Seeing Past Sexuality

For a long time in my life, I was bruised to such an extent to withdraw entirely from society.  But I’ve rejoined the world now, yet, unfortunately, I have found that most of what I was hiding myself from was, in fact, fraudulent. 

About three years ago, I discovered another side of madness; I stepped forward out of the world of psychosis, which my schizophrenic mind had bound me to for ten years.  And I have taken many steps towards recovery and independence since.  What is important to understand is that I thought I had a rat in my brain for my ten years spent in psychosis.  But there is another side to schizophrenia that cannot, I believe, be explained, simply by understanding brain chemistry…or genetics.

My bruised ego—it was the result of terrible alienation which lasted throughout my adolescence and into my early adulthood.  But I imagined, once I found that I didn’t have a rat in my brain, that my existence would no longer be imbued with madness…or…alienation.  However, in the last three years since becoming healthy again, I have only been renewed in my madness.  I am not crazy.  There is actually something really wrong with my life that I cannot fix; I’m a person who must, regardless of my own desires, live in emotional exile.

Let’s be very clear about what I mean when I say I live in emotional exile.  I have, for the last thirteen years, living in Vermont, had one sex partner.  For a month and a half, within the course of said thirteen year span, I lived in Miami, and I had three sex partners while I was there.  The one sex partner that I was with here in Vermont is now a dear friend; I must say that my friendships are very rewarding; but I also must say that to be so limited in your expression of affection for so long, is itself madness.

I am not unlucky in love because there is something wrong with my brain.  I could go on to explain all the good qualities I have which make it so much more inexplicable that I am so lacking in sexual intimacy.  I will not, because I don’t think it matters so much how virtuous, sexy, or noble someone is for finding a lover or sex partner.    

For the longest time, I felt so weak and frail, emotionally, because I had been without intimacy for so long.  I felt like there was something wrong with me; a few things have helped me to flip that coin over and see myself from another perspective.  Having had time to look deeply into myself to see that I am bright, resilient, and charming has rewarded me with tremendous amounts of self-love.  And being forced into spiritual—and emotional—desolation was the proving grounds for my self-love. 

My self-love did not blossom until I found root for it, however.  Finding this root took having some of the greatest relationships with some of the greatest friends I could imagine.  It also took being able to look at myself and know I have given my life my all. 

Here and now, I look at our sexualized culture from a very different perspective than when I first went into exile.  Sexuality is, to so many people, a thin veil which hides tremendous insecurity.  But no one is anymore at fault for their sexual transgressions than I am for being so hidden from my expression sexuality.  What is most wrong isn’t wrong within me anymore than it is within you.  When enough people see this one truth we can truly live in a culture of free love.

Straight Edge Awareness

Other than coffee, and my psych meds, there are no chemicals which go into my body to alter my mind or emotional fitness.  I stopped smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol without much attention to my actions.  It took several months of being sober before I realized that sobriety had become principal to my state of consciousness and wellbeing.  At that time, the decision to go straight edge had been made.

Despite being somewhat devout in adherence to straight edge philosophy, I’m not very knowledgeable to how it relates to anarchy.  Not everything must be intellectualized, however. Here, I will espouse my own understanding of how the straight edge lifestyle fits in with liberation and anti-capitalist ideologies. 

First, being fully present to partake in life’s simple pleasures, without augmenting consciousness with illicit drugs—or alcohol—cultivates a great deal of self-awareness.  Self-awareness is a great means towards self-reliance; in turn, as we become clearer to how we maintain resolve in the midst of tyranny, we become more in tune with the welfare of all human beings.  Movement towards feeling the feelings of injustice, and relating these feelings to other’s welfare, elevates our political relevancy.

Outside of being more connected to our political/social consciousness, remaining drug free is a great means to give added nourishment to the soul.  Our minds are one of the most connected to our soul organs which inhabit our bodies.  And freedom of the mind, which may soak in the entirety of our existence with sobriety, allows our soul to be cultivated with purer intention.  Moral underpinnings of living drug free allow us not only to rid our minds and bodies of toxic chemicals, but, ourselves, of the toxic vices. 

What we do to remain pure, in our personal practices, gives us the emotional resolve to create health and well being in our lives.  Sobriety can have importance to one’s political ideology because it connects us to our own welfare.  Being healthy, and being of an alternative mindset, produces a personal social culture of understanding, and empathy.  And in these things we may find the need for solidarity—and true, uncompromising, equality.

Rite of Madness

As I set out to be self-educated, at the age of twenty-two, I was blind to the path which would wind its way through a shadowy forest and lead me to higher wisdom.  My intention in pursuing this path—through the shadowy forest—was to go into exile—and read as much as I could.  Time spent in exile injured my soul.  Depleted, emotionally, from years of isolation, I found it necessary to seek support in the mental health system.

I would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was twenty-seven; after receiving this diagnosis, I attempted to end my life cutting my wrist.  This caused enough alarm in those that cared for me that I would spend the next two and a half years in a private group home.  Mental illness is not the focus of this blog post, however.  Rather, I will like to elucidate my insight into the natural tendency for people to find meaning in things.  My path of self-education acted as a means for my finding meaning in years of suffering from schizophrenia.  In turn, finding meaning in my suffering led to my freedom from this suffering.

Between the years of twenty-two and twenty-six, I read so much to cause myself harm.  There is a type of hysteria which I succumbed to; this is a real hysteria which I learned about from a psychiatrist; with this form of hysteria you create so much stress for yourself that muscles in your neck tighten.  The muscles which tighten are around your esophagus, and nearly restrict breathing. 

Let’s jump forward a few years: I had seen the extreme stress associated with my hysteria dissipate; but I was in the private group home which I mentioned previously.  In that group home I began studying again, but with less fanaticism.  My main course of study at the group home was of chess which I devoted about an hour a day to for over a year.  Even while there—years after my initial development of hysteria—I found reading difficult because it caused a re-emergence of the tightness in my neck. 

Even though I read with such fanaticism during the years of exile, I found, while I was at the group home, that my level of education was not as respectable as I might like.  I was intimidated by the amount knowledge which my peers with four year degrees held.  This left me dismayed.  I could not foresee, then, that I would ever step out to transcend the bewildered state I found myself in.

Today, I am very happy with my level of education; the years of stumbling around not seeing how to be a cultivated intellectual were paramount to my eventual success in self directed learning.  I needed to bear the weight of futility to acknowledge the relationship I have to the innate wisdom inside me. 

Serious mental illness can be associated with what is considered a spiritual rite in almost any culture.  That spiritual rite is known as a dark night of the soul; a dark night is marked by exile and self-denial; a dark night manifests itself in emotional torment.  A dark night of the soul is the breakdown of the ego—the ego that inhibits a person’s relationship to their own divine essence.  A person can, once they have let go of their false self, the one which leads to emotional conflict, allow their true self to emerge. 

As it happens, and I state this as fact, the path towards self-education runs through self-knowledge.  Had I not endured years spent in exile—had I not embarked on a dark night of the soul—I would never have cultivated any relationship to myself which would hold so much honesty.  Not seeing far enough ahead to carefully navigate the shadowy forest is how I arrived at a place of higher wisdom.  Years of exile and reading did not yield adequate learning for me to be happy with my education; but my suffering and exile were paramount to finding my source of innate wisdom.  All that was necessary to uncover this wisdom was to let my spiritual self emerge out from under my broken ego.

Wisdom is what emerges when a person has developed a strong relationship to their emotional core.  There, in finding this wisdom, there is all the meaning you will need to endure any bout of madness.

Marked by Awakening

Beauty,

Beyond the eyes

It strikes the heart

And

May reach the skies

To not acknowledge

An aching heart

A Person

Must be stifled

Be rigid

And at once

Will lose the way

But in the night

Emptiness

Steps into the fray

Marked by

Awakening

And the break of day

Radical School Movement?

I’d like to see radical schooling as a prominent movement in the twenty-first century.  If communities got together, we could uproot the compulsory schooling system, and force an overhaul of traditional curriculum.

Emma Goldman was one of the leaders of the modern school movement, in the United States, back in the beginning of the twentieth century.  Schools, which functioned within this movement, allowed children to be uninhibited by structured classroom environments.  The kids could go outside and play at any time they chose; and reading was not imposed as much as it was coaxed.  Kids would be illiterate, sometimes, until the age of nine.

As much as I would like to extol the efforts of teachers in the United States, they are too often outwitted by our competition based culture.  Knowledge is not dependent on academia.  And it is not for the child’s soul to endure compulsory schooling from morning to afternoon—only to have homework at night.  The well-respected teacher and educational reformer—John Taylor Gatto—suggest that kids need less schooling.  He also suggests that compulsory schooling is a means of spying—not cultivating freethinking individuals.

People love to tinker with things that excite them; words and numbers are two of the more traditional avenues for teachers to incite curiosity in their students.  What if children were—with their families and teachers guidance—encouraged to develop their own lesson plans?  A young person, at a reasonable age, could develop a curriculum around an apprenticeship with a nearby handy man. 

Schooling is intended to create functional habits in learning; and we could do a lot better at instilling, in students, a life-long relationship to their minds if we let each individual set their intellectual trajectory.  Self-directed learning is a tool that provides a means to cultivating independence and creativity.  Sanctioning one building, as the place of learning, in any given community, and requiring that semi-uninterested students go to this building everyday to learn about words and numbers stifles independence and creativity.

What is encouraging is that there are alternative approaches to schooling that are practiced in a great proportion of our nation’s communities.  I am a product of one such alternative educational program myself.  What is unfortunate is that these programs are too narrow and limited.  Alternative education has to stop being an alternative and start being the norm.  Schools need to stop being centralized places to learn from books; schools need to not be schools but hubs for cultural enrichment.

Another movement in schooling which I’ve read about (I already mentioned the modern school movement) is the free school movement.   Free schools involve teachers and community members founding private schools which require no tuition in low income urban areas.  What is radical about this particular movement isn’t so much the curriculum but the organizational structure of the schools, which is far more horizontal than traditional schools.  And this allows these schools the greater flexibility in meeting each child’s needs.   

Radical schooling exists.  We just need to coax it a little so that it may flourish.

Live and Let Live

I do not believe that for the sake of others who care for a person—another should have to endure a broken life.  But, from another perspective, living life may be very rewarding, even to the most challenged individuals.  I believe, for myself, in being committed to life, because I have seen that no times of despair are so perilous to be permanent.  No matter how disheartened I am about life, I know my feelings of alienation will not last, and that I will have good times down the road.

The concept of being committed to life was brought to my attention by a friend.  She brought this topic up as a concept which she had learned of, as a teaching of Will Hall’s (a mental health advocate). 

Not all wars, which are won, can bring with them rewards which are proportionate to sacrifices made in battle.  That is not to say that we are to be fearful of fighting; in some people’s lives, the cost of perseverance is so great that no rewards could ever make up for times of so much despair; that does not mean that suicide is their best means to resolving emotional conflict in these instances.

Anarchy is about cooperation within communities to develop an egalitarian social structure.  What we must realize—as radicals—is that in our communities—there are people who are suffering of so much emotional destitution that suicide seems an answer.  All of us have to see our role in society as a crucial means to alleviate the burdens which push too many to want to end their lives.    

Too many people are too alone.  Too many people are so crushed by a capitalistic sense of morality which pushes us to alienate each other for the sake of personal gain.  And it is this that causes people to turn to drugs; and it is this that causes people to lose their minds; and it is this that is why people turn to suicide.  No one is so righteous to say that their role in society does not alienate another person. 

We do not need to wait for the government to get things right for our culture to be one of caring and cooperation.  All we need is for one too many people to recognize the beauty of individuality; and we need this person to recognize that, because they are witness to this beauty, they must return the gesture with acts of compassion.   All of us must promote the individual in all people we encounter. 

If any one person is to value their own life, to choose to be committed to life, we must all contribute our hearts and soul to each individual whom we share in love with.  Only through a culture of a collective interest in humanity can we create a society that values the hardships which influence people to end their lives.  And that is, by my estimation, the best we can do to undo the emotional burdens which are so imposed on people that they end their lives.     

My Anarchy

I’m very determined to not look at anarchy as a political system.  Anarchy does not have to be the absence of government; instead, it can be brief uprisings within oppressed society; and it can be the path which promotes individual liberation.  Anarchy exists in all societies, but it is also, in developed, and many other nations, suppressed.  As anarchists we must choose to stand in solidarity with all peoples hindered by political systems, for their pursuit of liberation, from the notion of property, from the existence of a class society, and from a militarized police force.

Choosing sides in my fight for liberation has, in my lifetime, seen me in the depths of self-doubt.  There was a time when I thought the best I could hope for was to spend the rest of my life in jail.  Earlier in life, as an adolescent, I set out to be as unruly as I could—as unconcerned with my future as I could muster.  Among the people I hung out with the most daring of us were the ones who most risked doing jail time. 

Beyond just simple mischief as a young man, I really made a concerted effort to disregard bourgeois ideals.  I wanted to buck the notion that an education was something that I needed to get ahead.  To this day, I see little need to use institutions to further my own cause; as I see it, these institutions which I am to use for my own personal gain only dilute my ideals.  By stepping forth into the professional world with the intent to wield my education as a means to raise my standard of living, I would function to sustain oppressive economic structures.

Self-education became a priority in my life at the age of twenty-two.  My intention in study wasn’t to get a better job or learn how to write.  What I wanted was to get a proper education for founding a jail gang; I studied military science and martial arts philosophy to create a code of ethics for this gang.

Eventually, I came around to see that there were much better things in this world for me than to found a jail gang.  The ground work I laid down, as an adolescent, in creating as much havoc as I could, and dismissing societal values in exchange for this misguided aspiration, has afforded me that I squander the opportunity to be well-off.  And I am far more aligned to my personal ideology for it.  The turnaround I made in life—from disheartened and defeated man—to an educated and independent individual—was necessary.  I could not have lived on—long—from having sacrificed so much from my quality of life.

All in all, I’m very happy with my decision, as a young man, to test the boundaries of the imposed political system.  Having been on the receiving end of the oppressor’s will gives you an emotional reservoir with which to forge independence.  Toughness is necessary to live with true liberty in a society composed of rigid conceptions of what is valued.  Anarchy is to me to disregard the consequences of forging your own ideal.