Mad Visions or Mental Illness? Part 1

Myth & Metaphors of Personal Meaning

“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor” _Joseph Campbell.

The Universe saves itself from a Dark & Silent Fate?

By Evolving into a form that can act upon Itself - You?

Euphoric Senses Fall into Awareness of an Eternal Now?

Heaven is Felt as The Eternal Now Emerging Within?

Metaphor, Myth, Meaning & The Hidden World Within?


Its about the transformation of reactive energy states, not objective labels (metaphors)?

"Yeah right! - You've been away with pixies again our David," I hear my Uncles say.
"Told ya to leave those magic mushrooms alone! - Oh! Sorry I forgot, you don't need any, you nut job!" I hear ex lovers bemoan.
"Tut, tut, we warned you about mental illness, off medication," I hear psychiatrists refrain.
"Yeah I know its a very touchy subject, madness as mental illness is a debate with a wide variety of individual experience and objective professional judgment." This is my particular experience though and I don’t paint with a broad brush here, suggesting a universal application. Or do I?

Do the post headlines speak of mental illness & psychosis, a break with normal reality, or personal revelation? Not that I think I'm a messiah, although that may have been your, at first glance judgment? Perhaps more a further dissolving of personal identity, once euphoria energized sensations, enabling intuition fades? Or are these simply the mad notions of a diseased brain, and what do they have to do with everyday normality anyway?

A two part essay in analysis of a month of manic euphoria; its metaphors & meaning?

Where is the objective sense of normality in linking Led Zeppelin's song "Stairway to Heaven," with William Blake's famous painting of "Jacobs Ladder," you might ask? Its just a song, its just a painting, and there cannot be any method or purpose in the experience of madness? In this two part essay I explore my own altered states of perception from the viewpoint of metaphor and meaning. Exploring the hidden nature of my internal energies, my DNA's double helix and the double bind of a mind-body split that can't see the shadow on my cosmic soul?