Psychiatry — my personal experience
— gaining fundamental insights — Part 1

Hospitalization 1 — Out of the hell-fire, into the…

My mind-boggling lead-up to a psychiatric hospitalization

The full background is given in The 'forces of darkness' ('astral beings') — My own tough experiences. Basically, when I started channelling in October 2003 I innocently dropped myself right in the most delectably deep, brown and festering SHIT, because:

• I didn't know (as indeed few people yet know) that channelling ALWAYS works through an extremely troublesome influence that I came to call the 'dark force' but more recently chose to call the garbage instead, for the latter is a much better and more useful term for it, and
• I also didn't know that the garbage was already targeting me right from the beginning of my life, to manoeuvre me eventually into a situation in which I'd weakened my subtle or non-physical aspects sufficiently for it to be able to take me over and make me one of its puppets or to destroy me. — Well, that appears to have been the intent or plan anyway — if you can really talk of a quasi-autonomous complex of rogue programming in thought energy (a bit akin to a computer virus) having an intent or plan…

So, the big troubles for me that started as the shit hit the fan when I started channelling in October 2003 onwards marked the onset of that concerted and apparently long-set-up 'campaign' by the garbage. In those final months of 2003 the emphasis was on giving me lots of convoluted 'story' that was supposed to be about myself and my purported broader context, including alleged (but actually fictitious) past lives of mine and a purported major destiny of mine for the whole human race*, which was supposedly to come to fruition in a matter of a very few years.

All that 'story' included much serious and reckless trickery, which was causing me much confusion and getting to cause problems through disruption of my life and also causing friends and acquaintances to start to back off and see me as 'getting a bit loopy'.

In the beginning of 2004 the attacks started with a vengeance, and that was a desperately trying time for me — especially as I was still living on my own, with no reasonably compatible friends to provide any companionship and thus enable me to get my awareness more balanced and grounded. The attacking and tormenting 'entities', which I had no idea at that time were actually just illusory phenomena caused by the garbage, were pretty consistently my only 'company' in my abode.

Allegedly it was 'ascended masters' and even supposed 'Divine Consciousness' itself (whatever that might be!) attacking me, purportedly as testing and training for my alleged future very major and prominent role in the world at large, and then later on it was supposed 'astral beings'. However, these attacks ceased after a particularly severe attack crisis event during the spring of 2004, and I then innocently assumed that I was out of serious trouble.

I did still then get a fair amount of sometimes quite reckless trickery in my channelling, plus a lot of 'story' about myself and alleged past lives of mine, though at that time I didn't have a rational basis upon which I could discount that apart from where the story got changed, as actually quite often happened. This was always put down to interference by 'astral beings' in what were supposedly basically genuine and reliable communications from allegedly real 'higher' (and implicitly 100% reliable, positive and beneficial) non-physical beings.

It was towards the weekend of 9–10 October that year (2004) that I was getting increasing intrusiveness from my non-physical 'guidance', with very aggressive visual 'no' flashes* to various of my thoughts, and more purposeful and convoluted 'story' was being put to me, with something that seemed at the time to be quite weird and 'spooky' going on during a hiking outing of mine on 8th October.

My 'guidance' (really the garbage, though I didn't realize that at the time) was getting more and more pushy over the next few days, dragging me through some very harsh experiences that were claimed to be essential self-healing practices to help me clear out particular past life traumas of mine, and it was insisting that I had to go through a whole lot of testing and training too.

It was thus that it came about that I was being subjected to a series of severe ordeals for a week, particularly over the five days / nights leading up to Sunday 17th October 2004. By the latter day I'd had five consecutive days and nights with no sleep at all and it was amazing that I was keeping going at all — especially when one knows what gruelling ordeals I'd had to endure throughout each of those nights.

I was in great confusion during that time as to the true nature of my 'guidance'. It's clear to me in retrospect what the problem was. A particular part of my awareness had become seriously weakly grounded and this had resulted in my having become breathtakingly gullible towards what the non-physical 'guidance' was telling me, and so I was unwittingly letting the garbage kid me that I was still getting some sort of 'higher' guidance even when I was being directed to muck around with little bits of Satanism (though at that time it wasn't always being called that), because allegedly I had to connect with purported (actually fictitious) 'dark' practices in certain previous lifetimes of mine (again fictitious) in order to fully heal myself.

Thus the garbage was able, albeit with certain very significant constraints, to walk all over me. So, yes, I even got taken through the odd supposedly Satanistic practices, including a horribly exhausting long evening of a very gruelling Satanistic solo sexual practice. Amazing that there are people who (on the surface) actually choose to do such things to themselves! But then again, that 'choice' would simply reflect the extent to which they're being manipulated or indeed controlled by the garbage.

On the particular Sunday, 17th October 2004, it appeared to me that I had a lethal curse* working on me. It had come to my notice the previous day and had given me a rough night, still yet again with no sleep. It was supposedly put upon me by 'astral beings' and was going to cause my abdominal organs to liquefy, resulting in my death, and then, allegedly, I'd fall into a succession of the hells that pretty well all the traditions had come up with — though actually the delectable collection of hells dreamed up in the teachings of Buddhism were the prime focus, and they were 1,000,001% too many as far as I was concerned!

Just to rub my nose in this juicy prospect, my 'guidance' was taunting me more and more frequently with a strongly disturbing smell, which was allegedly that of roasting human flesh*…

I couldn't dissolve this 'curse' and was feeling absolutely ghastly with it in my solar plexus region (a deep, menacing ache centred there with a hellish quality about it whose awfulness is impossible to describe). It really seemed that there was nothing I could do about this, because there appeared to be nobody who had a proper understanding of whatever was going on, and thus nobody who could genuinely assist me — so actually I was pretty well resigned to my being very soon indeed to die*.

As a clutch at a straw, I phoned a particular healer, Christopher Strong (henceforth abbreviated to CS), who had assisted over the phone to enable me to come out of a serious 'astral beings' (i.e., garbage) attack crisis in April of that year, and he made a few suggestions for getting my awareness out of the 'nasty' that was going on for me — in particular, for me to take a gentle walk somewhere very open where there was grass and trees, and keep my gaze level-to-rather-upwards rather than tending to downwards as it would so often be, and then to phone him again for him to see what else needed doing.

Even now I recognise that advice of his as actually having been very good, as I did then (albeit a little dubiously at that time, because my situation seemed so dire), and I followed that advice, shakily having a little walk down by the River Exe and wondering how I'd keep myself from keeling over in my state of acute sleep deprivation — but it wasn't obviously dislodging this curse or whatever it was.

As I started returning towards my flat, I have to admit, having no idea what else to do, I clutched at another straw and went into the little church by The House That Moved and asked the very nice and well-intentioned two women in there, who were apparently members of the team running that church, to pray for me because it looked as though I was being possessed by demons and at the moment wasn't succeeding in clearing them out, and it looked as though I was now close to being killed by them. (I deliberately used language that would mean something to them and encourage them to try to be genuinely supportive in some way).

I take my hat off to them, that they didn't lay a Jesus or God trip on me, and, most concerned, they said that indeed they'd pray for me. I suspect that they may have been encouraged that way because they'd sensed from me that in some way I really was in command of my situation and knew what I needed at that time. (And my retrospective inner inquiry about that in 2019 supports that hypothesis.) Anyway, just that little bit of human contact had a certain 'comfort value'*.

Understandably, when I got back to CS on the phone and reported that I'd been into that church and asked the two women there to pray for me, he sighed and said (quite correctly, as I understood even then) that by doing that I'd actually made things a bit more difficult for myself — though he then reassured me that that was not the end of the world, and he spent a minute or two doing what I assumed would be some sort of remote healing action, though, in far retrospect I expect he was just clairvoyantly 'looking' at me in a bit more detail (for whatever good that would do anyone).

He just asked me to wait while I do a thing or two…, and then gave some further advice such as avoiding dairy products in my diet, and, more immediately, getting myself a light lunch of scrambled eggs on toast — something I hadn't had since I'd left my parents' home in 1967! Just why it had to be scrambled eggs on toast, I still have no idea!

Incidentally, the recommendation about avoiding dairy products was a nice try, which CS had also recommended in my original crisis consultation with him in April 2004 — but my retrospective inner inquiry supported by Helpfulness Testing indicates that actually dairy products were not enough of a problem for me for them to have had a significant bearing on the particular issue, though my simply paying attention to a diet change would have helped a bit in improving the grounding of my awareness and indeed my pressingly needed self-empowerment, and thus temporarily somewhat reducing my vulnerability to garbage attacks.

Before that, and indeed sometime about mid-morning, as another bit of final straw-clutching, I'd mentioned my pressing problem to my immediate neighbour and had suggested that if she knew anyone who was experienced with assisting people with demonic possessions*, to put them in touch with me pronto, because it looked as though I'd be dead within 24 hours**. I wasn't in the slightest expecting my telling her that to achieve anything, but it seemed only fair to her to let her know in a nutshell what my situation was, so at least she'd be braced for my imminent death rather than, maybe, have the shock of just finding a Philip-shaped lump of carrion.

However, evidently and most understandably my neighbour must have got a bit worried, and her inquiries had set something in motion*. While I was shakily tottering around in my little kitchen, doing my best to prepare that scrambled egg and toast, wondering how much longer I'd be able to keep going at all, two very nice policemen called at my door, wanting to come in and have a little talk with me because neighbours have been getting worried about you.

The policemen urged me to have a ride with them to the main hospital, where I could get some support and maybe treatment as necessary. I said, no, this wasn't a medical issue, but the policemen, while being extremely friendly and seeming genuinely interested in me and doing what they could to help, hadn't come here to take 'no' for an answer, and, being a bit fuzzy round the edges by then and not relishing the oppressive solitude of my flat for my place of dying, I acquiesced. At least this would be something different — an adventure of sorts! Even at this point my intrinsic playfulness of spirit was beginning to 'get a word in edgeways' and see opportunities for gaining new and unexpected learning experiences.

In any case, perhaps at the hospital at least I could have a dying space that had people around and wasn't so cheerless and menacing as my own little single flat would have been for that purpose. I'd made it as clear as possible to all concerned that I didn't want resuscitation, drugs or life support measures, for if I was really meant to die then, there was no point in delaying it, even if for some arcane reason I really had to go through all those hells as part of some sort of training!

And so it came about that I found myself waiting for some four hours in the waiting space at Accident & Emergency at the RD&E Hospital (Wonford), screened off from the waiting hordes, feeling inexorably worse and worse. This was a tremendous practice in patience — though it was a sort of muted practice, because I didn't really know what there was for me to wait for, except for my very shortly dying.

Well, at least it was a tremendous practice in remaining peaceful in the face of whatever all this really was, and this apparent immediate prospect of my dying and then allegedly falling into all those delectable hells — and all the time being taunted increasingly frequently with whiffs of that supposed 'roasting human flesh' smell to remind me of that prospect!

Eventually two men came to see me and told me they were now going to transport me to the neighbouring Wonford House, effectively the psychiatric unit of the main hospital. NO! Not there!, I urgently exclaimed at once — a bit shocked, actually, because it hadn't crossed my mind that what was happening to me would get interpreted as a psychiatric issue — 'mental illness', of all things!

Don't worry, they said. It's just that you'll get a more peaceful bed, and it won't be treated as a physical problem there. Well, as I say, I was quite fuzzy round the edges — more so by then! — and it seemed that I'd not be alive much longer whatever happened, so again I acquiesced as I didn't know anything better to do anyway. The whiffs of 'roasting human flesh' didn't go away, but indeed intensified, as though to gleefully say Yes, we've got you now…!*.

Enter my prison — admission to the psychiatric ward

My heart sank as I was escorted into Wonford House — curiously, in a wheelchair although I could walk perfectly well (okay, at that point probably in a rather wobbly manner!).

It was an extensive, forbidding-looking old building with high ceilings and seeming to have masses of stagnant, 'dark' energy and, I thought, some problematical 'entities' (supposed spirit presences), all no doubt left there from problems brought in with previous psychiatric patients. I could feel these apparent 'energies' keying in with my desperately dark and nightmarish feelings from the 'curse' (i.e., really the garbage attack), clutching at me and pulling me down further. What a nightmarish place for me to have to die in!

As I was taken through, I noticed one curious feature in the main stairwell: a very coarse net of what looked like grey rope, suspended across the vertical space between the floors. It looked for all the world like a grotesque giant spider's web in some haunted mansion taken from a B-grade horror movie. It wasn't till later that I realized that it must have been put there NOT to make the place look still more spooky but to prevent any patients from succeeding in committing suicide by putting themselves over the rail to free-fall down the stairwell. Not the greatest of morale boosters!

Oh, oh, oh! — August 2024 perspective on the above three paragraphs and a bit of the following one too!

Every time I looked at that photo of Wonford House just a little above, I'd kept feeling somehow drawn to and fascinated by some impression about the building in general but especially that main entrance and the bit immediately inside, as far as one could see it. I finally (just now) did a little inner inquiry to see if that strange impression was something my deeper aspects were giving me to nudge me into finding out something significant about that first first entry of mine into Wonford House, which would be useful to know about.

Yes, it turns out that there was — in particular, in order to remark on it here!

All those creepy impressions I was getting, and which felt so overpowering (on one level) were impressions primarily NOT of mine at all, but of those sort-of well-intentioned robo-humans who escorted me to and into Wonford house! According to my deepest aspects those individuals (possibly just one of them) were always spooked by that building, and particularly going into that rather forbidding entrance, and with a 'patient' who was (in their / his view) 'a bit mental'. So, at least one of the two was somewhat phobic of 'mental illness' and also anything to do with the occult, and who really had to steel himself mentally every time he had to escort one of those scary 'mental cases' to that 'spookhouse'.

Of course, sweet little garbage had picked that up and was merrily relaying it all to lucky little me — except that I was experiencing that only at a pretty peripheral level, because basically I was fascinated and intrigued rather than worrying or frightened. As I say, this was all new experience, so all what you could call 'nasty' impressions and feelings were underlain by a deeply sourced joyful fascination. — As I so often remark about the unpredictabilities, mishaps and stresses of my challenging hiking outings (including hitch-hikes to and from the hiking routes), It's all an adventure!

  

It was a long traipse along corridors that all had a dismal, cheerless, lifeless feel about them, eventually to reach the particular ward — Ash Ward (of a fair amount of ill-fame, as I was to learn from various sources later). I was registered in at the ward office, had the odd belongings and my money taken away and put into safe keeping, and then, after being offered, I think, a tail end of some sort of minimal evening meal, I could go to bed, having been given two tablets.

The nurses, who actually all seemed to be nice people, though clearly very busy, were quite determined that I should 'take' something, even though I said no mind-affecting drugs, so I gave in to having, as a one-off, just one small sleeping tablet and what I think in retrospect must have been a 5mg Haloperidol tablet (as I found out later, Haloperidol is an antipsychotic). In any case if I were soon going to be dead anyway, it wasn't going to make much difference.

I was allocated a single room, near the ward office, not in the corridor round the corner with the other male sleeping accommodation (including shared rooms and dormitories). This, as I understood later, was regarded as a 'special observation' room. Like the doors of the other patient rooms and dormitories, that of my room had a small square window in it, so that nurses could peek in once in a while (shining a torch in if necessary) to see that I was still in there and not hanging myself or slashing my wrists or disembowelling myself, or whatever. Well, at least here it looked as though I could have a peaceful death, undisturbed by other inmates — and even at that point I was feeling a little bit of relief.*

Once in bed, in addition to the horrendous feelings of the 'curse', one of the earlier ordeals was returned to me: as I lay there wanting to go to sleep, I was assailed by a strong nausea, having to endure that while just lying there concentrating on my deep breathing, while the inner voice was plying me with various way-out scenarios relating to me and my current situation, like one involving a massive wave of intense psychic attacks supposedly occurring that evening from Satanists all over the planet, focused on my flat and causing a large meteorite to smash it into a deep crater in the ground (thus allegedly the real truth was that I'd been manoeuvred into the hospital to save me from being destroyed in that little catastrophe!).

Once in a while a torch light was shone into my room through the little window in the door, and even on the odd occasion a nurse slightly opened the door and looked in. Whenever that happened I spontaneously greeted the nurse with a friendly 'Hi there', or similar*.

This felt surprisingly comforting, and seemed quite bizarre, because at one level I was so sure I was in a late stage of the dying process and was captive of something nasty beyond imaginings, which nobody understood, and yet here were periodic indications that people here were really interested in my well-being, and also nobody in the slightest seemed to have any thought that I might actually die there — weird! I didn't realize at the time, but this was already helping the process of getting my awareness better grounded, and so was something very positive.

One thing that did surprise me rather — indeed in quite a pleasant sort of way — was that a bit of slight gut ache resolved into an actual, albeit small, fart. …Now, why would I ascribe any significance to just one little fart, of all things, and actually mention it here? — Because liquefied abdominal organs (including presumably intestines) would have made such a happening impossible! According to all the story I was getting at that time from my supposed 'guidance', my abdominal contents were already in an advanced stage of their liquefaction, so if anything came out of my 'back end', it would have had to be a very nasty mess indeed — not at all an elegant little fart!

Indeed, although it was never admitted by my (garbage) 'guidance', if my abdominal organs had really been in even the slightest state of liquefaction I simply couldn't have been alive by then for a fart or indeed anything else to happen for me! However, at once then as I was thinking such thoughts my 'guidance' was giving me the story that there was no point in taking heart in that fart, nor indeed in anything at all, for soon it would be a very different story and I'd die excruciatingly, promptly passing on into all those hells.

However, I still took heart in my little observation and kept a very open mind about what was really going on, and the story that I was being given was seeming less and less convincing — a rather obvious series of attempts to cover up the fact that my guidance's bluff was now being called at every turn…

For a short while in my inner vision I had the impression of actually being taken towards those very hells that I was allegedly on the verge of dropping into. However, thankfully I was also still aware of myself lying in bed there in Ash Ward, so I still had a very open mind about what was going on, and wasn't actually believing that the visuals of a 'pathway to hell' necessarily represented my actual reality; after all, whatever would happen would happen regardless of what I or anyone believed, so I was pretty peaceful in accepting the situation.*

I was given visual images in an 'astral realm' (a type of illusory reality), as I'd now recognise it, of my passing on through an intensely dismal and increasingly twilight unpeopled landscape in which there were forbidding-looking grim cheerless grey houses that looked as though they could be of metal rather than any sort of bricks or stone, and I passed by the odd strange futuristic-looking tallish columns, each topped with a large globular polyhedral structure — looking completely alien and mystifying as to their purpose / significance.

Those too were of a grim, cheerless grey, as indeed the whole landscape seemed to be. Their polyhedral structures on top were of a somewhat lighter (i.e., mid-) grey — probably the nearest to white that you'd find in this landscape of grey awfulness without hope. Such variety of colour! It was all disturbingly impersonal in appearance, indeed with an indescribable quality that I can only label as 'hellish', and it all seemed familiar to me — not in any nice way at all! — from a very long time ago, as though I'd been to hell before…

… And then I woke up, having actually had a fair amount of SLEEP (Alleluia! ) and being aware that the 'curse' seemed no longer to be working on me. Later on, in fact I learnt that the curse had been a simulation anyway, given to me allegedly by my higher consciousness*, so in truth my innards hadn't even started dissolving.

A whole new meaning for 'voluntary patient'…

So, on the Monday I was a bit weak and weary, but it appeared to be all okay and I wanted to get out*. Could I, hell! Even though I was supposedly a voluntary patient and thus technically free to leave, I was kept in — and my following my 'guidance' to seek to escape just led to my being stopped each time and clearly being regarded as some sort of unstable miscreant who had to be kept in.

Monday evening, and I had directions from my 'guidance' (i.e., of course really the garbage), to put up a stronger resistance against the nurses' attempts to keep me in, which led to my being hustled off to the so-called Extra Care Area, where difficult characters such as this errant monkey could be restrained as necessary without the other patients seeing what was going on. I was put in a guarded seclusion room with a foam mattress on the floor, so I had to do my best to sleep on that.

During that night, while lying there on the floor of that seclusion room, I had more directions from my 'guidance'. This was still part of the supposed tests that were being given to me. These directions related to a challenging scenario that was in fact another bunch of fiction, but I couldn't at that point be sure that it was so, which was why I wasn't just ignoring the directions*.

As part of that scenario I was supposed to allow myself to be transported non-physically (i.e., by teleportation) to a location in Newton Abbot, a little way south-west of Exeter, in order to get joined up with my team who were supposed to have some forthcoming leadership function for all Humanity (rather bizarrely, the name Dominic Muldowney kept getting mentioned as an important member).

However, several apparent attempts failed to work and I was directed to put up a big show of agitation to get out, so that I'd be sedated, and then, when I was sedated, it would all work. So, having some degree of acting ability (indeed I'd been in a rough-and-ready small local amateur theatre group some years before), I acted my part and duly got sedated by the ward doctor.

Then still nothing happened and eventually I got a very little sleep, I then having to assume that the scenario my 'inner guidance' had given me was all fiction. Thus I resolved to have no further truck with such 'inner guidance' for the time being, and just to concentrate on being myself.

However, just being myself and visibly well was one thing, but I'd already set the machinery of the Establishment in motion. When I came out of the isolation room and met my guards (nurses) I had a piece of paper given to me explaining that I was now put under the provisions of the infamous Section 2 of the Mental Health Act of 1983 — I'd been 'sectioned'.

Yes, being 'sectioned' doesn't mean that one has been sliced into pieces, but that one has been made captive to the psychiatric bureaucracy! This allowed me to be kept in hospital against my will at the discretion and whim of a psychiatric doctor (of all unsuitable categories of people!) for up to 28 days (extendable through Section 3 of the Act), and so now the violation of my basic rights was legitimized and I couldn't leave anyway. Of course that would hardly have mattered if the psychiatric doctors had been genuinely effective in enabling people to resolve their various non-physically-sourced (supposedly 'mental heath) issues, and, first and foremost, would understand and properly respond to my own desperate-seeming situation i.e., in a manner that enabled actual resolution of the issue to occur, rather than just trying to hide it…

Monday and Tuesday at 'medication rounds', I meekly accepted an evil-looking yellow tablet that was 'in the book' for me, prescribed by the ward doctor. As I remember it, this was Diazepam, otherwise known as Valium. Just why I, with such a strict policy of not taking mind-affecting drugs, accepted such medication even for two days, I don't know for sure, though I rather assumed that my 'higher consciousness'* wanted me to get a little 'inside' experience and so encouraged me to be weak-willed about it.

Anyway, the medication did nothing to make me feel good, and for those two days I was in a relatively dull and rather somnambulent state, and my speech was somewhat slurred — presumably the state that the doctors wanted me to be in (!), as distinct from my much more vibrant and challenging natural and healthy state that would become apparent once I'd stopped taking that stuff.

My awareness getting better grounded…

On the Tuesday and Wednesday I managed to get visitations from my immediate neighbour (i.e., from back at home) in order to be brought a few essentials from my flat. No cause to mention such a triviality here of course — except for the fact that this did considerably ease my mind about two things.

Parallel with the big stories I'd been given by the 'inner thought-voice' on my first night in the hospital, about a tiny asteroid or large meteorite having smashed my flat into some deep crater in the ground, was another yarn that was intricately linked with all the confusing 'story' about the supposed great plans for me as some sort of world leader, which had been running through the series of ordeals that had led up to this hospitalization.

That 'alternative reality', put to me in an accusing / pitying tone, was that I was already finished and broken, and the whole purported 'Human Plan' was wrecked as a result. Allegedly the attempts to get me transferred into a new body — an actually fictitious plan that I explain about in The 'forces of darkness' ('astral beings') — My own tough experiences — had failed because I'd proved myself not to be up to the great leadership role planned for me (thus I'd let down the whole of Creation), and the 'Human Plan' itself was now in disarray, with nobody else truly suitable to take Humanity forward in its allegedly planned great step forward in its evolution.

The young man (allegedly Mike Mousley*, which is a name out of one of my novels) whose body I was supposed to have been transferred into was now established in my flat, I was told, and he'd been given my identity, and he was even right now using my computer. He had all my official IDs, and he even had had all my relevant personal memories transferred to him so that nobody could dispute who he was.

So now I myself was (allegedly) abandoned, discarded by all higher powers — just a tragic husk of a human with no future and nowhere to go, and to be left to die miserably with no further point or purpose in life, and with my body rapidly deteriorating and in particular my neck soon to cause me excruciations as it progressively disintegrated. Clearly a whole scenario given to me in an attempt to get me to do a juicy little suicide — but, unsportingly, the latter was still not in my sights, except as something that I had no plans to try.

I didn't actually believe this nor disbelieve it, but just faced it all with a peaceful open mind*. After all, I'd no means to know what the true state of affairs was — except that my immediate neighbour at home had just come with some essentials from my flat and not mentioned anything untoward!! That implied that the meteorite catastrophe was definitely fiction and that virtually certainly the Mike Mousley scenario was fiction too.

Yet despite that really quite watertight reassurance, it seemed that a part of me even then was actually still convinced of the Mike Mousley story, and I was feeling very unsure as to whether I'd really be able to get back into my flat or indeed live much of a life upon release from the hospital.

As I well understand in retrospect from my much greater clarity now, some years later, what was really going on was that, with me still having a fair degree of ungroundedness of a particular part of my awareness at that time, the garbage was constantly and mostly covertly feeding into my mindspace 'pseudo-thought' messages that were repeating and reinforcing that Mike Mousley scenario. By constantly doing that it was succeeding in building up an illusory reality in a particular aspect of my awareness that's only partly conscious.

Thus, although 'officially' I not only held no belief in the story but actually was sure it had to be rubbish, in practice I was also experiencing a certain level of belief in the story simply because it had been lodged by the garbage in that part of my awareness where my beliefs would be stored if I were holding beliefs. Thus, overall, I really just kept an open mind, having a certain rather nervous 'wait and see' feeling about the situation.

I think actually the garbage was failing quite magnificently in that trick, because I'm sure its real aim was to get that belief established sufficiently deeply in my system that it would either freak me out in a climactic sort of way, or/and, more insidiously and potentially fatally, bring about a sort of 'subtle energy' feedback loop of self destruction though believing that I actually was then rapidly disintegrating, having lost all intrinsic 'life support' and life purpose. Yet in practice, my consistent open-mindedness and also my consistency in progressively grounding my awareness while I was there in the hospital, prevented any such thing from happening.

Still, I do have to say that, despite all the indications that things were really going fine for me, when I eventually did get away from the hospital and back to my flat and opened my front door to find everything just as I'd left it (including dried-up mouldering remains from that scrambled eggs and toast, and some blackened shrivelled bananas, all patiently waiting there for me to clear them up…), I sighed one massive sigh of relief, for at that time that was the only way I could fully clear myself of that illusory reality — to see for myself that it had all been fiction and everything actually was okay, 'in the real'.

That's what they call taking the piss…

On Tuesday evening, two days after my admission to the hospital, I broke ranks and refused point-blank to have anything more to do with mind-affecting drugs, just continuing with a stool softener for my back-end problems (overtightness and clenching caused by the 'entities' (i.e., the garbage), and aggravating my mild haemorrhoids).

Surprisingly, although I was greeted with great reluctance and shaken heads about that, I wasn't forced to take the evil yellow tablet and so I went without it, slightly nervously wondering what comeback I might get from the consultant about that. In retrospect I guess that my just accepting a regular stool softener tablet let me off the hook, because it just managed to satisfy the official requirement that I must be given some sort of 'medication'! — Barmy!

Unsurprisingly, on Wednesday I was much more my vibrant self again — though by then I was caught by a physical problem — possibly my enlarged prostate had decided it was time to act, for my normal difficulty in peeing when in strange and not very private places (the so-called shy bladder syndrome) had escalated into no pee at all for well over a day, and I had to be catheterized (at that point I delivered a fat 1.8 litres — the overworked surgeon who catheterized me was impressed), then having a pee bag strapped to my leg* until such time in the future that I have surgery for the condition. Oh what a catalogue of calamities!

Meet the ward doctor…

On the odd occasion I was seen by the ward (psychiatric) doctor, who had the typical emotionally controlled and closed manner of a psychiatrist. Undoubtedly he was a likeable and well intentioned man in his own sort of way, but his 'vibes' were particularly disagreeable to me owing to his being what I then interpreted as reflecting his being an incarnation of an angel*, and therefore warm and potentially able to resonate very positively with me, but this effect was distorted by his defensive 'front' of the type that puts people into psychiatrist careers in the first place** — sort of I'm the doctor and I'm emotionally controlled and therefore all right, and you're the patient and therefore not all right.

Naively, I told him he was a strong healing channel (I meant, spiritual healing, which actually nowadays I recognise as seriously problematical) and explained very briefly that he was actually an angel incarnation, and with virtually unchanged expression and tone he uncomprehendingly told me that actually he knew he was a 'healer' — though, he emphasized, of a different kind (i.e., a psychiatric doctor). I almost choked on the diplomatic and decidedly unconvinced 'yes' that I uttered, having seen something of the evidence of his supposed healing powers in the patients in this ward — of whom more anon…

I then put it to him that I was perfectly well and should not be held there. In his quiet, unhealthily controlled manner, he disagreed, saying that he wanted to keep me under observation, because on Monday night he'd seen for himself that I'd got quite agitated. That I'd been acting then and he hadn't noticed that simple fact, and I'd been perfectly well and stable since (apart from the debilitating — NOT healing! — effects of the initial relatively strong medication), didn't get through to him.

It also apparently hadn't occurred to him that there was something a bit strange in the first place about holding somebody against his will to be kept under observation in hospital just because he'd got a bit agitated a few days before. After all, up and down the land people get very agitated — indeed often very much more so than I'd appeared to be during my stay in this hospital — and they aren't regarded as cause to be sectioned in a psychiatric unit! In fact, so pervasive and mind-numbing was the effect of this whole establishment that I didn't even think to put that very point straight to him!!!

Because I was held and effectively imprisoned under 'Section 2', my protestations that I had important work at home that was being harmed by my absence*, and which I needed to return to immediately, cut no ice with this man, to whom the only consideration was that he wanted to keep me in, under observation. Basic human rights meant nothing to him.

Well, here's the ward — now where's the cure?

What was there for me to do there? Well, I could take naps on my bed or I could pace up and down the two corridors of the ward (well, except that half of one of those was the women's quarters, where male patients were not allowed to go). I could sit in the smoking room, where I'd be fumigated by other inmates and be a passive smoker and be subjected to various flavours of pop / rock music, which were all disagreeable to me. Or I could sit in the television lounge and 'enjoy' the programmes there.

However, to me television is a sort of torture; I live my life without one, and am clear that I need one just as I need a hole in the head. So, apart from the odd very brief incursions into one or other of those rooms I basically kept to naps on my bed or in very leisurely fashion pacing up and down those corridors, day in and day out — well, except when I was writing up my personal journal for my stay there (something I didn't bother about in my subsequent hospitalizations).

The men's dormitories and bedrooms were down one end, with the two corridors joining at right angles, the women's sleeping quarters being at the far end of the other corridor. Men were not allowed into that part of the corridor serving the women's sleeping quarters. To add a little entertainment, each time in my to-and-fro pacings I came to the section with the men's sleeping quarters, I became strongly aware of the pong. Yes, the men's quarters stank — of unwashed sweaty feet.

Presumably it must be because many of the inmates hadn't had the best personal hygiene and the contamination and smell from their feet had got onto the carpet there. For the most part people didn't talk about it, and I could almost have imagined that I was the only person who noticed the rather gut-churning smell. Oh well, at least it reminded me that I wasn't in the Ritz!

Because I'd been 'sectioned', I wasn't allowed to leave the ward at all without an accompanying member of staff, and in fact during my time there I had only three short absences from the ward:

• The small-hours visit to the main hospital to be catheterized, accompanied one of the nurses — a particularly friendly and empathetic woman by the name of Jan, who was really like a friend to me (i.e., on the rare occasions when she had time for any sort of exchange with me);
• I was in a friendly manner pressured to spend a bit of one morning down at Occupational Therapy, which I did, but I didn't bother about that again as there was nothing there for me to do except have a friendly chat with the two staff who ran that pitifully underfunded unit. Because the rules associated with my being 'sectioned', I had to be accompanied by a nurse to go down there and again for the return;
• One short stroll outside in the grounds of the building, accompanied by one of the nurses (a very nice fellow called Harry) when things were a bit quiet and he didn't have much demand on his time.

The nurses and indeed the hard-working woman who did the cleaning and put out our meals were all lovely people who helped make my incarceration a positive experience despite its problematical aspects. I can't blame the nurses for feeling constrained by a rotten system and so occasionally the odd ones crossing with me just a little because of that constraint.

Most of them were fundamentally quite 'open' and aware individuals, and for the most part their personal views on what patients really needed appeared to be closer to my own than to the doctors' view, and they mostly knew that drugging the patients wasn't really the answer, but they just felt unable to speak out about the gross misguidedness of the psychiatry mindset, which, via the doctors, ran the show.

Of course actually it wasn't just that, for none of these people really knew what else to do in order to be of greater genuine helpfulness to the unfortunate people who arrived as 'patients', so at least for the most part they had no really distinct alternative methodology to offer.

Meals in a mental hospital — 'hospital food' with a difference!

With some exceptions, it's generally taken that anything that can be called 'hospital food' is poor to downright appalling — and my later experience in the neighbouring main (Royal Devon & Exeter) hospital for an anal fistula to be fixed bore that out to a fair degree.

However, I do have to say that, although certainly not perfect, the meals here in Wonford House were much, much better than the (generally) disgrace that was being perpetrated in the neighbouring main hospital in the name of 'hospital food' — and the same plus point was to prove to be true at the Cedars unit, of which latter, plenty more in Part 2.

From my perspective, breakfast, although very basic, could be tolerably healthy if one chose carefully (as so many people, sadly, don't), and one could choose quantity, which one couldn't do very much in the main hospital, where you got more or less a bare minimum all the time. Lunch was the main meal of the day, and was generally quite reasonable as basic canteen fare — good enough that I generally found it appetizing and really enjoyed it — though of course there was generally no really satisfactory non-meat option, so a vegetarian or particularly vegan would have had a hard time of it.

Quite often enough food had been brought in (it was cooked somewhere else and brought in hot), to enable second helpings to be granted to some who asked — though that happened less when I was in Cedars (my later, 2006 hospitalizations). The evening meal cooked option was generally a quite small portion — intended as a snack rather than main meal — but often really nice and tasty as far as it went.

Also, here in Ash Ward, there was an official late evening 'supper' time (the bedtime medication dispensing session in the Candy Store — remember? — being the yum-yum final course of supper), when we were allowed free access to the kitchen, so we could make tea / (instant) coffee. I myself didn't partake of that, as I'd been completely off mind-affecting drugs, including caffeine, from 1974, but I still went there then as we could also raid a small store of fruit and also the odd sandwiches and other extras in the fridge, mostly left-overs from the day's lunch and evening meal sessions.

I do applaud that little 'laid-back' element there, and actually it was particularly there in the kitchen that I often had the most positive exchanges with other inmates — for their going to the kitchen to make tea or find something to eat meant that they were getting a little less bored and more grounded and practical, so they were just that bit more 'live' and 'human' to relate with. Also, depending on what was available there at 'supper' time, anyone who'd missed a meal earlier in the day stood a tolerable chance of mitigating the day's deficiency to some extent then.

That latter point was significant, because people quite often got called in for consultations or to be taken to the main hospital for tests, and so forth, just when they really should have been having their lunch. Usually, unless a person who was thus affected specifically asked for their lunch to be kept for them, they simply missed it, and even then there was a pretty tight limit on the time that anyone's lunch would be kept.

So, if you thus missed your lunch, unless you made some outside arrangement for, say, a pizza to be delivered (at your expense), or you got permission to go to the Oasis restaurant in the main hospital (again, at your expense, and in any case which you couldn't do if you were 'sectioned' as I was on this occasion), once you were free again from your consultation or whatever, you'd have simply missed the main meal of the day and thus would go fairly hungry.

I didn't get any impression that the hospital staff were ever stopping to think seriously about the consequences of taking 'patients' away from the ward at their mealtimes, and especially lunchtime, and that's definitely an area that needed and presumably still needs sorting out with proper attention to the basic 'patient' needs.

The patients

As far as I was concerned, I myself wasn't a patient but simply a prisoner. In fact, during my stay I was increasingly open in using the latter word for myself rather than 'patient', and I could feel this putting some of the nurses and indeed some of the patients rather on edge — which of course was precisely my intention. Not that I wanted to create disharmony as such, but in this place to speak your truth meant inevitably a certain degree of 'rocking the boat'. If other people had previously been prepared to risk 'rocking the boat' in order to speak their truth I need not have been in this situation in the hospital now.

Well? Where's the cure? …Seriously!

What were the patients actually in there for? It seemed they all had some notion that they were going to be cured or 'get better', but, as far as I could make out, none had any idea of what really getting better entailed, and none appeared to have any coherent notion of any positive direction for their lives. Seeing that all the indications were that the doctors had no idea either, it was evidently a case of the blind leading the blind.

The patients were all receiving some degree of mind-numbing medication, and I was shocked (sic) to learn that some were having electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). I'd been under the misapprehension that this barbaric and destructive procedure had been jettisoned some time ago, but clearly I'd been mistaken about that. At least as far as I could ascertain, this procedure wasn't being forcibly given to anyone in a punitive way — something that I understand used to occur in psychiatric establishments (perhaps it still does in some). Also, thankfully, I got no indications that prefrontal lobotomy was on anyone's agenda nowadays.

What was particularly appalling about the medication was that it was quite routine for the various mind-numbing drugs to have various undesirable side effects, with the result that the affected patients were then given additional drugs to try to suppress those side effects. Thus most patients were consuming quite a cocktail of drugs.

I couldn't get a great deal of rapport with the patients, not just because of the various personal issues that they'd brought in, but I think particularly because of their drugged state. Most of them I found spoke very quietly, typically in a mumbling fashion, and were very difficult to understand, and I have to assume that in at least a fair proportion of cases this was the result of the drugs they were on — especially as my own speech was markedly affected for the worse while I was on Diazepam.

Another factor that also was helping to make them like that was the whole mindset of their being treated as patients with disorders rather than people with strongly positive qualities that needed uncovering through emotional release to resolve their personal issues so that they could 'grow' and stand their full height in body and mind.

Another distinct problem for most of the patients, relating to me, was that, even then, I myself was at least largely standing my full height in body and mind, and that tended to be felt a little bewildering and threatening in relation to what they'd been led to understand about their own nature — i.e., that there was little about them that was even worth their lifting their heads about. Not only that, but I was quite open with them about my seeing the whole psychiatry mindset as wrong and its 'treatments' as being unhelpful to say the least. Those points, then, were no doubt making it more difficult for them to relate with me.

Healing? — Where?

The nurses sought to prevent any supportive or healing connections being established between me and any patients there. I had admonishments from particular nurses to the effect that any such interactions with other patients would be interfering with the good work of the doctors — indeed they'd interfere with the almost 100% ineffectiveness and even destructiveness of the doctors' 'care plans' for the patients, so couldn't be allowed.

Also, to show warmth and closeness to another patient was completely not on, because the establishment had a 'duty of care' to ensure that there were no abuses, and it's a widely known fact, although of course not openly admitted by those who apply such policies, that up and down the land, psychiatric patients are seen as having no right to warmth and closeness at all (much as also tends to be the case for physically disabled people), unless perhaps from a close relative who comes visiting. Love, the great healer, was definitely not in order for psychiatric patients.

So, when one new female patient turned to me and started speaking about herself and felt my warmth and supportiveness, and started crying, and held onto me so that I unaffectedly put an arm around her, giving her a bit of direct attention, with no sense of desire at all, I promptly received an admonishment and a little lecture from one of the nurses.

The sad irony was that the lion's share of what she needed to do in order to achieve a full healing for herself — light years beyond what the doctors' 'treatments' could achieve for her — was simply the clearance of emotional issues. What she'd tried to do with me and what this hospital was geared to try and prevent at all cost by means of drugs and even ECT was the most basic form of emotional release / healing*. Sick!

I can say reasonably definitely that for nearly all, if not all, of the patients who were in that ward when I was there, the primary healing need, apart from getting themselves more grounded, was for fully releasing old emotional traumas — and that was the one thing that they hadn't a dog's chance in the Seventh Hell of Donald Trump of getting or being pointed towards in a psychiatric establishment!

I sadly observed one lovely young-middle-aged man who I shall call Y, who seemed to be going steadily downhill during my stay there. He actually believed that he was getting better, and was bewildered by my outspoken words about the doctors' attitude and their keeping me in without good reason. His eyes steadily developed a pleading quality, at least when he faced me, and he gave the impression of sinking into some deep mire beyond his control.

He was one of those having ECT, and no doubt that and the drug treatment were numbing him to his previously uncomfortable emotional feelings so that he was being fooled into thinking he was getting better. [More about him further below.]

Another man was in for depression* and was just left sitting around on his own, looking dejected and doing nothing. He went down to Occupational Therapy for a while most weekday mornings, although, as I've already remarked, Occupational Therapy in this place was of limited usefulness because of lack of funds, and the one time I went down there (under a little friendly pressure from the odd nurses) all I could do was have a friendly chat with the two staff who were running that little department. It did, however, give a little safety valve from the boredom of life on the ward. (Curious — I thought love, not boredom, was supposed to be the great healer. Had I missed something?) Maybe that patient benefited a little through sleeping away from his home situation for a while, much as I'd done, but apart from that I should say that this hospital was one of the last places I'd recommend for him or anyone seriously wanting to clear their depression.

Beware of the schizo! — understanding a 'schizophrenic'

On the evening of Sunday 24th October another new patient was escorted in, who I shall call X. He was a tall young man who looked to be quite a handful, having about him the undisciplined demeanour of a yob and hooligan with a strong criminality element, and no doubt drugs issues too — but I could also see that he was what I interpreted then as a powerful 'being of light'*. — Interesting!

Later, I was slowly making for the kitchen, and X came up to me in the corridor and embraced me affectionately*, in full view of other patients and the odd nurse or two. Then, as I continued towards the kitchen, he put an arm around my shoulders, I seeking to disengage him, pointing out that it would be problematical with the nurses for us to be seen doing things like that (much as I had no problem about that otherwise).

In the kitchen, where patients went to make hot drinks and collect fresh fruit to eat, X turned to me, looked me intensely in the eyes and said that he could see that I had a very open mind and he felt that I was the person he was looking for. He said he'd had 'guidance' (i.e., from some non-physical source) to get himself admitted to this hospital because there was a very special person who he was meant to encounter here in the hospital.

I told him I was in fact a healer, so very likely was the one who he was meant to encounter*. He then told me of some traumatic episodes in his life and asked if I could somehow heal him of the painful mental disturbance they were causing him. He also told me of a role of 'gatekeeper', which he'd 'known' for much of his life that he'd have to fulfil, and wanted to know what this was about. He also regularly 'heard voices' and had been labelled as schizophrenic.

I was able to discreetly attempt a little 'healing' for him*, and channelled a little information that seemed at the time to make some sort of sense of his situation. Allegedly he was the sole incarnation of a 7th dimension being. Allegedly, incarnations of 7th and 8th dimension beings were rare and almost always powerful 'beings of light'. His gatekeeper role was, allegedly, a future role connected with the purported Network of Light around the planet. Subsequently I was able to 'verify' about the gatekeeper role with a 'lightworker' 'friend' of mine**. According to him the Network of Light would have a fair number of 'gatekeepers'. I didn't know what a gatekeeper did, but it was supposed to be a role carried out by the person's 'higher consciousness', and not a physical task.

As for my channelled information about X — it was all fiction, fiction, fiction! That channelled information came from the garbage, as actually does ALL channelled information, whether the apparent source looks to be 'dark' or 'divine'. The story of the Network of Light is a very pernicious piece of fiction that's rife in the New Age movement, having been sourced from the garbage to cause major problems for people on a theoretically global scale. There's no such Network of Light, except in various individuals' garbage-sourced illusory realities.

As I now understand it, as already noted, X would have been simply a no-soul person, as I am, and that would have accounted for the strong 'energy' resonance between him and me, and for his seeming to have a very deep level of awareness and having a severe grounding problem that made him particularly vulnerable to 'entities' and the garbage. He had major interferences from the garbage and, according to my inner inquiry, the usual complement of attached parasitic 'lost' souls (as I had at that time).

Also my inner inquiry results were strongly suggestive that he had a powerful and very troublesome partial walk-in and indeed he appeared also to have been incorporated into the cacoprotean network (hence his supposed 'gatekeeper' task). Undoubtedly, if that were correct, it would have been the partial walk-in that was the major causal factor in his mass of emotional and behavioural problems, including his compulsive association with criminals and 'druggies' and thus no doubt taking on various of their ways.

As a part of the cacoprotean network, actually he looks to me to have been a 'broken' part, being too open-minded (a bit like me!) for it to control him in the ways it would have been trying to. Typically, it controls people into becoming prominent 'healers', 'lightworkers' and 'spiritual teachers', but would seek to wreck or destroy those who aren't sufficiently controllable by it. Indeed, there are clear signs that it was trying hard to incorporate me too into it throughout my particularly major garbage shenanigans, but the relevant aspect of my awareness never got quite sufficiently ungrounded for that to happen.

It really does look to me as though X did get 'guided' to encounter me, but I'm not sure to what extent that was for the purpose of gaining him healing or of trying to cause problems for me — though, on the basis of all my experiences with him I'm sure that his conscious attitude towards me has always been benign and indeed remarkably trusting, seeing me as a very positive person from whom he was seriously seeking help, and for whom he'd never want to cause harm or trouble.

In particular, GH would have been bound to corroborate the 'gatekeeper' story, because apparently he himself was (and is) unawarely a member of — yes! — the cacoprotean network. It's that network in particular that's seeking to set up psychic strategies for very seriously harmful interference with people on a global scale.

As for X's label of 'schizophrenic', that was just a psychiatrist's way of shrugging off responsibility for really paying attention to the issues that needed resolving. Give the person a label for a disorder, and, hey presto, you've already done much of your job — you can then make some sort of attempt to 'treat' the disorder, and in the process you let the person down completely.

Early the following morning I was just dressing when X knocked on my door and I bade him enter. He sat down on my bed and said something about himself that caused him to start crying — exactly what he needed to do — and I sat down beside him and put a supportive arm around his shoulders. At that moment, the door opened and one of the nurses looked in. Another admonishment — You're not supposed to be sharing rooms, you know… I can only imagine what that nurse thought had been going on between me and X! But even if we had been doing that, so bloody well what?

I sensed then a difficult energy from various nurses towards me; clearly news about X and myself had got around and caused a certain consternation, and I felt that I was soon going to get some sort of more detailed admonishment. This came after breakfast from one of the more senior nurses, who took me aside into a private room and warned me not to have anything to do with X, and made various dark innuendos about him.

The innuendos no doubt had substance — I was quite aware from my own 'reading' that he was likely to have been, and still to be, in a lot of trouble with the Law and would need regarding with healthy circumspection. However, it was apparent that there was another side to him — the more human side — that all these people were failing to recognise, and he'd come to me for healing and guidance and was showing a child-like deep trust in me that was quite extraordinary for the sort of person who everybody was seeing him as.

Neither were the nurses recognising my own standing as an enlightened 'healer' as distinct from some old fool in his 60s who'd simply got infatuated with a young fellow who would take him for a ride and steal all his possessions and maybe murder him in his bed as well for good measure.

Later that day X managed to escape from the hospital, but returned the following morning, making a bee-line for me. He had a meeting with his psychiatrist there later that morning and indeed persuaded him to call me into the meeting to explain his situation. I take my hat off to that particular psychiatrist, who, despite saying he disagreed with my viewpoint, at least listened with concentration and then thanked me warmly for my explanation and admitted that I'd made sense for him of certain things about X that had had him baffled.

You see? The views that I as an enlightened 'healer' had on such matters may look far-out from a materialist's viewpoint, but, unlike anything that a materialist could come up with, my view was providing explanations that 'added up' and made sense of all aspects of our life, without having to recourse to Perhaps there isn't any cause for that or That just happened or It was just chance that it worked out that way. I explore and demolish such nonsenses in depth in my article On the nature of reality and truth — Too simple to believe! :-).

X left soon after, having been 'de-sectioned', and then it was up to him to get in touch with me at home if he wished, for further 'healing' / guidance as appropriate. He'd undoubtedly benefited from coming into the hospital, but, as far as I could tell, that benefit was from his meeting with me there and nothing else. Schizophrenic, my arse! Some difficult issues, yes, but they needed understanding, addressing and resolving, not labelling as a disorder and then 'treated'. And, particularly important in his case, those difficult issues couldn't even begin to be understood without looking at him and his life from a broader perspective than the physical and 'mental'.

"We want to keep you under observation…"

I learnt that a ward round was due on my first Friday. The ward round was a sequence of meetings with each of the patients, involving the consultant, usually the ward doctor, and a nurse and possibly other helpers who had been associated with the particular patient. This was where patients' cases were reviewed, and so I assumed that I could then make the case that I was perfectly well and be released forthwith.

In the event, that ward round was postponed from the morning because of the consultant having been called out, and then it failed to happen in the afternoon either. To my dismay I then found that I was stuck there for the weekend, but with a promise that I'd be seeing the doctor or consultant on the Monday and could put my case then.

Prior to that Monday two successive very nice nurses who were both quite 'open' and aware, and actually very sympathetic to me and my situation, interviewed me so that they could be supportive to me in any reviews with doctor / consultant, and indeed both got very interested because I explained to them about their own depth of awareness and how they were potentially strong 'healers' themselves.

Getting reminders of Mr K…

…So, of all appalling things, I'd already been there a full week plus. On Monday there was no consultation with the doctor / consultant after all — but I did manage to buttonhole the doctor informally and spoke very directly to him in a manner that I think he wasn't well used to.

I told him in a friendly but forthright manner that I, as a perfectly well citizen, had every reason to be very angry with him for keeping me in against my will and when I was so clearly well and in an emotionally stable state, and it was very important that I be let out without further delay and allowed to get on with my important work*. Confronted like this, he changed his normal supercilious stance and sought to sound sympathetic, saying that he understood and would do his best to help when we met at the ward round on Wednesday.

By this stage a funny name was starting to pop up in my mind. Kafka. You know of that fellow? The Czech author Franz Kafka, who wrote The Castle, The Trial, and other mind-numbingly dreary but disconcertingly salutary novels portraying labyrinthine, depersonalized bureaucracy. As I slowly paced up and down the two corridors I looked out of the windows across the courtyard to other parts of this extensive old building and thought of The Castle, which I'd given up reading when I was about halfway through, and chuckled.

Was my story about all this here going to be so cheerless or so boring? But then I thought also of how I'd heard that even Kafka's short story Metamorphosis, which at least hadn't bored me and had made me cry my guts out, had actually caused its author to fall about himself with laughter. I have a pretty good motto for myself, and, come to think of it, for everybody else too — There's a laughing space in everything. Yes, I knew, the sillier this all got here, the better and more meaningful the story I'd have to tell at the end of it all…

So, it dragged on. So stupid. All that the doctor really need have done was to recognise that I was okay and get to my paperwork and rescind the Section 2 rubbish right there and then. But they have 'procedures' of course, against which basic human rights are seen as nothing.

And the fact that various of the nurses — very likely at least most of them — considered that I should not be still held there carried no weight because the system required that I couldn't be released without a signature from a doctor, and even then it wasn't for a nurse simply to go to a doctor and say This man shouldn't be here [because…], and so please sign here to release him. No, one had to wait for the next formal session, regardless of any human rights abuse that was involved in continuing the imprisonment.

Thank goodness! We've found a disorder at last!

On Wednesday the ward doctor told me I'd not have long to wait as I was just second in the ward round list. In the event I was put back till last — incredibly stupid behaviour, because it's that sort of thing that's bound to get any inmate's rag out, so to speak, and cause completely unnecessary aggro.

Were those doctors actually seeking to provoke me into some sort of confrontational aggro? Surely not — yet in retrospect it looks almost as though they were! Surely all the other inmates hadn't unexpectedly become truly higher priority than me, sufficiently to warrant changing the ward round list order to that extent?!

Perhaps it was the ward doctor's way of seeking to put me in my place in response to my having talked to him in a forthright manner two days before and seeking to get out as soon as possible — who knows? If so, it wasn't only stupid but what I'd describe as primitive and petty behaviour. It's up to such staff to set an example of healthy and intelligent behaviour — and only common sense, seeing that inmates who are shown respect by them are more likely to show them reciprocal respect and thus make life more pleasant and less stressful for them.

This ward round would get me my first encounter with my allocated consultant, a certain Andrew Blewett.

Anyway, I was so sure that once my turn came all I needed to do was to just put my case, and I'd be released at once — but that's not how it went. I put it down to learning, as they say. The consultant and doctor asked me loaded questions about my special and positive qualities, and it was clear that they were perceiving each as a psychiatric disorder. I'd previously mentioned my having acted up at the beginning in response to 'guidance' I'd received, so they were asking about that. You mean you hear voices?

Ouch!* However I described my 'guidance' in the face of the series of questions of that sort, it was clear that, to these men of limited outlook, my receiving 'guidance' was none other than 'hearing voices' and thus, in their eyes, to be seen as a psychiatric disorder. For them, the expression 'hearing voices' was like a Pavlovian trigger. I got the strong impression that their minds were loaded with a small and unedifying repertoire of such trigger expressions that rang the DISORDER! bell for them. Evidently experienced 'healers' generally would thus also be seen as having a disorder that was causing them to 'hear voices', and cause their psychiatrists to salivate as they clocked up their little list of — er — disorders.

After having been through my various special qualities, not least my awareness of my having a 'higher purpose' for this lifetime (I think 'having a higher purpose' was another of their Pavlovian triggers), the consultant thanked me warmly for giving all this valuable information, which had raised a number of important questions — his tone implying that the 'questions' were actually instances of particular psychiatric disorders. I didn't trouble to ask them how many 'bells' had rung for them and how many times they'd salivated during their little interrogation.

The outcome was that they wanted to keep me in a bit longer yet, under observation, and would review my case again in the ward round on Friday.

I delivered an articulate bit of my general critique of their whole psychiatry mindset, which clearly embarrassed them, and I accused them of violating my basic human rights, but they knew they still had the upper hand because of that nonsensical Section 2 provision. I told them that I was thinking of taking out legal action against them for wrongful detention. They weren't worried about that, no doubt because they already knew that it would be unworkable to do so, as in fact I later established from a lawyer to be the case.

The consultant warned me that if I got cross with them it would make things more difficult for them to give me a favourable outcome on Friday — a sure sign, if any further sign were needed — that the whole issue here was really nothing to do with my health, whether it were physical or mental, but a blatant issue of wielding personal power over an inmate. Any ordinary person in my situation there would have had cause to be not just cross but more like irate at being kept in like this.

By this stage I had a formal appeal pending against my being held under that infamous Section 2, but the doctors seemed happy to keep me in until the appeal overturned their decision — knowing well that the hearing wouldn't be for at least a week yet and then it would be a few more days before the result of the appeal was notified. They clearly wanted a run for their money. My basic rights as a citizen were not a concern of theirs.

I was disturbed at the way that the nurse at the ward round had kept quiet and hadn't spoken up for me in that session — though I say that not as a criticism of the nurse, who was a lovely and good-hearted person, but of the whole hospital mindset that doesn't allow nurses to speak straight out to doctors. However, that evening a very friendly and sympathetic nurse on the night shift told me that the nurse who'd been in on my session had actually spoken up for me after I'd left the session, and had managed to get the consultant to see my situation in a more positive light so that I should have a more favourable outcome on Friday.

…And I eat babies too! — Stupid lines of inquiry as an issue-avoidance strategy

On Friday, again my name was put back to last on the ward round list*, but at least I did get seen, mid-afternoon. The consultant said that they were concerned about me because of my having got agitated on my first Monday at the hospital and because of all the 'questions' that had been raised in the last ward round**. The consultant then asked me further questions. I hear that you've been having sexual feelings for some of the patients on the ward, he started, as I groaned within — another Pavlovian trigger, which would undoubtedly lead to more…

Actually it may not have been so much when I'd been seen with an arm around X that had now come back to roost, but rather, a certain breach of confidence on the part of one or two very nice and seemingly sympathetic nurses to whom I'd mentioned about the catheter (remember that?) causing me pain at night when I had erections, which latter had come quite frequently for a few nights because, it had seemed, X's 'higher consciousness' had connected with me and resulted in his sending me an erotically loving energy body or 'etheric double'* — a phenomenon that often occurred between me and various people with whom I was very strongly connected.

Anyway, whatever the exact communication pathway, the rumour had gone pear-shaped as in that party game which, when I was young, I knew as Chinese Whispers, and 'one' had become 'some'. In fact I didn't even have desire for X, for as an enlightened person — something beyond the understanding of psychiatrists — I let go of desire whenever it seeks to arise, and instead I allow a mutual resonance of love, without any sense of attachment or clinging.

Love? what's that? This isn't a bordello, you know…

The questions that followed from the consultant about my sexual feelings and orientation were completely gratuitous and demeaning. He wanted to know whether I was attracted by men, by women, by children, and how often and even when I'd had sex this year… Amazing — that this man was allowed to call himself a doctor and claim to be some sort of healer! I could feel and hear his particularly strong interest in the question about whether I was sexually attracted to children.

That was surely one of the real prime Pavlovian triggers for them! Surely I lusted after children — please let it be! But no, I didn't have a skeleton in my cupboard there, and so, that DISORDER! bell was unable to ring for them. Oh, how he wanted to discover abnormalities and disorders by the delicious dozen!

The dear soul actually missed a trick because he omitted to ask whether I'd 'done it' orally, but I guess if he'd salivated at that Pavlovian trigger it would have been a bit too close to the — er — knuckle. And then afterwards I realized I'd missed a trick too, because I hadn't told him about my ravishing of dead sheep during my hikes on Dartmoor and also my putting prime Tamworth sows in the family way during my raunchy farmyard visits. I like Tamworth pigs — they have style… But then I knew I had to go a bit carefully because I was determined that I'd get out that day if at all possible.

Another bit of creative rumour (or humour) relating to X showed up, because the consultant remarked that apparently I thought X was some sort of Second Coming (yes, his exact words!). Where the eff did he pick that one up? Could it be that this was another sexual reference?

Clearly the consultant wanted to find in me a messianic belief in some involvement of mine in a Second Coming, but it was a bit brazen that he arrived at that conclusion from my having told X and certain of the nurses (with X's permission), as any true 'healer' could have done, that he was a very special person, allegedly with at least one very important role in the future*… But then, after all that joking of mine about these doctors' Pavlovian triggers, sadly we must remember that, for such doctors, who think almost exclusively in terms of disorders, the mere fact of openly acknowledging and cultivating a person's special and positive qualities appears problematical to start with.

Doctor, please cure me of my fixation on being let out!

Anyway, after all that, unsurprisingly the consultant said he still really wanted to keep me under observation. However, he said he was prepared to allow me out on four days' leave, still under the provisions of Section 2, so that I'd then have to return to the hospital on Tuesday to see him again — this all told to me in a very grudging tone, as though my going home wasn't really in my best interests. I was repeatedly asked Do you really think you could cope, back at home?

These 'doctors' really wanted to see me as ill and needing their 'care'! I'd say, if anyone was 'ill', it was them! Well, I didn't counter their question with something about a gay three-legged salamander perhaps not being able to cope when released from these gentlemen's clutches but as I myself didn't have a third leg to unbalance me… (you get the picture?) and instead just sounded somewhat surprised that they had any doubt about the matter of my copability at home.

My general impression was that the only reason that I was being allowed out at all at this stage* was because I'd made such a fuss and was making the doctors feel so uncomfortable and embarrassed by my forthright and articulate criticisms of their horrendously misguided psychiatry mindset and their claims to be healing people, and by my repeatedly and openly accusing both the system and them personally of abusing and violating my basic human rights. I'm sure they were not at all used to such responses to them from anyone who they saw as a 'patient'.

But then the grounding issue wasn't something that the doctors could have had any understanding about, and indeed I myself didn't have that understanding properly till October 2006 — and I had no idea about the calamitous iniquity (i.e., for me) of the sacred geometry wands until well into 2007.

So, in the event I was actually allowed out then, and returned home. In fact it turned out that I'd been within a gnat's whisker of having to return to the hospital immediately for a roof over my head, because of being unable to gain entry to my flat!

Reason? — No, nothing to do with Mike Mousley, nor an asteroid impact! No, much more mundane and indeed grounding than that! I'd had my flat keys left with my landlord (a local housing association) in case they needed to gain entry for emergency maintenance / repairs purposes, and so I had to pick the keys up before returning to my flat. And because I'd been made bottom of the ward round list that day, and thus was leaving at the end of the afternoon, it was a rush for me because the housing association's office might have already closed — especially as it was a Friday.

As it turned out, the office was just closed and the housing officer was just leaving — but he was really nice about it — I could have hugged him! — and unlocked the office again and got me my keys. Then once I was back in my flat I found that the pee in the pee bag strapped to my leg (remember?! ) had turned a rather alarming rosé colour, because my hurrying journey to the housing association office and then back to my flat had evidently caused chafing of the catheter somewhere 'inside my insides', thus resulting in a little internal bleeding.

So straight away I had to phone the out of hours medical service as a precaution about that — though fortunately no serious problem was indicated, and I got away with a course of antibiotic because there was actually a mild urethral infection anyway.

On the Sunday, unexpectedly I had a phone call from one of the nurses on the ward, asking how I was getting on. She sounded mighty doubtful that I'd be coping, and thus sounded equally surprised when I laughed and said, of course I was doing fine, for as a perfectly well citizen I should not have been imprisoned in the hospital in the first place. She sounded mighty impressed that I sounded so buoyant and upbeat, which struck me as funny and strange. (Had the consultant put in my records that I was a gay three-legged salamander?)

Then on Monday another nurse phoned from the ward to ask how I was getting on. She sounded a little bit surprised too when I said I was doing fine. (She too must have seen something in my records…) At least those nurses presumably would give positive reports back for the meeting with the consultant on Tuesday (perhaps like We've never known a gay three legged salamander do that well at home!?), and surely the consultant would then not have a leg to stand on for keeping me in any more.

So reluctant to release — in case it happens again!

Tuesday came and the consultant seemed as uncomfortable as ever to meet me. He said he really thought that on the basis of the 'questions' (i.e., supposed disorders) that had come to light in the information that I'd given them about myself, there were significant reasons for my staying in the hospital for the time being, to be kept under observation, but he also admitted that he now had to acknowledge that I really didn't want to stay (My goodness, he'd noticed!), and reports from the nurses indicated that I was managing to cope on my own back at home - as though I hadn't managed perfectly well living on my own at home for decades! For that matter I'm sure even a gay three-legged salamander would cope perfectly well with just a little encouragement.

It was still a concern of his, as originally stated in the previous ward round, that I might once again run into the sort of circumstances that had led to my being sent to Wonford House in the first place, and he wanted me to understand that we are reluctant to allow you out of the hospital if you're just going to run into the same problem and come back here again. Just how I was supposed to sort out my home circumstances while being kept in hospital wasn't explained. And if the problem didn't show up when I was staying away from my flat, how ever would it come to light again to be further investigated? What a lack of logic and clear-mindedness about his outlook!

"We are reluctant to allow you out of the hospital if you're just going to run into the same problem and come back here again", indeed!

Now, since when have hospitals been saying such a thing to somebody who's been in for a broken bone or a cancer? Somebody slips on the ice and cracks a bone. Does the hospital say We're keeping you in for the rest of the winter because we can't be reasonably sure you won't slip and come back with another fracture? They want to get their patients out and doing okay at home as soon as possible — but this psychiatric unit wanted to cling onto this particular inmate with the most amazing excuses!

It was not, either, as though they'd ever actually been through with me what had been going on for me at home that had led to my arrival at the hospital, and then sought to help to prevent such a problematical situation from recurring — but then of course that was not something that would have been reasonable to expect of them in the light of their closed minds and slavish adherence to their 'medical model', which in reality was no model at all of the human mind or human consciousness… (memories of a certain roasting smell on a memorable recent Sunday — and it wasn't my lunch either, unless of course there's a hell in which one eats one's own roasted flesh, but I'm not aware of one — at least, yet…)

The consultant then told me — it sounded as though it was meant to be some sort of trump card — that actually my collection of what I'd been calling special qualities were what he and other psychiatric workers regarded as indicators of my having a personality disorder that he called mild schizotype (pronounced with the final 'e' as an extra syllable). Thanks for that, Doc — just what I wanted for my joyful little verse a little further down this page!

That was, apparently, supposed to be a particular reason for my staying in and being observed and maybe even 'treated' by them. And of course any 'treatment' couldn't possibly have made me more 'normal' apart from perhaps 'zombifying' me! The very thought! Actually, one more extraordinary thing about this whole most unedifying episode — those two doctors never, never spoke of actually treating me or any supposed disorder of mine. Keeping me under observation was all they'd ever spoken of. Any notion of 'treatment' was only implicit.

Presumably Jesus and all our 'healers' and spiritual teachers* and promoters of self-actualization had or have this 'mild schizotype' condition (arguably not always so 'mild'!) and need hospitalization and treatment to bring them down to a blinding mediocrity of some supposed normality.

Anyway, because of my regrettable insistence on going home and my having demonstrated that I could manage there, the consultant admitted that it was no longer tenable for him to keep me there against my will (effing right, Mrs White!), and so I left as a free man with the provisions of Section 2 lifted from me.

But you must understand — I have a career…

One of the various things that struck me about the consultant and the ward doctor was a distinct air of something akin to sadness about them — particularly that final time I met them. I encountered the doctor in the ward soon after my final meeting with the consultant. I knew these were not genuinely happy people, even though they most likely believed that they were more or less happy, actually because, with their blocked awareness, they had no idea of what real happiness was like.

That unhappiness, presumably below the surface, seemed to be accentuated now, for it seemed that they had some inner sense, probably not really formulated in their minds, that I wasn't only beyond their reach but also that I had something precious that they felt was barred to them. Being an empathetic person, I could feel something of that sort-of sadness of theirs, and nowhere was it stronger than when they each came to a point of agreement with me, almost for the first time.

At this occasion of parting, they each actually came to agree with me that in future it would be best for me, in the event of any apparent crisis situation like what had landed me at Wonford House this time, to have alternative contingency arrangements already in place so that I'd not get pointed to a hospital at all and so be wasting the time of doctors for whom my particular issues were not relevant.

Yes, yes! They'd both, independently, finally acknowledged what I'd told them, and what so many people who were not psychiatric doctors could have told them, in the first place! Yet my feeling at this point was particularly the inner sadness (or similar) of these two men. I can only surmise at what was stopping them from making a break and opening out to something of what I'd been gently pointing them to during my whole stay in this hospital — though it felt like it was speaking directly out from them both: How I'd like to learn something of your way! But you must understand — I have a career…

I felt and do feel great empathy for these and the countless other doctors and other care professionals in a similar situation — but they have the answer to that issue in their very own hands. True healing begins when we take what is for us a courageous first step to lead us out of our self-created prisons of notionally comfortable personal circumstances, and start to embrace the truth that there really is greener grass — and a lot more besides! — the other side of that fence.

When a career or professional / academic reputation is involved, it can seem a scary and even impossible step to take — to start asking oneself what one is achieving in that career. Is this where I really want to be? And, very importantly, Does it really matter so much what people think of me if I start exploring and stepping beyond my current perceived limits? What would be the actual benefits of doing so?

A good starting point for such people is the recognition: My career isn't me!, and then, What is most important about me isn't any career of mine but ME. The so-called 'Christian work ethic' has a lot to answer for in having pervaded our culture with the insidious notion that our true life task is simply our career and we have little or no intrinsic worth as ourselves. Thankfully, many of us have now got clear of that misinformation and are discovering for ourselves how much more there is to life, and finding an underlying life purpose that had previously been hidden from us by our own unawareness, and which points us in fully positive and rewarding directions relating to ourselves and the others around us.

As I well know from my own experience of initiating positive changes in my life that meant stepping outside my limits as perceived at that time, the prospect of facing disapproval from some quarters and losing certain friends could feel intimidating and scary, but this became outweighed as I gave proper consideration to where I could be pointing. And the latter was towards a more exciting and fulfilling life experience — on the one hand letting go of old and miserable feelings and all those friendships and relationships that would hold me back, and on the other hand experiencing new and more rewarding activities, drawing new people into my life, who were appropriate to and supportive of my new, positive direction.

I've left behind 'friends' who were attached to how I seemed to be at those times in the past and so wanted me not to change. And now, for all the apparent troubles and tribulations of my own particularly challenging positive life direction, I'm beginning to draw in people who are truly like-minded and LOVE me — and that love is mutual. THAT is what I'd been so afraid of before I made my first big step — which gives a whole new meaning to that horrible taunt Don't look so worried; it might never happen!

I've found that once the seemingly tremendously intimidating first step has been taken and a positive life direction becomes established, further positive steps are nothing like as difficult to take, even if they too look formidable in anticipation. In taking such a positive direction we learn that we can face the fear that had been holding us back and had been often manifesting as limiting self perceptions, and know that the world doesn't fall apart when we take a forward step that may subjectively feel like abandoning much of what we had ever known.

We discover more and more that it's as though the world, the Universe, the entirety of 'What Is', has been ever so patiently waiting all along for us to make each step and gently encourage us forward to the next one. And so we gradually discover that, far from being an indifferent or even hostile environment in which we just have to make do somehow, the Universe is in a very fundamental sense actually a loving, nurturing environment for our own exploration of the life experience.

Within it we find the means and the encouragement that are necessary for us to follow our directions of positive change, growth and broadening horizons — thus maximizing the abundance and variety of our life experience. New and more appropriate friendships and positive relationships are always available to us and are naturally drawn to us as our horizons widen.

On this website I give a variety of pointers and means to assist people in initiating or enhancing their own requisite positive change and life direction. There's plenty here for people considering their first forward step, and likewise for those who are well on the way.

I embrace and salute all who get moving in this positive, healing direction. This is where real personal power comes in, for by bringing about such change in your own life you're positively affecting everyone who connects with you or relates with you in any way, and assisting them in their own emergence. We need not to be fooled by apparent negative reactions from those who on the surface don't understand, for those reactions are signs of their starting to feel challenged; in fact, in a small way their own process of positive life change may have already started.

Some lessons from this experience

The Mental Health Act needs revision

In the UK we have so-called mental heath legislation that's a clear breach of human rights and needs to be amended without delay. Section 2 of the Mental Health Act of 1983 is notorious for this breach of human rights and has been widely misused, and yet politicians have still not seen fit to do anything about it. Why not? — For no good reason, that's for sure!

Section 2 provides for three main situations, any one of which would be grounds for keeping a patient in hospital against his will. I don't know the actual wording of the Act, so I'm here detailing the substance. The allowed reasons for detaining a patient are:

• The person is a danger or potential danger to the community;
• The person is a danger or potential danger to himself;
• The person has a mental condition that in the view of a psychiatric doctor requires his being kept in hospital.

There clearly is a case for the first two options — particularly the first. But it's the third provision that defies common sense and allows a doctor to effectively imprison anyone if they just don't happen to fit or indeed if they look like an interesting specimen to be kept under observation. It actually gives a Draconian power that could even lead to the sort of excesses that were the hallmark of the old USSR, where political dissenters were routinely imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. While I don't seriously expect the UK to go that far, there's no good reason for having legislation that makes such a state of affairs possible and in any case has enabled many serious violations of human rights to occur.

The only justifiable reasons for a psychiatric doctor deciding that a person should be kept in hospital against his will are surely the first two provisions listed above — if the person is a danger to himself or to the community or there's very strong evidence that he may be so — and even these could easily be abused.

The third provision effectively gives free range to the doctor's whim and invites him to play 'God' (and not any God who I'd want to know) with people's lives in a way that's inconsistent with civilization in the 21st Century. I can't think of even one contingency in which this provision would be necessary for a beneficial purpose, and can't understand the mentality of those who allowed it into this legislation.

If a person is judged by a doctor to be having delusions, so what? Free choice is a basic human right, as long as it's not negatively and seriously impinging upon other people, and it's a fundamental right of ours that we be allowed our own, even deluded, perceptions of reality.

Indeed, I know from my own perspective, being enlightened, that ALL psychiatric doctors are deluded, so who is going to 'section' and hospitalize all of them so that they can be supposedly cured of their delusions (against their will)? Similarly, having emotional issues and at times instabilities is the normal human condition and isn't cause to imprison people in a hospital or anywhere else, except if they become a danger to others or possibly to themselves.

In my own case there was nothing that showed me to be a danger to myself*, let alone to the community, and so even my having behaved strangely and appeared to get agitated when the nurses were preventing me from leaving was no justification for my being held at all — if we set aside the weasel words of that third provision in Section 2.

Indeed, the nurses and doctors at Wonford House had much evidence that I was a significantly beneficial person in the community, though the nurses there sought to prevent me from being overtly beneficial to any of the patients and so I had to be sparing and discreet about that — I gave a minimal overt hands-on 'healing' to a mere four of the patients while I was there, though quite possibly my own relative openness, freedom and positive 'energy' was having some small degree of healing effect on pretty well everyone who I encountered there, and my overall outlook would have been something of a 'brightener' for the whole setup there.

The community lost out considerably through a hospital incarcerating me like that — except in that by doing so the hospital gave me the ammunition to enable me to formulate a public message that I'd been wanting to put out for a long time but previously hadn't had the basis of experience upon which I could usefully do so.

There was a new Mental Health Act in 2007, which came into effect in 2008, which was something of an amendment to the seriously deficient 1983 Act. Unfortunately the new Act hasn't changed anything for the better and has actually extended the possibilities of completely harmless individuals having their basic human rights violated and to have incarceration and/or seriously harmful 'treatments' enforced upon them, supposedly for the sake of 'improved public safety'.

It's thus distinctly easier than before for 'political' considerations to determine whether a person is deprived of their basic rights and made a captive of the mental healthcare system and systematically harmed and even wrecked by it (ECT, for starters, is a wrecker) — and I'm really thankful that I'm very unlikely indeed nowadays (2011 and beyond) to have further cause to attract the attention of the mental healthcare services in any 'serious' way through any problems of mine.

A warning to psychics, 'healers', spiritual teachers and 'lightworkers' in the UK

Your ungrounded, astral / garbage sourced 'energy' awareness and supposedly 'higher' perceptions* will get you labelled as having at least the schizotype personality disorder if you cross paths with a psychiatrist or psychiatric doctor. If you allow yourself for any reason to become a hospital patient for a non-physical issue, not only the manifestations of your ungroundedness but also your special and positive qualities will most likely be noticed and will be seen as at least possible disorders and quite possibly be used as reason to 'section' you — or at least used as 'contributory evidence' for that purpose.

It would then be quite a struggle for you to get out — and possibly all the more so since the 2007 Act came into effect. Theoretically some doctors could even force 'treatment' upon you for your supposed disorder(s), this sanctioned by Section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and more extensively by the 2007 Act. That treatment would include mind-affecting drugs but also could include the downright destructive ECT. None of those treatments would assist you in any way to get more grounded, and most would actually further weaken your grounding, as well as causing other problems very long term — for example, many psychiatric medications actually cause people to start experiencing hells (which include 'night terror' experiences).*

For ALL those people, their pressing need is NOT to get pointed at all in the psychiatry direction, NOR to continue as they are, but to sort themselves out, properly at last, which they cannot do through their own garbage-sourced methods, but can do by application of the methodology that is presented on this very site. The best starting page for them ALL is Crisis emergency self-help — Life upturn the SMART way, regardless of whether any of them consider themselves to be in crisis.

The power hierarchy in hospitals needs a radical overhaul

One highly problematical thing that showed up again and again during my stay at Wonford House was that doctors were regarded by the whole system as superior and not to be questioned by other than fellow doctors. Because the whole system works that way, it's not fair to criticize the doctors very strongly for their commonly supercilious and 'unquestionable' attitudes when the system within which they work actually encourages them to work that way.

That's a crass setup, because nursing staff are the ones who best know the patients and indeed have masses of practical experience, and they should be not only free to but required to speak 'straight' to doctors at all times, constructively calling into question the doctors' views about particular patients and even telling them directly and openly when they're clearly wrong. And of course conversely, doctors should be required to ask for the views of nurses and to take their views fully into account in making their decisions.

This is particularly true in psychiatric hospitals, where doctors are renowned for their lack of healing knowledge or ability, and patients' issues are by and large understood better by the nurses than the doctors — well, this latter point appears to be true if my own experience and pretty well everything I've heard from others on the subject has been anything to go by.

Heal thyself first!

I've already covered this here. This is crucial for all people in caring professions and activities.

A person doesn't warrant an 'ill' or 'disordered' label just because he hears voices!

You wouldn't seriously call a person mentally ill just because she has troublesome neighbours or is being bullied at school, or has a rather infuriating time of it with that confounded supermarket auto-checkout repeating its mantra Unexpected item in bagging area! Remove the item before continuing! — so it similarly makes no sense to call a person ill or label them with a personality disorder just because they have a troublesome external non-physical influence interfering with them and causing them trouble.

Of course the tormenting garbage, like a school bully or troublesome neighbours, may readily make a person highly emotionally stressed or indeed ill (i.e., physically), but its presence itself isn't an illness but a troublesome situation that needs resolving and not hiding with medication or ECT.

Please see 'Hearing voices': How to stop them — the REAL self-help way!.

Give precedence to getting patients out, not keeping them in!

That's common sense that is generally applied in non-psychiatric hospitals, but, if my own experience was anything to go by on that particular occasion, it isn't always applied in psychiatric establishments, and I think the above Heal thyself first point applies. Care workers and institutions need to learn not to hold onto patients and to have a detached viewpoint from which they can rejoice in having worked themselves out of a job with regard to each successive patient. Giving precedence to keeping patients in is a sure sign of a failing system.

However, I don't in any way mean that people should be simply parcelled out of hospital as soon as possible and 'dumped'. The real problem is this compulsory element, and the real need to treat 'patients' on a much more equal footing in arriving at any care plan, including duration of hospitalization, and any follow-up programme.

About the consultant who dealt with me

With good reason I pillory the consultant and ward doctor in this account of mine — although I don't mean it in a personal way. However, it was brought to my notice that Andrew Blewett is highly regarded and praised by the nurses and indeed a fair proportion of the patients for his open-mindedness and flexibility as compared with many other psychiatric consultants, about whom I've heard a variety of horror stories (unfortunately presumably true ones).

Indeed, much more recently I found his Facebook profile, and it's clear from that that indeed he is indeed a really genuine and decent guy, and has significant active nature and environment interest. That doesn't altogether surprise me, because when working within a rotten system, many a really decent and 'human' person may come across as rigid and not-all-that-human in their workplace just because of the constraints imposed upon that worker by the unsoundly-based framework within which (s)he is having to work.

I should say, however, that my impression of the particular ward doctor wasn't at all so favourable. There was something a bit 'twisted' and 'not right' about him, and I wouldn't want to be dealing with anyone like him in any area of my life — whereas I can easily imagine the consultant as being a personal friend of mine (i.e., outside any 'patient-consultant/doctor' relationship).

These positive observations on the particular consultant in no way detract from my own observations, but rather, are an implication of the absolutely horrendous attitude of many psychiatric doctors and consultants, who should never have been allowed to practise as any sort of doctor or care worker until they'd got themselves properly sorted out and learnt true healing methods. Sorry, but true!

I should also draw attention to the pretty obvious point, that at least most of the positive views of the particular consultant would have been based on the various people's own ignorance of what their real needs were, and of the extent to which the consultant, along with the whole 'mental health' setup, was actually seriously failing them. Again I point to How all psychiatrists could begin genuinely to help their clients, which explains that point in depth.

Psychiatry urgently needs replacing with training in self-actualization — the only proper, comprehensive healing

Renaming psychiatry to the nicer-sounding 'mental health' would be only a cosmetic change, so let's dismiss that right now. There is only one genuine type of mental health, and that is genuine self-actualization.

The fact is that (as far as one could ever tell) each of us is a whole consciousness and not simply a body with a mind. So, separating 'mind' off for treatment is straight-away problematical, just as is separating off the body for purely physical treatments. We can't effectively address 'mental problems' without looking at the whole, consciousness-based, being and what is going on for it.

The vast majority of issues or 'conditions' that are presented by patients in psychiatric work have two basic healing requirements, which don't need a psychiatrist, psychologist, or indeed a professional care worker at all. One of them is to get themselves and particularly their awareness better grounded.

The other is to clear old emotional traumas that they're carrying (no matter whether the traumas truly belong to them or belong to parasitic lost souls that are attached to them, or/and are being drawn from particular archetypes). In Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way I point to a range of methods that are effective for speedy and painless clearance of emotional issues and traumas, and also for getting better grounded.

Particularly effective in mental healthcare establishments would be The Work (especially for using guided inquiry during counselling sessions) and Self-Power Walking and Grounding Point. Both of the latter two practices (described in Some potent self-actualization / healing practices) would fit in extremely well, with groups or individuals who were willing to give them a try being guided through doing the practices so that they could learn to continue regular use of those practices for ongoing self-healing once back at home.

In fact ALL of us (including all the doctors and nurses) to varying degrees have that need for clearance of emotional issues, and if that need were fully met there would be virtually nothing left to recognise as mental illness — and we would all be functioning in spectacularly better and more wonderful ways than are evident at the moment even for people who were apparently 100% healthy and 'doing fine'.

Going hand in hand with emotional release, we need some form of healing through genuine self-actualization, which addresses properly the whole being (including all non-physical levels and aspects) and enables us to manifest our deepest and fullest natures. Such self-actualization work, when used effectively, can bypass any need to use dedicated emotional clearance methods*.

How are patients in psychiatric units 'treated' at the moment? — By seeking to suppress what are seen as symptoms, that's how. That's like claiming to be healing people who have chest pains by just giving them painkillers, with no attempt to find out what was causing the pain. So, mind-numbing drugs are used and even, appallingly, still ECT. The latter isn't just unhelpful but is downright destructive, for it disrupts memory connections in the brain and thus prevents the recipient from ever being able to fully release and resolve old emotional traumas in the current lifetime — just for the sake of a little immediate superficial comfort.

That's not what true healing is about. ECT helps ensure that the person can never open up properly to the happier and more abundant mode of living that had been ready to open out as old traumas were cleared. ECT is also immensely harmful to the victim's non-physical aspects ('energy system' in New Age type parlance), and thus is bound to cause a whole plethora of harmful physical, mental and emotional effects that gradually 'filter through' from the person's 'subtle' aspects over the years and decades — these effects then never being recognised by the medical profession as having resulted from the much earlier and seemingly unconnected ECT, and indeed generally then being put down to that person's general ageing process.

Emotional release is seen as an undesirable symptom instead of the most essential natural healing process that it truly is. And as though that's not enough, psychiatry labels people's special and positive qualities as disorders and therefore sees them as something that needs 'treating'*. The aim is simply to reduce a patient's subjective experience of emotional discomfort and also to reduce or eliminate anything unorthodox and challenging about them, and not to acknowledge and resolve the cause of their emotional discomfort and manifest their deeper, more abundant selves as would happen in proper, holistic healing.

Psychiatry doesn't heal people; if anything it makes them worse, even if they subjectively think they've got better. Psychiatrists don't recognise nor understand the true nature of a human being and so they have no model nor direction (apart from a notion of 'normality' based on a normal set of human malfunctions and a normal degree of unawareness) upon which they can base their treatment methodology.

The only true healing is that of allowing and enabling people to become complete — i.e., self-actualized. By contrast, what psychiatry seeks to do is to try to help people to be 'normal' and free of recognised 'disorders' (many of which, as I've noted, are actually their special and positive qualities, even if they're manifesting in more or less distorted form), and all this means pointing towards an unchallenging mediocrity, which is actually a highly dysfunctional state. A complete and fully functioning human is still an extreme rarity and is thus most certainly greatly abnormal.

True healing therefore points us to our unique and intrinsic abnormality! Or, better expressed, it points us to our vibrantly positive uniqueness. In true healing, pointing towards a dull mediocrity or towards 'normality' — or indeed returning to how one was before — isn't a genuinely sane option.

Am I claiming, then, that under no circumstances should any symptom-suppressant or behaviour-quietening measures be used?

No, because the reality of the situation is that at the present time virtually nobody has the understanding or ability to handle a fair proportion of people who are perceived as having 'mental health' issues, and for these people only, it's only common sense to use what minimum means are necessary to quieten them so that the appropriate support / care workers can assist them, and indeed so that they aren't a menace to other people.

But such measures should be seen as only last-resort emergency or 'panic' measures — temporary measures of expediency — and not in themselves part of any healing plan or methodology, and should never be used for the prime purpose of making a person more comfortable for the purpose of avoiding addressing the underlying issues.

In 2018 I finally produced a long-overdue dedicated web page covering the whole issue of the need to replace psychiatry: How all psychiatrists could begin genuinely to help their clients.

…And now a question

There's one pertinent matter that I never clarified during my incarceration. I'd like to restore the balance now and ask. Would some nice friendly psychiatrist please tell me what expression is used by psychiatrists for the mental condition — which one might of course describe as a 'special quality' — that makes people become psychiatrists?

Postscript — one place where the labels do stick, even for me

There's one potentially problematical end result of having been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, whether as a voluntary patient or as a prisoner under the provisions of 'mental health' legislation. The person then has in his medical record some basic details of that hospitalization and the diagnoses that were given by the hospital doctors, and these aren't allowed to be deleted from a person's record even though they may be completely wrong and the person may have had no true 'mental health' problem beyond what we would regard as everyday life issues.

You can thus be stigmatized and potentially have problems with getting jobs with employers, or insurance firms that want to know if there are any 'mental health' issues in your medical record. This might not seem so bad if the diagnoses given actually meant something useful, but, as I've shown in my above account of my own experiences and indeed will further indicate below, the diagnoses of psychiatric doctors aren't worth the paper they're written on.

A few weeks after my release I visited my regular doctor and checked out what was on my medical record. There were indeed, included in my computerized record, scanned copies of the letters sent to my doctor upon my admission and upon my release from the hospital. The admission letter referred to my 'having delusions' and the release letter gave a diagnosis that I was of a mildly schizotypal personality with some degree of hypermania.

My own doctor (GP) who I saw was a much more open-minded person than most GPs were until quite recently, and there seems to be quite a shift occurring now in general practice towards a broader and relatively more holistic understanding of health issues (though still with a long way to go!). He had little doubt that I was talking sense when I told him about the psychiatric diagnoses being rubbish, as he'd always appreciated and respected my 'aliveness' and self-command, which made his job so much easier with me and gave him a positive experience in my rare consultations with him.

He inserted an appropriate note in my record to the effect that I'd really been okay and the diagnoses were not a correct indication of my state — but he told me that nobody was allowed actually to delete the record of the hospitalization, including the letters of admission and discharge.

That's probably no problem for me, because I'm old enough now that I shan't be looking for jobs and there's unlikely to be cause for anyone now to be asking of me pointed questions about my medical history. But for very many other people such a situation would be serious.

Even with a contradicting note from a more understanding GP after the event, the fact of having such a hospitalization and crass and completely pointless diagnoses of alleged psychiatric disorders on one's medical record could result in one's losing many job opportunities and also having problems in gaining certain types of insurance — even though the supposed diagnoses would simply be labels that had been given to normal or indeed often highly positive qualities or states of mind. Let's remember that almost everybody and certainly all psychiatrists and other doctors have emotional ('mental health') issues themselves whether or not these are recognised as such.

In my case it was wearily predictable that the most unorthodox situation that had got me admitted to the hospital in the first place would get described as 'having delusions', for that was one of the 'Pavlovian triggers' of the blessed psychiatric doctors, and once they'd attached that label, then they felt that there was a disorder that was available to 'treat'. But actually, a delusion is a belief about some aspect of reality that's held onto but isn't correct. So, to what extent was I actually holding onto any such incorrect belief about an aspect of reality?

We need to consider where the dividing line lies between (a) being mistaken or misled and (b) being deluded. Surely, if you're merely mistaken or misled, when you get further, contradicting, information you consider it and are prepared to let go of the mistaken notion if the evidence balances up the other way. On the other hand, if you hold onto a belief in your mistaken notion and persistently reject whatever contradicts it, then and only then can the word 'delusion' become appropriate.

In my own case, it must be very apparent from the earlier part of this account, that I was exceptionally open-minded and ready to let go of perceptions and notions that were put to me — whether from the physical world, non-physical aspects of reality or from apparently within my own mind. Indeed, I was holding no beliefs to start with — just working with the best available interpretations of data that I received. Also, it should have been very apparent to all concerned that I was dealing with issues that were outside the limited belief system and view of 'reality' that the psychiatric doctors had.

Instead of recognising that fact, the doctors tried to interpret my own situation and state of mind in relation to their non-understanding. A truly honest person knows when to both recognise within and say openly that This is beyond my understanding. The world doesn't fall apart when we make such admissions. When we do make such admissions we've straight-away opened the door to the possibility of genuinely gaining that understanding.

One greatly important thing that the psychiatric doctors didn't understand was that for anyone the whole of life experience is built up on what we could call delusion. An enlightened person has a viewpoint that's outside delusion, and yet can also experience the illusions that make up the life experience — even while simultaneously being out of delusion altogether, because he isn't attached to his illusions as an objective portrayal of 'reality'. In other words, what can be seen as a delusion for a non-enlightened person is merely an illusion for an enlightened person. Meanwhile a psychiatric doctor neither knows nor sees any of that and so remains wrapped up in his own delusions.

THAT is the fundamental absurdity of a psychiatric doctor referring to another person as having delusions — and this is all the more bizarre when that other person is an enlightened one and knows many things that the doctor could usefully learn from him!

I've already considered the nonsense about the term 'schizotype' to describe anyone who has a degree of non-physical perception, healing ability and a sense of some underlying purpose in their lives, but what about this 'hypermania' that was referred to?

What is that 'hypermania' diagnosis really telling us? I can tell you one thing straight off — they were frightened of me! They were frightened of me because they found themselves facing a human who was unbowed and uncowed by their wielding of personal power over their 'patients'. After the first two days (a little experiment of mine) I was clear of and unsullied by the drugs they use, which so helpfully keep inmates dull and submissive, and I had about me a vibrancy and self-esteem that they knew inwardly was an implicit challenge to their whole psychiatric career.

So, that 'hypermania' label that they put in my record was, for the most part*, just their relative perception in defensiveness, out of their own fears of my own healthy energy as what I regarded then as an enlightened mystic** and healer.

One confusion that these doctors were prey to was their association of a person's having a lot of vibrant energy with one's being in a state of great tension or even agitation. What they couldn't bring themselves to recognise was that throughout my stay at that hospital — even when I was acting agitated on that one early occasion for a specific reason — I was generally remarkably relaxed and peaceful with all that energy. That's one of the great hallmarks of a person who is enlightened, and who also has thoroughly assimilated the Alexander Technique into his modus operandi.

To summarize, then.

In this postscript I've shown yet another iniquitous absurdity and harmful consequence that arises from a person being admitted into a psychiatric hospital. I look forward to the time when more aware general practitioners throw back those letters from psychiatric hospitals about their patients, saying something like What the hell do you think you're doing, saying things like that about my patient, who you evidently know worse than nothing about! — and of course, even more importantly, not referring patients at all to psychiatric services in the first place but instead pointing them to actual self-healing / self-actualization methodology.

Continued in Part 2…