5ce58698   
   XPost: alt.society.mental-health, alt.support.schizophrenia, sci   
   psychology.psychotherapy   
   XPost: bionet.neuroscience   
   From: dalton@nfld.com   
      
   Here is an excerpt from my Salmon on the Thorns web page:   
      
   Shamanic call: Sun stare, naked thorn hill climb, blue rose vision   
      
   I have retitled this as Sun Stare to avoid conflict with native groups who   
   believe that my experience was not a sundance and/or the term sundance is   
   exclusively native.   
      
   Now I will get to my September, 1991 mystic sun stare/thorn climb/blue rose   
   vision first manic episode, at the age of 27.5, or 2.5 solar cycles, 2-7 days   
   before new moon, with onset 2-3 days after an M-class solar flare. I'll   
   subdivide this page later, or add more navigational jumps. It is written in a   
   rather dry prosaic first person style which might put people off more than a   
   third person account or mystic poem/story laden with glorious symbolic   
   imagery would, but some like facts.   
      
   In early August of 1991 I was back in Newfoundland, and experienced a stellar   
   folk festival, including the last time I heard Newfoundland fiddler Emile   
   Benoit (last album was Vive la Rose, named after a Belgian folk song) live. I   
   think he used to swirl the chi at concerts as well as I do or better, since   
   on one occasion when Figgy Duff was on stage I felt something and turned   
   around and there he was dancing. I thought of his music while on the thorns   
   (later).   
      
   Not long after I returned to Vancouver I and some friends caught an amazing   
   near-sunset outdoor concert from Sarah McLachlan, at the PNE bowl, Aug. 28,   
   1991. During her set a formation of dark birds wheeled by in the background,   
   reminding me (now) of some "mermaids" (humpback whales) I had heard on the   
   Southern Avalon in the summer of 1983, also backed by birds and a mystic   
   sunset. Anyway, Sarah's voice flowed through me like a river, leaving me   
   buoyed up later, but not hypomanic yet.   
      
   That week I was busy planning orientation activities for the UBC grad student   
   centre, including a big concert with celtic rock band The Stoaters, plus   
   hoping to have some geophysics Ph.D. thesis work ready to show my supervisor.   
   This stress and associated sleep deprivation also contributed to the   
   intensity of the mystic manic episode, later.   
      
   Then on the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 31, 1991, I walked down the hill to   
   deliver a deposit cheque for my fall Iyengar yoga class to my new teacher,   
   Gioia Irwin, who I had not met before except by phone. When I met her it   
   seemed as though there was an energy about her (not visual), a lightness, and   
   this transferred to me --- after I gave her the cheque I bounced up the hill.   
   This I have come to realize was a proximity-induced raising of kundalini, or   
   shaktipat, though in some cases it is more sudden, and can even manifest like   
   an epileptic seizure. In this case it was one of many factors (including   
   music) and was gradual. But it is well known in the Kundalini literature that   
   such shaktipat awakening of Kundalini can trigger or be equivalent to a manic   
   attack. I wonder if some of other such cases still living have cycles similar   
   to mine, most bipolars do not.   
      
   In the evening of Aug. 31, 1991, there was a crack or two of clear sky   
   lightning, just after sunset. Such flashes have occurred at the start of two   
   later waning crescent hypomanic episodes as well. One morning of that week,   
   about Sept. 3, there was another flash through my curtains, but that was   
   probably a reflection of sunlight off moving glass. I postulate that clear   
   sky lightning flashes result from ionospheric activity 2 to 3 days after an   
   M-class or larger solar flare.   
      
   That evening (Aug. 31) I had an excellent seafood meal at a Greek restaurant   
   and then dragged some friends to a multi-media performance concert at the   
   Pitt International Gallery. This had art on the walls, performance poetry,   
   improvisational jazz, and two rock bands: Zza Zza &  the Angels (or Limos?)   
   and Rockaway Revue, to whom I did some ecstatic sweaty dancing to 3 a.m. This   
   creative stuff and dancing was another factor in the manic trigger.   
      
   After the multi-media performance art/rock show, I went home and took a   
   shower and then, in the early hours of Sept. 1/91, a shower of ideas began.   
   At first all were good and related to my grad centre orientation plans, but   
   then after a day or two I was trying to write down too much and implement too   
   much for that year by myself. The ideas expanded in circles to healing   
   problems with the campus and then to establishing a grad student run think   
   tank to solve many of the problems with society. I put some of this in a   
   slightly garbled memo to the university deans and president, and after that   
   my supervisor talked me into setting a psychiatrist's appointment for Friday   
   September 6.   
      
   As it turned out, not all my ideas that week (Sept. 1--5) were bad; my   
   concert organization resulted in the most successful event in the history of   
   the UBC grad student society, on Sept. 13, but I missed it since by that time   
   I was in hospital.   
      
   Then on the late morning of Thursday, September, 5, 1991 I awoke refreshed   
   and feeling that all was right with the world, that a new age was at hand;   
   that all the people who were in for "20 years of boredom" (to quote Leonard   
   Cohen) were coming back, and that there would be a meeting at Vancouver's   
   nude Wreck Beach of lots of hippies/celts/pagans/new-agers/gypsies/etc later   
   that day.   
      
   That day I saw beautiful linkages in all my music and books, and left them   
   strewn around the apartment. I played stuff such as John Lennon's Instant   
   Karma/Give Peace a Chance/All we are Saying from the Shaved Fish LP. I put on   
   every button I owned, then decided they looked too gaudy and took them off. I   
   then left my watch/keys/wallet there, left my apartment door wide open (and   
   at the time the building front door was unlocked) and an incredibly long   
   orientation week event listing on my GE answering machine, and then walked   
   off towards Wreck Beach.   
      
   I walked east on W.4th, then through Jericho Beach (folk festival site), then   
   Locarno/Spanis Banks East/Spanish Banks West and towards Tower Beach, a few   
   hours before sunset. But I didn't make it to the (watch)Tower Beach, let   
   alone Wreck Beach.   
      
   Sun stare: A few hundred meters east of the first tower I began gradually   
   stripping off as I proceded forward. First went my nice Banff centre   
   sweatshirt, then brand new runners and socks, then my sweatpants, then   
   finally about a hundred meters east of the first tower (around the bend so   
   the tower is not visible, I think), I dropped my few-month old red glasses in   
   the shallow water to be completely naked (well outside the nude beach area)   
   and with out of focus vision of anything more than a few inches away. During   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)