We are all one!

In throwing myself into an exploration of psychosis I am challenging demons that persist to hang over me. I am searching for an illusive key. My sense of picking up this baton feels heavy and formidable, but I  have a sense that if I don’t begin to travel this road it will simply continue in a cycle that will carry on driving me mad.

We are all one! In certain frames of mind this spiritual observation, which permeates a myriad of beliefs from across the ages, seems incontrovertible. Yet to take it on board as a principle guiding force in life, is without doubt, potentially dangerous and damaging. It can lead to a frame of mind where the ego finds it impossible to discriminate. In a very real sense the dissolving of the ego leads to an inability to determine where the subject ends and the other begins.

In contemplating my experience of that place I feel a dichotomy between a sense of an extreme peace and an extreme fear that leads to psychosis. To enter that frame is to go beyond time and the linear sense of day-to-day life and to find a point in which the cyclical nature of everything is within grasp. But with that comes a sensitivity and a vulnerability that strikes at the core of the self.

The following poem refers to an experience of being ‘saved’ by an ancient Oak tree in a park in London N17 in the 1980s. Trees can seem to know so much more than people. Sometimes it’s easier to feel ‘one’, to feel ‘connected’ with a tree than it is to be able to communicate with another human being – especially in that fragile space of dissolution.

The Meaning of Psychosis
© First published in ‘100 Houses’ May 2011

Falling into that hill;
where earth, sun,
moon and stars connect.
Rhyming Thomas calls
and you want to go there
where eyes that don’t see
peep through shadows
of ancient markings
spelling traces of
a memory of a House
older than God’s.

Falling into that time before
dog-bound and
cradle-snatched
you imagine a knowledge
intuitive and broad; hear
ancestors reading
the flight of Herring Gulls
the mood of Crows or the
alighting of a Robin
on midnight’s tree.

Falling into that yearning
to see again
the first splitting cell
re-enacting its magic
below the surface
of a living landscape.
Oaks that speak
as family when
the human machine
binds our soul-laces to
the gate of the relentless
mundane.

Falling once more
beyond the filter
that holds one moment
to the next. We become
as fish in the grass,
seeking to forgive
moon its monstrous
children; whispers
louder than dust when
thought and fact collide

100 Houses is available from Amazon – price £5

About Knitting Time: art and poetry on life and mental health

This blog came out of a project partnering with Outside In and Waterloo Press back in 2013. My illustrated poetry collection 'Knitting Time' was published and illustrations from the book were exhibited at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex, alongside a series of workshops reflecting on themes around grief. I have continued blogging sporadically about my arts practice since then. If you feel motivated to comment via email you can contact me via colinetto [at] gmail.com
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1 Response to We are all one!

  1. Jonathan R. Swart says:

    We are 1 in the sense that time does & will always leave us behind in the blanket of comprehensive misery that is natural and without any mainframe for conducting cerebration but the human element that in its most basic form is incomprehensive due to ill management of conditions. Humanity becoming conditioned to copy cat conditioning that is ultimately phrased in negative conditions. Like Capitalism, socialism too cannot stand outside the conditioning imperatives that keep us subject to fears that jade the individuals experience with negative and positive conditions that it is forced to choose between. Why we call ourselves free to choose. In the illusion of existence is the mainframe working for and on behalf of individual creators. The key quality to keep from empty conditioning is the right of passage through the fullness of space and time, where the slate of mental wealth is all we have to spend, and time is ours to condition with our individual percept strings. So we come in time to enjoy one anothers creative endeavours and find strength to face up to our demons, engage in our own particular psychosis and penultimately face up to life, and in so doing. Get on with the living!!!!!! What, and this without any conditions but our own. Happiness is a new world union.

    Be hopeful! 🙂

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