Life is a Rorschach Test
Continued from 'On the Path...'
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Most people who have studied psychology probably know of the Rorschach
Test.
A reminder serves the purpose; it is those abstract ink blot images that
are held up to someone to determine if they are a mental case by what they see
in the ambiguous blot. I studied psychology on my own while in college. It seemed 'psyche'-logical to me that to know thyself was the beginning of wisdom -- the 'higher' part of higher education. In those terms, psychology as the 'science of the psyche' ultimately means awareness of HOW one is conscious. If we don't know better, we can't do better. It took me three years of college to realize that what I really wanted to learn was the ultimate meaning of life. Not just my life and lesser loves but the big picture of greater Love. This deep desire came out of personal tragedy. After discovering an old flame from high school had moved to campus -- and rekindling that flame -- I went into shock when she soon after died in a dormitory fire, blaming myself because I didn't follow my urge to see her earlier that evening before the fire occurred. Something snapped. I lost all interest in the irrelevant "brain stuffing" of college. A core impatience with understanding the meaning of it all took precedence. I came from a long line of self-employed independents, and had thus grown impatient to own my own life. Self education had proven far more valuable than 'formal' education and I just knew that, "If I was going to BE, it was up to ME." Realizing that the fiery prayer of desire is not seldom the prelude of the revelation -- what I was going to do with my life -- I spent a lot of time on my knees, having no other place to go for answers. Finally, I had a lucid conversation with my higher Self that snowballed with great enthusiasm into an experience known as 'cosmic consciousness' that no words can describe. You might say I had a 'life-reading' with 'future memory' that put the past in perspective and gave me a compelling vision of the future - my "calling", "mission", whatever. Inexplicable gifts of the holy spirit followed. I was seeing auras around people and intuitively knew what they were going to say before they said it. The 'small voice' within had become anchored in my conscience. A certain KNOWING had transcended everything I once believed. And I seriously engaged the path to understanding all this. Being true to this vision, I didn't see any need in wasting time, so I dropped out of college to begin studying the mysteries of God full time -- the 'high end' of the 'psyche' as a Higher Power. And of course, my concerned parents of social prominence wanted to have my head examined by a doctor friend who was directing a new mental health wing of the hospital in town. That's where I first saw the Rorschach test I had read about. I knew it was simply a "projection tool" that allows patients to project what they are thinking and 'seeing' in the ink blob. Since I knew that game, I projected what I knew from this perspective, seeing the 'good' in the ink blot with an upbeat 'archetypal' rendition of heaven. Those who have studied the works of Carl Jung and 'got it' know what I mean by the archetypes that frame the process of directing conscience. So when I was given the Rorschach test to reveal, basically, where my head was at, I said what this ambitious clinic-director needed to hear to keep me from being a new paying customer in the town's new psyche ward. My parents had insurance and this doctor knew there was a "blank check" available. He had his own agenda that challenged my pure intent for freedom to continue 'On the Path'. When my Mother brought me in for an appointment to chat with this doctor, he began with a nice Fatherly rap about the norms of society. I let him meander with his own justification for his rise in the food chain as he explained the maturity of his 'judgment'. As he rationalized his own normalcy, he was fishing for grounds to judge me abnormal. So then he finished with his pronouncement -- in the context of his definition of 'normal' -- by saying that "mysticism and metaphysics aren't that important." My response -- from deep within my awakened 'BEING' -- welled up with a Higher Power that I have tried to accommodate with more humility and grace for the 52 years since then. But at the time, this 'Higher Power' thing was new to me. And I spoke Truth to power in an inappropriate way that lacked any semblance of diplomacy. As I began responding to the doctor, an emotion rose with my words that spoke with increasing power and authority that matched the swelling volume and intensity of my words as I responded: "You're telling me that metaphysics -- the source of physics -- the MIND isn't important... AND I'M LISTENING TO YOU???" Believe me, you would have had to have been there to appreciate the unfettered intensity of the words spoken and the 'judgment' it conveyed. I kid you not, the doctor fell back in his seat, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he started shaking violently. I knew I shorted his circuits with the lie in his own words, and I made a fervent call for God to snap him out of it with my agreement to take full karmic recompense right then. Almost instantly, the doctor sits bolt upright, grabs the phone and yells at his assistant, "Bring in a shot of Thorazine RIGHT NOW". Judgment is a two-edged sword, and the 'sacred word' (s-word) cuts both ways. Since I had studied psychopharmacology on my own -- well explained in then-current issues of Psychology Today -- I knew that thorazine was not just a mental straight-jacket, numbing free will, but virtually a chemical lobotomy with permanent brain damage side-effects if used regularly. Yet I knew this was a lesson in the first law of "cause and effect" (karma) in a free-will universe. To every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Response to stimulus. We reap what we sow. I had asked for this lesson and, by God's grace, I was going to make the most of it!
"Acceptance is recognizing that
whatever happens,
So I went with the
flow, letting the doctor shoot me up and sit there while he stood over my chair
like a wild man, flailing his arms, spewing forth psychoanalytic jargon with
unmasked frenzy that condemned me as "dissociated", "strung out" and
"mentally disturbed". Duh! If I believed this guy, I would accept that virtual
curse and BE that way! In other words, this doc-in-a-box had a lock-step
'box' of "BS"
(Believe System) between his ears... with an ambition for fulfilling his own
standard of 'importance', 'normalcy' and 'success' -
more psyche patients! And
my 'judgment' was deemed a threat to his own highly accredited 'BS'.
You see, life is a Rorschach test. It's not what happens to us -- but
our take on it -- that shapes our frame of reference regarding the ultimate
mysteries of 'God in man' as raises man in
Continued
at: 'On the Path...' |
