Wilson, this post is going to suck. For most people, anyway. I’ve got a few reasons to write it the way I’m going to write it, and that necessitates it being kind of crappy. It kind of reminds me of back when I was writing my book, and the Maestro asked me to demonstrate for him the unusual features of the playlists I was listening to, so I wrote everything out for him, including the lyrics of like twenty songs. He wanted to throw his laptop at me for expecting him to read it.
This will be kind of like that. Ever since I wrote my book, I’ve been saying in it and in writing thereafter that there is a certain link between insanity and illumination. With this post I want to return a bit to that subject, basically by illustrating an episode of a little insanity I experienced a few days back. But I want to do it in a super-detailed way, full of screenshots and videos of some conversations I was engaged in on social media. It will be therefore a very tedious read. It will also convince the average reader that I am just seeing things that aren’t there. That I’m crazy. Now I’ve never denied being crazy. I only insist that pretty much everybody is crazy, and that maybe I am a bit crazy in ways that a lot of other people aren’t, yet I’m just as balanced, functional, and illumined as the next guy when all is said and done.
I’m taking this effort for a few reasons, though. For one, there may be people out there who get where I’m coming from and see the potential for as much illumination in this event as I do, or even more. I’d like to give those people something to chew on. But further, someone close to someone close to someone close to me is suffering from issues of craziness. Schizophrenia, actually, and I would like to have on record how I deal with being a bit crazy myself, so as to tell these folks where I’m coming from when I give advice about how to handle episodes of being a bit crazy.
In the end, there are things to learn from this description, primarily in the sphere of how the mind works, but also, there are a few genuine enigmas in what I’m going to write, and there are those who will benefit from reading about it. However, as I said, my writing about these things in the form of cataloguing meticulously an event of strange perceptions in a kind of scientific way is going to make this thing an unpleasant read. Sorry for that.
So anyway, this last Saturday, Shabbat, I had superheroes on the brain and spent some time on social media. I do use electronics on Shabbat, unlike the more meticulously observant Jews such as the haredi ultraorthodox types. I avoid social media, however. I do see a certain wisdom in avoiding electronics altogether and just being where one is and living in the world God gave us one day a week, but under current circumstances doing so just isn’t possible. However, staying off social media has been healthy for me. This last Shabbat I didn’t stick to that rule, though. I’ve been finding it harder to keep up with a lot of routines and good practices that I normally do, lately. It was a full moon, and my war with the Yetzer Hara, the Animal Soul (two Jewish and Kabbalistic terms), or “the Flesh” (as the Apostle Paul would describe it), wasn’t going entirely my way, I suppose. I had lucked into a super comfortable room in Pompei, and was relaxing in a kind of Calgon Take Me Away moment, and just spent the day on the Reddit talking about superheroes.
I had put a couple of recent blog posts about superheroes up on the r/DC_Cinematic subreddit to see how the DC supherhero community would react to them. The one called the Pitch about the concept of inspired creation of art (and scripture) against the backdrop of the Zack Snyder Justice League quintet of movies just went up a day ago, and I had put my movie review of Black Adam on there. Now these are not normal superhero posts on the Reddit, Wilson. They are very long, very weighty, and very philsophical and theological. I wasn’t sure anyone there would be able to make heads or tails of them. What I found is that the majority of the posters on the subreddit hated them. Absolutely hated them. I really wasn’t surprised. My years on various forms of social media have me convinced that the internet is pretty thoroughly under the control of the forces of darkness.
Also, you’ve probably picked up by various anecdotal comments that I have made over the last few years, namely since my 2019 misadventures that are the subject of my novel, that from my perspective on things, my electronic devices just hate working. I usually chalk this up to age. The day came when I had to start handling the electronic devices of my mom, for example. You know, helping work the remote control, setting up the phone, etc. The brain slows down as we age. I supposed my day had come to start not being able to work the remote control, so to speak. Although it was somewhat weird that this seems to have started for me with the perceptual calamity of what happened to me in 2019 with the drug mishaps. But I didn’t have any confidence that anything supernatural was going on. Frankly I still don’t. I thought maybe it was some lingering effect of the shizophrenic breaks from those episodes. Could be. However, strange functioning or lack of functioning of my electronic devices has been related to my various spiritual goings on in my usual synchronistic perception of things.
Something like that happened on that Shabbat, not only with a strange functioning of lack of functioning of a phone or tablet, but rather with an utterly bizarre exchange that happened on the r/DC_Cinematic subreddit. I’m just dying to show it to you, Wilson!
So first, let me tell you a bit about the r/DC_Cinematic subreddit. It’s a forum about the DC superhero movies. People post all kinds of questions, information, and speculation about the various DC superhero movies there. For the longest time now, the subreddit has been divided between those who love the Zack Synder movies, and those who hate them, though since not much has happened on that front lately, the focus has shifted more toward the Matt Reeves Batman movie, this new Black Adam movie, and most especially the fact that James Gunn has recently been made the DC superhero czar by Warner. There are those who love him and those who hate him. So I am a lover of Zack Snyder, and, at least for the moment, a hater of James Gunn. That would put me in the minority, by the way. The Zack haters have always been very numerous and very, very aggressive. And the James Gunn lovers are also rather numerous and vocal.
I know I’m putting you to sleep with this superhero geek stuff, Wilson. This gets interesting completely outside the realm of superhero movies, though. Trust me. Just allow me to offer a bit more background information so that what follows doesn’t come off as completely confusing. So my review of Black Adam follows similar lines to my comments on Zack Snyder’s movies. The movie was beloved by a lot of fans, but tanked with critics and at the box office, and now at r/DC_Cinematic most of the talk about it is that it was a bad, failed DC superhero movie. Now Zack’s movies did make bank, but underpoerformed financially in comparison with the expectations of the time, and they were hated by critics, at least initially, and divided fans as well.
My theory on why these two sets of movies fared the same with critics? Well, they thematically touch on the concept of Messiah. Zack’s movies are kinda Jesus-ish, given Superman dies in the second movie and is resurrected in the third. Black Adam is was not even slightly New Testament, though. He’s a kinda bad guy savior, or rough guy savior, or more interestingly, an unworthy savior. If you want to know my take on it, you can read the review. So, of course I draw the conclusion that Satan hates savior-like superhero movies, and in my typical conspiratorial fashion I’ve been saying that the demon-infested media has been trying to run those movies into the ground while satanist fanboys downtalk the movies.
Yeah, Wilson, I literally demonize my enemies. Literally. And to be frank, sure I am being flamboyant and literary, but, you know, there are a number of aspects in which I am being pretty freaking literal and direct. Now also, I used to spend a lot of time on the internet while recovering from PTSD, and I used to be pretty vitriolic. I used to do a fair amount of demonization back in the day, though nowhere near the level I have reached since I have acquired my new world-view that I’ve attained post Chaz and the meth misadventures of 2019.
But when I got on the Reddit and dealt with the reactions to my posts, which were hugely negative, I went to town with the demonization of my critics. However, the reactions were incredibly interesting, and synchronistic coincidences came into play. So, Wilson, I just need to show you some of these internet exchanges with some commentary. Because in addition to dialoguing with demons, I may just have run into some internet angels too!
So this was a fairly normal exchange, but you get the idea from it that I’m just hated because of the way I am, which is intellectual, and you can see that I am already talking to this guy’s hostile spirit by indicating that he is just out to get me or oppose me in a general sense rather than anything specific. You also see from this that someone was going to argue with me, but then as things developed, they just deleted what they said. Like running away and hiding. I think this was because of the spiritual tone I would escalate to later. In my view, demons run and hide when you force them out into the open. Now pay attention to the guys name here. Names are going to be important in this. So the guy coming after me for thinking I’m smart (like I am required to think I am stupid to please him – an unwinnable scenario) is “Neveradvancing.” Okay, Wilson, I have to confess that Friday night on shabbat I ordered some wine and fell asleep early without any praying or studying and woke up this morning feeling like I am not advancing on a number of my disciplines goals that I have set for myself. As I say in my opening, the war with the Yetzer Hara has been a tough one lately. And here I get attacked by a guy named Neveradvancing.
Now I am just putting this on there for some context, since it mentions the kid with ADHD concept and this guy called GtrGbln. Also, notice that I am not universally a jerk to everybody, LOL. He was pretty rough in his critique, and I kinda sloughed it off in as friendly of a manner as I could. His grammatical errors told me I wasn’t dealing with Albert Einstein and wasn’t going to be able to make use of his advice. But then we get to this GtrGbln character.
So things get a bit more interesting here. This guy GtrGbln. Let’s speculate about the name. It’s maybe Guitar Goblin? Greater Goblin? Anyway, something Goblin. Like not fairy or angel, but something from dark and evil imagery. A goblin. Definitely not Fluffy Prince or something nice and sweet. Servants of darkness often use negative imagery. Not always, but frequently. Also, he has nothing to add, but just harsh insult. He is what we call an “internet troll.” I’m used to it. I’ve been quite an internet troll at times myself. But also, I am getting a bit tired of nicely tolerating all the low grade, poor criticism, and this guy isn’t even offering low grade criticism. Just insult. Why would he hate my blog so much? Well, don’t forget, my blog is spiritual. Theistic. About the Messianic nature of Black Adam. And this Goblin is just going to hate that. I decide to just get old school and lay into the guy like back in my internet trash-talking days. He plays along. Then I just out and out treat him like a demon and remind him that he is going to gehenna. That’s where the demons are going at the end of things. I’ll have to tell you my theology on that sometime, Wilson. I don’t really talk too much about hell or gehenna with actual people. My thoughts on hell and gehenna are pretty unusual. And I don’t threaten actual people with hell. I talk about God’s love with people. But when I am talking to demons, I am all too happy to remind them that they are going to gehenna. I then finish that exchange with a “tick tock” to introduce my theory that we are getting to the end of days and it’s getting time for the demons to go to gehenna. They don’t have much time left.
The strange thing, Wilson, is that when you start talking to demons about gehenna, they tend to shut up. I’m not kidding. And that did in fact end that exchange. But this guy would end up following me around. Allow me to show you.
So no need to read all of this. Just notice that the guy I am responding to is “baileyontherocs.” Now I am Jonathan Bailey. My Reddit username is baileyjn8. Baileyjn8 arguing with baileyontherocs. So we are starting to get some coincidences here. My contributions are total end of days prophet now. I am not even talking movie jargon. I am just saying the world hates the DC movies because the world is coming to an end type things. And there is the Goblin guy following me around. But particularly, don’t forget that I drank and went to bed and felt bad about not advancing, and I am being opposed in dialogue by baileyontherocs and Neveradvancing. Some little synchronicity hints seem to be going on in my perception of things. For all this boring, stupid superhero internet trash talking that I am forcing you to endure, Wilson, that’s really the only thing of significance that has come up thus far. I am engaging in hostile doalogue with baileyontherocs and Neveradvancing on the day I woke up after not having a pious Shabbat because I had wine the night before.
So I come back to the subreddit a little later to see who else is attacking me for what, and I see this post. It talks about the death of Jonathan Kent, Superman’s dad. However, my name is Jonathan, and I’m thinking to myself, it’s like this subreddit is wishing for my death! And I start looking through the comments, and then a couple more synchronistic things happen. Things start to get theological as well as personal.
So looking at this post talking about Jonathan getting killed, I decided to lay down some subtext of my own.
Here I talk about a scene in the Superman movie Man of Steel when Jonathan Kent, played by Kevin Kosner, gets killed in a tornado, but I relate it to Elijah. Like, if I die, it will be like Elijah going to heaven. Just starting to introduce subtle theological messages into this post about “the death of Jonathan.”
I then start to notice some more coincidental issues in the comments to this post.
With the above, we have a guy named StormIsComing1 talking about the death of Jonathan being a necessary part of the story. This point is contradicted by a guy named hemareddit, whose description is nothing other than “El diablo” – the devil. He contradicts me, as I had said the death of Jonathan in Man of Steel was done well. He doesn’t like the idea of a death by being carried up to heaven like a prophet, but rather that Jonathan just dies randomly from a heart attack. El diablo wants Jonathan dead by heart attack.
Do you see where I am going with this? I am getting contradicted by Jonathan on the rocks, goblin, and el diablo, while I am now being supported by this guy “storm is coming” who is talking about the necessity of death to further the story. This conversation about a cartoon show depicting the death of Superman’s dad is starting to parallel theological conversations that have been uttered since the beginning of time. Why does God let people suffer? If God can stop suffering, why doesn’t he? Was God powerless to stop suffering?
Now we are getting to the end of what I am trying to show you, Wilson, so I won’t do any more screenshots to make things even more tedious, only tell you that also involved in this conversation was this guy JediJones77, who ended up taking my side in a number of points in this conversation. You may remember how I use the image of the Jedi in my various poems and literary references, and if you’ve ever seen a menorah, you know that seven is a spiritually significant number. I looked at this guys’ profile and he agrees with me on nearly every point made in all of these superhero conversations, almost as if we are being channeled by the same spirit. I looked at his profile. Hundreds of comments that I could have made myself.
So before I put up the last little image to close this post off, I’ll summarize that we are talking about me, a guy with PTSD and some residual cognitive oddities remaining from a drug mishap years ago who was suffering some weakness in his efforts to be disciplined this last Shabbat, a full moon, who started talking about superheroes and started seeing everything through the theological lense that he tends to see things. Strange coincidences of names in the conversation, and coincidences of themes between these cartoon characters and principles of theological debate. Hold that in mind, Wilson, while I show you the last little bit of weirdness in the whole episode.
The Reddit has this feature where you can upvote posts and comments that you like and downvote comments that you don’t like. I decided that I wanted to upvote that comment about the death of Jonathan being necessary to the story, but in keeping with the werid behavior of my electronic devices, my freaking phone just wouldn’t let me! It kept changing my upvote to a downvote! This happened so many times, I decided to record the phenomenon. Check out this little video I made of the frustrating event.
I don’t know what to make of this. Pretty bizarre behavior for a phone, right, Wilson? Just a little weirdness to cap off a weird Shabbat. I just was not capable of upvoting someone me I agreed with and who was in support of me.
Anyway, I’m going to close down this little post about a guy stringing everything together in accordance with his preconceptions about things. I was seeing a kind of war between myself, the Jedi guy, and the Storm is Coming guy against the Goblin guy, the Bailey on the Rocks guy, and the El Diablo guy. Coincidences, synchronicity, and apophenia.
One thing I will say about it, though, might be best served by yet another superhero reference. Back in the 80s there was an old superhero movie called the Swamp Thing. In that movie, a scientist is covered with a special chemical that turns him into a superhero, the Swamp Thing. The bad guy in that film takes the same special chemical and is transformed into a monster. At one point in the movie the female lead asks the Swamp Thing why he was turned into a hero, but the other guy was turned into a monster. His answer was: “the special chemical makes you more of what you already are.” So I have issues of God and theology on the brain, and when I get into weird moods, I see it everywhere.
So there is this guy who I mentioned above who is close to someone who is close to someone who is close to me who is having mental problems lately. He is suffering from paranoia, mood problems, and disconnection from reality. Nobody really knows how it got started. Family members suspect that it could have had something to do with these COVID vaccines that stormed the world very quickly in a politicized environment with very little actual scientific research to determine the scope of their effects and side effects.
My advice to him is that he should immerse himself in the things of God. I too lost my mind some years ago, and you can see from the above that here and there, just a bit, I can also be overtaken by weird perceptions, drawing everything I see into a certain paradigm that is related to who I am. Yet what I see in everything when these episodes come are the spiritual and theological aspects of pretty much everything going on, even debates about the death of Superman’s dad in a cartoon.
So then, along with that, we can see that I am still maintaining healthy relationships with friends and family. I haven’t required any hospitalization. Maybe I am a bit weird, but I am riding my bike across Europe on an adventure tour that many would only dream of taking. I’m basically a functional guy. And while my perceptions can go to the bizarre, they result in things that are meaningful in accordance with who I am. And who I am is somebody who sees the spiritual meaning behind things that wouldn’t have the slightest bit of spiritual meaning to those in a typical mental state. That is not exactly a bad way to be crazy. It’s much better than getting checked into hospitals for being a danger to myself or others and losing relationships between myself and those I love. God basically brought me back from the mouth of madness, a little crazy at times, seeing things others don’t see at times, but this is actually more of a blessing than a curse by all means.
So when you look at this conversation, Wilson, you’ll see more of the crazy than the illuminated, but when you compare this depiction of an episode of apophenia with other things I have written about synchronicity and the so-called “prophet sight” that I have referenced in a cheeky way in various posts and whatnot, you’ll see that the craziness is not entirely divorced from something that could be considered a form of wisom, in a way.
So for those suffering from problems of mental health and altered perception, from breaks with reality or whatever, I can only say that I credit my relationship with God for getting me through my own adventures in madness with a way of looking at things that is actually rather serviceable.
That’s why I wrote you this bizarre post, Wilson. The above might make people who had previously thought I might have some kind of prophetic vision think now, “okay, yeah, the guy really is nuts.” But hopefully I have depicted the episode in such a way as to show that my connection with God made me nuts in a kind of a wise fashion. And this is why I suggest that all people immerse themselves in the things of God, so when the world really does get to be too much, and you do end up going off the deep end, you’ll wind up as something resembling more of a mad prophet than some kind of a psychokiller or random maniac.
Now if only I can figure out why my phone always acts up in such bizarre ways, with upvotes of those with whom I have things in common mysically turning into downvotes.
And finally, again, sorry to subject you to all the screenshots and thousands of words of commentary about superhero nerd talk on social media. Be sure to tell anyone who reads this post to read some of my other stuff which is written better. Again, this post was written to cataolog gritty details for analysis of bizarre mental states, not specifically to entertain or captivate any reader. This post is one for the books, to be considered by a certain few under a specific set of circumstances.
Vaya con Dios, Wilson. Talk at you later.