(I wrote a lot of this stuff during and after a "consumer participation day" Jan 13th, 1999 - it needs work and editing but a lot of it just flowed effortlessly onto the page)

We're all on sacred journeys. All of us. The clients, the psychiatrists, the workers, the families, the friends. True healing comes from the soul - but we no longer believe we have souls. That's why we're not really healing anybody.

We see our journeys as separate and individual - that is if we see them as journeys at all. This is an illusion. It is all the one journey. My pain is your pain. My joy is your joy. Until those statements are recognised as absolutely true and not just lovely poetic sentiments, we will continue to live in the shadows, glimpsing the light from time to time but never really knowing what-it-is-all-about. If I heal myself, I help to heal the others because in reality there are no "others". There is only me and I am evreybody.

You'll never heal anybody by telling them to ignore their own inner voice(s), their own inner wisdom, their own inner guides. You'll certainly never heal anybody with pills that sedate and subdue these inner resources.

The whole of our planet needs healing. You cannot expect to heal any section of it without healing the whole. Well, you can expect it but it won't happen that way. I'm crazy enough to want to heal the world and just crazy enough to believe it is within our power.

Let's be daring. Let's dare to imagine a world in which every individual constantly manifests and radiates the divine joy that is our true nature. Let's be daring enough to make it our absolute priority. Let's be daring enough to believe we can create such a world. Let's be daring enough to reject the views of the past because they have not worked. Let's be daring enough to share this vision with everyone who is ready to hear it and respond to it. Then let's not stop until we make that dream a reality.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

In a sense, we are all sick. That sickness merely manifests in different ways in different individuals. In some it is called psychosis or "mental illness". In others it is called by other names such as cynicism, defeatism, apathy, skepticism, conformity, disillusionment and reluctance. These are all manifestations of soul-sickness. Until they are seen that way, we won't heal anyone. Most of us are walking around asleep, never daring to scream the questions that are inside us. "This is it? This is all there is? Surely not!"

It is my belief that psychosis - and indeed every other crisis in people's lives - is in fact an event created by the soul in order to wake the person up and scream their screams and galvanise their inner resources with a view to experiencing Who They Truly Are. It even works in a few cases. I realise not everyone will share this point of view. Not long ago, I myself would have laughed in the face of anyone who wrote these words and I would have considered them as either being on some pretty amazing drugs or off-with-the-fairies. Yet I would have secretly envied them and wondered where-on-earth such ideas could spring from! So, I can hardly blame anyone reading these words and considering me totally loopy. If this is madness, I heartily recommend it.

One could say that the world is in its current global crisis to wake up our collective soul. No other approach or solution has any real hope of healing the world.

The reasons that psychosis (or any other crisis) doesn't often produce the soul's desired result are many and varied. One of the main reasons is that it is rarely allowed to run a natural course without intervention from well-meaning people, who react to the "symptoms" with understandable fear and confusion while never seeing what is truly going on at the level of the soul. The process is generally interrupted or stalled or diverted by hospitalisation or medication.

At this point in human history, few people will see things as I do but there is always hope that a few more minds will open up. And I don't have handy a perfect alternative to the current system. I see this as just one small part of our overall misunderstanding of Who We Are but that also is changing in subtle and unsuspected ways. The world is changing and may become unrecognisable in the not-too-distant future. We will look back on our current way-of-life and ask "Did people really do that? What were they thinking?" - Good question.

I realise I may be accused of generalising and extrapolating too much based simply on my own experience of schizophrenia. I may even be accused of being completely "delusional" and out-of-touch with reality. I have always felt 100 (or even 1000) years ahead of my time. But I am a patient soul. I'm prepared to wait. After all, what is 1000 years when we have eternity.

We are all in this together. We all succeed or we all fail. I can't think of any other way of putting it. People like Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, James Twyman, and many others are saying the same thing. We are so intertwined that we are each other. Yet, in our ordinary consciousness - which is the state most "normal" folk spend 95% of their waking hours in - we see ourselves as separate. Until we see our true Unity and interconnectedness as a Reality and not just as an interesting philosophical speculation we won't get very far at all.

I could go on and on and on with this theme ... For a more complete explanation I'd recommend Conversations with God Books I & II ... if you are ready to listen to what is being said it will literally blow-your-mind. There are MANY, many guides on this planet at the moment. Some are in disguise. Some are so well disguised you might never notice them, unless you resolve to notice everybody. To see nobody as "lesser" or "greater". If we stop and listen to these guides we might just learn something.

My own journey has many times been a harrowing ordeal. In a sense, I would not have wished it upon anyone. Yet, paradoxically I am eternally grateful and delighted that it happened. Many times I tried very hard to give up and become just as cynical and skeptical as "everyone else". However, from the outset, I never saw this as a journey back to "normality". Indeed, if normality means being sensible and rational and abandoning dreams and not believing in miracles then I have no desire to be "normal".

There … I don't know how many people will bother reading this or how many of them will agree with much of it but it's worth writing anyway even if only for my own benefit. Sometimes, the words just flow onto the page and the thoughts are not my thoughts, or at least not the thoughts of my ordinary state of consciousness. This is hard to describe if you've never been "crazy".

{For many years, I figured why bother telling anyone what my views are. In fact, it has taken 15 years or more for these views to evolve and they continue to evolve. Recently, I have let go of the egotistical idea that I could work it all out by myself and have allowed myself to learn from many other sources. Even though, in reality there are no "external" sources. I am starting to enjoy living inside the paradox.}

An interesting question to ponder - why do human beings have imaginations? We do some of us have a crystal clear vision of the way things could be? Is this just to drive us crazy - never being able to have what we can imagine? Or is it rather a sign that we have the capacity to create any world we desire if we only believe in ourselves and each other? Our true natures are in fact far greater than we have come to believe we. Reality is far more astonishing and boundless than we can imagine. The day may not be far away when nobody needs to write these words because we will have experienced our true nature and it will blow our minds.