My story of going crazy and then some very controversial views

 During the summer months, when I was twenty-six, I had stopped taking my medication. I was living in a dilapidated horse stable in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia that I hired a carpenter to convert into a one-bedroom apartment. The old stable building, with its sloping, crooked roof, was off main street, near the Truro raceway, and was located behind a local radiator business named Eastern Radiator. 

In my delusional state, I would sleep into the late afternoon, wake up and go to the gym at the agricultural college, and then spend part of the evening typing feverishly on the computer or delivering long lectures staring at the TV. I believed as I lectured that an international audience was watching me through hidden cameras placed secretly throughout the apartment. 

When I left the stable, often after midnight, I took long drives throughout the county. As I toured the surrounding countryside, I lectured the same national audience, who I thought answered me, in the voices of radio hosts speaking upon completely unrelated subjects.

 

I believed in error, like right now, that people were watching me on hidden cameras, and I believed those cameras were secretively placed in destinations along my travels. The same conspirators, I suspected, also listened to my voice, and broadcast what I had to say, using listening bugs hidden in my car. 

Late into the night I gave what I believed to be clever and articulate speeches to large TV and radio audiences. These talks, I believe in reflection now, often deteriorated into gibberish, and I suspect were never as articulate as I imagined them to be at the time.

 

One night that summer, in a main room of the old stable building, I was busy singing songs to a large TV audience, entertaining them, and dancing excitedly around the room. Some time after midnight, with the July moonlight illuminating above the old stable building, very unusually, I met a ghost who I recognized immediately belonged to the great movie star Fred Astaire. I conversed with the famous deceased entertainer, in the hallucination, lost in the delusion, and then allowed the ghost to inhabit my body. Fred Astaire's ghost then lead my feet in a tap dance routine worthy of praise by any dance critic of high society. Moments later, still lost in delusion, I met the ghost of the great heavyweight boxer Sunny Listen who also inhabited my body long enough to give me professional boxing lessons and offer me encouragement in my life.

 

Late at night, I would often set out on long drives, and I was a good driver believe it or not. One night as I drove through the rural countryside lost in delusion, talking to the car radio, I began instructing the Catholic Church how to raise a billion dollars from its population of one billion church members worldwide. I reasoned the money could be used to provide medication for the sick, and buy food for the hungry. Soon after delivering this message to the world, I began telling the United Nations, in a different hour-long speech, what to do to help the church deliver the food and medicine to the needy. An hour later, driving farther into the rural countryside, on the dark head beam lit road, I began to busily instruct NATO countries how to use their peacekeeping forces to guard the acquired food and medicine from any rebel factions. As I delivered the important speeches throughout the night, conjured up in my imagination by grandiose delusion, I believed unusually that United Nations judges around the world, at that very moment, were seriously considering giving me The World Peace Prize.

 

I toured the quiet rural country roads of Colchester County that summer rambling to myself throughout the nights. Eventually my mental health deteriorated to the point I had to be committed to a mental ward in the Colchester Hospital.

 

On long drives that summer under the stars, before being hospitalized, I passed churches, small businesses, and homes, drove over bridges, moved past swift flowing rivers, crossed gentle creeks, drove across railway tracks, waited for passing trains, and arrived in neighboring villages, before happening upon open fields under the moonlight, all while moth, mosquito, and black flies, flying several feet above the road, collided with the cars headlights, that beamed out into the darkness, or missed the headlights and splattered into the front windshield.

 

As I steered the Pontiac 6000's front tires on the pavement, a breeze came whispering languidly through the partially open side windows. I soon found myself driving down the peaceful streets of Truro where only silence gathered late at night. A few minutes later I was driving through the hills, above Hilden, on the outskirts of town in deep contemplative thought, when I came across the deceased old bootlegger Jacks house, with his missing leg, and his three hungry Doberman pincher guard dogs.

 

As the car rounded a bend ahead the headlights fell on a racoon scavenging in a garbage bin beside the road. In continues deliberation my mind continued to roam until I began to consider how every friend I knew seemed to laugh at me, like I was a silly person, perhaps because they thought I was strange. The way they looked down on me, I thought, felt like being kicked in the face, and then I began imagining my own blood seeping out of my mouth, nose, and ears. Where is this cruel place in the unknown, I began to wonder, as a momentarily sadness came over me driving.

 

An hour later, moving through the countryside, I was in a much better mood and had began lecturing the world again. I soon came upon a steel bridge and began to cross above the water below. As the car tires rolled unto the bridge, I noticed the steal on the edges of the structure were painted green. I then saw that the bridges underneath was covered in thick planks of wood for support. As I drove over the planks, I looked down over the side railings of the bridge to the center of the dark water moving swiftly along below. My eyes remained fixated on the dark waters surface for a few seconds, until I heard a thud, and a clank of steal under the car tires, and then looking ahead, moving unto the asphalt, the cars head beams began shinning again on a double yellow line.

 

Several minutes later, I came upon two large open fields beside the road in Stewiacke East. I recall seeing that night a vision there, as I passed one field, of hundreds of ghosts congregated together upon the sizable open terrain. The areas ancestors, I imagined through the hallucination, were gathered in large number below an ink black impenetrable night sky. The ghosts were dressed in bright white, under the moonlight, below an endless number of alien stars.

 

On a different day, standing in sand from a sandblaster used at Eastern Radiator, I looked up Maine Street, Bible Hill, across the Salmon River bridge, into the hills of Truro, to the towns steeply elevated and sloping streets, and had another vision, this time of a million African ghosts gathered there. I believed, seeing the apparitions of Africans, that they'd come to give me encouragement in my important efforts at solving the dilemma of world hunger.

 

Changing topics:

 

I sometimes suspect that a lot of religious people, who live without mental illness, commonly assume that God, throughout the course of human history, has spoken, and revealed his insights, only through sane people's lives in this world. If this is how they see us, and our experiences living with mental illness, then I believe they lack imagination into what God's design, planning, and purpose is for all human beings.

 

It would make sense then, if attitudes like these are real, that when I claim to be listening to God's clear voice in my life speaking directly to me, that people respond to this belief only with quiet contempt. Unlike the experiences sane people had throughout history of experiencing God, which were considered legitimate, any religious experiences from people living with schizophrenia are perhaps suspected instead to be nothing more then misguided religious delusions.

 

This might explain why no one with knowledge of the publishing world has offered me any encouragement, advice, or support in getting my writing reviewed or published. I believe the literary community should instead reasonably agree that a unique perspective, coming from someone with schizophrenia, should matter, especially if the writing is interesting, delivers an important message, and is written in an uncommonly clear voice. In each book I've written, I've introduced into the narrative characters who live with schizophrenia. These books also reveal unusual insight, from God, that is intended by him to give people hope.

 

Changing topics:

 

When I do a search for "Schizophrenia", "Hearing voices", “Delusions", or "Believing that God is speaking to you", the search results I get reinforce my suspicions that sane society see the possibility of God acting in the lives of the mentally ill in unique ways as very unlikely. This widespread dismissive attitude in society removes any meaning that might be found in the delusional world we experience. Yet this delusional world is one that gives me, and many other people, a feeling of having great dignity and importance in this life.

 

As strange or laughable as it might seem to people, I believe God intends people who have the mental illness schizophrenia to venture into and explore these unusual worlds of the mind. Should sane people look at the world God has made for our minds only with contempt, or at best only with pity. Is our world somehow more strange and awful then their world is. Their world after all has sane people living in it like Stalin and Hitler. No one living with a mental illness has created and unleashed diabolical evil on a scale like that.

 

Why can't the adversity mentally ill people face, that's experienced in a unique world of delusion, be seen as a unique and valuable struggle that is normal to the human condition. Why should our experiences appear subhuman and lack a commonsensical interpretation. It should be obvious that no ones life in this world is perfect, and few lives ideal, and that all people's judgment about what reality is experiences error whether people are smart enough to understand that about themselves or not.

 

Changing topics:

 

 After listening to God speak clearly to my thoughts, I now believe with certainty that his love and plan of goodness reaches comprehensively to all of mankind. I know God loves multitudes of people universally, even when people hold unique beliefs, whether people are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, gay, lesbian, agnostic, atheist, or have chosen another of this worlds beliefs.

 

My heart tells me, listening to God speak to me, that when the ideologically controlled, and impoverished people of North Korea die, having no prior knowledge of God, and holding no rehearsed hope of eternity, that God, who's nature is love, and who is merciful in his reach beyond what the cruel and misguided teachings out of human history suggest, will make a way for these poor North Korean people to have a future full of prosperous possibility. I know God will heal their broken hearts, give them new life, and welcomingly introduce them into his glorious kingdom. "But know this; beware to you who are unkind to God's children. Beware to you who hunt down my children upon the earth and do evil to mankind; you will meet me on the day of judgment." 

 

In my liberal Christian beliefs, I believe God values all people's lives on this earth more then we understand. As I listen to him speak in my life, I now dare to question certain Bible passages. I no longer believe that all these ancient words are free from error and I think the writing at its worst cruelly fills our minds with unreasonable and fearful belief. I object strongly to the Bible's teaching that says only a minority of all people alive and dead will find a narrow road to life, and that the rest of humanity will follow a broad road to destruction. This angry thought is indifferent to the fate of multitudes of imperfect people and was produced in an ancient culture where cruel thought was the norm. I also interpret there to be great error in the Bible passages that say people who drink socially, or people who are homosexual, will find themselves separated eternally from God's love like the verses found in 1 Corinthians 6.  

 

1 Corinthians 6 "Do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."  

 

These ancient words were produced from imperfect moralizing about right and wrong, and clearly reveal the imperfect logic of a cruel and ancient culture. After this reasoning was agreed upon, and written into the Bible, by the thinkers out of this ancient culture, warnings of eternal punishment were then placed in verses threatening consequences for disobedience. To stop people from daring to object to the writing, or to change any part of it, warnings of hell were strategically introduced. 

Some people might argue so what if the ancient thinkers deliberately mislead Bible readers about the words authority, weren't they just attempting to set their society on a healthy course moving forward into the future. 

The problem is forcing people through coercion to avoid a certain behavior, by claiming God is against it, when in actuality God had nothing to do with it, is immoral, cruel, and deceptive. Some Bible passages called also for a cruel punishment of death for those who disobeyed, which was terribly unjust, but these ancient Bible passages have also had a lasting effect on people's lives right up until the present day. What's behind this behavior is imperfect ancient moralizing but not everything outlawed in the Bible fairly speaking is wrong. Below is a list of behavior considered terribly wrong in the Bible and after this is an interesting second list of strange instructions from the Bible that were meant to be followed. (Right up until this day)

 

Addiction, Adultery, Anxiety, Apathy, Argumentative, Bigotry, Backbiters, Bitterness, Blasphemy, Boasters, Calling people a fool, Cheating, Chronic lateness, Course joking, Covenant breakers, Covetousness, Criticism, Debate, Deceit, Depression, Despiteful, Defilers, Disobedience to parents, Dissention, Divorce, Drunkenness, Emulations, ambition or endeavor to equal or excel others, Envy, Evil Thoughts, Foolish talk, Fornication, Greed, Gluttony, Haters of God, Heresies, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Idolatry, Immorality, Implacable (cannot be calmed), Inventers of evil things, Jealousy, Lasciviousness (unbridled lust, shamelessness), Lawless, Lust, Lying -- Bear False witness.

 

Only kill burglars at night. Don't boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. Don't eat fat. Don't sit where someone on their period sat. If you drop a grape, don't pick it up. Don't mix fabrics. Don't trim your temples or beard. Disabled people can't approach the altar of God. Poison yourself to disprove adultery. Kill entire cities if they worship other gods. Don't defend your husband by grabbing his enemy's junk. Women should cover their heads to keep angels from getting turned on. Deformed people cannot approach God. Non-Virgins are to be stoned. A woman's punishment for defending her husband = Cut off her hand. Giving birth to a daughter makes you unclean for 66 days. If you disobey God, you will eat your babies. No bastards may enter the church. Women will never teach or have authority over man.

 

Timothy 2:11 "I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent."

 

These ancient views are obviously not fair to women, people who are gay, or people who enjoy having a social drink, but they are also not fair to God because they claim to speak for him, and they don't.

Changing topics:

 

I wrote a gay erotic scene in one of my books: "Lust Lust Lust Montreal to Paris," and I wrote several lesbian erotic scenes in the three books: "Demons in the Pleasant Valley Hills," "A Paranoid Schizophrenics Message of Hope for the World," and "Lust Lust Lust Montreal to Paris." In writing these scenes I wasn't implying that I'm gay, I'm not, not that it should really matter, but I just wanted to clarify that. 

 

Obviously I write about sex in my books while claiming to maintain a friendship with God. If you're wondering if I've recognized that fact I have. I just don't believe the writing or reading of erotic literature is wrong or that anyone's imagination is deviating off course for doing so. What's happened to our modern society, I think, thanks to reasoning from ancient culture, is the shaming of sexual behavior has been introduced, creating a lingering guilt, that was then passed along to us across time in an extremely unhealthy way.

 This shame, introduced by rigid dogmatic men of ancient times, was produced by them through moralizing, before they then engraved their beliefs in stone by deceptively claiming this is God's will. The writings in the Bible shame sex in many ways, just investigate the writings, when in fact these are normal biological behaviors. 

The ultimate reality is God reads all of our minds every second we're alive in this world. There is no part of us God hasn't designed or lawful behavior that is a surprise to him. How we act in this world is through his intricate design.

The study of philosophy, and listening for God's clear voice, has significantly reshaped my perspective. Communicating with God has reassured me that I'm free, absent fear, or threat of condemnation, to follow my heart, and my sense of what I see as fair, while studying philosophy has encouraged me to be open-minded in all my beliefs, which has broadened my understanding of the world and myself. I now question all assumptions about everything, including the dogma found in religious tradition, as I consider diverse viewpoints, and develop a more nuanced and informed understanding of reality and our human experience.