The Crowded Room

[Silenus]

Hi @eth 🙂

Thank you so much for your kind words. It is an honour to share this literary space with you...

My dad's heart is truly a stuffed unit. There's reverse valve leakage into the right, and constant fluid on his lungs and in his chest. The legacy of 2 bypass surgeries, one of them botched. He gets blue lips after 5 minutes off the oxygen, so it's there to stay as the new normal...

He's 83, and happy with the life he's had. I can't argue with that... 🙂

I am so happy to hear about your experiences sharing your words in a room full of peers. Nothing beats that. More power to you. Especially when it is deep words on deep subject matters. This is all about the very fabric of the societies we craft together. I wish I could read it, but anonymity denies...

[Silenus]

A Cytokine Storm of the Mind

A cytokine storm of the mind
Left me unable to find
Any way to be inwardly kind;
I saw sanity's spring unwind,
Reality reel undefined,
A storm that left my third eye blind.

Viral thoughts sprang into being,
Different ways of thinking and seeing,
Confined unrefined suddenly freeing;
The certainty of past fearfully fleeing,
Harsh truths shown with no way of unseeing,
Will this tempest lead to death or well-being?

9th May, 2020.

This poem was inspired by a term that the current global pandemic taught me - cytokine storm. It is what happens when the body's immune system kicks into overdrive with a severe life-threatening over-production of cytokines, resulting in high fever and inflammation.

I got to thinking. There are many parallels between physical health and mental health. It is no great stretch of the imagination to delve into the possibilities that just as our physical self has an immune system, so too does our mental self have an immune system.

In the same way that our physical health immune system has T-cells, B-cells, NK cells, neutrophils and macrophages; our mental health immune system also consists of many different tools, each for different purposes. Our mental immune system can contain such wonders as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Mindfulness, meditation, tapping, even writing as a form of therapy as I highly espouse.

I see strong parallels between our physical wellbeing being threatened by an immune system gone into overdrive, and the racing thoughts and severe dysfunction of a mind during times of anxiety, depression, hypomania, rapid cycling, or mixed episodes (all mental states that I have lived experience with).

It is a very steep learning curve, this getting to know yourself thing. It requires calm contemplation and a gently-held focus, something that is near impossible during a cytokine storm of the mind...

Thanks for reading. Much love to the community.

[eth]

Hey again @Silenus  love your poem and the concepts behind it.  With my previous psychologist we used the word 'flooding' for what happens during  "anxiety, depression, hypomania, rapid cycling, or mixed episodes " that you mention and so many other mental health moments/waves/rushes/downs/panic/psychosis ..... the list could get really long here.  And really that flooding isn't only in the mind, it's also at a very physiological level.  And then there's a whole lot of other body chemistry (and neural) triggered as the moment passes (tho' sometimes delayed) - as the flood recedes, as the forebrain takes over from the lizard brain again  ... for example I get extremely tired both mind and body  in the hours after a panic attack or PTSD flashback trigger.  And you see it with little kids even - I say 'good weep > good sleep').  So for me the mental and physical are entirely entwined when it comes to mental health experiences.  Very interesting topic indeed.

[Appleblossom]

Really love your posts @eth  and @Silenus 

I have had to actively research this stuff all my life to simply survive.  It helps a lot to have the internet and access to a wide body of research and it is one of the things that keeps me ticking.

[Exoplanet]

I really dislike the term Mental Health, to me it's like saying we have 2 separate healths, the physical one & what . .  an invisible bubble that hangs over our heads being the mental one? In my opinion we are 1 body, 1 unit, 1 health; it's just that they can't understand the brain well enough to refer to it's entire health cycle as physical. 

[Silenus]

Thought

The human race is guilty of lazy intellect... we fill our lives with fluff and fancy, and rarely if ever take the time to think of the consequences of our actions before we act...

In the world of thought, all things are possible. We form our thoughts, and they are part head, part heart; a measure of logic and a dash of fantasy...

We can think anything we want in our thoughts, even the dark thoughts... it doesn't matter... it's a victimless crime except for the collateral damage to our conscience and our view of ourselves...

But that's the thing. Thoughts do no external harm. It is not until we materialise our thoughts in the form of our actions that our potential for harm exponentially grows...

It is in the moments between thought and action that we have the greatest control...

It is the critical moment, just before we let the genie out of the bottle and unleash the chaos of our three wishes...

The moment between thought and action is everything...

The world is saved or destroyed in those simple moments...

[Silenus]

Nessy

This is how my personal evolution has transpired...
The pathless land of truth is both journey and destination...
The awareness of the perception of conflict is the end of conflict...

4th June, 2020.

Lit

How can a person learn
If all they want to do with books is burn?

5th June, 2020.

Truth

Bite down hard on this.
It will hurt less.

6th June, 2020.

Cloaked

Ignorance is the cloak of invisibility
Draped over the dark things
We wish not to see...

8th June, 2020.

[Silenus]

A Present from the Past

If you couldn't change the past
Back when it was the present,
What possible chance have you got now?

Let it go...

9th April, 2019.

Again The Phoenix

Burned by the eternal fire
Of my own funerary pyre,
On thermals rising higher,
To new heights I aspire,
Wingbeats never tire,
I'm no angel with a lyre,
And hear no heavenly choir,
Heed me I'm no liar,
My ascent will transpire,
My quill will fill this quire,
My path a drawn wire,
The heights my only sire,
The only thing I desire,
So far above the mire,
I strive before I expire
From invisible wounds so dire,
To be something I can admire.

With my brain and blood afire,
My thoughts rush all haywire,
Ascent pauses for this flyer,
For this I must inquire:

What does rising higher acquire
Beyond what I was prior?

Perhaps better to retire,
Before I become a born-again fryer,
To the inner war I call ceasefire.

As all my demons fiendishly conspire,
To drag me into the eternal hellfire
Of my self-doubting quagmire,
I stop being the amplifier,
And turn to the role of pacifier,
This fire is my purifier.

Bang!

A shot like sudden gunfire,
The thought that made my mind rewire.

8th June, 2019.

[Silenus]

If you are at war with yourself
The world will never know peace...

Such a simple and profound truth...

If you are at war with yourself
The world will never know peace...

You are your self, correct? Let's start with that basic fact...

Everything that your five senses gather is converted to electrical impulses and sent to your brain for processing and storage...

That is the biology of you. But it is not you. You are more than just a meat puppet getting jerked by survival instinct's strings...

Because you are your self, right?

That conception of self that you have is perhaps the greatest evolutionary leap that the human race has made right there... we may have thumbed a ride on evolution's highway for a few hundred millennia with our opposable thumb giving advantage, but the real evolutionary leap happened when we became self aware...

But don't feel too special. The human race always thinks that it is unique in intelligence and awareness on this planet. This is the trap that comes with self awareness, for self awareness manifests itself in our selves as our ego...

Lots of animals have an awareness of self as separate from other. We are not unique in this. It is life's will to evolve ever higher, and this is as true in the physical plane of form and function of body as it is true in the mental plane of intellect, emotions, awareness, ethics and morality...

Getting back to Ego and the awareness of self. Ego is a wonderful thing. We all have an ego, an awareness of self as separate from other. Such an evolutionary leap! But it comes at a price...

Ego can get carried away with itself, to the exclusion of all else. From there comes vanity, pride, greed, the feeling of being better than another, prejudice, racism, sexism, and a whole legion of other -isms, narcissim being one of the worst...

But Ego comes with gifts as well as curses, for everything is both gift and curse...

If we learn to transcend our Ego, and turn it into ego with a little e, then the true potential of our last evolutionary leap can take us on to further leaps ahead. From there comes love, compassion, empathy, sharing, nurturing, learning, and a nobility of the spirit that is appropriate for the gifts we have been bestowed with in life...

Before we become further enlightened in our own journey, we struggle so much with fears, uncertainties, doubts, even self hatred. That has certainly been my own experience of my life journey...

I was at war with myself. Constantly. Questioning. Doubting. Hating. Harming. Hurting.

How could I possibly gather the peace and quiet needed for me to attend to spiritual matters such as evolving myself ever upwards to be better than before, if I was at constant war with myself?

Evolving yourself is not easy. It is complicated stuff once you get past the Mindfulness and being the Watcher within who is aware of all of your thoughts and emotions. That is by no means the end of the journey. For me, it was really just the start...

But the Mindfulness and the meditation and the watcher within have given me the ability to get to a place of peace and quiet within myself. If you have reached that place in your own life journey, you will know as well as I do how much power this gives you, to be silent and at peace within yourself. Before, when you were ranting and raving and shouting at yourself with never a moment's peace, you were wasting all of the power you had by creating conflict within yourself and stacking part of your power up against another part of your power in order to fight yourself. Such a waste of your power...

From peace and quiet comes true power. The power to contemplate before you act. The power to tear down entire civilizations and societies in the blink of an eye. The power to change the entire world...

Everything starts with an idea, a thought. From there, it is made real by the actions we take in the Really Real world...

Society is just a bunch of individual projections of selves, getting together and agreeing on an oversimplified one-size-doesn't-quite-fit-all compromise of rules and values that govern how we function and interact as a collective...

If you are at war with yourself, you will project war, not peace, into your surroundings, and the world will never know peace...

If you have found the peace within yourself, you will project peace, not war, into your surroundings, and the world will finally know peace...

Thanks for reading, and for sharing time with me in the contemplation and exploration of truth. It is an honour to journey with you...

[Define_normal]

Apologies 

Sorry, a simple word 

Sorry, a meaningful word 

Sorry, a painful word to say

Sorry, starts small

Sorry, gets bigger

I'm Sorry I can't lend you money 

I'm Sorry I made you sad

I'm Sorry I made you angry

I'm Sorry I made you hurt

I'm Sorry I got sad

I'm Sorry I got hurt 

I'm Sorry I was abused

I'm Sorry I was molested 

I'm Sorry I saw you do drugs

I'm Sorry I saw you almost die

I'm Sorry I didn't tell you I was struggling 

I'm Sorry I grew up wrong

I'm Sorry I am a constant reminder of your pain

I'm Sorry I was a baby when he hurt you 

I'm Sorry I made you struggle 

I'm Sorry I was taken away

I'm Sorry I was given back to you

I'm Sorry I was a burden to you

I'm Sorry I am still a burden to you

I'm Sorry I am so messed up 

I'm Sorry I can't lend you money 

I'm Sorry 

I'm Sorry I was born