The Nexus Of Good And Evil

A Blind AgreementBy Patricia Lefave , Labelled, D.D.(P)

First posted in 2003

This is an agreement that must be broken. I think all of our lives depend upon it. When I say "all,"
I mean humanity. I don't mean we labelled people, because everybody else is really doing just great.

Before, during, and since my breakdown/through, I think one of the hardest parts of the whole business has been getting anyone to hear me. Almost everyone remains psychologically deaf to my words. I know why.

It' s like trying to deprogramme a large group of people who are absolutely certain that they understand my experience better than I do. It has been a monumental task. It's a task that under normal conditions I would not bother to try to continue to try to accomplish. I personally have no need to have everybody agree with me, nor do I feel any desire to force them to do so because
they don't. But these are not "normal" conditions.

I can be, and have been, controlled by the beliefs of these folks and the unquestioned power they have been legally given to impose their belief system upon me, even against my will. Their labelling system gave them that power. Even insane cult leaders haven't managed to gain that much control..... yet.

I am aware that the only real problem here, exists because of the premise of reasoning upon which the whole paradigm rests. I' ve been aware of that for at least eight years. I'm just not "allowed" to tell anyone who might be offended by the awful news. Offending others by telling them the truth they don't like is one of my character flaws you see. The fact that what I'm telling them about , is the truth of my own experience apparently doesn't factor into the whole business.

I am aware that people in psychosis are struggling to escape the same paradoxical trap from which I escaped. I want them all to be able to follow me out of there. I once told a psychotherapist, post breakdown, that I had "left a trail of psychic breadcrumbs in there" for them to follow. Now, I'm
back out here in concrete reality urging them on. I felt, that part of my spiritual energy was still inside the collective unconscious with the others, who were getting stronger but who were not out of the mess just yet.

The imagery of my psychosis has proven to be extremely accurate as I have reintegrated. I have
had to work hard to sort out the nightmare. Harder than would have been necessary if only there weren' t so many working to prevent it. But I always thought it was overflowing with universal truths, that we all need so badly to see and understand. Someone asked me about two or three years after my psychosis, " So what do we do about it now ?" I said ," We must bring the understanding of this to concrete reality. "

The mystification has just got to go. It's not enough to understand it psycho spiritually. We' ve got to make it "real " for everybody: patients, psychiatrists, clergy, police, lawyers, judges, families, teachers, support groups, prisons....everybody, everywhere. We all had a role in making this mess,
at least to some extent, which varies from person to person. But we need to get it cleaned up
before we all slip into it, and find that we can't ever get up again. "We" are all in this trance state together. The Big "WE". Not the divided "we", between "them" and "us".

I believe that some of the people, many people believe to be the most crazy, are actually the most sane. One consistent feature of this is the reversal of " realities ". We who actually see more, are going to have to spell it out, blow by blow. I once demonstrated the new way I describe things to some people, to a friend. After listening to it she said, "You sound like you're talking to idiots." " I know, " I said, " I have come to accept that I am talking to idiots, and also that the idiots, to whom
I am talking ,are absolutely convinced they have the higher understanding. That's why they can' t hear me." We are sometimes talking to people who don' t know water is wet because they have
been trained to believe that water is fire. "

Until the last few years I haven' t been able to fully hear them either. It is our mutual deafness that we haven't properly "assessed". Though we are all using the same words, we aren' t speaking the same language. So now, I'm going to try writing out a concrete demonstration of the nexus point of meaning. Maybe drawing it all out on paper is the only real way to see the difference . A "seeing " with eyeballs, that which is not "seen" with the mind or spirit. This is WHY we go crazy. It has as much to do with how we see the truth about ourselves and others, as it does about what we see. We spend a lot of time looking for logic in anti-logic. We must get out of the attempt to see it there. It is a search that will never end.When we relate to someone from a different premise( the basic belief about what is going on between us ) without knowing we are doing that, we can' t make
sense of what's going on, because we aren' t hearing the same meaning.

I believe that madness is a metaphysical problem of relationship. It does not take place within us apart from others; though many want the person who breaks, to believe that it does. It is actually
a group event. It occurs when reality is seen as the opposite of itself, and the person being defined as "sick" cannot convince anyone to accept his/her truth as valid. There is group pressure applied
to the individual to accept the group consensus as reality instead , and to deny their own reality in favour of the group's perception of it. The need to "belong" often plays a big role in manipulating
the individual to give up trying to convince anybody of anything. To get well, we need to become fully aware of these things.

When virtually everyone around us is telling us we can't identify reality, we start to doubt ourselves, and that doubt can cause great fear. If I can't even trust my own senses to tell me what I see and hear, how will I ever be able to be sure of my own reality again ? Sometimes we even think a group
is trying to drive us insane deliberately...for sport, or as a form of twisted "fun". Although there may be one ( or several people ) in the group, who actually are acting out as sociopaths, the majority in the group, do what they do, out of ignorance, or stupidity, or the delusional belief that they have the " superior " worth, or understanding. I once saw a man in my own town wearing a T-shirt that said:
" Never underestimate the power of a large group of really stupid people. "
It's true. Large groups of people really do hold a collective power. That's neither good, nor bad ,in itself. It's what a group does with collective power that matters. I'm saying, to all of you who have suffered through this metaphysical illness with me, let's use our collective power to connect together, just like we were forced to do in psychosis, before we were ready to handle it. Only this time we will do it with our ego boundaries intact.

We' ll share our stories right out in the open. If nobody near us listens, we' ll tell it to each other. We' ll support each other in our healing. We' ll tell the stories of our psychoses so we can integrate them and get past them. We will use our minds, which WE know to be far better than they are judged to be, by those who silence our Voices. They do that because they really don' t understand the reality of our universal experience.

We are our own best healers because we understand the truth of our experience, whether anybody else accepts it or not. We will help each other get past our doubts about it. Sharing that validates us. We will all recognize that it is the telling of the story that is making us all stronger. Don' t be afraid of the Voices. They are only the Voices of those who have suffered with us . They are us.

When we all learn how to form really solid personal boundaries, there will be no difference
between internal and external Voices. We will relate to all souls the same way; using the Life
principle of mutual respect, which runs in both directions at the same time. By that I mean: We restrain ourselves from violating the boundaries of others AND (not OR) we learn how to psycho spiritually block the attempts of others to violate our boundaries. For most of us, labelled by psychiatry as defective, the latter is the most important part. Words can be very powerful, when put together in just the right way. We all need to learn the effective way to do that. Learn to hear what is meant, beyond the words used to convey the meaning.

Read this sample conversation and use it to learn to hear the truth being discussed by two people who are talking, and yet they are not communicating at all. These are the abstract discussions weall have about our "condition" . The discussions we have with those who aren' t hearing a word we say as " real."

Don' t worry about sorting yourself out. Just become aware of what the people who think they understand, are actually doing. The majority of them have no idea they are doing it. That's why they are so confusing to you. We have all felt that some of our psychiatrists are genuinely concerned and honest people, while simultaneously trying to manipulate and control us. Then, they deny the reality of everything we say and feel. Our perception of that is accurate. It is not really OUR perception that is the problem.Though on the abstract level, there is "a perception problem."

It is often the psychiatrist who has the perception problem, and he has it, because he has been thoroughly trained to see us the way he does. Trained to hear us in a certain way. Trained to make certain that no one will be held responsible, other than the Identified patient, or at least the I.P.'s body. That's why it has all been reduced to the physical. He is trained to believe we are physically "sick", and that the real event that made us metaphysically "sick" did not occur at all. The event has been transformed into "mental illness". Think about the ideas that psychiatry accepts as "symptoms."

These are statements that rest on the nexus of meaning.( the point where we meet as opposing "sides" of the same problem of relationship.) They have truth in them, and patient and doctor agree that they do. That point of meaning is our mutual "Centre", the nexus, the "hub" of the matter. Like the centre of a wheel. Listen carefully:

You think people are talking about you.
You think people are harming you, mocking, ridiculing you.
You think they are trying to control you.
You think they are putting thoughts into your head.

We all agree with that don' t we ? At least, on the abstract level. I once told one psychiatrist, in the team that worked on me, that psychiatrists say the word "think", as if it were always in quotation marks. But listen to what the doctors, are not saying:

The doctor is sure, people aren' t talking about you, or trying to harm you, or trying to put thoughts, or ideas into your head, because he has been taught that those complaints we make, are our "symptoms" which "prove " we are physically ill. So, he tries to talk you out of your reality, or he ignores what you say altogether, or, sometimes he "humours" you.

The humouring comes from the training concept:"You can't talk to a disease." You may know those three statements are the truth because it's your experience, but you can't make the Doctor believe you. What I' m saying is, stop trying and get your validation from someone who is willing to hear you. Most of the time, right now, that's your peer group. But remember. No one can ever lead you farther than he/she has gone him/herself. That applies to psychiatrists also.

It is the absence of validation for our real experience, and emotions, that cause us to suffer the loss of our ego boundaries. It is the pressure applied to us externally, as well as our own doubts, fears, isolation and the inability to see the whole problem. Also, we are overwhelmed by the insistence of others, that we accept their definition of our experience, as an illness coming from within. They are often so genuine in their concern, that it confuses us even more.The fact is, people DO talk about us right in front of us, because they believe we are the lesser mind. Some of those people DO harm us, for no other reason than the opportunity to do so has presented itself. Others are blind to the results of what they do, because of their misguided attempts to help, based on their false beliefs about what is happening. The sociopaths involved very often get away with it. After all, no one is going to believe us.

Some like the power rush they get out of that. It's like an addiction. And psychiatry IS trying to control us, trying to put it's ideas, of our experience, into our heads, and often, our dysfunctional relatives do the same thing. The way we express that in psychosis is symbolic rather than literal. Psychiatry does act a lot like the C.I.A., all covert operations and hidden agendas, in it's attempts to control us. They sincerely believe they are doing it "for our own good" because they hear "delusions" instead of the truth we are telling them.

Psychosis is a mad search for truth, that we can' t see in our waking lives, because everyone tries to talk us out of seeing it, and into accepting a fantasy version of reality, in which all others remain absolutely blameless. That's the main idea I'm trying to get out of psychiatry's head. Whether psychiatry wants to know, or change, or "let it go'" is becoming irrelevant to me now. I'm saying it out in the open, simply because I know no one will ever hear what is never stated. There is a great deal of resistance and denial in this, on the abstract level. It's just that those traits are being ascribed to the wrong people. Those aren' t the patients' traits. Those are psychiatry's traits, and as long as they remain so, I will be required to continue to deny, that I was ever physically sick, and resist psychiatry's attempts to convince me otherwise.

For me, it is mostly stating it that matters, not whether it is, or is not, accepted by anyone else. My statements, of MY truth, do three things at the same time:
1. They validate me. They validate MY OWN experience, perception, and perfectly appropriate, emotional reactions, to a very real event. A group event.
2. They tell psychiatry how it really is. The psychiatrist's inability, or unwillingness, to accept it, is his problem, not mine. ( This is about boundaries and detachment. )
Boundaries form,( or reform ) and hold, when you speak your own truth. It's about convincing yourself first. If any others become convinced, because of what you say, then that's a bonus.

My statements are shared with all those like me, who have been overwhelmed for exactly the same reasons, in the same way, on an abstract level. The concrete details of our experience vary, but the event is essentially the same. It is the conceptual level, of our individually unique stories, that we have shared together. Shared the experience of the chaos; of the enmeshment. We are The Voices of the experience. But it is also possible to bring renewed order, and peace, out of the chaos, and into Collective understanding. Now we need to be the Voices that do that, in concrete reality, solidly connected to it. That's what we are doing now, by sharing our experience with each other, right out in the open.

To me, it's not about being either proud or ashamed, to have been crazy. It's about knowing we were never really crazy in the first place. I have seen another T-shirt, which is intended as sardonic humour, that I would wear. It says, "I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now."
That's what I'm aiming for. I want the fact that I'm all right now, to become "We". I want that T-shirt to become a statement of our concrete reality.

I have said before, on a person to person level, I don't normally care that much, if the other person accepts my reality, and my feelings about it, or not. Psychiatry FORCES me to care, and to keep fighting the same battle, over and over again. Unlike dysfunctional families, and the average workplace, psychiatry has granted itself the unquestioned power to force it's belief system upon me, take over physical control of my life against my will, and to trap me permanently within it's twisted paradigm of reasoning. No individual, or institution, should ever be given that kind of power.
My rights, as an individual in a democratic country, disappeared with the application of the label. It took ten minutes, with a doctor who had never even met me before. He had no interest in hearing my story at all. This can be done to anyone, anytime, anywhere on the planet. If that doesn' t scare the hell out of those people who have yet to receive their psychiatric label, maybe it's time they heard all of our experiences, so that it will. It may jolt them out of their false sense of immunity in time to stop the Machinery of the Mental Illness " Business " before it becomes unstoppable.

A Metaphor for Psychiatry:In the meantime, we birds of a different feather, are going to flock together, and fly away, in search of greener pastures where the seed of Truth will feed us forever. You psychiatrists do know what a metaphor is , don't you ? Thomas Szasz referred to our relationship with Psychiatry as psychiatric matrimony. Just like a literal marriage, which has gone very badly, we "committed " types often try to do everything we can think of, to save the relationship. If we can' t, at least we know we tried.

After that, we will not have to feel guilty, when the divorce we have needed to get, for so long, at last becomes final.





ONCP