A Total Immersion in Descent

I Begin Here

I have mystical experiences, I used to like to say. This sounds a lot better than saying I have psychotic symptoms. Psychotic symptoms lead down? Mystical experiences lead up?

The trouble is, I haven’t experienced a trance state in a while. My inner world has instead been clouded with paranoia, obsessive thinking, and other distressing states I would rather not talk about.

When I first lowered one of my antipsychotics, I felt a deepening receptivity to the world around me. I started dancing again. I felt a wild energy move through me, exhilarated by some unusual perceptual experiences, both mundane and magical. I thought that I was reclaiming more of myself. Despite my efforts to release expectations, I wanted to be a “spiritual person”—whole, abundant, and connected, feeling so good that I was not weighed down by the things of this world.

But time brought growing fear and shame, obsessive thinking, paranoia, and other dark states. I felt persecuted by frightening spirits from the hell realms. I feared malicious powers were forcing thoughts into my mind. It felt as if my brain didn’t have an “off” switch. I couldn’t escape.

Still, I continued doing what I set out to do. I felt joy. I started a rejuvenating romantic relationship. I explored caves and learned about birds. Sometimes I experienced a strange sense of balance amidst the distress and fear. Even though I was resilient in these ways, it was very hard. And it still is.

I want to speak of the value of states of awe and the value of states of terror. So, I will take you on a journey through worlds, all worlds. I may prefer some of them to others, but my preferences don’t have much sway around here. Mental states come uninvited. And then they go. We can watch together. Maybe, when it’s over, we will understand that ‘spiritual’ is a word that does not exclude the underworld. In fact, we may have a spiritual experience in the most terrifying of places. Spirit doesn’t exclude anything. So, let’s go up and down together. There will be nothing to transcend, but everything will be transformed.

Down

I enter the hell realms, searching for a light.

I have been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. I reluctantly call my paranoia a psychotic symptom. I also think it is worsened by obsessive thinking. But maybe it’s just a human experience that can’t be easily categorized. I use the word ‘paranoia’ to describe a pervasive story I have been told is not real but that still terrifies and threatens me. I learn ways of understanding different mind states, and I am left facing the groundlessness of my experience—words can never fully express what it is to feel severe pain. Whatever words I use, I know this experience is something I do not want.

When I am told that this story is not real, it still feels real. I don’t know how to free myself. It feels like I am caught in my worst nightmare and there is no way to escape. I experience a sense of terror that reverberates through me.

Sometimes I don’t believe I have schizoaffective disorder—I am just sensitive. There is nothing wrong with me. At other times, all I want is freedom from what I perceive is wrong with me. But what is it that is wrong with me, anyway?

I reach out for something to ease the intense suffering I feel and end up with my hand on a prescription pill bottle. I am no longer searching for spirit. I am searching for relief.

I am in an uneasy alliance with medication. I don’t like it, but I need some of it. If I was completely off my medication, I don’t think I could share writing with the world, let alone take care of myself. Still, I wanted less of it, particularly since it has been harming my body. I also thought if I lowered my medication I might be able to recover more of my unique experiences—the ones I liked, not the scary ones. I would have more trance states, even though these were already a healing part of my life. I would be less limited, and more of the bright being I imagined myself to be.

When I am lost in the world of hell in my mind, what I want is to be in the flesh and blood of my life as fully as I can. I am less wedded to leaving this reality and finding other ones to float inside.

Still, I am drawn to certain experiences. Most of the trance states I have had in recent years are gentle and calming, when I’m not overstimulated by the sights and sounds of the city. I feel a deep peace as I enter into another reality. These states help me to understand where I am called to go. They help me to not have to understand anything.

But sometimes they are more disruptive.

Up

If joy is a fish, I was wet all over.

Water was falling from the sky, and water was flowing around me. The park was growing dark, and my heels had wings. I was dancing in the rain. Was I laughing? I know my soul was. I moved my feet until they were leaving wet footprints over the clouds. I moved my eyes until they no longer needed to see, which meant that they could see very far and very deep. I moved my hands until they were no longer attached to my body. I had no arms to reach out into the rain. I became the rain.

That night, I fell into my body. I had difficulty sleeping, and I could feel obsessive thoughts weighing me down. I rested most of the next day because I was so tired.

Had I gone too far up?

Down

Sometimes the terrain of my mind is devastating, and I need help to make it through.

My friend Theodore guides me through the underworld. I recall him telling me that a mystical experience is not about being in a trance. It’s about . . . I don’t quite understand what he’s saying, and I don’t quite like what he’s saying. I want my mystical experiences to be about being in a trance. I don’t remember asking him to explain. I feel him gently look across the screen and connect me with what it is that I remember. I remember “this.”

I wasn’t always the way I am now. Years ago, I used to be a “practitioner.” I meditated often and participated in silent retreats, and I had a community. I was a “spiritual person.” I cannot meditate anymore, not safely. My mind is too difficult to sit still and witness with my eyes closed. This is a source of grief. I feel I am no longer practicing.

My friend Randall, who sits with me in difficult terrain, often reminds me that taking care of myself is the practice. I hope he’s right because I am very skilled at taking care of myself, even if sometimes the way I do that can feel dangerous.

~ ~ ~

Two weeks ago, I made my way across a ledge. We were inside a cave. The ledge existed uneasily above a very big drop—a drop of about fifty feet. The ledge was tilting downward. At the bottom of the drop was death—or, maybe, at the bottom of the drop was immortality. I did not have to cross the ledge. I could have said, I don’t like this. And I did, I spoke out of my fear: I don’t like this, I really don’t like this. But I never found it in me to say: I don’t want to do this. Because really, deep down, in the thumping-breathing-quivering part of me, I really wanted to do this. I was aided across by two cavers more experienced than me. They encouraged me and showed me how to move my body. I found that my body needed to find its own way. I crawled on hands and knees. I slid myself across stone on my butt. I was terrified. If I slipped, everything I called myself . . . would be gone.

Or would it?

There is a picture of me making my way across the ledge. I framed the picture and put it above my desk. What does the picture rouse in me? Is it fear? Or courage? Yes, yes, they go together. This is the most spiritual experience I can recall. I am a body within a vast wilderness that has not succumbed to my longings for comfort. I long for this wilderness, because I am also a wilderness. And I find myself by losing myself in this numinous place. How else could I know the power trembling in my body? What could be more spiritual than reaching down into the pit of my being and touching that power? Maybe, sometimes, the most spiritual response to “I don’t like this” is: I must do this. In turning toward, I turned beyond. In leaning into my own experience and gripping the edges of it, I found the place that has no edge.

I was inconveniently, terribly, exquisitely alive.

Could I call this precarious state paranoia? There was no illusion or distortion of danger. There was only danger. I was not on any spectrum of mental illness on that ledge, I was simply human. No pill would help me find my way across. I had to rely on my kind companions, and I had to rely on myself. There was no room to be paranoid. There was only room to wake up out of the dream.

~ ~ ~

There is also no space for paranoia when I get out of a cave. I feel strangely safe in my body. The healing caves offer goes deeper than any medication. My mind, which is not separated from my body, feels whole. I am not at war with life, for I am a warrior. I am in harmony with not just life, but death. This means I always have good company.

After emerging from the cave, we gathered in the upper world. We grinned before the camera. Six helmets, six heads, twelve knee pads, rows of exposed teeth. We had travelled downward, together. We rose with joy.

Down

When my mind goes downward with my body, I feel a deep sense of healing. When my mind goes downward without my body, I feel broken, deprived, and disconnected.

When I suffer from what is called “mental illness,” am I in my mind? If so, who is the I that is in my mind? And what happens when I feel out of my mind? When the paranoia comes, I want it to go. I don’t want to suffer. I try to convince myself it is not “real.” Then I try to convince myself that there is something real.

The more I try to think my way out of persistent paranoia, the more I become entangled in thought. The more I try to get rid of it, the more menacing it becomes.

I feel it in my skull. It feels as if a virus has taken over my brain. I attempt to overpower the virus.

Sometimes I try something different. It doesn’t always work. I am not always so nimble. But I try to love my paranoia, to hold it in tenderness. And I do. I love my paranoia. It is strange, I almost feel happy, loving my paranoia. Does it change? I don’t know, but the way I experience it changes. It almost feels as if I am hosting paranoia, because it needs somewhere safe to rest. Isn’t that what fear wants? A place to rest.

Down

I can rest in movement, if only I remember not to struggle.

I was falling. It wasn’t an accident. It was an invitation. My body was just descending. The ground below me opened to hold me without stopping me. I fell through a pit that would not harm me. I was falling home. I remember the peace in letting go into the darkness. My body open as a feather, heavy as a rock. I was no longer separate from anything. Everything was in me, and everything was beyond me. Did I reach the bottom, or did I keep falling? The end of the experience is subtle in my mind now. Can I even use the word “end?”

I find a poem I wrote during that time, and it helps me remember. After falling, the portal opened into a great light, and I transformed into a brilliant radiance. All of my fears were abandoned in the heights above me.

When I remember falling, I am no longer so frightened. The void welcomes me without offering any security. Why do I feel strangely secure?

I did not exactly see myself falling with my senses, but I saw vividly. This was a seeing deeper than sight. My inner eyes were wide open, my body keenly perceiving another reality that didn’t even need to part with this one. I could listen without ears and see without eyes. When I was falling, it was a total immersion in descent.

Up

When she disappeared, what did she leave us with?

I am learning about birds. The names people give them. The colours of their feathers. I have not learned to fly with them when they fly, but I will. It will only take a lot of not-practicing to fly with the birds.

We gathered in the woods. It was dark outside, and we were searching for screech owls. I like to say we were looking for friends, because that’s what a birder is. Someone who befriends creatures of land and sky by witnessing them.

When she came, the screech owl was tiny in her majesty. The way she, like us, was searching for something. She was not looking for humans—no, birds are not humaners. In that moment of ecstasy, were we transported to another realm? Did we forget that we were human and enter the world of flight? It was magical, the way she had learned how to move with the air, the way she flapped elegantly through the night. When she disappeared, were our hearts beating a little faster? Were our eyes a little larger? She forgetting about us, us remembering her.

Is this what you call a spiritual experience?

Up and Down

I am learning about falling by learning about rising.

And I am learning about rising by learning about falling.

This is how I fly with the birds.

There is a swing in the park. The swing is under a tree. The tree is inside the sky. When I move on the swing under a tree inside the sky, I go up and down. First, I move towards the sky, then I move toward the earth. I don’t say “yes” when I rise into the air and “no” when I fall toward the ground. I delight in the rising and falling. The place within me called spirit remembers how to move without gaining ground.

Down

Bring me into the depths of my flesh, so that I may know spirit in bone.

I want. I want. I want. I ask experience to satisfy the longing in me to be “whole, abundant, and connected,” and, in doing so, I become broken, deprived, and disconnected. The moment I wish for my experience to be different than it is, I am in hell. If I can allow experiences to move through me, they will be freeing. The moment I try to hold onto them, they will restrict me.

The altered states of love and peace that have poured over me have been an important part of my healing—inviting me into spaces that open me up to the transcendent. They remind me that, though many of my experiences have been pathologized and I have trouble navigating the aboveground world, my divergent mind can be a gift.

At the same time, altered states can be like a drug that I long for to escape the situation I am in. I can enter other realities and forget the value of simple clarity. I start to long for the rising, and not the falling. I yearn for the light, and not the darkness. But it is the very descent into the darkness of paranoia that can show me where I am called to heal.

The experience of falling into the void was so powerful because it was about moving toward the earth. Rather than collect something of my own, I had to release any sense of clinging. What is this but some sort of mystical descent into the cave?

When I crawl inside caves, I am going counter to everything I have spent years of my life looking for. I am going downward, and I am going into the darkness. By moving toward what I have been trying to escape, I free my mind.

I must enter my body fully if I am to make it through the cave alive. And, rather than float or fly, I must learn to climb and crawl.

I connect with the spirituality of mud. This is the flesh and blood and bone of spirit. Though I have experienced states of ecstasy by moving through cold water in a cave or sitting alone in the dark, this ecstasy feels different somehow. This is the ecstasy of being inside the earth, not above the earth.

Circle

This is where up and down meet.

I remember sitting quietly in my apartment. I am alone, but I am not alone. I can feel hands gently stroking my head. When I feel hands on my head, I feel loved. I am not outside of the circle. I am inside the circle, and I am outside the circle. The circle dissolves. Now the places in me that hurt are not hurting so much anymore. I rest inside a world inside a world and remember.

Across

I create a place for myself in the most precarious of places.

This is how I arrive home.

Sometimes I stare at the picture of three tiny people on a ledge. Part of the cave is illuminated by a headlamp. Part of the cave is dark. There is a light on my head. It looks like a bright orb. I am on the ground, making my way across. I remember the light. I remember the darkness. I do not remember rising or falling; I remember crawling. I did not mutter a prayer when I made my way across. I was too busy being a body. The place in me that was terrified was awake. I was completely immersed in the journey. When I made my way to the other side, was it a miracle, a miracle,

to be alive?

~ Originally published in Room Magazine, Issue 48.2