Insane or Inspired? Book 2 (Part 2)
By: Jay Campbell
Tags: Spirituality, Awakening, Loneliness, Consciousness, Mental Health

The Loneliest Number

I had a significant phobia of hospital food, after being informed, as an impressionable young child, that the NHS had adopted a zero waste policy. That is to say, anything that was taken out, or sawn off, during surgery, went straight down to the hospital’s kitchen. Of course, I felt that Tink’s parents needed to be made aware of this too.

“That’s disgusting!” said Mrs Cooper, who subsequently appeared to masticate her steak and kidney pie with a little less enthusiasm. I found myself wondering whose kidney it was, exactly, and whether the fact that it came from an animal (probably), made it more disgusting or less disgusting.

Certainly, if people were told that cannibalism was now okay, due to climate change, or whatever, then they’d probably go along with it. Perhaps not immediately, but eventually, once it had been legalised, rationalised, televised and, therefore, normalised. For this was the process through which every kind of insanity had already been embraced by society. And, conversely, through which every kind of natural human behaviour had been discouraged, suppressed, discredited, stigmatised or blatantly outlawed. Welcome to your so-called life, by the way, if you weren’t already aware of these things.

In any case, having seemingly put Mrs Cooper off of her offal, I carefully inspected the contents of my supposedly vegetarian sandwich. It didn’t seem that any of the ingredients could possibly have come from a human body. Although, most commercial bread does contain human hair, apparently. Go figure. Perhaps we’re all cannibals, after all.

“That’s a pretty necklace,” said Mr Cooper, looking at my silver pendant. It was silver in appearance, anyway. The metal itself was platinum. Jay was no cheapskate, after all. Although, precisely where the money came from remained something of a mystery.

Following a brief conversation about it, Mr Cooper questioned the appropriateness of a man in his forties buying jewellery for a sixteen-year-old girl. In any other situation I’d have probably ripped his narrow-minded head off. As it was, I calmly explained to him that the pendant wasn’t a romantic gift, but rather a spiritual ID tag. And, by wearing it, I was showing my affiliation with a particular religious movement, as well as my loyalty to the Goddess.

“To God, you mean?” he said, as if I had misspoken.

“No, to the Goddess.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“Well, if you’re referring to the Old Testament God, then one of them is a brutal tyrant and a genocidal maniac, whereas the other is the divine feminine Source and sustainer of all life, everywhere.”

He briefly closed his eyes, as if struggling to compute this apparently new information with his microscopic pea-brain. “Jesus is God,” he replied, “and so that’s who I worship.”

How convenient, I thought to myself. And what wonderful mental gymnastics you are capable of, that allow you to overlook the crimes of his Father. I didn’t actually voice these thoughts, under the circumstances. But I wanted to.

“Perhaps you would like to join us in prayer, later on?” he asked. “Annabelle needs all the help she can get right now.”

What was he up to? Was this a deliberate attempt to convert me? Two can play at that game, I thought. “I’ll lead us in prayer, if you like,” I offered.

“Okay,” he agreed, much to my surprise. And so that’s what happened, not long afterwards. After gathering around Tink’s bed, we respectfully lowered our heads, closed our eyes, and… “Heavenly Goddess,” I began, “we collectively recognise your divine and eternal presence, as you lay here before us, in this body known as Annabelle. For I know that you have gone completely unrecognised, up until now. Even the love of your biological family was rooted in their perception of you as their property, with no inherent identity beyond that which is apparent to the senses. I know that thousands have passed you on the street, without recognising you. And I know that some have even intentionally hurt you, such is their level of ignorance.

“And so, as Annabelle struggles to decide whether to stay with us, or to return to spirit, please let her know that, finally, there are those in this world who do indeed recognise her true identity, and who will treat her accordingly. Advise her not to give up on her species, because she is not separate from it, any more than you yourself are separate from it, or separate from her, dear Goddess. And so it is.”

I didn’t know when the Coopers opened their eyes, exactly, but they were already staring at me when I opened mine. And I opened mine immediately after I’d finished speaking. So they must have jumped the gun a little. In any case, they didn’t seem to understand my prayer, or appreciate the sentiment. But since I wasn’t actually addressing the Coopers, I wasn’t overly concerned about it.

After bidding the couple farewell, I walked back to my hotel room, which was only ten minutes away, and tried to avoid using the television to, “avoid myself,” as Jay had so succinctly put it. And it was true, I did do that. Which got me thinking about the Genesis play, and the undeniable truth that it had so dramatically exposed. Who could deny, after all, that their consciousness was neither sought, nor desired? And who could deny that being alone with their consciousness, for any significant length of time, had a detrimental effect upon their mental health?

We knew these things, psychologically; they couldn’t be denied. Even the most experienced meditators crumble during long-term isolation. And despite apparently blissful states of consciousness that can be reached, temporarily, in meditation, there was no evidence to suggest that consciousness itself was an inherently pleasant thing. Quite the opposite. For in the absence of content, of one sort or another, consciousness was a decidedly unpleasant thing. And we acquired this knowledge through raw, human experience.

Even so, it was a rarely discussed and even taboo subject, within the spiritual marketplace. For the goal of most practises was to become more conscious, in the name of freedom and spiritual evolution. And, indeed, that’s what I myself had been doing. However, as I sat there alone, in a sterile hotel room, it didn’t seem to help very much. I still looked at the blank television screen with a degree of longing, knowing that human voices, and human faces, were only an arm’s length away.

It is claimed that ‘public speaking’ and ‘death’ top the list of human fears. But, in truth, death is something that every human being would pray for, if their greatest unacknowledged fear were ever realised. The reason why people don’t mention isolation as a fear is because it’s not a realistic possibility. I’m not just talking about loneliness, after all, but permanent isolation: No contact, whatsoever, with others, whether human or animal. This means no virtual contact, either, through computers, and no access to television or radio. Forget about reading, too, or listening to music, or consuming any other content produced by human beings.

Television shows have actually experimented with this concept, asking volunteers to be filmed in isolation. And what we learn from these experiments is that most people can’t even handle a few days of total isolation. Why? Because consciousness, devoid of content, is very unpleasant. Which may explain why we dream at night. We simply need to be aware of something, anything, save for the briefest of interludes. As humans we are desperate to avoid feeling isolated and alone, even though this is all there really is to existence, by definition. It could even be said that it’s our natural state.

Bearing all of this in mind, therefore, is it really so hard to imagine that Consciousness itself, from which we all emerged, and in which we all partake, might have found the experience of isolation equally unbearable? Even an isolated human has the memory of others, at least. Source would have had no such memory, nor even the concept of otherness, necessarily. For true otherness cannot exist, in reality. It can only be experienced, through dreaming. We know this from our own experiences, every night, during sleep. Do we not, after all, accept and interact with dream characters as if they were real? And is this Divine dream called life really any different?

To become lucid within a dream means that the illusion ends, and dream characters are seen for what they truly are. In life this awakening is called self-realisation, because the one true Self is finally realised, and the socialised self, or ego, is seen as having no more substance than a dream character. This doesn’t imply that, in an awakened community, like Haven, everyone becomes a clone of each other. Quite the opposite, in fact. Human uniqueness blossoms, in the absence of a contrived and tightly regulated social order.

Ultimately, the Divine Herself seemed to have dealt with the problem of Consciousness by dreaming up the illusion of others. And now She continued to deal with that problem, vicariously, through us. As a singularity she didn’t have the luxury of choosing death. And neither did we. Suicide was no solution to the challenge that consciousness posed, because consciousness survived the illusion of death. Millions of people had realised this truth for themselves, through near-death experiences. And now, as I would soon discover, my friend, Annabelle, was one of them.

To Be Continued