I am beginning to feel that I am doing better.

Something happened, I think a light came on. I realized that what has happened is that I have become afraid of my feelings. This is what has happened this year, I have lost my center. I became afraid, and then afraid of feeling afraid. Thinking that my fear wasn’t normal, that it wasn’t reasonable, which amplified the distress of it. I have realized that this is not illness, it is growth. The fear of fear was the result of listening to the world and not to my own spirit. That is the cause of the distress. I finally heard you. My voices and hallucinations are nothing more than another experience of our existence. But the meaning of them if it is drawn from fear, and from comparisons with other’s ideas of what our experience ought to be, will result in the sense of losing oneself. This is because one begins to see oneself as abnormal in the world's view. And it will result in fearful images, nightmares and voices. I see now that this “falling away from center” has indeed enriched me as I am now able to see it without fearing it. Voices and visions like all experience, can enrich or diminish us. There is nothing special about them except that they are another way of experiencing oneself in relationship to the world. For me sometimes they help me see things more clearly. It all depends on what meaning they have for us, and indeed, that meaning is our own creation if it comes from our spirit, from our center. The experience is free to be as it is, and because I have seen this it will not bring distress, only opportunity for growth. If there is no distress, there is no illness. I have persisted in tolerating this distress for over a year, and I will continue to persist in this growth, but the distress has a new face. And I have a new vision.

This awareness is only a beginning, what counts is what I will do to sustain this growth. The recognition is the beginning.

-Ariel

Whatever you can do,
Or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic, in it.
-Goethe