A Question Posed

A very simple question was posed to me the other day, and it struck me with its elegant simplicity and shining clarity.  That question was this, "do you think you are gifted?  In touch with other dimensions?"Now, it is the first part of the question which struck me.  The extra dimensional aspect I will delve into later.

For now, let us break that first question down to the many different layers within.  First off, am I gifted in any way?  An honest question that everyone should ask themselves at some point.  I really don't think that Tyler Durden was right at all, which was the entire point of the thing, but I digress.  Self improvement is not masturbation, and if it is indeed such, then so what?  I kinda dig masturbating, as does every other human of sexual age and sound body.  Whether they admit it or not is another question, and some even feel guilt at the very thought of the act, though they continue to "abuse" themselves nightly.  Humans are sexual creatures, and there is nothing wrong with that.  There is also nothing wrong with seeking to better oneself.  Asking if you are special in any way is a genuine question that may just impact the entire course of your life.  You don't even have to feel guilty, as you aren't placing yourself above anyone else, but simply acknowledging that you are indeed a beautiful and unique snowflake.

I myself am gifted in a few ways I am willing to accept and embrace.  I have a special relationship with the English language.  I do not always do her justice, but I appreciate the ebb and flow, the oddities, the apparent paradoxes, and the simple beauty of such a diverse language.  English as we know it today has a rich and diverse history, and can claim influences from almost every language in use today and many which aren't.  It is a beautiful, almost living thing in its own right, and I love that.  I seek to toil away the remainder of my days as a wordsmith, hoping to craft something beautiful out of the raw ether.

I am also fairly intelligent.  I wouldn't place myself with the mental greats of any age, but I'm certainly no fool.  I may act like one quite often, but that is simply because at my core I am nothing but an awestruck child stumbling through the beauty, and tragedy of life.  It affects me in ways I cannot begin to explain, and the smallest thing can be a near fatal blow.  Ironically, while I may feel the smallest tremor in life as the big one, the actual big quake can pass me by almost unnoticed.  It is almost as if I simply cannot process something of such an earth shattering magnitude, and retreat into myself until it passes.  Actually, that is exactly what happens.  No need to dance around the truth, now is there?

That is the other thing I appreciate about myself is that I seek the truth in all things, including myself.  I will often gladly admit to a wrong, and seek to make things better.  I've always sought to be this way, but have often failed in adhering to the practice.  Like any other young male, I equated faults to weakness, and would refuse to even acknowledge many of them.  This acceptance of the truth has come from years of experience in doing things the wrong way entirely.  Everyone has faults, and having them isn't exactly a weakness in itself.  The fault may induce some sort of weakness, be it physical, mental, or emotional, but being flawed is not a weakness.  In fact, one can find their greatest strength in accepting their flaws and seeking to better themselves.

Humans have an innate need to be led, and as such tend to deify those they seek to emulate.  If you act more like the alpha, you might indeed become the alpha some day.  At the very least, alpha might like you more.  Combine that simplistic, instinctual drive with a mind capable of abstract thought, and it's no wonder we have a plethora of gods.  Our need to understand, mixed in with the need to be like alpha spat out no end of amazingly powerful gods.  Though we think ourselves so removed from such things today, that is simply not the case.

Einstein wasn't some kind of time traveling android from the future who came back to give us a glimpse of the truth, he was simply a man with an extraordinary mind and a few ideas about how things might really work.  He was simply a human seeking to understand the world in which he lived, even though he sought to understand the very universe in which the world itself lived.  He looked beyond conventional boundaries and showed us a glimpse of what lay behind the curtain.  However, do you know much more about the man himself?  I don't.  I can infer a few things though, and I would imagine that a man who spent so much time in his own head tended to be a bit odd.  I could even see him being a bit of an asshole, because he simply had no time for the mundane thoughts of those around him.  He was flying between dimensions, not thinking about what's for dinner.  Of course I'm not going to call Einstein an asshole, because that is just my mind making connections where none may exist.  I do know for a simple fact that he had flaws though, if for no other reason than because he was indeed a human being.

I too seek to understand the universe, and I too am a flawed and infinitesimal human being.  Am I really any different from Einstein?  Am I really any different from any of the great minds of our age?  No, no I am not.  We are all one and the same.  While I may not have the mental capacity of some of our current great minds, like Neil Degrasse Tyson, we are all just monkeys poking things with sticks.  Thankfully, science loves to share its findings, and I can absorb what they have learned.  Who knows, maybe I can even add to it one day, as could any other person alive.  If you are ever around a person who is, for lack of a better term, simple, you will often find that they cut straight through the bullshit and call out the truth.  We all have our strengths.

To finally answer the first question, am I gifted?  Yes, and so is everyone else.

And now we delve into something a bit more mystical.  If you have an aversion to psychic bullshit, know that you are in good company with me.  I am a militant agnostic.  I don't know, you don't know, no one knows.  Period.  Shut the fuck up about it.

Do I believe there could possibly be extra dimension which we aren't fully aware of.  Well of course I do.  They are all around you every day, influencing every conscious thought and action you have while interacting with the rest of humanity.  Vocal sounds make up a very small portion of human communication, with the rest being made up by body language and other similarly subtle things that often escape notice.  Pheromones dance in the air around you constantly, inciting subtle hormonal changes in your body that affect how you may feel about a person of situation.  I simply cannot handle being around a mass of people, as I tend to be a bit sensitive to pheromones and other scents in the world.  It is like a rush of feeling and emotion that induces a panic attack.  I honestly believe that research into human pheromones will one day explain why people have panic attacks simply by being in a crowd. 

Psychics.  Empaths.  Bullshit. 

There very well may be other planes of existence that we do not know about.  In fact I genuinely believe there are.  We have barely scratched the surface of what we know as reality, which itself exists within each and every mind alive today.  We create our own universes.  I will never know exactly how a smooth glass surface feels to anyone else, because I will never, ever be that person.  I will never have the neurons of my mind aligned precisely as it is in their mind.  My body will never grow the nerve endings in exactly the same way.

For someone to claim a connection to something greater is highly suspect to me.  I would never suggest that such people do not exist, but I think that most of them can be explained away easily by our current understanding of science.  An "empath" is someone who feels the emotions of others.  They often claim some kind of sixth sense that gives them this ability, and in truth that is exactly right.  We have far more than five senses, and one of them is pheromone recognition.  I too feel the emotions of others, because I pick up the pheromone signature that said emotions produce.  I also key in heavily on body language and facial expressions instinctively.  Therefore, I have a pretty good gauge of how someone feels at a particular moment.  This is nothing more than a useful trait that has evolved to give people a better sense of the pack mind, and some are of course better at it than others.  Almost any successful person has this ability, and many have learned how to use it consciously.  These are the used car salesmen, or the politicians who can read any person or crown and adapt their approach.

As for a connection to something else, to a higher plane.  I do see things.  I do hear things.  I do find certain patterns in the world that seem to be ordered in certain ways, and if I follow the patterns life does seem to be easier.  I am also a diagnosed schizophrenic.  I really can't say if these things are real or just a product of my overactive imagination.  That is what schizophrenia really is, and what it boils down to at it's root:  a hyperactive imagination.  Since our minds create our reality, these things are indeed real to me.  If they come from another place other than my own mind is truly not important.  They affect my life, and therefore are real.

The question now really becomes whether or not I can learn to control the phantasms.  I don't really care where the voices come from, or the shadow people, or the random feelings of near touch that plague my everyday life.  I just want to at least learn to control them.  If that involves performing "magical" rituals, then so be it.  Of course my source of magic will come from a known and much researched source, hallucinogens.

I'm not talking about black cats and frog's eyes here, but instead delving into our deep past and dredging up nearly lost arts.  The shaman, or medicine man, was always a powerful figure in a tribal setting.  They of course mostly used bullshit and sleight of hand to fool the naive, but the position itself came into being for a reason.  We need to understand the world around us, and in order to do so we must understand ourselves first.  The shaman realizes this, and delves into themselves in search of answers.  They glide through the multicolored folds of their minds, and pick out useful pieces of information that helps us to understand the human condition.  That the shamanic arts were lost in the rise of scientific thought is a true shame.  More than any other magical art that later became a true science, like astrology, the shamanic arts of self realization deserved a true scientific treatment.

Due to testing of hallucinogens in the early 20th century, which among other factors led to the psychedelic movement of the fifties and sixties, we advanced more in the field of psychiatry than we ever have before or since.  Now the general consensus seems to be that everything needs a chemical fix.  Nearly all research funding is in this area of the field, and the research into actually understanding ourselves has fallen to a brave few.  Ever wonder why everyone is miserable?  Ever wonder why even rich, healthy people need pills to keep them happy?  We have absolutely no idea who we are or what we want.  None at all.  We are children given the ability to purchase any shiny thing that appeals to our childlike wonder.  Seeking to fill a hole left by our lack of understanding.

I wish to reach into other dimensions.  Hell, I want to surf the fuckers while playing patty cake with a purple gorilla.  Another thing shamans had going for them in their line of work, they stayed fucked up on the best drugs.  Of course they enjoyed themselves, and why the hell not?  Just because you are undertaking a serious pursuit doesn't mean you have to seriously disregard the talking colors, or that really awesome purple gorilla who is always down for a serious round of patty cake. 

I will enjoy myself greatly while undertaking these trips.  Also, look at the word itself that describes the experience.  Trip.  You are indeed taking a trip, into the depths of your psyche.  Could be scary as hell, or the most wonderful experience you have ever had.  That is the gamble.  I'm fully expecting to find some seriously dark shit hidden down in there that needs clearing out.  Perhaps the gleaming blade of Aramath will do the trick, or maybe my rainbow colored rail gun that shots out soap bubbles at hyper-kinetic velocity.  It's my mind, and I'll clean it out however I really want to, thank you very much.

In the end I only seek understanding.  I only want to understand and control.  I want my fucking life back, and I'm willing to go to great lengths to get it.  My son deserves a father, not a hobbled hermit afraid of his own shadow.  A man who must hide away from the world, because it all really is too much to handle.  I feel like I am dying, and I mean that very literally.  I genuinely feel that death lurks close by, and that I'm toeing the line between realms a little too closely. 

Were it not for my son, I would have died six months ago.  I would have found a way, even if the direct approach is seemingly beyond me.  I wanted to die.  I wanted it to end.  All of it, every white hot thought and emotions quenched in the quiet peace of oblivion.  Turn every TV on in your house to something you despise, though a different thing on each one, and turn them up to full volume.  Now find every radio in your house and do the same thing with music you hate.  Then take the time to set every alarm clock in your house to go off at different, random times.  You'd want to eat a bullet after a while too.

In a lot of ways I did die six months ago.  The old me is forever lost.  I will never be that person again, no matter how long I may live.  He is like an old friend that I secretly couldn't stand.  I will miss him, but I'm kind of grateful that he is gone.  Dude was kind of an idiot.  Now I find myself slowly waking up.  It is almost like finding myself in a new and completely unfamiliar body.  The sense of dislocation is ever present.  I don't feel at home in this skin, as I had little to do with wrecking it.  Who I was before the break will forever feel like another person, just one I know a lot about.

Slowly I'm coming back into myself though.  Little pieces falling into place, or that I've carefully placed myself.  No longer am I trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, then duct taping it in place out of frustration.  I know my limitations more keenly than anything else about me, as they were the first to present themselves to this "new" me.  I hate people in general, and rarely ever care to be around them.  There are a select few I can enjoy for a brief time, but even then I long to return to my solitude.  Only my son can keep my awe and attention for any length of time.  I adore that child more than I think he will ever truly know, but I seek to show him as often as I can.  I hug him as often as I can, and often kiss him atop the head.  I worship that boy, and he embodies every good quality I ever wanted to have.  He is kind, caring, thinks of others before himself quite often, and is genuinely a special person.  That isn't just a father talking up his own child, he really is something special.  He will do great things in this world, even if they are only for those he loves.

Suddenly the hammer grows heavy.  The blade gleams, raw upon the anvil.  It is done, and any more would be too much.  Fine tuning and polishing can come later, if ever at all.  A true smith would have apprentices for such tasks, and since I am alone they often never get done.  I just like crafting the blade.