Taken from the Philosophy of mental health- Copyright 2013

 Taken from the Philosophy of mental health- Copyright 2013

How often it feels like as if we were all alone on a mountain, waiting for a clearing to come in the sky. We sit and wait and while we wait we look out on the iconic and the enigmatic cityscape. The entire city lies before our eyes, a sea of structures, an entire economy, a society and yet a land as obscure to us, no matter how seemingly close we appear to be. This mountain is our solitude, our turf and our place of belonging.

When we are alone, nature comes to life, when we are alive, we are no longer ravaged by the world and its lies, the pomp and the ceremony, the prestige and the power, the grandeurs of illusion, no pressing tabloid reports, no propaganda of any kind, upon this mountain we are alone and yet we are in good company. There is this ancient order of nature with our candidness and all we can do is think as we are on our own self made pedestal and yet on a throne of beauty and wonder. Contemplation becomes the most beautiful vehicle for connecting with the aesthetic and the ethical ideals, which we house within ourselves. Contemplation becomes a medium and a communicative response to the depths of our experiences, our search for something more profound, more purposeful and lasting. A tragic news bulletin, a story that almost defies the laws of probability, the mysteries of the unknown, the conquests of the arts and the sciences all alike equate the power to contemplate and offer a meditative response for us to contemplate, and examine ourselves.

As Socrates himself once said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”,

and how modern man has failed this examination and this self-assertion so many times, over and over again. Too many as I stated in the last chapter are uneducated, too many rely on the adhesives of cheap Hollywood entertainment, the pleasures of the pubs and the pleasures of their gadgets and computers. These days one must step in line, march in line, think in tune with popular opinion and fashion and if this is performed with due diligence and confidence, one might live a comfy live, have many girlfriends, be the life and soul of the party, become a regular lad, a regular face amongst the elite, have a well paid job, a good house, with the mortgage taken care of, with two Mercedes in the driveway and two pampered children. These are the anxieties of the modern man –does his bank balance waver and his pay role slide in the face of these weekly bills, expenses, luxuries, the family expenditure and the pilling paperwork of the office. How nightmarish it all seems to me that only a tiny minority have chosen to escape this regulated existence. To this minority they would be revolted at the notion of having to tick the boxes, make the generic choices, step left, step right, keeping in line to the march of the times. These days men and women work as a goal to support their ambitious climb to promotion, they often work to work, they work to support the statistically correct, wholly probable, geometrically designed nuclear family or desire to life a comfortable suburban existence. The means is work the end is work, the adhesive is pleasure, as I stated –and I listed the various types of petty pleasures- because cheap thrills and kicks are all that the uneducated get out a life that is left to a minority to gloss over. Life is not thought over –hardly ever- enough, the abstractions are left to the scientists to scare and promulgate, the thunder and state random researched reports and findings through the papers, for the passive majority to simply browse through. A social hysteria is only achieved through the endorsement of mass collectivised produce, methods which will procure the simply pleasures to enable the majority to live the comfortable life of their dreams.

Let me be wholly ignorant and state that if life is to be reduced into a category or pool of common associations and motives. Lets state that the working week is all about the office routine –the means to an end, namely work- and lets call the weekend, sex, alcohol, sport and family rituals. Now these are the motives of a modern western society –or shall I say a majority exposed and psychoanalysed- in a nutshell

and how by the limits of popular culture, fashion, mass psychology and the all too typical ignorance that runs rife through each western majority, the philosophical and the spiritual side of man is greatly ignored, misunderstood, not developed, followed and contemplated through fully. Quite often the majority view religion, salvation, redemption, spirituality and ethical behaviour with a Sunday attendance at a church service. This too does not shock me, for it is the paper thin skin on the very bones and depths of a matter or subject that does not receive adequate attention, practice and contemplation and what does it matter if you believe that salvation is contained within a mere building built and constructed by human labourers and not within your codes of practice, your insights and your level of depth for devotion and tolerance. Appearances are everything to the many, the depths are too murky and too dangers to explore they offer change and change is not always a good thing.

As the questions are rarely thought and the answers even less likely found, the thinking is done as I said to a minority. It is both a matter of genetics and psychology, of nature and nurture for those of us in the minority who have escaped the commonalities and the reduced psychology –the predictabilities of the majority- of a society. As I stated in the last chapter academia is obsolete, for those who do not learn a single thing about life itself, likewise a religion is nothing if you do not hold the fire of passion that puts practice to near perfection. We are granted or taught the thinly visible guidelines of codes of practice; concepts and commonly circulated notions when we are children, we often view all events and people with a sort of black and white scope. We often view the behaviour and the oddities of others as if we could read their sufferings and their differences like a book. This superficial approach, actually spells out loud and clear that the differences in others are never seen, not understood and most likely they are made to look repulsive when they come up against the common psychology of the majority and why? Well quite bluntly I state that the majority know little about the minorities differences- their subtle nuances in the ways of living an exceptional life or a different life with a slower pace, yet on a reflective path of searching and learning, yearning and searching- how much is known about those who view pleasure and work as neither the goals, the means and the ends to life! But who contemplate on wider and the deeper processes of time and inner elevation, transcendence, momentary equilibrium and a mystical entrance of the mysteries of time and space, life and death, nature and man.

Why must a minority think for itself, learn to live and question, experience and create? Well as I stated before, because the majority are so blindly influenced by what they see around them, that their whole lives go by, mistakes are made, mountains of accumulative wealth are sought or captured, mounds of notoriety and power are sought for pleasure –as the adhesive or an end in itself- life is a fleeting moment in the minds of those who work for their means and their ends to living. What is nature? What is time? What great questions must we ask ourselves? How do we create the utopian society our forebears dreamt of? Is their a guiding force governing all motion? Is there something more than coincidental forces in the energies of the cosmos? Such questions are too confounding and overwhelming for many to even contemplate. But at least we must question our lives, the meaning behind these seemingly meaningless exploits.

Let me state from my own evaluation. The whole of human history, surging forward from a primal orders of instinct has confirmed the nature of man, man is the problem solver, acting in interest for survival, but also for the means and ends of education, for wellness and wholeness. Selfishness may be rife in mankind –inherently intertwined- but nonetheless the challenges that each age faces as we all know are never non existent in any sense but as man faces personal, impersonal, interpersonal and national challenges, the importance of adaptation and problem solving for the problems do not cease to function as the problem evolves, mutates and constantly shifts from stagnated pools to fully charged, highly dangerous and chaotic forces of destruction.

As this age has become too complacent, too placidly and slovenly based upon the luxuries and the privileges of many past decades piled up, the great need for thinkers and practical people has not been in greater demand that has over this past decade.

The discipline of old institutions, laws, cultural emphasis on labour and freethinking,

improved education –at all levels- and conservationism. These are the demands and sources for reform and enlightenment in essence. I am not trying to go off on a tangent with the subject of human progress and education, but am trying to meditate on the concepts of contemplation and human healing and contrast them to the growing disturbances of where too many in society get lost. Too many get lost in being unaware, being passive and unassuming about the delicate process of life, the deep levels of life that are often unseen and of course I speak on the lies of pleasure and

cheap entertainment.

To any human being who has survived a major catastrophe, a meltdown, a breakdown or tragedy in some variable form or persuasion, the old order of life has unquestionably changed. The old assumptions, the old beliefs, the shallowness and the naiveties of our nature will fundamentally and necessarily change, this is the inevitable aftermath to the crisis that follows. The crisis itself may reoccur, may strike again at our Achilles heal and leave its venomous taste within our system. Our impressionable lives are ready for the making or the breaking, the moulding and the building of our constructed natures, which are ready to be challenged by the external and the internal worlds both around us and within us. I myself have congregated and associated myself with the older generations and have been treated to the extraordinary insights and moments of self-renewal through conversing with my elders. I have met such people in hospital twice, on different courses, which I have

partook in. The stories are magical, they are my memories of bliss, the only, singularly present light that beams like a vibrant pulse of energy, through a pitch dark moment or period in my life. I have formed friendships with such people, with older generations with whom I found the common denomination between such affable and sociable human beings in their entirety. 

As I have struggled in the past two years since my release from hospital, I have had to familiarize myself with the old world of routine, self discipline, a professional standard and a determinism to work and try things anew. Over so many days I would wake half exhausted, half emotionally wrought, raved by depression, a breathlessness from my anxiety, shooting pains and muscular aches –my psychosomatic illness took leverage over my habits and motives- and all in all dizzy spells were forecast at least several times a week. Throughout many weeks I spent much of my time in bed, trying to convalesce, I grew intrepid through both depression and excitement and there was always a fresh crisis around the corner for me to tackle. I wrote my diary entries to a melancholic flavour of my dissipating mind, with a growing pathos often for the community of those who suffered from similar illnesses and even of those with ASD, whom I have gotten to know in a greater capacity as the years have gone by. I have never taken surveys in my life on different peoples and their particular tastes and associations, but I do remember distinctly the kindnesses from which I have met from some of the most profound people, people who come from all walks of life. Their stories –as I mentioned earlier- stay with me, I may unfortunately forget their name, but never their story, and I have met with narcotic addicts, alcoholics, schizophrenics, people termed psychotic, people with behavioural disorders, bipolar disorder, attempted suicides, people who have spent time in padded cells, sufferers of vicious abuse of many kinds and I have met courage and beauty in the stories and the individuals that bore the spirit and the goodness to still feel and give love, despite the very negligence and the ignorance of those who have manhandled them. I also know many other people –my beloved- who suffer not specifically from mental illnesses but from crippling physical conditions –those who have been neglected and left for the hospital bed waiting lists- I have known and still know these people, these names, flesh and blood alike and have come to a contemplative conclusion, they have come to their own conclusions on the mysteries of life, what it brings, what it gives and what it takes alike. I have thought it is so wonderful, so lamentable and yet so strange how often it is the healthy and the wealthy who abuse their position vicariously and rather prejudicially, to reap reward, to bask in social notoriety and accumulation and how it is the deprived, the afflicted, the wounded, the troubled men and women of the world who have the resilience and the depth that many cannot know, for the rich never rarely see the other side of the coin, in the world of poverty and desperate need. 

So too the healthy should not be ignorant of the blessings, the capabilities, the honours and the privileges one bears and possesses when one is in the full prime of one’s life. I am rather pique and rather lost when I see the youth of today –my contemporaries- showing no regard for civil liberty and bodily integrity, no respect for seniors or the responsibilities and the codes of good conduct that bring honour to those who obey them respectively. As I said earlier you may laugh today but you will quite possibly weep tomorrow, for anyone who takes their own health for granted and their abilities, by not making the most of their days, by being thankful and grateful, for doing the best they can, when they can, they will be left to their terrible disadvantage and will be forced to learn of the frailties, the costliness, the hardship and the community that can emerge through suffering and through conquering. But I must admit the days bring fresh challenges even for me and I will confess that it can be particularly difficult for to survive a day when we clutching to straws, and the world seems not to understand for its indifference is no illusion but our affirmation to positive change is the difference and we should find comfort and solace in our own ability to problem solve and locate the sources of our abilities.

I have lived through times of political and social unrest, turmoil and recession –every age has their national and supranational crises to bear-, I have listened despondently and wholeheartedly ignored the common rigmarole of the media and yet I have come back around full circle to my own self realisation, time and time again I have to live life at my own pace, the world it seems has gone awry long ago, I cannot find solace in the world or. When a man comes to an important juncture or stage in his life and realises that he cannot know everything from his own tastes, desires and fantasies and accepts that often he learns much of the lustre of his own capabilities from his friends –the ones he loves and cares for- life is that much more sentimental and rather luscious with its surprises when one finds support and pleasure from friends on a mutual basis. I myself have found a circle of dependant comrades, intellects that mimic the youthful search for learning and living. I cannot stop praising those men who belong to the minority out there –those who are not absorbed in a corruptive popular culture that relishes in stereotypes and cliques, that acts to endorse and make profit over the uneducated through cheap tricks and kicks- I really find that where there is a certain element of alienation between the sexes which is potently based more on culture and pithily I state it is all fashion trend and business. What have the sexes in common that the boutiques and the fashion designers have not exploited?

I am basically stating that a good friendship –to say it eerily enough- when it has been given a temperament for openness offers the devotion and the understandings that monogamy can never forge throughout a lifetime, because it is not based on traditional restrictions, gender roles, cliques and culturally implies terms. True freedom is spontaneous, self searching, questioning, defies the shrunken superstitions of each society. I must state that it is a sorry case when we find ourselves surrounded in a city of strangers, for that is what we are –we are not brothers in this land of ours-

without community spirit, without that contemplative power of reasoning in life, the majority will always fill the adhesive roles as labourers and shop keepers that toil and exhaust themselves for cheap pleasure –as the means and ends of their existence- while- and hardly question and wonder on the abstract boundaries that shape their existence. Blessed is he who stops pacing two and fro and roars “Why”!