Tag: psychosis

Thailand mystical space adventure: Aaron returns – Episode 149

by Kurt Robinson on January 24, 2017 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Aaron goes to Thailand and doesn’t recognise himself

When you start a new job after a period of inactivity, maybe it will seem nothing more than a daily grind. If you’re lucky, you might get a few months of honeymoon period in which you’re still learning things and the job is exciting. If you’re really lucky, you might stay in a 5 star hotel in Thailand, and find yourself full of energy, amazed at the great work for which you’re preparing. That’s the position Mr. Battle found himself in.

In this episode, Aaron explains his journey to Thailand with a new company, telling us the vague details of their plan to create a new internet with security, privacy and community. Aaron also tells us about how he was so vitalised by the experience that, for the first week, he only needed three hours of sleep a night, and about an unusual dissociative episode, being unable to recognise himself in the mirror for a moment, thanking his body for being a vessel for his soul. Then Kurt recounts a recent occurrence in which he almost had an out-of-body experience, and recalls a story from Robert Monroe’s “Journeys Out of the Body”.

Join us in a new soul-travelling, identity-shattering, curry-eating episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Robert Monroe – Journeys Out of the Body

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please have a look at The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit and Aaron’s posts on Steemit.

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The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

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Mental Illness Outsiders – The Andrarchy Show Episode 5

by Kurt Robinson on December 9, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Mental health, isolation and reason

When you see a homeless mentally ill person doing something unusual on the street, you might do as most people do, and ignore them. Have you ever thought about why they’re on a street corner barking? Maybe they weren’t always like that, but over the years, their desperate attempts to get anything resembling affection – attention, acknowledgement – lead them to stranger and stranger behaviours.

If you’ve ever had an experience with mental illness, you might have noticed that your thoughts can quickly carry you away, getting you to places full of anxiety, dread, hopelessness and even delusion. There are mental tools that we can use to help us gain control of our minds and our lives. Meditation is one of them, and so is logic. Being able to look at our thoughts and analyse them a little more objectively can help ground us.

In this episode, Andrew “Andrarchy” Levine interviews Kurt about mental illness among homeless people, and about the role of reason in stabilising your own mind.

The Eps:

The Andrarchy Show Episode 1

The Andrarchy Show Episode 2

The Andrarchy Show Episode 4

The Links:

Andrarchy’s post of the episode

Why being ostracized hurts more than bullying

The thing we fear more than death

Do we see reality as it is?

Andrarchy on Steemit

Homelessness, being ignored, acting crazy and the power of humanity

Mental illness and what to learn from your mind breaking

The Cash:

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Talking to horses, seeing aliens and demons: The Andrarchy Show Episode 4

by Kurt Robinson on November 25, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Andrarchy continues an interview with Kurt about mental illness

What would you do if one day you woke up and you realised you could do something which previously you thought was impossible, such as using telepathy, psychokinesis, changing reality or bending time with your thoughts? Would you be able to handle it? Would you think you were going crazy? Would you throw yourself into a world of confusion, unsure of what was real and what wasn’t?

This is the fourth episode of The Andrarchy Show, in which Andrew “Andrarchy” Levine interviews Kurt about a strange mental experience, talking to animals, talking to aliens on peyote, and being afraid of demonic attacks.

The Eps:

Mental Illness & Shamanic Experiences – Episode 1 of The Andrarchy Show

A Psychotic Break or Shamanic Awakening – Episode 2 of The Andrarchy Show

The Links:

Follow Andrew on Steemit

The Cash:

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

A Psychotic Break or Shamanic Awakening?: The Andrarchy Show Episode 2

by Kurt Robinson on October 29, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: Is it mental illness or a spiritual experience?

If we take the psychiatric industry’s model of mental illness, we might be inclined to believe that these experiences are purely negative. But if we go too far the other way, speaking of neurodiversity, spiritual awakenings or shamanic experiences, we might be tempted into thinking that these experiences are wholly positive. It’s true that these experiences may involve a lot of suffering for the people whom they affect directly, and the people around them – however, it’s also true that people can learn a lot from these experiences, about themselves and the nature of the world they live in.

This is part 2 of Andrew “andrarchy” Levine’s interview with Kurt about having a psychotic break, or spiritual awakening. We discuss the terms used to describe these experiences, the change from linear to conceptual thinking that went on in Kurt’s brain, and possible explanations of what caused this spontaneous change from psychiatric and yogic perspectives.

The Eps:

Mental illness and hamanic experiences: The Andrarchy Show episode 1

The Links:

Andrarchy on Steemit

The Cash:

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Mental Illness & Shamanic Experiences: The Andrarchy Show Episode 1

by Kurt Robinson on October 20, 2016 in Best Bits, Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story – How to deal with a psychotic break

Psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis as schools of thought are less than 150 years old, and we shouldn’t be surprised if such young sciences have gaps of knowledge, questions that are still left open, or even questions that are outright ignored. It’s possible, even likely, that the modern psychiatric model of mental illness is incomplete, and could learn things from other schools of thought.

Many people have the conception that being diagnosed with a mental illness means that you have a chemical imbalance. However, such “illnesses” are normally diagnosed by looking at behaviour, rather than blood tests or other chemical tests to determine amounts of chemicals in one’s brain. So, at least in the majority of cases, the “chemical imbalance” idea is just an assumption.

In contrast, there are shamanistic traditions which stretch back hundreds or even thousands of years. Shamans have been helping people through the strange times in their lives even before recorded history. Is it possible that psychiatry and psychology still have a lot to learn from shamanistic methods?

This is a clip from an interview that Andrarchy (Andrew Levine) did with Kurt, and more clips will be coming over the next couple of weeks.

The Episode

To download this episode in audio, right click here and press ‘Save as’.

The links

“Mental Illness” – how and what to learn from your mind breaking

Andrarchy’s post on Steemit introducing his show

What a shaman sees in a mental hospital

A traditional approach to mental illness – Phil Borges TED talk

Healing with communication, conversation and love by Sterlin Luxan

What is a shaman by Terence McKenna