotic. Your nature-connected, intuitive, spirit-filled, empathy and vision is the antidote to their collective madness.
(Image of stars and constellations, including capricornus, aquarius, with the words "The manner of finding the principal Star.)
You put together the broken pieces. And they want you to be ashamed and embarrassed; they look down on you with pity. If you were connected, they say you were aloof. If you were free, they say you were bound. And for a while they had you believing it.
But once heaven is glimpsed, you will always remember. You have been to the mountaintop and seen with your own eyes.
Just like somebody who learns to read can never have that taken away from them, once we experience a more connected, meaningful, true, and just way of being, we won't settle for anything less. One of my spiritual teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, taught, "If you are capable of living deeply one moment of your life, you can learn to live the same way all the other moments of your life."
That glimpse of heaven you had, mad one, that is your home. That is your birthright. Don't ever let them convince you otherwise.
Is it difficult to go from complete darkness, to blinding light? Yes, of course. Will you stumble as you gain your footing? Certainly. But what I need is others who have been through a similar transformation and rebirth, and the understanding and example that is possible. Not caterpillars dragging me away from the cocoon.
We have been passed down the ideas that visions consit of clouds parting and a light shining down. This is a plasticized version. In reality, visions shatter the ground beneath our feet. They are confusing and chaotic. But the experience is no less profound, or potentially world-changing.
They've merely lived, while you have been fully alive. You have so much insight and wisdom to share with people who are lost in the meaninglessness and isolation of our societies.
Their worst fear is the dark places within themselves and they project this fear onto you, oh Dark One. Your wildness must be subdued at all costs. Or else they may come face to face with their own sahdow, something they have spent their whole life setting up a bulwark against. Your smallest thought or gesture can set off the rebellion within themselves. They fear you for good reason.
You are destroying the hierarchy within.
They try to make you an automaton or bureaucrat or wage slave, but you listen to what your ancestors and future generations call you to be--an artist, a poet, a warrior, a mystic, a healer, a magician, a rebel, a lover, a hero. You are loved just the way you are. By me, and I am sure many others. You have died and been reborn to be who you wanted to become.
You have been to the shadow world and returned. You have befriended the dragons. You are whole, and madness is how you were able to become whole.
Weave your web, student of the spider. Perform your magic on the only stage that matters, great magician.
(sparkle)
(get some rest. You have arrived. You are home.) [LB note: "You have arrived; you are home" is a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.]
(image of a flying carpet through trees, plants, and clouds)
(Magical Spirit)
Back Cover:
madness is diving into the dark world below
where seeds sprout and space allows possibilities to grow
we don't know everything that godes down under the surface
there's always more than what you see
madness is wandering beyond the limits imposed by reality
to a world of connection and potentialities
where our skin becomes the earth
our hair--seeds
our breath--mist
and our spirits--free
communication with unspoken words
the abandonment of the dreamless dogma of sane society
creating new worlds
being new worlds
and needing to give--no apology
This zine is anti-authority and anti-medical. You may not want to read it, especially if you're in a place mentally where your brain is causing you a lot of havoc and doesn't seem at all your friend. Paris Williams's Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift In Our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis covers some similar territory with more research, page count, and moderation.
Knocking from the Inside: Breaking Free from Mental Imperialism
by Jimmy Dunson
(Mental Liberation Wish)
(BEGINNING)
Humanity is profoundly sick. This hydra has many heads, but at its root is the same mental illness: the belief in one’s superiority, another’s inferiority, and thereby the right to dominate. We see this in every axis of oppression: race, class, gender, ability, species, nationality, immigration status, age, sexuality, body type, educational attainment, language, attractiveness, color, religion. We see this in colonizer’s relationship to indigenous peoples. We see this in humanity’s relationship to the Earth. We see this in the sane’s relationship to the insane. And if we take an honest look inward, we have internalized this way of being and how this disease is present even in our relationship to ourselves and our different parts.
There is a predator, a dominating spirit in our being. It is doing a predatory interview to see if we will be its victim. Our different parts get loud and emphatically say, "No! We are fre!" Then the police or the doctors, or others outside the self, see this uproar and side with the dominating spirit. Isolating the parts within oneself [leads] to further abuse and silence. If a domestic violence victim yells no when she is hit[,] and the police come and tell her to obey her abusive husband or else they will lock her up and drug her, how can she heal? She needs allies and accomplices who can listen to her, maintain her safety, and help her out of the situation when she is ready to leave. Likewise, so do our depths need liberation from the dominating spirit within.
(Overcome Power)
There is a part in us that wants to dominate all other parts of us, and it would rather turn all the different parts against each other than give up its power.
Our society is sociopathic and pathological. Our culture is inflicted with a highly communicative spiritual pandemic. There is a word we use for bodies who move with no heart or spirit, eyes that can't see, ears that can't hear, hearts that can't love, creatures whose light within has died even though the physical body is still moving: zombies. We are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. When this way of being finds its way into one's consciousness, and this disease tries to stamp out the human spirit, the only response to this predatory soul violence is to get loud, to scream from the depths of one's soul, to refuse with every fiber of our being, our spiritual and relational annihilation. Is this easy to witness? No. It's chaotic, it's full of rage, it's violent psychologically. But the alternative is letting the sickness in. What do we do when a Nazi shows up, organizing for genocide? We punch him in the face. Our grandfathers taught us that we do whatever it takes to not let authoritariansim win over humanity. It doesn't matter if we have fighter jets or if we are in the Warsaw Ghetto, when the pathological disease of domination and superiority shows itself, we resist with all we have because to not do so would be the death of our spirit, and our joining the ranks of the sociopaths.
(Do not go gentle)
Just as in disaster capitalism, predators use the disaster and the shock that comes with it to entrench Power and economic policies that favor the interests of the powerful, so too when somebody goes through a psychological disaster, a psychosis, the response from those who believe in Power Over is to retrench what is powerful and in control in our psyches. But that spirit of domination is what created the conditions for the diaster--the psychosis--to arise to begin with. Just as in a disaster, there are those impacted who have more of a vested interest in their well-being and survival than elites, and want more than a return to pre-disaster conditions[;[ they want a just recovery. So too, in psychosis, our deeper parts know what is needed. The role of outside support, the ego, is to listen, step aside, and help facilitate the self-determined needs of one's depths, especially those parts that are most marginalized or suffering.
(There's a difference between living and existing.)
This mindset of domination might blast and ruin my sense of self before it exits my being, but I am not in the last afraid of my psychological ruins. I carry a new world within. That world is growing in this moment.
The dominating life before madness was the real psychosis--the rigid roles, the meaningless drudgery of the work, the loss of authentic social relationships, the destruction of the depths and everything we needed to survive and thrive. In some ways, even though a psychosis is immensely devastating, it also in a sense washes away the unnameable disease that is everyday life under a half-lived life. But with madness, without coercion from above, the different parts within us default back to meaningful relationships based on mutual aid. Dorothy Day said, "while the crisis lasted, people loved one another." We want that love to last. We want to stretch out these temporary autonomous zones where we reimagine who we can be and how we relate to others in an authentic way instead of how we were conditions.
At the same time that psychoses cause so much devastation and loss, they also act as a personal wake-up call. They are moments of possiblity wherein our different parts reject the ethos of Power, spontaneously break through to care for themselves and affirm their worth. Suddenly, a spell is broken, a crack in the borders that divide myself from myself widens, and I can see myself through those cracks. My different parts connect, share, and that better and more whole self I am constantly fighting for isn't a distant hope, but a current reality, if only temporarily. This is a microcosm of the person I want to be. It is an echo from a future me that I bring closer into existence through each small simple act of kindness and courage, through loving and being loved.
In ordinary consciousness in our society, people look at the world through the scope of a gun. It gives focus, but misses context and the large picture. Those of us who are neurodiverse (labeled schizophrenic or autistic, for example) are aware of and in communication with a universe of beings, not just the consciousness of humans.
I've been taught by others, especially the psychiatric industry and religious institutions, that what I do, say, think, and believe is diseased, broken, wrong, and inferior. When in actuality, the deep, dark, ancient parts within me know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing so for my healing, wholeness, and liberation.
Five hundred years ago the "curch" called us "possessed by demons" and "witches" and tortured us in the name of "God". Now "doctors" call us "psychotic" and "mad" and torture us in the name of "medical science."
(Psychological collapse --> Liberation)
(Moon Struck: This year when the moon is full, we will put aside our devices and go out into the world. Like generations of human beings and animals before us, we will revel in the moonlight and be as wild as our spirits move us to be.)
Marching from one area to another to eat, kept in line, surrounded by barbed wire, forced to take mind-altering drugs, medical professionals committing all manner of violence towards me--from the inside, mental hospitals feel like concentration camps. The only way we get out of these institutions is acting like we don't have something in our depths rattling its cages. We play the part of the zombie.
Their exorcisms, whether fire at the stake, electrocution, lobotomy, or poisonous chemicals, is meant to remove what is still alive in us, to remove the God in us, who we are united with at our core.
Psychosis is our psychopath antibodies. It's the human spirit, crushed, abused, ready to be annihilated, ready to fall under the spell, in survival mode, revolting, screaming for life, for its own continued survival, knowing that in order ot stay alive, to keep its soul, it must fight. This spirit can never be extinguished. It can only be hidden. It is the source of life. The mad have held onto their humanity, their spiritual depths, and have experienced every manner of torture, degradation[,] and evil for this "crime." Instead of calling them diseased, we should be learning from their spiritual alchemy. The mad have a cure to the real disease. May we listen to their words, may we see their visions. And may the dead arise and be born again.
Through listening, working with, and supporting my different parts, especially the parts most marginalized, ot lead their own healing process, I build a long-term, more sustainable, resilient, and pwoerful sense of self. I don't need to save myself. I need to listen, support, and be in solidarity with my different parts.
(Submit to love without thinking, as the sun this morning rose recklessly, extinguishing our star-candle minds.)
(THE EXTRAORDINDARY ARISES)
I need accomplices who can help me with my transformation and gradually growing wholeness, not self-appointed saviors who try to make me do, be, or believe what they think I should do, be, or believe.
I am building a new self in the shadow of the old. Individually, we prefigure who we strive to become--we magically imagine ourselves into being.
Everything is talking to you, everything is voicing your depths. You are lover, beloved, and the wedding party. And so is everybody else.
You remember. There is meaning in everything. The magic is all connected. You understand the pieces and how they fit, but don't let the ego puff you up to hide your smallness. Stay humble. Make it about others' self-actualization, awakening, liberation, and enlightenment; not just your own. Help others achieve their own realizations.
In darkness, in emptiness, is the secret of life found. And only in those brave spirits who sail down tot he black depths at times fearful, but yet pushing on, is the heart reached. Like diamonds, with the pressure of outside forces and a little time, we sparkle and shine, and will continue to do so though our bodies turn to dust and our words become but the faintest echo.
I dream of a listener, another soul with openness and willingness to hear without preconceived notions.
(Mindful Magic)
I dream of an end to not only military, economic, and cultural imperalism, but to mental imperialism as well. The idea that we have to conform to the majority held opinion of what reality is and how we are supposed to perceive and experience that reality.
I dream of a world that recognizes that to be alive is more than to just digest food or breathe in oxygen, but to radically confront reality in the name of all that isn't but yet could be.
I dream that those who have had the courage to dive into their own shadows will be acknowledged and thanked for their part in closing the gaps that were left by those of us too afraid to look ourselves in the eyes.
I dream of being understood and loved for the untamed, wild, and beautiful creature that I am.
I dream of a world in which we, the mad are free to define ourselves for ourselves, have the courage and the necessary space to articulate our inner worlds.
I dream of a world wherein people don't rush to label every new abnormality a "disease" to be cured, but look inquisitively at every case and recognize not only the dangers, but also the truths held within the psyche.
I dream of a world that not only celebrates differences of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and so on, but also differences of mental perception.
The differences between you and I don't need to translate into the poison of superiority and/or inferiority, but can be like the space between two lovers' hands, full of recognition, acceptance, and even passion. Our differences, the spaces between us, are where we begin to love and understand each other, and in so doing, learn to love and understand ourselves. Even if the space between us is farther than that between the sun and moon, and even if our differences outnumber the stars in the sky, I know that my knowing and your knowing will find the places wherein we intersect and connect. Those collisions and the illusions they destroy is worth living for, fighting for, going insane for, and if need be, dying a thousands death for. May our differences always exist, and may our comings and goings always awake the dreams inside our dreams where we recognize the dark hidden beauty within us all.
We escaped conventional reality to a hidden world of unlimited possibility and magic. We rushed heaven's gates like it was a police barricade and we were one hundred thousand revolutionaries.
We were born to be free, and caging us in concrete or the more powerful prison of societal expectations could never smother the wildness in our chests. We fly with the birds. We dance with the rain. Our blood shouts with the thunder. And our feet kiss the earth. This is madness, to live beyond human reason, to inhabit other, truer worlds. To live with an excess of passion and love, and to feel completely and totally in a world devoid of feeling, in a world that it would be worse than madness to adjust oneself to.
(In transfroming ourselves, we transform the world. In transforming the world, we transform ourselves.)
There has to be some way to reach into the future, into a place of possibility, beyond what is. If all that already is is all there is, life would stop. We must go to another side, a realm beyond. This beyond is a place of darkness, of chaos. And madness is the means. We reach behind, to nonexistence, and the pain of becoming. And we reach into the future, impregnating ourselves with what we discover there.
There's a power in madness, in living on the edge. There's a power existing between worlds, wrestling with demons, and making love to gods. Our psyches can exist on a borderland between what is and what is not, but yet could be, between reality and possibility. But there is a mental imperialism every bit as violent, inhuman and egocentric as political, economic and cultural imperialism. While others are denied their sovereignty or their livelihood by the powerful, we are denied our reality, our experiences. Our experiences tell us there is still magic in the world. And when we dance to the rhythm of the creative impulse of the universe, our lives can be inufsed with that magic.
(Jars of springwater are not enough anymore. Take us down to the river. The face of peace, the sun itself.)
(Image of plants growing up around the words: What can we grow from crisis)
In madness, wings can touch the Sun. We may come back singed or scarred, but what true angel has ever remained untouched and unharmed? Who is to say [that] scarred wings are worse than no wings at all? Perhaps to be divine is to feel, to refuse to be anesthetized, blocked, or cut off from the rest of existence. Perhaps the pain others push down rises up in those of us open to it. Maybe there isn't so much of a gap between humanity cutting down the forests and some of us carving our wrists. When the land, sea, and sky are poisoned, maybe it's natural that a part of us dies as well.
(Be Sanctuary)
We have abandoned the dreamless dogma of sane society. We wander beyond the limits imposed by reality, to a world of connection and potentialities. Who's to say that a kiss can't save a life? that a dance can't destroy an invading army? that making love doesn't create new worlds? Our bodies are bridges from nothingness to eternity. What the sane don't realize is that the first single-celled organism is trying with all its might to be, and it's not guaranteed that it will. It exists parallel to us. All growth, all evolution exists in the madman's eyes. And when she dances, she dances against everything that would destroy or cage life. And she dances for her twin kindres souls who, although divided by space and time, are also fighting a battle against both non-existence and all who would carve out existence from the top down, forcing, violating, raping, so that their version of "life" can replicate itself, can alone eixst. When she dances, when she sings, when she cries, an echo of the movements and voices we refuse to see and to hear, she does it for us all.
(break the spell)
You are mad, my love--creative, passionate, universe-creating and -destroying, you warrior, healer, poet, mystic, trickster. They cannot stand for one moment your ultimate sin, your abandonment of their mass psychosis. You become wild, feral, untamed for an instant and there is no limit to the violence they will inflict upon you. You separate yourself from the narrow tunnel vision of dominant humans and open up to the wider ecosystem of life all around you, and they cannot allow it. How dare you turn your back on colonization, on domestication, in favor of a right relationship with all other beings inside you and all around you? Your dancing and singing and crying and praying, your magic, induces such rage in the sane. Their insistence on dominating all of life, their religion of superiority, they must defend at all costs and they cannot tolerate you for a moment.
(Picture of doves, with partially unreadable text: How do birds make great sky [unreadable] of their freedom
They fall and falling, they are given wings)
(Building Power While the Lights Are Out (within))
[LB notes: Building Power While the Lights Are Out is the title of the mutual aid anthology Jimmy Dunson edited and published]
Oh, but I see you, Holding the invisible threads that maintain life. Being the immune response, the white blood cells, in response to the disease of their soullessness. You are beautiful and sacred. So full of life. You have found such treasure within yourself. And they, in their ignorance, would prefer you unfeeling, unloving, dead inside, overmedicated. And patronizingly tell you, you are diseased, ill, but in reality you have broken free of their mass psychosis.
You have lost your mind? So? There are worse things to lose. You have found the heart and soul of the universe. You simply stopped being the false god to the universe within you, you stopped being the dictator to your differing parts. And reuniting with those parts of yourself was such a homecoming. You felt so much joy. At last, you were whole. There was a glorious revolution inside you. You died and were reborn again, in haromny with all existence, except for those who will do anything to try to make sure their world is the only one that exists. They are the lost sheep and when you return home, they say you've come the lost sheep. Their compulsion to dominate all life, their unquenchable, all-pervasive thirst for Money and Power is psychotic. Your nature-connected, intuitive, spirit-filled, empathy and vision is the antidote to their collective madness.
(Image of stars and constellations, including capricornus, aquarius, with the words "The manner of finding the principal Star.)
You put together the broken pieces. And they want you to be ashamed and embarrassed; they look down on you with pity. If you were connected, they say you were aloof. If you were free, they say you were bound. And for a while they had you believing it.
But once heaven is glimpsed, you will always remember. You have been to the mountaintop and seen with your own eyes.
Just like somebody who learns to read can never have that taken away from them, once we experience a more connected, meaningful, true, and just way of being, we won't settle for anything less. One of my spiritual teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, taught, "If you are capable of living deeply one moment of your life, you can learn to live the same way all the other moments of your life."
That glimpse of heaven you had, mad one, that is your home. That is your birthright. Don't ever let them convince you otherwise.
Is it difficult to go from complete darkness, to blinding light? Yes, of course. Will you stumble as you gain your footing? Certainly. But what I need is others who have been through a similar transformation and rebirth, and the understanding and example that is possible. Not caterpillars dragging me away from the cocoon.
We have been passed down the ideas that visions consit of clouds parting and a light shining down. This is a plasticized version. In reality, visions shatter the ground beneath our feet. They are confusing and chaotic. But the experience is no less profound, or potentially world-changing.
They've merely lived, while you have been fully alive. You have so much insight and wisdom to share with people who are lost in the meaninglessness and isolation of our societies.
Their worst fear is the dark places within themselves and they project this fear onto you, oh Dark One. Your wildness must be subdued at all costs. Or else they may come face to face with their own sahdow, something they have spent their whole life setting up a bulwark against. Your smallest thought or gesture can set off the rebellion within themselves. They fear you for good reason.
You are destroying the hierarchy within.
They try to make you an automaton or bureaucrat or wage slave, but you listen to what your ancestors and future generations call you to be--an artist, a poet, a warrior, a mystic, a healer, a magician, a rebel, a lover, a hero. You are loved just the way you are. By me, and I am sure many others. You have died and been reborn to be who you wanted to become.
You have been to the shadow world and returned. You have befriended the dragons. You are whole, and madness is how you were able to become whole.
Weave your web, student of the spider. Perform your magic on the only stage that matters, great magician.
(sparkle)
(get some rest. You have arrived. You are home.) [LB note: "You have arrived; you are home" is a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.]
(image of a flying carpet through trees, plants, and clouds)
(Magical Spirit)
Back Cover:
madness is diving into the dark world below
where seeds sprout and space allows possibilities to grow
we don't know everything that godes down under the surface
there's always more than what you see
madness is wandering beyond the limits imposed by reality
to a world of connection and potentialities
where our skin becomes the earth
our hair--seeds
our breath--mist
and our spirits--free
communication with unspoken words
the abandonment of the dreamless dogma of sane society
creating new worlds
being new worlds
and needing to give--no apology
