Consolation Prize # 2 - Dead People

As much flack as I got for being a comic book fan and having played RPGs over the years, nothing I've done has caused as much controversy as my metaphysical activities. For those of you who aren't so sure what metaphysical activities means, it means psychic work and exploration of the unseen world.

By the time I was an undergrad senior at university I was so disillusioned about everything from politics to my own chronic pain, I had a spiritual awakening. Having waged a personal battle with the creator who gave me a body with which I couldn't do those things I wanted to do, I encountered a strange kind of teacher. For lack of a better term and to avoid talking about people involved who might not want to be mentioned, I will call this teacher my angel...my first encounter with many...and I'll call him Robert.

I met Robert in the summer of 1990. I began to work with him as he taught me all sorts of incredible esoteric concepts. At first I wasn't comfortable with Robert's teachings, but, eventually, I began to see physical proof of what he was teaching me. Over a period of several months I learned that my life and my disability had been no accident. There was purpose in my suffering. I was an instrument, a device for transmission, through which ideas and "voices" could speak. Whether it was through my writing or through trance channeling of the dead or disembodied spirits, I was able to help those who like myself suffered with pain, both physical and emotional.

Between the years 1990 and 2002, I was an active member of the metaphysical communities in Dallas and Los Angeles. Because I had lived under scrutiny and outside "normal" society, I discovered that the reaction to my perceived unorthodox activities was not as disturbing to me as it might otherwise have been. Of course, I lost almost all the friends I had to that point but I meet a whole new class of people who were themselves just as "odd" as I was. Most of them weren't physically disabled but they had found that they did not quite fit into the world in which they lived.

As my esoteric studies continued and practices improved, I began to understand that my mental and emotional detachment from my body made me capable of entering trance-like states extremely quickly and very effectively. My faulty body was actually a more efficient tool for channeling and meditation because I was less "grounded" to the physical world. Meditation and the holistic methods I practiced also helped me to control the pain I was experiencing.

However, by the mid-1990s, I began to see too much politics and in-fighting occurring inside the metaphysical community. The so-called "New Age" movement (a term which I never liked to begin with) had become as politically charged and exclusionary and any forward-thinking movement about which I had studied or of which I had been a part. When I moved to L.A. in 1997 I thought about taking as active and public a role as I had in the Dallas metaphysical community. However, before becoming a part of it, I observed it and determined that it, too, was too exclusionary and not forward-thinking. Since 2002 I have kept my practices to myself.

I have no doubt that what I have learned studying the metaphysics has taught me better how to manage my pain and my mental anxiety over being disabled. Again, my track of exploration was intense and, at times, excessive. So, I'm not sure I would encourage most people to explore alternative methods and practices in the way I did. However, there are great benefits that can be derived from developing the mind's power over the body. It can, at the very least, give a disabled person better control over a body which is not entirely under their own control.

I'm sure everyone who reads this entry will have a different reaction to my confession of being a believer in alternative methods, meditation, psychic powers and "the other-side." However, in practical terms, I was able to work for 10 years, coming to terms with my own body without putting any undo stress to worsen my physical disabilities.

But no matter how hard I tried to find answers from the other-side or improved my practices, I continued to experience chronic pain, worse than ever, and my body continued to break down...