‘You hit me back first.
My predictions always come true.
Don’t dare to invalidate my reality.’
Nuances of paranoia affect all of us.
We may be well-balanced and trusting
folks, but out bodies still hold the
fears and traumas our parents experienced,
and the generations before them.
When safety fears are triggered, we tend
to slide from anxiety to paranoia.
In today’s culture this has become a normal
disposition, a challenge to be alert and patient
with the love and hate conflicts inside us.
Yet when fear splits the heart from the head
our bodies go numb to feelings, and empathy.
the spiritual potential of our being is arrested, and
one’s world turns into a hostile and lonely place to be.
Collective paranoia spreads like a virus,
flowing into already anxious minds,
feeding on irrational fears of danger
and the need to blame somebody.
When public figures act out their paranoia,
they become super-spreaders of fear.
Does this virus have a remedy? Depth Analysis?
Listening to Bach? Wilderness retreats?
The occasional pinch of hemp oil, known
to free blocked wires in the brain that
channel superior cosmic insights?
Sadly, when magnified fear has eroded trust
in fellow humans and silenced the whispers
of affection from our hearts, truth is walled in,
and seeds of hope fall on barren ground.
While paranoia can carry a kernel of truth,
suspicious hunches are easily twisted and
inflated to surreal proportion. I grade my own
paranoia from anxious overload – to irrelevant –
to useful. The latter protects me from harm.
There is a Sufi saying …
Trust in God but tie your camel at night.
Night also holds the hidden content of our neglected
unconscious, where fears and desires entwine
as archetypal forces that can take us over when
entitlement and apathy have made us careless.
Clearly, our inner narrative needs witnessing with
constant re-adjustment, so we remain grounded and
balanced in human values – among them – integrity,
humility, friendship, humour, and reverence for life.
Course of Mirrors 