Up until last year I thought perhaps that the inner voice within me I seemed to have since I was a kid, was a sign of madness, but since I led a reasonably ordinary life, married, kids, career, I just ignored it. It wasn’t like I was hearing voices or anything, there just seemed to be something within me that was “knowing” of things that I shouldn’t really know. So last year I started writing, writing automatically, without any real conciousness and the result has been most interesting.

Maybe I am a fantasist as the previous comment suggests as my writing is an alternative to the reality that I endure in my life. The only thing I do know that what I write is very insightful, beautiful and many people have said that the things I write have helped them understand their own spirituality. So who the heck knows, I think I have stopped worrying where the writing comes from and I just write everything down on http://www.discoveringmylight.com.

I have to say, that I don’t think I do have a psychiatric illness but I can see how in some instances it would be difficult to see a dividing line between the two.

When I was 6-7 years old I saw my grandmother’s image in a mirror a few days after she died. She was a fiery Irish immigrant who only yelled at adults, who quaked as she walked the earth,which endeared her to me. I’m not sure what Freud would say about that experience, but I can imagine. I know how unreasonable that experience sounds, but I cling to it still, not as a fantasy or as an “as if,” but as an actual event in which I participated. Does this feeling sketch me as someone disturbed? I hope not.

I have kept that memory in my head for many years and find it fascinating as well as comforting, perhaps because it offered some connection to the afterlife, actually the only glmpse of the place I have ever experienced. I am aware these are the sorts of observations that get people branded as strange, but we have them anyway. Pilots don’t discuss UFOs for fear of being grounded, yet they see all sorts of unidentified stuff.

Since i don’t fly planes I can admit that I saw a UFO once and watched it for a half hour at least while I waited for a night college class. I was in my car eating dinner and I was convinced this thing in the sky that was getting brighter and brighter was some space anomaly. As it got darker, the light got brighter and I realized the light was from the school behind me reflecting through a window. Had I not figured that out you would be now reading about my “true” UFO experience.

I think spirituality is a corruption of common sense that fulfills some personal need. The more skeptical among us seem to require less spirituality, although we all have our own versions of magical thinking that might be a substitute for spirituality.

These are all worthwhile subjects to ponder. Menninger alums Drs. Glen Gabbard and Stuart Twemlow once co-wrote a book about near-death experiences. That is quite a validation of the subject’s merit.

One of my favorite books is One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which great amounts of magical thinking occurs. I find such stuff refreshing and full of joy. I would love to experience a speaking owl or a man who can change water into wine or be able to decipher those strange clouds, which are nothing more than messages from the universe. They are, aren’t they?

A fantasist enjoys the creative exercise as an alternative to the reality that we generally endure. There are abuses, and for those folks whose fantasies are harmful to themselves, they obviously need help and guidance. The rest of us use fantasy as a coping mechanism. They hurt no one, except one’s reputation when judged an eccentric, a character flaw I feel ought to be embraced and indulged.

Eccentrics simply want to be remembered and perhaps seen once or twice in a mirror after they’ve left this “mortal coil,” a Shakespearian phrase from Hamlet that I’ve never understood but always appreciated. Sort of like the healthy practice of spirituality, fantasy, magical thinking and the like.