Revisting Thoughts From The Rabbit's Hole

1963 - Year of the Water Rabbit

"Delusions are fixed and false beliefs that aren't responsive to evidence" - Elyn Saks

My question is, "If my delusions ebb and flow, change and transform (are not fixed) are they still delusions, or are they just wild imaginings?"  

I love to play with ideas, maybe too much so.  Sometimes, if I follow an idea too far it goes down a rabbit hole... Unafraid, I follow still.  I am a rabbit; I love cozy deep dark holes.  I love the solitude of the dark and being confined and safe within a home of me and my own.  I am the opposite of agoraphobic.  I can be there, in my safe dark little space, re-ingesting and further digesting these wild ideas - squeezing them for all they're worth.  If life is a banquet, like I've alluded to here before, sometimes it's beneficial to re-examine what you've thrown out - chew the poo so to speak.   This is what rabbits do.  It's call cecotropy.  As part of their digestive process, usually at night between normal eating times they emit a soft mucus covered poo - we'll call it 'night poo', the stuff of dreams, but it's technically called a Cecotrope, these wet sticky green morsels are what they proceed to eat. Yum Yum from the bum bum!

Cecotrope: Cecotropes, also called 'night feces' or 'soft feces,' are the material resulting from the fermentation of food in a part of the digestive system called the 'cecum.' Cecotropes are nutrient-rich and are passed out of the body, like feces, but are reingested by the animal so the nutrients can be absorbed. Cecotropes have twice the protein, and half of the fiber of the typical hard fecal pellet. They also contain high levels of vitamin K and the B vitamins...

 ...In cecotrophic animals the large fiber particles pass quickly through the colon and are excreted as typical feces. Through special muscle contractions (reverse peristalsis) in the colon, the nutrient-rich portion of the food is moved back into the cecum, a sac-like structure between the small intestine and colon. This food remains in the cecum, where it is broken down by special bacteria into absorbable nutrients, such as simple sugars, starches, and amino acids. At a certain time of the day, depending upon the species of the animal, the material from the cecum is moved into and through the colon and passed out through the anus. The animal then ingests this material and it moves through the digestive tract a second time, and the nutrients formed in the cecum are absorbed in the small intestine. Without this process, many of the nutrients in the food would be lost and passed through the colon, and out as typical feces. If rabbits, guinea pigs, and rodents are not allowed to eat the cecotropes, they will suffer from malnutrition....

....In a way, cecotrophy is similar to the process of ruminant animals chewing their cud. Cows, goats, and other ruminants chew their food once, swallow it, and then the digestive process continues in the rumen where the fiber starts to be broken down by bacteria. When these animals chew their cud, the material from the rumen is brought up through the esophagus to the mouth, where it is rechewed and swallowed. By repeating this portion of the digestive process, ruminants, too, receive more nutrition from their food.

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=18+1799&aid=2932

So in a way, rabbits are ruminants who just do it differently, maybe in a more disgusting way, but come on! Is chewing regurgitated food (barf) any worse than eating specially prepared poo? 

Gladly, in humans, ruminating means something entirely different.  It means thinking on passed experiences or thoughts. Bringing things back up later for re-examination. Most people just enjoy life as it passes, having very little need to revisit it over again.  They live it once without thinking too hard on it.  They accept things as they come and digest the answers they've been given without need for much, if any, rumination.  Like all things in life, this attribute is both a blessing and a curse ... especially a curse when they are being fed a bunch of crap that they happily accept and move on (or actually get stuck with, since that's what error usually does).  

Life and reality are certainly a profound riddle IF you dare to think deeply about it and question the seemingly unquestionable, but therein lies my joy in life (and my curse). Sometimes I think too much and too hard.  It's something in my nature.  Sometimes I think so hard I break my brain, or get caught in a run-away train of thought.  In all my thinking I do not think myself smart ... If I were smart, perhaps I wouldn't have to think so hard? If I were smart I would have avoided all the pitfalls of insanity (My studies of the brain show that we're all insane). At any rate, I thank God for the game, and giving me the bouncy ping-pong mind to play it (and for providing the net).  

You are meant to have joy in this life, and have it in abundance.  I try to find joy and delight every day.  My greatest joy is found when my mind is engaged, as well as my body.  Maybe I'm out of touch with the suffering and reality that most people experience.  I admit I have a pretty good life, but it's not without its issues. Duality always seeps in, no matter our level of ease. My life is certainly better than much of what I hear reported, especially better than much of human history.  There is no other time that I would want to be alive ... at least not yet.

I appreciate my life, and mostly just being, a spectator at the spectacle.  I guess this is because I've considered hard what it would be like not to be; to have never existed.  Even if my life is a short little blip, at least I'll be able to say I came, I saw, I heard, I was ... even if erased to history.   It has been said in one form or another that most people live their lives in silent anonymity.   As a rabbit I'm down with that.  As a chameleon, it's cool.  Secret, silent, hidden; I have very little need to be seen or heard (within this rabbit mindset).  I type these things mostly as a way to process my thoughts. I'm actually glad to think I may just be talking with myself.

These installments are my night poo that I excrete and eat again.  Writing for me has always been a very effective way of distilling what and how I feel and think.    And here, in this installment, I am trying to communicate to you the view of a Rabbit and welcome you to explore my hole, better even your own hole(s).  I am perfectly fine with isolation.

In my thinking lately I've been very fixated on context.   With the last passing manic episode I was challenged quite heavily to keep things in context.  To be Ron Hill, to be Rhill (real). As I viewed myself throughout time I had to keep remembering who I was right now.  I know this sounds crazy (try living it).

My takeaway herein, is that TODAY is yesterday's heaven ... if you could realize that, and remember just how much anticipation and excitement you felt back then (yesterday) to be where you are now (today), and be experiencing all the cool things you are experiencing now, your joy would be immediate and full, in every coming moment of consciousness.  

Like children we cry and complain because experience is always a few steps ahead of perspective.  And joy is all about perspective and context, and catching up perspective to realize the joy you are having right now.  Many times when I observe a child I see a creature that is complaining or confused because they lack the perspective needed to appreciate their wonderful place in time.  As an adult I look back upon my childhood with fondness, and like most experiences wish I could do it again knowing what I know now (And when I'm tuned to my wonderful inner child I am doing it again in an even better way than the way I made this wish).  Many times in life the answers you need come only after you've taken the test.  Experience lags perspective. This is why we are unhappy in most cases of unhappiness.  We can not appreciate our special place in time, right now, our special challenges/blessings when we have them NOW.  Somehow, we fail to live in the now, always looking ahead for more or better, or behind in regret or longing.  Living the now is living in context. Living the now in context with a caught up perspective is joy.

Like I said, during mania when I view my existence through time in both directions it becomes so confusing...Everything speaks to me and is connected.  I am connected to everything, especially that conscious or living.  I see who/what I was in the long past, I see who I will be in the future.  I see through time and space. I am time and space. Time becomes irrelevant.  I am that I am.  "I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end."  If I lose my current place in time, Ron, I fall out of context and into madness among all the layers and inversions of infinity, with the accompanying metaphors, signs, and symbolism. 

It's no coincidence that manic people realize to some degree their divinity when manic.  Maybe they are divine, and they are glimpsing that. If we are truly the children of god, we are divine and we are gods in process. If you are seeking to find god and follow his/her will you are on this path, you are divine and eternal. For god said "Mine elect hear my voice and hearken unto my spirit".  God is speaking, are you hearing it?  Currently I am, loud and clear...and it is joyful and rich.  I feel myself being lifted up and enlightened.  Out of my hole and into the light ... but I must remain grounded to the Earth, a rabbit in my safe hole of dirt.  

Here on Earth we need to live both in the spiritual context (a step once removed from now both directions) as that of a child of God, and in the context of now a hu-Man living a very physical life.  So here and now as a human, and before and after as a child of god, you become a whole person that realizes the spiritual context and lives joyfully and happily in the now, the physical.  (I hope that made sense).

I know, all of this seems silly and out of touch with reality, especially within the context of all the terrors and horrors of life on planet Earth today, during this very upsetting and trying time in the world, with all its attendant madness. It all depends on what madness you want to live within, what perspective you choose to put on reality.  To someone rooted in real world issues this will all seem like head in the clouds foolishness.  Maybe it is.  Maybe I've merely escaped down my hole, eating my own night poo in the silence and dark of my tight hole to escape the predation going on above.   So be it.  I've glimpsed who I am, who/what I was, and what I will be.  If you dare follow me down your own dark tight hole, and dare chew your own cast off treasures, thinking dark and deep, you may glimpse it all too.  As for me I have more to be and more to see, and I wish all the same for thee.  

Presently I may still be somewhat in a manic state, for when so I feel and experience god and strongly believe he is there.  It might just be that all spiritual/religious experience is simply some degree of mental illness.  I certainly know that as for myself I am more positive and hopeful in this state over that I think and feel when in some degree of depression.  I am more powerful and in tune. Like everyone learns, life is a balancing act and achieving that balance is harder for people 'blessed' like me.  I think it keeps me unstuck and better able to consider all sides. I am not afraid of falling from the beam. The key to being centered is to remember that there are certain things which cannot be known whether I'm leaning believing or agnostic atheist.  To claim knowledge in the unknowable is oft misguided arrogance.

To paraphrase what Roald Dahl says in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, "You should never ever doubt what no one is sure about"

The End (if that's what we must call it).

THE END