Buy the whole book The Shadowed Soul with a chapter on how I’ve overcome ADHD, Dyslexia, Suicidal Depression, PSTD and Anxiety, Schizophrenia and Bipolar, Epilepsy and Autism, Brain Damage and Digital Dementia and the Retardation of Thoughts in the link below:
Chapter 2: A GLIMMER OF HOPE
Going in and out of the rooms of recovery, from meeting to meeting, and treatment center to treatment center, without staying sober was the way my life was for a long time. I just had no ability to surrender. I had no ability, just like most of us, to see what I was truly thinking in anyway. It was interesting because the one thing I always did was walk back into the rooms of recovery, and I truly hated anything to do with God because of being locked up in that detentionary boarding school where I wrote all this poetry, I open the book with.
The one thing I could never give my life up to was God. I was locked up in a Discovery Academy, in the middle of Provo Utah, for three years. Discovery Academy was a one-year program which was meant for trouble privileged kids who came from disfunction, and none of their parent knew what to do with them. The only thing they did constantly was try and convert all of us to the Mormon way of life, and none of the kids came from a Mormon family except one. She was a daughter of one of the teachers who taught there.
They tried as hard as they could to convert all of us to see “their light.” The fundamentalist in Utah only achieve one thing with all the kids there except one: David Jones. We all picked on him and called him Jesus Jones the whole time he was there. The Mormons got us all to hate God, or anything to do with God, with all our passions in our hearts. I showed how they made me feel about God in the poem Let Me Be. The only thing that school really made me was angrier than I already was, and worse than I already was in every single way. I was abused hard, and at the school I only perfected my Oppositional Defiance Disorder with their fundamentalist guidance.
Oppositional Defiance Disorder is a disorder kids with autism and severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, are known to get, which means anyone, in any authority situation whatsoever, they would stand up too! That place made my life so much worse than already I was then before I was sent there. I was sent to Discovery Academy because the first psych-ward I was locked up in, for signs of suicidal tendencies, let me go without any recommendations. My mother did not know what to do with me, so she found this Hell Hole in the middle of Provo Utah.
Today I see my mother had no choice, so I do not resent her in any way for it, or anything I went through as a child. If it wasn’t for my mother, I doubt I would have the capacity to be as loving a person as I can be. I was just an extremely sensitive person, who still too this day takes everything personally, and was abused by my father. I was completely out of control when I was a little kid, but because of Discovery Academy, and the fundamentalists that tried to force their way of life on us all, my biggest problem, when it came to the circles of recovery, was God! For years after I left that place whenever I heard the word “God” anger was the only emotion I would express!
One night I was at an old Episcopal Church at Bush and Gough in San Francisco right before a meeting and I just said the words to myself: “I don’t know?” It was interesting because I had never really said those words about too much of anything before. I thought about it right as I said it, and at that moment those words, “I don’t know?” became my Higher Power. To say I did not know was the beginning of a true solution because once I said those words, I started to stay sober. I had a professor, who was had a PHD in theology at SFSU, years later tell me my definition of God is very Socratic. It has been interesting to me that since opening my mind with those words, I have found my God in the Ancient world both Greece and India.
I did a lot of soul searching in the rooms of recovery, and finally got sober after trying for 8 years without much success, but I had a dream of doing more. I had a dream of getting off SSDI. I hated government assistance. I wanted to be somebody, not just an empty soul powerless under the hands of society who was not able to have a life because anyone with that limited income has a hard time living life to the fullest in America. I knew if I was going to amount to anything, I would need to be able to go to school, and if I went to school, I had to be able to read. All the kids I have talked to on Facebook, or in person, that went to Discovery Academy were traumatized by Discovery Academy, and most couldn’t even read when they “Graduated” that high school, which we all did, unless we were sent somewhere worse. I was able to graduate from Discovery Academy High School with a third-grade reading level just like every other kid that was sent there.
It was only by pushing myself to read as much as I could, every day, with a lot of literature I could not even comprehend, that got me into college. With all of my learning disabilities, it was not just about understanding the words and the phonics but comprehending what was on the page too. My ADHD was more difficult than my dyslexia in my opinion, because once I could sound out the words, I still had a harder time focusing on the page and absorbing the content I was reading. None of the ADHD medications worked for me whatsoever, so I just had to continue to try as hard as I could to be able to understand what I was reading. It was crazy because I would be reading a book and not even be aware that I was not paying attention to the words. I’d be reading and a word would trigger a different thought, so I would be thinking of something completely different than what I was reading. I would just wake up somewhere else in the book on a different page and realize I could not comprehend anything I was reading. I was not even be able to remember, or processes, much of what was on the page. With all of this I just pushed ahead and read as much as I possibly could every day. I read 100 pages of Immanual Kant one day when I first began reading, and the only thing I really got out of the book was the Latin phrase a priori, which just means: before the fact.
When I beginning to read daily, I found a great book: Greek Thought, and the Origins of the Scientific Sprit, by Leon Robin. I loved the way this book was written because I could comprehend phrases, and snippets of literature that were just a couple of sentences, which sounded poetically beautiful. Poetic beauty was what Leon Robin took from the Ancient Greek philosophers. It was so creative and well-constructed. It is an older book, so the style is much different than the modern literature, but those are the authors I tend to like the most because the philosophy of the older literature is poetic.
This book has turned out to be my favorite book. I have read it many times, and even spending time committing pages of it to memory because I loved it so much. The Section on Heraclitus the most! It is this book that got me to memorize quotes and phrases from other books as well. Because of this book I love to find creative aphorism within them and commit them to memory, and then share them with other people when I am giving a speech at the toastmasters, a radio show, or speaking for college professors. It was also this book that inspired me to go from an accounting major to a philosophy major.
There is a line in this book which spoke to me more than any other. Robin says how Plotinus, the first of the Neoplatonists, wrote, “After rising from the Ego to the One, I now find the Ego once more, and in that Ego the Infinite One if I wish, but if I turn from it to determine my own domain and give myself the illusion of independence, then I become only a part, isolated from the Whole and am truly reduced to slavery.” It sounded so cool when I read it, and it took me a little while to truly understand all of it, but what that saying means is: I go from myself up to God, and in myself I find God, and God finds Himself in me. I am One and identical with God if I have the clarity to see who I truly am and depend on God completely, but if I turn away from God, to get some type of self-independence, which I might think would make me special and unique, then I have done the wrong thing. Breaking away from God makes it that I have lost who I truly am. Because when I take myself as any different, unique, or independent from God, instead of being One with God, and relying on God completely, is where all my troubles lie. Relying on God completely is what I am meant to learn how to do in this lifetime. Being true and special is to be One with God and taking God and Everything! To be One with God, is to be a God, which is identity-in-difference. The Neoplatonists were qualified-nondualists, AKA identity-in-difference, and Neoplatonists and Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, which are my spiritual practices today, have lots in common. They both came to a lot of the same conclusions and are qualified non-dualist, or identity-in-difference. Vedanta is just a religion practiced in the modern day of India, but what they practice is: we are all One with God and God is Everything.
It was those words which spoke to me so clearly. Even when I did not completely comprehend them, they just sounded so beautiful and pulled me right in. What these creative words did for me was make me want to seek the truth! Even when I did not understand them completely, I enjoyed spending my time doing my best to figure them out. I just got a mystical feeling form them, and they pulled me in. It was this mystical feeling which made me do research on Neoplatonism. It was that research that made me a Neoplatonist and convinced me Plato was my prophet in the West. Especially because so many of the conclusions I came to on my own were already in the Platonic and Neoplatonic texts. This goes with Plato saying how the soul has always existed; therefore, the soul has already seen everything: Anamnesis, which are numerical truths exist within us all.
If any of us want the answers to anything, just look within. Not just Anamnesis but Platonic Forms, which are the truths, that everything in an image of in this empirical universe, are within us all. This is why we are all fallen Gods trapped in human flesh. All the research I have done has shown me this because I am always coming across other’s writing which reveals others have already come to my conclusions as well. My conclusions, which I thought were original, have already been revealed by all the other souls in history. These revelations are just universal truths within all of us. These are the platonic concepts of Forms and Anamnesis.
Because I was reading so much, once I got an iPhone, I always went to iBook’s in order to download more books. They had a lot of books with expired copy writes for free there. This is where I found the book An Essay on the Beautiful, by Plotinus, which has been translated by Thomas Taylor and John M. Watkins.
There was also another book I read in my English 1B class at the Community College of San Francisco, which had to be the best fiction book of the 20th Century in my opinion. That book was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This book spoke to me clearly as well, so I related them both to my life, and I saw the truths in myself from a book, which was meant for an African American audience: Invisible Man, and I united it with the Platonic truths in An Essay of the Beautiful. Both these books were protreptic to me.
The etymology of this word in Latin comes from the word protepticus, which means something that is encouraging. In Greek the word would be protreptikos, which comes from another word protrepein. Protrepein in Greek means to turn forward and urge on. Protreptic in English describes an utterance, or a speech, that is designed to instruct and persuade. A moral instruction is what I would call both An Essay on the Beautiful and Invisible Man. It is writers like these, Plotinus and Ralph Ellison, that got me to see my true nature, let go of the past, and continue to strive for the better.
Plotinus teaches that the Soul is innately good, and it is in the search for truth that its goodness is revealed. In Invisible Man, Ellison writes about an African American in the South during segregation who is struggling to find purpose and the goodness within himself. The Invisible Man’s mistake throughout the book is he is in a constant conflict with himself. What he is conflicted about is his self-worth. He constantly tries to get self-worth through the approval of others. I am not African American, but anyone should be able to relate to seeking approval from others. In my chapters on depression, anxiety, psychosis I show how too much of what we all come to think about ourselves, and how we all tend to identify, is what we think others think of us when none of us can even prove others have minds let alone what they are thinking! Sounds quite psychotic when we look at our sense of self in that way, but from what I have seen, everyone cares too much what they think the people they meet in this world think about them. This self-identity and struggle are something all humans go through and is what the ridiculous theory of race is based on, which is the main theme of Invisible Man
The approval from others is what caused most of my problems as a child as well. That is what my Oppositional Defiance Disorder was about. I could not get any positive attention and approval growing up, but I was extremely good at negative attention. Just like everyone else, my adolescent shaped the early years of my adult life.
In the Invisible Man, when the Invisible Man gets to the goal of finding out who he truly is, then he is free and no longer depends upon other people to prove he is a good and worthy person. For a large part of my life, I was in as much fear as the Invisible Man. When I finally was able to have a purpose and self-worth, I was able to let most of the fear in my life go. That fear was what was controlling me, so when I let the fear go, I was able to educate myself and started on the road to a solution and happiness. Letting go of fear, and a self-identity based on the imagination of others, was Invisible Man’s solution as well.
There’s education in the writing of Plotinus too. Plotinus writes, “Thus proceeding in the right way of Beauty he will first ascend into the region of Intellect, contemplating every fair species, the Beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than Ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are offspring and essence of Intellect.” This tells how the soul is innately good, and the way to have that realization is to use the Intellect within us all to access and see that goodness. We use this Intellect to see the answers within us all. This is for everyone. That Beauty Plotinus writes about is God, and everyone at their core is a God in themselves. We are all worthy, and there is a loving purpose for all of us. We just need to look inward to find all the answers.
To be able to see the truth is the main point of anyone’s life in my opinion. The only thing that stands in anyone’s way is their perception. The Beautiful is All and creates All, for this is what Plotinus is stating. “Supervening irradiations,” means to shine our goodness through. Shining our goodness through is the Intellect within ourselves revealing the answers. We are all meant to expose ourselves to the answer; not to expose ourselves to the thoughts of others like I did, and the Invisible Man did, but to looking within and seeing the Intellectual Principle that Plotinus writes about in the Enneads. It is the Intellectual Principle which leads to the One, the Beautiful, and the Good. Those are the only three words which can describe our Maker according to Plato because there are no other words which are just for God. To Plato God is ineffable, so veg words of Perfection is all anyone can say about God! Too Simple and Perfect for words!
It is this search for who he is that makes the mind of the Invisible Man so cloudy at the beginning. In the first chapter he ends with a speech that is quite amazing and ardent. He first gets beaten to the ground, then he picks himself up and puts forth wonderful words that dictate his goals with blood dripping down his neck and in his throat. It starts out, “We of the younger generation extol the wisdom of that great leader and educator.” These words here give the premise for his goal throughout the book. That goal is to seek an education. Like Plotinus he knows it is his Intellect that is the objective of his happiness. Invisible Man is intelligent, and he exposes this in each one of his speeches. His flaw is that he is looking for the approval of people whose disposition is to look down upon him for the color of his skin. He is looking for white men’s approval in the South. This is nothing but insanity because none of them will ever give it to him because he is an African American.
As I stated, I am a white man, but I constantly made the mistake of basing who I was on what others were thinking of me too. I have noticed this because just like Invisible Man, I had a way with words too, yet my gift with words was more about judgement. I could always see what was wrong with people and cut them down, but it was nothing but a sense of inferiority that I was blind to. It was my childhood which encouraged this behavior in me. It was my father, and then it was perfected with the trauma of Discovery Academy, which perfected this skill! This “skill” was nothing but a defense mechanism and was the cause of all of my difficulties in my life for a very long time. This fear of what my family thought, lead to the fear of what the rest of the world thought, especially those kids at Discovery Academy, who were already angry too! That all spun into anger and chaos for years! It was this anger and chaos that got me to try and kill myself me more times than I can count after I graduated from Discovery Academy! This fear and anger got me to get in fights every night for a year straight in San Francisco and I did not even win one! This fear and anger got me to get arrested over and over! This fear and anger got me to use every drug there was! This fear and anger got me in and out of every psych ward in San Francisco more times than I can possibly imagine! It was only to try and find the answers, find out who I truly am, and what I truly “Do Not Know” that got me to the goal of turning my life around. Turning his life around is what Invisible Man does too! But, Invisible Man is seeking approval from everyone which means he is consumed with what others are thinking of him too! This constant seeking of approval leads to all the conflict in Invisible Man’s life. Invisible Man is extremely talented. He has an amazing talent of speech most could never even dream of having, but he puts a limit on himself through needing the recognition of others! It is a limit he puts on himself, just like I did, and just we all do at one time in our lives when it comes to our identity and how we define ourselves! Everywhere in my life I have seen how we all do this to varying degrees. I only know this because I have never met anyone I could not make angry with what I said to them. Lots of these people I did not even know or would never see again! Yet they all cared what I said to them! Why would anyone care what a crazy little angry stranger had to say to them, but one night when I was arrested in a drunk tank, I had everyone in all the other cells screaming at me! Why would the other prisoners care? Why would the cops care? It made no sense to care what a crazy angry drunk person was saying in a different cell, but all of humanity struggles with what we think others think of us because we survive in tribes, groups, cities, and societies! We survive together, so we all struggle with this imaginary identity, and because the Invisible Man is so well written anyone should be able to relate to this struggle of identity if they can put their own ignorance and judgements aside on race and just look at the words of a beautifully written book!
There were always those ones who would scream at me, “I don’t care what you think!” That is when I would tell them: the only ones they are fooling are themselves. If someone does not care what another thinks, there is no need to tell them they do not care because if you tell someone you do not care, you are trying to prove a point, and if you are trying to prove a point you are trying to convince someone else of something. If you are trying to convince someone of something, you obviously care what they think! It’s a defense mechanism to say “I don’t care what you think!” A defense mechanism was my problem too, and so many of our problems no matter what the color of our skin. It was the fact I so desperately did care that had driven me crazy too just like Inviable Man, but it was this fear of people got me to lash out at all the people around me and ruin my life for years!
At the end of Invisible Man’s speech in the first chapter, he accidently utters the word “equality.” This word sends the white people almost into apoplexy, for they are all appalled that a Negro in the South during segregation would be trying to achieve equality. It is this misspoken word that tells what he is truly looking for. To be loved and appreciated and taken to be just as worth as anyone else is the main desire in anyone’s life if they can acknowledge it or not.
I remember being young in grade school, and it was extremely difficult for me. Being a functional illiterate most of my adult life, it was these learning disorders that dominated both my purpose and existence. I remember being asked to read out loud in Holly Trinity, which was the name of my grade school I was at, and all of the terror that came with that. I was terrified because it all seemed so easy to the rest of the class. I felt horrible because the rest of them could seem to read so easily. It was the fear that others could do something that my brain was not permitted to do at the time. It was not that I did not want to learn. I did. I just did not have the ability to comprehend basic words that were on the page in front of me, and none of the teacher new how to help me with my complex brain. I could not process any of the words with my Dyslexia. I could not even sound too many of the words our or comprehend them once I did. I saw all the other kids do it and automatically I felt less than, and one of the words that I longed for in school was this “equality.” Or just belonging. Which is what the Invisible Man wants too. I just wanted this love and acceptance that we are all craving and misunderstanding. This Love of the One which we all truly are!
My father had his Doctorate in Organic Chemistry, and for his only son to be so terrible in school was the shame of the household. My father drilled it into my head how worthless I was because of it. My father abused me severely in lots of ways which is expressed in the poetry I open the book with, and the only thing my father could say to me when I asked him if there was anything he ever regretted about all the abuse was after he had left the house was, “I didn’t make you work harder because where you are in school right now.” With those words I snapped. Those words were the only thoughts he had of me in his mind! Those thoughts of worthlessness turned out to be the thoughts which perpetuated my cycle of insanity for years. The fear of what other people thought of me was what saturated my brain all throughout my early life. Then when I went from that psych-ward to Discovery Academy, my life was chaos for years because of this fear of people! This fear did not end until I used all my intellect to redirect the energy I had into finding a way to get an education. The education I always wanted.
I have always wanted to learn; in fact, I found a lot of things fascinating that most people would probably take as boring, like math and physics. My hero was Einstein as a little kid, for he suffered from dyslexia as well, and some even speculated he was on the autism spectrum like me. Einstein did terrible in school and as a child had a nervous breakdown himself, but Einstein did not let it stop him. Einstein’s brain was even stolen after he died, and it kept at the Mutter Museum, and one of the things it shows is that it is a tiny bit smaller than the average brain, but Einstein went to a special school as a child, and they taught him to read a different way. It was based on picturing images when he read things.
I learned how to read as an adult at the age of 30 at a program called Linda Mood Bell. Linda Mood Bell functions off of picturing what one reads too, just like the how Einstein learned how to read. I would read a paragraph, then tell the tutor exactly what was in my mind. I would do this with as much detail as possible, even picture and describe things that were not in the text. Each paragraph was a different painting, and this was to train one’s brain to comprehend the words on the page.
I am different in lots of ways because of my brain, and one of the ways I am different is I do not think in pictures at all. I only think in words. This is a rare disorder called Aphantasia. This is why what Linda Mood Bell did for me was a bit different than with the other students that took the program. A was also on medications at the time I took their program which retarded my thinking. Those medications are necessary when someone is struggle with psychosis and mania, like I do, but even with those medications, the Linda Mood Bell program still drilled into my head was the phonics of the English language in an amazing way! I have read basically every day since then, and a lot of what I read was way above my reading level at the time, like Immanuel Kant, but this dedication and desire to learn, combined with the Linda Mood Bell program, got me to be able to read, and today I can read authors most people have no ability too. I just pushed myself as hard as I could because I wanted to learn, and I wanted most of all to be off of SSDI. It was not just the sciences I found interesting, for one of the dreams I had as a child was to be a writer. That is what the poems I opened the book with were all about.
When I was at Discovery Academy is when I wrote most of the poems I opened this book with. I told myself I wanted to be a writer someday when I was locked up there. I wanted to put my ideas on paper and try and communicate a good message to other people. I promised Heather Woods, the girl who drew the cover of this book, I would publish those poems with that cover someday when I left. I kept that promise.
It was when I finally got sober with those words “I don’t know” that people would always thank me when I shared from the floor in different 12 step meetings. They do not do that too often for anyone, but lots of people truly loved what I had to say once I started living in the solution. Like Invisible Man, I have always had a talent for words, but I was terrified, and I could not see that it was only fear that was controlling me. I could not acknowledge I was just basing my sense of self on what the others thought of me, just like Invisible Man did, just like we all do. We all want to be important. Ralph Waldo Emerson, not the Emerson in Invisible Man, but the one history is familiar with, said it best, “The most basic human desire is a need of importance.” That is all racism truly is. Racism is nothing but how important one person is compared to how important another person is based on something as artificial as the amount of vitamin D in the skin, which is all the color of anyone’s skin is!
The amazing thing is that 99.9% of all human DNA is identical, so genetically and even behaviorally speaking, race does not even exist! The theory of race is engrained in the human psyche to seek some type of meaning and importance in our lives. We all have that insanity of worrying about the world’s thinking just like the Invisible Man, and if you ask most people today, they tell you they believe in “race” when it does not even exist! Anthropology disproved the theory of race a long time ago, but people still believe in it to this day! This was Invisible Man; this was me. I was not discriminated with race, but I had a huge fear of people, just like Invisible Man, just like we all do, and just like Invisible Man and everyone else we all believe things that are not true! Having misbeliefs of the Empirical world and where we all fit into the society around us is an insanity all humanity struggles with! Being wrong about the empirical world and having misjudgments is a difficulty we all suffer from! Ignorance is insanity as well when it is coupled with the pride of humanity! We just need to see that to be great is in all our natures, just like Plotinus writes. We are all identical with God! We are a piece of Him. When we take ourselves as separate, is when we truly suffer!
To search for my true Platonic nature is what got me to increase my reading comprehension. Linda Mood Bell was a great program for me because it got me to open the door to better reading skills. It is an amazing program that is about the neuroplasticity of the human brain and increasing oxygen flow to parts of the brain which are underdeveloped with people with learning disabilities have. I wish anyone with ADD, ADHD, dyslexia or autism could take it.
Since I have been reading so much, I have been able to see how I love the way Plotinus writes An Essay on the Beautiful. “If, in this case, every lover of truth will only study a language for the purpose of procuring the wisdom it contains and will doubtless wish to make his native language the vehicle of it to others.” This line expresses the purpose of why anyone would want to be a writer of philosophy. To convince people not only of what the writer has been through, but to show a solution and truth that others can apply to their lives is the purpose of any philosophical writer. This is why one would strive for a career in writing and philosophy. I needed to learn how to read, and I needed to learn how to write, and learning is the only thing which has gotten me out of my disorders and into society instead of an endless cycle of psych wards and jail cells. It is this goal of learning, and being able to read and go to college, that got me to happiness. I was able to get an Associates in Business my BA in Philosophy and have taken several graduate courses as well. I have only paused to make more money because I am no longer on SSDI. I still work on learning every day, and to be a philosopher means you need to read more than any other major there is, which I do! It is not just simple text as well, but the most difficult of any text. The hardest reading there is, is in philosophy, and I have done it, and I love it! It was Linda Mood Bell made all the difference!
Invisible Man, after the Bloody Battle Royal in the first chapter, leaves with the gift of pursuing an education. One of the gentlemen who is in charge of his fate is an older white man called Emerson. Emerson says to Invisible Man, “Ambition is a wonderful force, but sometimes it can be blind.” This statement is the key to the Invisible Man’s suffering throughout the book. He wants to be important so badly, that he cannot see his true motivation. His motivation is fear. He does not pursue his education for the fact of pure knowledge. Invisible Manis very intelligent, yet having his own intellect is not enough for him. It is his battle, and it is a battle he cannot win. Instead of finding the Beauty in his Soul, for the fact of his Intellect, he is left chasing after something that he will never get: the approval of others.
I myself am guilty of a lot of the same character defects that Invisible Mandisplays. I was given an IQ test as a kid because they thought I was so stupid, yet I scored a 124 which is in the top 5%. I have pages of books in my head just from listening to them before I could read. I have people’s bank account numbers and social security numbers in my head from just hearing people say it once. All from just listening to them. Hearing things was the only way I could memorize things, and knowing I have this talent is not enough. I have an ego. My ego tells me to show people all the time what I can do. That is why, even being a white male, I can identify with Invisible Man. This is what makes Ellison such a great writer.
When any person can relate to the story, the writer will know they have succeeded, especially when someone that the book was not even intended for can relate because this book was written for the African American plight, but even as a privileged white person, I could relate. It is like the African American feminist Maya Angelo said, “We are more alike than unalike. Nothing human can be alien to me.” Approval is a disgusting word, for it can blind my actions just like the ambitions of Invisible Man, just like the actions of all of us. Approval is based on attention. When all I seek is attention, I know I am living in fear. Fear is the enemy of the truth, and I have seen every person in my life seek this in some way because of our humanity and our surviving together.
Plotinus writes about a black blanket of fog that shadows the truth as well. “Though the mischief arising from the study of words is prodigious, we must not consider it as the only cause of darkening the splendours of Truth, and obstructing the free diffusion of her light.” With this passage it tells there are those who do not speak the truth, and even write words that are based in error. It is up to the Soul to see the Ultimate Truth. For perception is enhanced and clarified only through trial and error. To make the judgment of what one would want to believe in. When someone speaks with words of anger and vitriol, it is up to another to see if it does hold true for them. When Plotinus argues the nature of the Soul to be Good, that tells me that if I look with persistence, I will see the truth. That truth will be what brings happiness and freedom.
It is also in a cloud of lies that a man called Brother Jack tries to use the talents of Invisible Man, so he can get his way. Brother Jack asks the Invisible Man, “How would you like to be the next Booker T. Washington?” Booker T. Washington was a true historical figure. An African American who lived in the South from April 5th 1856 to November 14th 1915. He was a person of history who bowed down to the white establishment in the South for his own benefit. The white people wanted this because Booker T. Washington was able to get the other African Americans to be more subservient to the white power. It is in these words of deceit that Brother Jack is trying to entice Invisible Man with the reward of recognition that he has been looking for. Brother Jack is offering him what he’s always wanted, which is status and recognition. Yet he is doing it, not for the welfare of Invisible Man, but so he will have more control over other African Americans. This is a falsehood, and it is the same “darkening of the truth” that Plotinus writes about.
I have had others tell me to live in ways that I came to see as fake as well. People in recovery have told me that “I can’t think my way into right acting, I can only act my way into right thinking.” Or “Why? is not a spiritual question.” This seemed to be nothing but a justification of their ignorance to me. It was a brainwashing for one’s actions. I understand what they mean by this. It tells me that I am to do what is right, and not always trust my thinking. When I do what is right, that will make me happy. To live in a solution, is what the truth is all about.
The problem with “I cannot think my way into right acting, I can only act my way into right thinking” is all action is based in thought, which I prove in The Power of Inaction. When I have clarity of mind and see all my thoughts clearly, I can see I have conflicting thoughts and emotions, just like Invisible Man. The thoughts and emotions can be in conflict, but only with clarity of our thoughts do any of us take the right action. This is the most powerful aspect of Ellison’s writing. Ellison writes about a dichotomy in everything that Invisible Manexperienced. Invisible Man goes from triumph to tragedy all in one sentence, which shows a true artist. I have those thoughts that I am either going to pass all my classes with honors and win the Nobel Prize, or I will not amount to anything! This is the main reason I related to Invisible Manso much. It is a powerful lesson to learn. That lesson is that the right “choices” are up to me and my Soul, which has been blessed with Beauty according to Plato, just like every other Soul. To see the Truth and make the right choice is a good purpose.
When it comes to “Why? is not a spiritual question” they are just saying they don’t have the answer. So, then they are telling you because they can’t figure it out, don’t ask the question. That in itself only perpetuates the ignorance. If we say you can never ask a question and the answer comes along, no one would be able to recognize the answer. Just say the words “I Don’t Know?” and then, if the answer comes you can be open to that solution and truth.
It is with this keen sight of truth that Plotinus writes, “Let us quit the study of particulars, for that which is general and comprehensive, and through this learn to see and recognize whatever exists.” This shows the truth available to all! If any of us can put aside all judgment, and take a comprehensive look at everything, we will find any answers we need. Misery is unlocked with the ability to see and accept what is True. All solutions are within everyone’s grasp, and as long as we all try, the answers will become apparent to all of us. Satisfaction is that life is about learning, and “responsibility rests upon recognition” like Professor Bell would always say in my English 1B class at CCSF. Getting answers is the essence of what Plotinus means when he says the Soul is Beautiful. It is in the Beauty where the answers lie.
The truth is revealed to Invisible Man at the end as well, for he asks himself “Why should an old slave use a phrase as, this and this or this has made me more human, as I did in my speech?” This is the truth that Invisible Man comes to recognize at the end, and it is a question which is all about “why?” He is Human, and he does not need to rely on the validation of a third party to be his truth. Every error he made throughout the book led him to the point of finding his self-worth. He is worth enough for being who he is. He has a Soul just like Plotinus and any other white man. He is able to see the truth just like we all can. The truth was there for him at the end because he kept looking, and when he found out who he truly was he found the happiness in himself.
It is in the words: “I don’t know” that I define my higher power. I do believe all of my answers are within me, and to continue to look each and every day with meditation. All of the answers for the universe are within us all. As long as we can learn and look for the truth, we can be happy, but admitting we do not know, and always being able to search for another answer is where one finds happiness. Anyone can be happy when they comprehend reality. Finding the truth in every experience, and when we learn from any situation, no matter what the tragedy or reward, using the words “I don’t know” is what led me to my rewards! I am arguing it will for you too in this book, and all our brains have a neuroplasticity that needs to grow and develop throughout all our lives.
This learning is what got me into the different forms of Hinduism as well, because Hinduism goes very well with modern science, and is all about seeking the Truth. Gandhi said, “I am a passionate seeker of the truth which is just another name for God.” It is in the seeking of the truth that all of the answers to life will be found. We can always be grateful as long as we learn from the struggles we go through. I have struggled with lots of things, not only learning disabilities, but I have a rare organic brain disorder which gives me the aspects of eight different brain disorders without fitting one stereo type, and to have each of these struggles is an experience and an opportunity to grow and learn. This book that I have written is about the neuroplasticity of the human brain and how similar we all are. I was inspired by the Linda Mood Bell program and their conclusions of neuroplasticity. This means none of us are born with an IQ and we can all get our brains to develop throughout our lives at any age. The effort I put in is a daily effort to overcome my “eight” brain disorders. I show how similar I am to everyone else in the chapter The Power of Inaction, so if anyone is struggling, my hope is they can overcome their mental difficulties by exercising and training their brains daily, just like the Linda Mood Bell taught me with reading.
I, and everyone else, can only learn through experience. Like in An Essay on the Beautiful and Invisible Man we can find the Truth as long as we will always question and never give up looking into ourselves and letting the light of our Souls shine through. Having the ability to read such reflective and protreptic words of writers such as these was necessary for me, so thank you Linda Mood Bell. Linda Mood Bell made it so I was able to get an education. Reading is a wonderful tool that is necessary for learning the lessons in these two amazing books: An Essay on the Beautiful and Invisible Man, and the only secret to life there is for any of us is the desire learn!
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