The Ostrich and the Elephant

A blog on spirituality, science, philosophy, ETs, and mental health

Tag: Emotions

  • 7 Year Update

    Oh man.

    Oh man.

    Oh man.

    The last 7 years have been tough. That’s an incredibly big understatement. The level of pain and anxiety I’ve experienced has been crippling. I still can’t leave the house without taking a Valium at the moment because of the risk of my mind taking me down a very scary path which could lead to a panic attack.

    There are 3 causes for this.

    1. My health concerns. I’ve gained 50kgs (110 pounds) in the last 7 years because the antipsychotic I’m on causes massive weight gain, and this has led to a few health issues. Sleep apnoea, high blood pressure, and I recently found out I’m in the early stages of pre-diabetes. Since finding that out I’ve radically changed my diet, and lost 3 kilos in the last 2 weeks. It may end up being a blessing in disguise because I have so little strength left I’m not sure anything else would have been enough to change the way I was living. I’ve also been experiencing heart pains on and off for the past year which has been really scary, but I went to a cardiologist and they said my heart’s fine, so that assuaged my concerns a little bit. It’s been tough though. January and February of this year I experienced anxiety over an extended period like I never have before. I was beside myself. Luckily now my anxiety only gets really bad when I leave the house, so I do that as little as possible. Just enough to go for an hour walk a few times a week. My doctors said I could come off my antipsychotic and just continue to take lithium while keeping the antipsychotic on hand in case I notice myself going into psychosis again, but I just have SO much fear about experiencing psychosis again I’m terrified of this. Which leads me into my next point…

    2. Fear of having another psychosis. I haven’t had a psychosis, or even any psychotic symptoms, for 3 years and 3 months. However, my fear of having another psychosis absolutely terrifies me. It’s the scariest thing in the world to know that your mind can turn on you at some point and make you experience something that can be paralyzingly terrifying. Especially after what happened during my first psychosis in 2018. I read a study that said a lot of people in psychosis show raised levels of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in their blood, an endogenous compound known to be one of if not the most powerful psychedelics known to humans. I thought, great, my biggest fear is losing grip on reality, and now I might be having non-consensual psychedelic trips, which yes, can be great, but can also be horrifying. My first psychosis was equal parts incredible and terrifying, but the terrifying parts were so terrifying I want to do everything I can to make sure it never comes back. That’s why I continue to take medication today, despite it still being my choice whether I want to or not. And the third point…

    3. My spiritual path. My spiritual path is NOT EASY. You have to face up to everything: your pain, your anxiety, your fear of death, your fear of going crazy. The last thing the mind wants is enlightenment. It is the end of the ego. So it will say it wants enlightenment, but is actually doing everything it can to sabotage your efforts. But this transcendence of the mind thing is not easy. If we are identified with our minds, as almost all humans are, then this process of letting the mind go can feel very much like death. Or, as I mentioned, a fear of going insane. And there’s absolutely no way to know that things will work out okay on the other side. This is why I think the spiritual path requires quite a lot of faith. Faith doesn’t mean belief in something, but rather something more like trust that even though you don’t – and can’t – know for certain, you let go in the face of that unknown anyway. It’s not totally blind faith; most people usually have a lot of evidence pointing in this direction, but you can’t know what’s going to happen until you see it for yourself. All the spiritual teachers in the world could tell you, “Don’t worry about it, it’s heaven,” but until you see it for yourself you’ll never know for certain.

    So that’s a sort of brief summary of where I’ve been the last 7 years, and most especially the last 2 years, where it ramped up in intensity. The best I can do is just cope, and try to allow this process to unfold as it will without me getting in the way too much.

    I’ve got a couple of more blog posts to write which I’m more excited about – this one was just a catch up seeing as I haven’t written here in a few years.

    Thanks for reading,

    Will.

  • Embodying the Divine Feminine

    In some spiritual circles, there is often a distinction made between what is called “The Divine Masculine” and “The Divine Feminine”. In Hinduism these are called Shiva and Shakti respectively.

    There is a lot written about these two principles, and I’m not here to write an intellectual rundown on these two ideas, not least of all because I’m not an expert in this field. Instead, I want to give a very simple rundown of how I see these two ideas relate to spiritual awakening.

    Shiva, the divine masculine, is often said to represent the absolute reality or consciousness; that which is beyond all form. Shakti, on the other hand, is often said to represent the manifest world, the life-giving energy of the universe, in all her beauty and horror.

    The type of spirituality I have mostly followed since my spiritual journey began 8 years ago is called “nonduality”, from the Hindu word advaita, literally meaning “not-two”.

    The basic premise of this school of thought is that all is ultimately consciousness, there is no true separation, and thus the separate self is ultimately illusory too.

    These teachings are really fantastic for those interested in ultimate truth and enlightenment. However, like all teachings relating to the nature of reality, they have their limitations. As far as I see it, the world is much more nuanced than can be simplistically put down into absolute statements about its nature, and too much emphasis on these teachings can lead to someone rejecting or neglecting the phenomenal world as merely “illusory”.

    As I see it, the world is only illusory in one sense – that is, its nature is very different than how most humans usually think it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s “not real”. If a magician performs an illusion, we don’t afterwards say “nothing happened”, we say “what we thought was happening was not what was actually happening.”

    This is the sense in which I see the world as illusory: It is made out of consciousness, not matter. The world is very much real as consciousness, but very much unreal as matter.

    That’s not to say we should disregard the idea of matter altogether – it is still the way consciousness is appearing so should still be taken seriously. I wouldn’t step in front of a bus just because I think matter is ultimately illusory. Illusory me would still die, and all the spiritual excuses in the world wouldn’t change that.

    So to just dismiss the world as illusory is to neglect the relative reality of the world, and often leaves people in an intellectual framework without embodying their awakening, or otherwise engaging in “spiritual bypassing”, which is using spiritual teachings as a way to avoid dealing with their issues.

    I recently came across a great spiritual teacher called Louise Kay, who I think embodies the balance between “masculine” and “feminine” perfectly. She is in part a nondual teacher, and simultaneously helps people come to terms with and embrace their emotions.

    A lot of nondual teachers reject the usefulness of meditation practise. They say, “you already are what you seek, all you need to do is recognise this.” And this is true at an absolute level, and in my opinion can even be a useful teaching at a relative level, but it often leaves people sitting around “waiting for enlightenment”, with no change in their everyday life.

    It is a paradox as far as I see it. Yes, you already are what you seek, and yes all you need to do is recognise this, but at the same time practises may be useful in helping you see this. I say “may be” because in my estimation there are no rules for awakening. Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie both woke up in the midst of severe depression, without any previous spiritual path.

    The way I approach it now is to keep reminding myself that I already am what I seek, but at the same time, I’m going to do the practises because I feel they help my relative life, and who am I to say that helping my relative life won’t help wake me up? Anybody who says they have a simple answer to that question I think is deceiving themselves.

    I had some sessions with Louise and she actually told me that I’m already awake, just that it hadn’t sunk in fully yet, which was great to hear. I still struggle with a lot of depression and anxiety, largely related to my experiences over the past couple of years, so it’s a bit hard to be excited about while I’m still suffering so much, but it’s nice to think that my path is paying off.

    In conclusion, I think the Buddha’s teaching of “the middle way” is most appropriate here. Don’t get stuck in absolutes, and don’t get stuck in relativity – embrace both and see where it leads you.

    I’m personally excited to see where this path of opening up to my emotions will lead me. I’m only a beginner on this path but I feel it’s perfect for me, as my emotions were what so often made meditation difficult to maintain. A meditation practise that specifically focuses on embracing your emotions in unconditional love feels perfect for me.

    I’ll see how it unfolds from here…

    Much love,

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • We are emotional creatures before we are rational creatures

    As humans, we often like to think of ourselves as very rational, intelligent beings. We like to think that we make decisions based in rationality and observing all the facts at hand.

    I argue this is not the case, and that our emotions are actually the driving force behind most of our decision making, not the other way around.

    You can see this in day-to-day conversations where people have instantaneous negative (or positive) reactions to a given proposition, when they clearly haven’t had the time to really consider the proposition in question.

    The Scottish philosopher David Hume was one of the main proponents of this idea – that we accept or reject propositions based on how it affects us emotionally rather than whether the proposition makes sense.

    This may sound like a dreary view of humanity, but it isn’t. You see, I think our emotions are excellent guides for how to live life. The problem is when these emotions are repressed (because we try to avoid uncomfortable feelings), and are thus turned into distorted and conflicting emotions.

    In my opinion, this is why girls and women are often considered “crazy”. It’s not because emotions are inherently crazy; it’s because we’ve suppressed our emotions in society to such an extent that they are bottled up until they explode in unhealthy and irrational ways.

    But emotions can be rational. Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly felt, “I shouldn’t be here”? That’s not a rational response, it’s an emotional one, and if the person pays attention to their emotions, they’re often giving us very good advice. The “gut feelings” we have about things, so long as our emotions are not suppressed and distorted, are usually very accurate perceivers of what is going on in any situation.

    As far as I see it, emotions should be the basis for how we navigate life. We should leave the mind to doing what it does best: sorting out practical things that need to be done – not ascertaining the ultimate truth of any given situation.

    I think the reason humans live in such a conflicted state is precisely because of this avoidance of emotion. We hate experiencing negative emotions so we’ll do anything to avoid that, even if it means agreeing with propositions that are clearly untrue, just to remain comfortable in our safe small bubble of false emotion.

    I have experienced this in my own life. To take one example, a friend was talking to me about 911 once, and how she thought that the official story was bogus (a sentiment I now agree with). At the time however, I was in such a protected state of emotional avoidance that I forcefully rejected her proposition before she even got a chance to state it.

    Why? Because considering the fact that some shady things had gone down on 911 made me feel very uncomfortable. It made me question my version of reality with something quite horrible, and I wasn’t emotionally equipped to be able to deal with that.

    I can see this now in people I talk to about this. Some people are open, some people react badly and want to shut down the conversation straight away.

    In my case, this was clearly a distorted emotional response to something when it should have been a rational and intellectual discussion of a topic.

    The same goes with any difficult truths you are trying to share. I am now of the belief that extraterrestrials exist, and when talking to people about it, I can see some people are open to it, and some people shut down the conversation straight away without even hearing any of the evidence I am presenting.

    This is a very strange phenomenon. Wouldn’t we all want to listen to all perspectives and evidence in order to ascertain truth? Why shut down a debate before it has even begun?

    The reason, again, I think is simple. Our days are mostly spent trying to experience good emotions and avoid bad ones. This is what Henry David Thoreau was pointing to when he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

    So, what to do with all this knowledge then?

    I think the answer is clear: We need to get more in touch with our emotions. Understand them better. Be conscious of what is happening inside us so we can make sane decisions on any given topic, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction of accept or reject based purely on not wanting to feel uncomfortable.

    The best way to do this I believe is through meditation. While meditation can be a very difficult thing to maintain – after all, we are facing up to uncomfortable emotions inside us – it is only when we are willing to do that, when we are truly willing to allow anger, fear, sadness be present in us and move with those emotions rather than running away from them, can we truly become rational creatures. Only then can we live up to our name of Homo sapiens – by definition, discerning, wise, and sensible.

    In love and light,

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • Writing Turned Me Into An Alcoholic Within a Month

    Well, I shouldn’t say that. Life turned me into a potential alcoholic, writing just gave me the final push. I had never been even slightly tempted by alcohol as a substance to abuse until I started to write.

    Why? Well, I have a lot of anxiety. It’s a long story that goes way back, and I’ve tried to manage it in various ways. An opioid addiction, antidepressants, withdrawing from life completely, and – that’s about the end of the list.

    But then I came upon the idea that I was meant to be a writer, of sorts. I felt like I had a lot of things to say, and I felt like they were important. I still feel that way. The problem was: I could barely sit still long enough to type a title, let alone an article.

    I started living with my dad for reasons that relate to my first blog post on here: “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, and he was a drinker. Not a come home and yell at everyone in the house type of drinker, but a drinker nonetheless. I was never very attracted to it. It didn’t seem to be my drug of choice. I had the occasional beer with him, but that was about it.

    Then I started writing, and found it only compounded my agitation and inability to sit still. So I’d have a beer to calm the nerves. Then two. Then, over the period of a day, eight. One month as a “writer” and I’m already a cliché. Hooray.

    The irony was, I was actually kind of prolific during this period. And I produced some fairly okay writing. It really did seem to help the writing process for me in a way that my other coping mechanisms – coffee, anti-anxiety pills etc – didn’t.

    In “The Way of the Superior Man” (which is a great book, and everyone should read it, male or female), David Deida refers to alcohol as a feminine substance. He didn’t delve into why this was, but I imagine it’s something to do with getting in touch with your emotions – and with my experience now I wonder whether that’s true. Maybe it dulled my emotions just enough so they were manageable enough to engage with.

    I don’t think I’m going to keep up this alcohol-fuelled writing thing for long though. I don’t see it being a viable long-term method for personal success. I’m not at a point where I feel I can meditate every day, but I’m doing other work with a couple of people which I think will help a lot with my state of being. I’ve got some akashic (I still don’t really know what that means) trance/hypnosis sessions lined up with a great guy at “Alchemical Child”, and I fortuitously met a woman in a health food/spiritual store that I had a great connection with, so I’m looking forward to delving into my subconscious a bit more with these people. I think that will really help. I’m also booked in for a 10 day silent meditation retreat up here in Queensland which I’m in two minds about attending, but I’ll feel into it closer to the date to see if I’m ready for another one of those (they are intense).

    I’m still on “leave” from my main spiritual teacher: she has cut me off completely as a way to force me to stand on my own two feet and not use her guidance as a crutch, which has been… frustrating at times, but I understand why she’s doing it.

    Fingers crossed I can get through this period and come out the other side a more functional human being.

    But still, as always,

    In love and light,

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, or follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • The Importance of High Vibrational Music

    “Where words fail, music speaks.”
    ~ Hans Christian Andersen

    Growing up through my twenties I mostly listened to one band over and over again. That band was headed by a guy called Conor Oberst; the band name was Bright Eyes.

    A lot of people considered this “emo” music because he was indeed very emotive, but he was different from the emo genre in a big way: He was uplifting. There was hope in his music. Not to mention he’d been called this generation’s Bob Dylan because of how great a songwriter he is.

    Here’s one example out of pretty much any song I could choose:

    “The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qu’ran is mute
    If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth
    Still they’re pouring over Sanskrit under Ivy Ieague moons
    While shadows lengthen in the sun”

    Beautiful right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

    Or maybe this one:

    “ I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
    With a post-modern author who didn’t exist
    In this fictitious world all reality twists
    I was a hopeless romantic, now I’m just turning tricks”

    Like, what the fuck. How good is this guy? And those are just the first two that popped into my head out of the thousands I could have chosen.

    There used to be a facebook group called “Conor Oberst has more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body.” There was also one called “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend”. I joined both. Actually, I did more than that — I wore a shirt with “Conor Oberst is my boyfriend” on it to a festival once. It got mixed reviews.

    And sure, his voice was often quivering, he often sung like he was scared to sing, but that’s part of what touched me so deeply about him; his vulnerability and his rawness. And even though a lot of other people found him depressing, I didn’t. I saw past the quivering fragility and saw the fervent spirit inside him. The same goes for Leonard Cohen. Yeah, it’s sometimes sad music, but it’s the beautiful kind of sad. Not just sad for sad’s sake, but sad for honesty’s sake.

    I heard about a study on death metal music recently. I’ve never been a fan of death metal at all; I couldn’t understand how people could enjoy listening to that type of music, but apparently they do. All I hear is rage and darkness, and I don’t want to feel that. But the fascinating thing about this study was that people who reported liking death metal said they didn’t feel anger or darkness when listening to it — they felt peace and joy.

    Peace and joy while listening to someone scream like the devil? Apparently so.

    And, contrary to what a lot of people claim, listening to death metal doesn’t make you more prone to violence.

    Here’s a link to the audio discussion on this: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/the-curious-joy-of-death-metal-music/10514754

    I guess this is what we love about music. It evokes emotions in us that are otherwise unexpressed. And music is a very healthy way to do that. So I’m not against death metal or its fans, because I now understand where it’s coming from — it’s coming from a place of truth for them.

    But it’s easy to get trapped. It’s easy to just have one type of music you listen to that you listen to all the time even when it’s not really what you’re feeling inside. I’m sure death metal fans don’t want to hear the devil’s voice every minute of the day, just like I don’t want to hear Conor Oberst’s voice every minute of the day. Sometimes I actually much prefer silence to music. It changes all the time. And so should our music — so it accurately reflects what we’re feeling in that moment, and so we don’t get stuck in a set pattern of feeling because we just always happen to have the same playlist on repeat.

    This is why I have now broadly expanded the types of music I listen to. I’m still not a fan of death metal, but I now appreciate where it’s coming from. And my musical tastes over the years have now expanded tremendously. It used to be just sad, beautiful songwriters. Now it’s everything from Rudimental, to Kali Uchis, even to some chill EDM. (Okay, I guess my taste hasn’t changed THAT much. But it’s still constantly expanding).

    My point with this article is that, because music has such a powerful influence on our emotional states, I think we should try and be more conscious of those emotional states when we’re listening to music (or when we’re in silence), so that we’re not reinforcing an emotion we don’t want, but we’re also not avoiding an emotion that is there and needs to be expressed, lest it comes out in unhealthy ways.

    As John Cusack’s character said in the movie “High Fidelity” (yes yes I know it was a book first blah blah I’ve even read it so bite me) — “Did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or was I depressed because I listened to pop music?”

    I think the answer is a little bit of both, John. My advice is: Listen to what speaks to your soul, whatever that is, at any point, but don’t get stuck there because you just always put on the same type of music.

    Which brings me to the main topic of the article: high vibrational music. I’m now on the look-out for music that’s positive and inspiring that matches where I am at in my life right now. There are a few I’ve found: The self-titled Radnor and Lee album which is so good I made a whole post on to itself (link here:
    https://theostrichandtheelephant.com/the-best-spiritual-album-i-have-ever-heard/ ), Rudimental, and a few tracks here and there that I really resonate with. An album called Known Odyssey I’ve also liked, which is a bit more new-agey but I’m beginning to appreciate that type of music more too, and it has some beautiful piano compositions. I’m still only on the beginning of the journey in finding high vibrational music though, so if you have any suggestions please leave them in the comments and I will check them out. Thanks!

    But I think it’s also important to remember, with all this talk of sound and music… as someone has probably said once, silence itself is the most powerful sound you’ll never hear.
    Or, as in The Simpsons when Lisa is at a jazz bar and the patron next to her says: Ugh, sounds like she’s hitting a baby with a cat.
    And Lisa says: You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing.
    The patron: Pfft, I could do that at home.

    Thanks for reading,

    In love and light!

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • The best spiritual album I have ever heard

    This story was originally going to be titled “The importance of listening to high vibrational music”, but I felt that this is such a good album it deserved a post all of its own. The album is the self-titled album “Radnor & Lee” from Australian musician Ben Lee and American actor Ted Mosb… I mean Josh Radnor… the lead character from How I Met Your Mother.

    How these two people (one of whom has never played an instrument) ended up coming up with the most inspiring, soul-touching album I’ve ever heard I will never know, but somehow they did it.

    As some of you may know from one of my previous blogs “My disastrous spiritual awakening”, I ended up in a mental hospital for 3 months.

    These places are not fun. Not only are you in a mental hospital, you also have literally nothing to do all day but ruminate on how you ended up there and pace up and down the corridors.

    The one thing we were allowed (no mobile phones, no internet, no coffee) was a small mp3 player, which was the one saving grace in this oppressive environment.

    During my three months there I almost did nothing but pace up and down the corridor listening to this album, which gave me some reprieve from the soul-crushing monotony of life in a mental hospital.

    Also, as some of you may be aware, I had just had a partial spiritual awakening (my spiritual teacher called it a kundalini awakening), so I had enormous amounts of energy flowing through my body and no way to let it out in that environment. This led to me, for 3 months almost non-stop pacing up and down the hallway either in silence or listening to my mp3 player. I joked with the staff that I think I had done about as much walking as the girls from Rabbit Proof Fence.

    For those who don’t know that reference, it is a beautiful but sad story about a young aboriginal girl, her sister, and her cousin, who were taken (part of the “half-caste”, “stolen generation” as it’s known in Australia) from their families to be integrated with “civilized” Western life and have the aboriginal blood bred out of them. These three girls didn’t like that situation, so they decided to make a 2,400 km (1,500 mile) journey along a rabbit proof fence to be reunited with their families. It took them nine weeks of walking to return home, despite being tracked by a professional aboriginal tracker, the girls managed to cover their tracks effectively and stayed in hiding with their families once they made the journey back.

    I’m quite sure, in my 3 month stay in hospital, that I did about as much walking as those three girls, while listening to mainly just one album on my mp3 player — Radnor and Lee’s self-titled album. And also a little bit of Kali Uchis’ Por Vida, which is also a *great* album. I feel I learnt a lot about women listening to that album.

    But back to the Radnor and Lee album, aside from some Bright Eyes music, I haven’t found any music that has touched me so deeply or inspired me so much.

    A couple of songs you might like to listen to are:

    “Be Like the Being” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rPsmoWn7ZQ
    “Still Though We Should Dance “— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEN8Tn1MmCQ
    And “Falling Upward” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpLhFFNBqSg

    And here are a few Kali Uchis songs thrown in for good measure:
    “Sycamore Tree” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAaE8CmOf9k
    “Lottery” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrtIJK1SfcY
    “Ridin’ Round” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUANL9WoB90

    So I just wanted to say a public thank you to Ben Lee and Josh Radnor (and Kali Uchis) for helping me get through one of the most difficult times in my life. You three people made is *slightly* more bearable in that horrible place.

    So, thank you, and I hope your albums spread far and wide so other people can experience the same thing I did with it.

    In love and light,

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

Pin It on Pinterest