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In the movie "The Sixth Sense" one young man is driven over the brink
of insanity and another boy is developing severe psychological problems because
they can see the spirits of the dead. In both cases, an attempt to reach out
to the caregivers and authority figures in their lives and explain what they
are experiencing is met with incredulity, judgment and scorn. They are both
labeled "troubled youths". Both are treated as if their sensitivities
and experiences are nothing more than the signs of a diseased mind. There is
no one they can go to for an explanation of their talents, no one who can teach
them how to accept and control these things. One young man kills himself. The
other very nearly travels down the same road.
This movie had a great impact on me because it eloquently tells the plight
of all Awakened today. As people are Awakening at an increasingly younger age
and in increasing numbers, there is no support structure for them. They cannot
discuss their experiences in the classroom, as they will invariably be met with
disbelief and with scorn. In the best of cases, their teachers will simply accuse
them of having a very vivid fantasy life. In the worse of cases, they will be
seen as mentally unstable and referred to a psychiatrist. Given the state of
American psychiatry today, they will be put through a battery of tests, labeled,
and put on a cocktail of drugs that will prevent them from any kind of normal
functionality.
Awakened young people who have no context for their talents can just as easily
label themselves. Given the information available to them in today's world,
what really is left to them? If they cannot accept or control their sensitivities,
they will be miserable in school, at the work place, and feasibly in any public
place with a large number of people in it.
What do you do when you are psychic in a world that does not accept the reality
of psychic abilities? When you are walking down the hallway in school and you
are assaulted by the emotions of a hundred other teenagers around you, how do
you maintain your sense of self? If you have never been trained in shielding
-- if you have never even been told that those emotions you are feeling so thunderously
within yourself might not even be *yours*, what can you do?
A sensitive person in such a situation may seem like they are having the most
radical mood swings -- and yet all they are doing is picking up the emotional
energies of the girl down the hall who is stressing over her math exam, and
the boy at the locker next to them who is elated over his acceptance onto the
football team, and the teacher who's silently screaming inside because her marriage
is going down the tubes. Here this student could feasibly experience very strong
sensations of anxiety, elation, and sorrow, all one right after the other, with
no good explanation from anything going on in their own life. They can't control
them. They can't block them out. They can't explain them, and they don't even
understand why they're experiencing them. No wonder they get confused!
If they try to talk about these barrage of feelings with a school counselor,
what is going to happen? The first thing the psychologist will do is try to
determine if the person is going through troubles at home. When environmental
causes have been rules out, then the psychologist must assume the problem is
with the student herself and is probably an imbalance of some sort. Once again,
this leads to labeling and to medication and all the stigma and low sense of
self that go along with these things.
Even if the student never consults anyone at all, she still has to deal with
these feelings, with no explanation of where they are coming from and no possible
solution in sight for making them stop.
A young person like this may well learn to avoid crowds, and to outsiders it
will look as if she is agoraphobic or prone to panic attacks. The "symptoms"
she will exhibit will essentially be the same. If she's in a large crowd of
people, she will feel overwhelmed. Her pulse may start to race. She may feel
a clutching in her chest that has nothing to do with her heart, but is actually
a sensation in her energy body as it is being overwhelmed by all those peoples'
energies. That sounds just like a panic attack, and it would be diagnosed and
treated as such by any psychiatrist in America.
And say that years go by, and all this person really wants is for the sensations
that have brought her such grief to come to an end. She wants a "normal"
life -- one that is free of such sensations. She compares herself jealously
to other "normal" people who don't have such sensations, who can lead
a "normal" life, can go out in crowds without consequence, can shut
all of that terrible background noise out without even having to think about
it. Ignorance appears blissful to those painfully aware.
Such a person could well start to accept the fact that there *is* something
very wrong with her, that her sensations are really just the result of a disease
of her mind. That is what the doctors have repeatedly told her, and that is
the only explanation available to her that seems to work. And of course the
drugs that the doctors prescribe seem to help the problem, because most of them
inhibit any kind of clear thinking. They dampen the higher brain functions and
reduce people to little more than mental robots.
But such robots can get through their days without having panic attacks. They
are good little productive citizens. They can hold a job. They can pay the bills
and help the economy by buying their highly priced pills. And by the current
standards, they are "normal." This elusive state of "normal"
is more desirable than any of those "abnormal" sensitivities that
the psychologists really couldn't explain, even if being "normal"
now means that they don't really get any kind of enjoyment out of their lives
anymore, since the side effects of such drugs often include a lowered sex drive,
an inability to cry, and a flat-line of emotions that cancels out the highs
of elation as well as the lows of depression -- not to mention any kind of artistic
creativity that often goes hand-in-hand with that "bipolar" cycle.
And thus you have the story of hundreds of people in the world today, wrecked
and ruined and convinced that the fault somehow lies with them because they
could not understand what they were feeling and there was no one around to explain.
Of course, accepting and understanding your talents is no piece of cake either.
First of all, you've got to have a strong enough sense of self to overcome all
those ideas society will impose on you that what you are experiencing is false,
that your every experience of something extraordinary is simply the product
of some mental imbalance or another. You will have to accept the fact that there
will be very few people you can talk to about these things, and that even if
you try to hide the things you can do, most other people will sense it and treat
you differently.
Worse than that, you will have to come to accept that even your own family
might not be able to accept this in you, and they will either be pushing continuously
for you to seek medical help for something they see as a disease or they will
become righteous on you and declare your talents the work of the devil.
Either way, you may face total rejection from your blood relatives. They may
be driven to abuse you emotionally, verbally, and physically over it, mainly
because they can't understand this capacity in you, and their lack of understanding
makes them afraid. They may kick you out of the house. They may disown you.
They may heap judgments of all sorts upon your head to try and explain your
"strange' behavior away to themselves, such as accusing you of drinking,
doing drugs, or engaging in some other form of stigmatized behavior that is
still easier for them to accept than the truth.
And if you don't crack under the pressure put on you by your family, if you
don't just give in right then and take the easy route of therapy and drugs and
admitting that it was "all in your head", then you'll still have to
deal with whispers in the workplace. Gossip among your friends. People who will
be your best and closest friends in all the world -- right up until they learn
about this in you -- and then they'll suddenly treat you like some monster or
some filthy piece of dirt they regret having ever come close to.
And it's not like in accepting it you will open yourself up to all of the answers,
because nobody knows all of the answers. There will be books, but half of them
are useless. Even many of the useful ones you will have to pick through in order
to find the little gems of truth hidden among all the confusing nonsense. If
you find others who share your sensitivities and experiences, you will have
to discriminate carefully in who you trust and listen to, because many of them
will be power-hungry. Many of them will seek to claim more knowledge and mastery
than they have a right to. They will mislead you and abuse you and in many cases
leave you more confused for their instruction than when you started out in the
first place.
It is not an easy path. Sometimes it will seem like Awakening is just a blight
on your existence -- like a bright and shiny toy full of all kinds of promise
that only turns out to be sharp as a razor on every edge. You will go through
periods of frustration and confusion. You will go through periods where you
regret ever taking the first step to accepting who you are and what you can
do. And you will go through periods where you really doubt yourself, where the
easy route of declaring yourself insane and going on meds looks preferable to
living your life on the fringes of what is accepted, a pariah to all but a few.
Yet if you have a dedication to the truth, you will never be able to deny what
you believe in your heart to be true. You will never be able to willingly shut
your eyes and go back to being blind in a world populated by the blind. You
will just not be able to stomach it. Because you will have experiences everyday
that will remind you of how much else is out there, and how much wonder the
blind people are missing because they lack your sense of sight. And as hard
as it will be, it will also be beautiful, and amazingly fulfilling. And in moments
of reflection, you will know that it is all worth the price you have paid.
~ Michelle
This article is presented as part of an ongoing effort to present other views outside of, as well as within, the online vampire community. Those of us who consider ourselves vampiric don't always look at things from the same viewpoint due to our life experiences. As such, the views and opinions contained in this article are entirely those of the author(s), and may not necessarily be shared by SphynxCatVP. The webmaster is not under obligation to update or otherwise keep current the contents of this article. Most importantly, only you can decide for yourself whether this article or any of the author(s) other views are useful or applicable to you - you are responsible for using your own reasoning and judgement, so judge wisely.
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