Never been one to let the carrier drop

One problem that I see is that people like me – empathic, aggressively nonviolent, etc – are inherently going to avoid power. I don’t want power over other people, because I don’t want to hurt other people and I’m afraid that I might inadvertently do so especially given how much trouble I have understanding people who are driven by other forces. Who is going to seek power? People who are running very different software from me. In many cases, people who don’t care how much they hurt the people they have power over, or possibly even people who enjoy hurting other people. This is kind of scary but does explain the bizarre brokenness that is Earth.

So, I can’t get in the mind of someone who would enjoy violent acts, in general. I admit I haven’t really tried. I’ve only shot a gun a few times in my life, I’ve avoided first person shooters after they got to a certain level of realism where they were pressing on my empathy, and I don’t try and feed the occasional violent thought that I do have.

But I also get that we are *amazingly* flexible programmable systems. With just a few changes way back there in childhood, I’d likely be sitting with my finger on the button typing the launch codes. If we have any inherent morality or empathy, I don’t see signs of it in the disturbing behaviors of, for example, the ruling class of America – to whom, I am slowly coming to accept, I am a interchangable component to be strip-mined of any useful ideas, turned into a gearwheel and fit into the consumer-producer cycle, and then tossed aside. I’m not what they’re looking for – partially because I don’t think people in general should be having children, partially because I want to disband the economic system as it currently stands in favor of something that sucks less

Am I what *anyone’s* looking for? Well, increasingly I’m what *I’m* looking for. Sadly, the more this is true, the less I’m what anyone else is looking for. However, at least I did get some music recorded last night. I have this theory that the more of these throwaway tracks I write, the better I’m going to be when I sit down to do album work. It’s a strange way to work.. trying to write something every night, with less concern about quality than just about the experience of writing..

So, as so often happens after I’ve had it shut down for a while, I decided to fire up the studio and of course various breakers need reset, equipment doesn’t want to talk to other equipment, etc.. so I do a test track to make sure everything is working. This one is extra 80s movie soundtrack so I thought I’d share it with you all

http://sheer.us/stuff/2015/80sMovieSoundtrack.mp3

So, in Virginia they put me on a gen one psych med that I have to say I’ve been really enjoying. I don’t usually think of psych meds as something one enjoys.. the word ‘endures’ is usually more applicable.. but this one from time to time will make me feel like colors are brighter and sounds are clearer. When they first gave it to me it felt like I was flat out tripping. I have to wonder if it has anything to do with the recent moment of almost-dream-clarity.

I’ve tried with and without and at the moment I definitely prefer with on this one.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CloudCuckooLander

I had a really amusing one tonight.

What would happen, resource wise, if we all just stopped keeping track entirely? Our money has “In God We Trust” printed on it but if we really did, we wouldn’t need money.. we’d all just do our bits, expecting the system as a whole to work because we were doing our part of it. We’ve assumed that the result if we did this (didn’t keep track) would be a economic meltdown but that may be based on the theory that there’s one objective reality.. if there’s a whole entwined set of them, maybe our failure to keep track wouldn’t break anything at all. (I can just see me trying to sell this experiment to Congress now. “Hey guys! I’d like to test the fabric of reality by turning off money…”)

It was asked, what good things happened for people because of my unscheduled and unplanned foray east.

Well, let’s start with the hitchhikers. One of them said he’d spent the last night under a bridge. I was able to deliver him *to his home*. He was only 89 miles away, but you know, when you’re carrying a duffel, 89 miles is a stupidly long way to go. I think it did a lot for his state of mind that I was also able to deliver him his favorite artist (Conway Twitty) on request, courtesy of the laptop in the back of the van.

The second one I wasn’t able to get to where he was going as it was significantly off my route. But I did get him 300 miles down the road, and we had a good talk. He was rainbow folk, and a former Navy cook.

Let’s also mention the guy in the SUV stuck on I-95 because he was out of gas. He had his whole family in the car. I took him to a gas station where he filled up, and then back to his car. We shared no common language.. well, I know the word ‘Amigo’, which I said when he got in the car, and he smiled and then we used hand signals to agree on finding a gas station, etc. Perhaps the word for friend is really the only word you need in any language?

We can also mention Vinnie, as I think spending some time with me venting about her recent situation was good for her. At least, I hope it was.

So, over the last week I’ve been using my neuro-hacking abilities along with whatever assistance I may be getting from whatever spiritual entities you might or might not want to believe in to work on dreams. I’ve had numerous extremely vivid nightmares and.. for the first time.. last night what was almost certainly a initiating sequence for a lucid dream with dream control. It didn’t, you know, totally *work* – but I have to say I’m impressed with the lack of subtlety. It was not one of those situations where you wonder if you’re dreaming. There was music, and a sequence that reminded me of the C-64 game Master of the lamps that I *think* was supposed to assemble into a flying scene for transportation from where I was to where I wanted to be. This was initiation for video-game-era quality dreaming.. the visual quality was reality grade, as was the sound quality.

So, it didn’t work.. I very much tried to do something inside it and very much failed.. but it felt like it *almost* worked.. like you could feel stray signals leaking away into bits of neural net that were miswired, but if I were trying to, say, fix a analog audio device and I got results this good, I’d know I was almost done. I am very hopeful, since among other things in order to not be having one of my standard I-can’t-breathe nightmares I have to assume the neurological wiring for keeping me breathing while I’m sleeping is almost fixed! Another hint for this is that I several times in the last week have awoken *feeling rested*! Since in previous years the usual experience was to wake feeling more tired than when I went to bed, this is significantly awesome.

I don’t get the feeling that my entire mind is repaired just yet.. I still very much feel the divisions during the day, especially when I toggle between modes to program vs to do social interaction.. but at least *some* of the wiring required to have the kind of dreams you’d want to have is apparently active.

There’s this odd thing I’ve experienced, way back in my youth, where I would occasionally lie about progress in personal development and it would become the truth. Now, these days, I try to avoid lying at all, but I’m kind of curious about whether I should be trying to do this.. it’s not so much lying, as it is in the words of 12-step “Acting as if”. Kind of a hopeful jump-start. I do think that repeatedly saying “I can’t” is damaging.. as Wang Chung says, the words we use are strong, they make reality.. and I know I don’t want to be believing I can’t.

I feel the need to say, if you are *seriously* thinking I would sexually assault you, have you ever thought of how much I would pay to *not have* the memory of having done so? Like, if someone were to ask me, “I’ll give you $1 million dollars but you have to have the memory of forcing $person to have sex in a way that hurt her.”.. Okay. Keep inserting larger values for the million. Keep inserting. You’re not going to find a number at which I’d take the deal.

See, to me, *that* is what love is like. You want the person you love to *not be hurt*. This would seem to be kind of basic, love 101, not advanced love, not anything that takes ideas more advanced than you’d expect to find in the mind of the average 10 year old. If the person *must* be hurt, you would want it to *not be your agency* that hurt them, or even your body. I’ve already got the somewhat awful situation of it’s the *idea* of me that’s hurting $person a little bit, because $person thinks I would do something I wouldn’t do. (Or maybe she doesn’t. I could write a whole novel on the subject of that.)

So, I think part of what I’m forever confused about, is how anyone could think that I would enjoy sexual assault, that I could ever get what I want and need from it? It just sounds inherently.. well, kind of awful.. to me. Like, awful for both participants, not just for one of them. I may have mental issues but I don’t think I can ever see them pushing me that far into the dark.

So, yes, those of you who are afraid of me, I think you have in fact failed the minimum safety check for mental health. I think you’re a danger to yourself. You’re imagining someone as willing to hurt you in a way that said person is not, and I kind of think that imagination hurts you. And, I mean this really and sincerely, good luck with that. The imaginary monsters under our beds are in a lot of ways the most powerful monsters there are.

I Waited Until My Wedding Night To Lose My Virginity And I Wish I Hadn’t

This is a battle I still face. To the extent that I am DID, I personally endorse sexings as a wonderful way to spend time with a friend, great exercise, something that I love how feels, etc. However, there are voices inside my head, so to speak.. not voices, that would make them too easy to identify and squish, more sort of.. text messages? Inherent thoughts? I think it’s the worst at 3 AM. Lately it’s had a lot less power over me, which is nice, but there is this inherent internal meme that I spend a lot of time fighting.. it’s actually more a set of memes. You’ve got the sex is sinful and wrong set (although I really hope that A: heaven is real and B: there’s a lot more sex and a lot less fear) but then you’ve also got the sex isn’t wrong, but YOUR breed of it is.. and then you’ve also got the boys enjoy it but girls don’t and similar sets of insanity.. as I said, I’ve got a set of alters, the most prevalent one being one that is a Root Rep of my mother, so to speak.. I think this definitely falls into the Pink Floyd The Wall thing nicely..

It’s annoying and I wish it would go away. Fortunately, it seems to be going away, so perhaps my wish is being granted. Anyway, the counterarguments are beyond obvious:

1) Sexual contact in my experience, at least the way I do it, is friendship-building and leads to really close and loving emotional moments. So it’s pro-love so insofar as God (the one we’re defining as defining sin here) is in favor of love they’re not going to be anti-sex.

2) How can something feel good and right and be a sin? I think this is the scariest one because there are moments where I believe this is possible and these are the moments where I believe God is evil. Athiesm is a preferrable mental place to this by a long shot. Living in a universe where there are no escape routes and God is evil is *disturbing*. Even if it’s only happening in your imagination for a few minutes it’s not a few minutes you’d really want to be present for.

I have to remind myself that there are parts of my mind that are not as well connected to my personality as a whole as other parts – parts where absurd and absolutist thinking make sense because of the limited context of available memory and experience. And yet, when ‘mother’ crops up even in my thinking, I want to run far far far away.

So, to hit the usual high points of discussion of what I believe about the spiritual universe, at least in passing.

I believe I’m not the biggest thing out here. So in that sense I believe in angels, Gods, what-have-you. I do *not* believe Earth has accurately captured them and put what they believe and want and need into a book – or if they have, I haven’t read it yet. However, I probably agree with enough of the talking points of Christianity that you could call me a Christian? Of course, this might also be true of Islam, certainly is true of the Unitarians, etc. I think it’s safest not to give me a label. But, I do think a spiritual plane *exists* – however I don’t think you can *know it exists* unless you already believe in it. This one is easy to explain – what you believe forms filters that affect what you experience, so you’re not going to get any signals you aren’t willing to accept. Now, on the other paw, I do believe every adherent to every religion experiences signals that validate their choice of religion because of how they’ve got that part of their mind set up. This part this far is things I’ve talked about many times, news to nobody.

I will say that I’ve had the first valid (to me) spiritual experiences ever, in a church, which leaves me a lot more open to the possibilities that churches might be good ideas, or at least not completely pointless. I think some of the mental damage I took comes from the fact that I was pressured a lot into confirming into a religion while I was experiencing nothing and feeling nothing of the spiritual domain.. it was just like I was tuning a radio in a empty band, while my parents spoke of God as if they were having a actual connection of some sort, and I was upset and didn’t want to go forward with this whole confirmation thing since I wasn’t having this experience at all, and they had already printed the invitations. I will own my own part of that, I should have been a *lot* more assertive. Throughout my entire childhood really.

Now, how does this all tie in with my mental illness? Well, I have to think about a bunch of questions. Am I sick because I wanted to experience being sick (in the course of a infinite amount of time a lot of absurd things become possible) or because I made some bad decisions or because some *other* people made some bad decisions? We’ve definitely reached the point in my story arc where I want to *stop being sick* – I mean, I’d really like to stop living on a world where the pyramid of needs isn’t just guaranteed covered, leaving you free to figure out what you want to do with your self-actualization – it drives me nuts that we let people starve to death and be homeless just so we can waste a whole lot of resources tracking our resources, and that no one can design a better system. But that’s a subject for another blog post. Anyway, I’m definately ready to stop having there be something wrong with my mind.. one of the things that was wrong with my mind the strongest, and is a lot less present right now, is paranoia.. persistant, irrational fears and the inability to lead my life because of them. As you’ve all noticed in my blog lately, I’m a lot more willing to just talk about whatever instead of letting my fear keep me silent. It may be a irrational hope, but I have hopes that as I talk about some of this stuff solutions will be found, patterns will be noticed, etc.

If we do believe in a God of Love, and we believe said diety wants me as part of *eir stable, then we have to ask some interesting questions. Does said diety want me to be sick? I mean, perhaps my mental illness makes me a interestingly shiny gem, but I like to think that a diety of love wouldn’t want to have people collected like specimens in a bottle but would rather have real friends, in which case having me not be sick, or not be as sick, would seem to be a desirable thing. And indeed I would say of late that I seem to be getting some sort of assistance from the spiritual domain. Of course, that might just be my imagination, but then, *everything* might just be my imagination.