IT DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT-OF-VIEW

"Cola para ver el final de la crisis" ("The queue to see the end of the crisis") by el silencio

I was recently having a wide-ranging email exchange about the economic and political madness of the world with my dear friend Kelpie Wilson which closed with me asking, "Is the madness part of the corrective? Or, am I drinking too much ayahuasca?" Kelpie responded, "I am amazed at how little that stuff seems to affect your mental sharpness, but only you know the answer!"

Well now... the truth is that I don't know the answer. It seems to me that ayahuasca both heightens my clarity and shifts my point-of-view. But, it's confusing because often the new point-of-view gives less of an "answer" than a deeper sense of the contradictions of earthly life and the existence of many truths. As consciousness shifts, so does point-of-view -- often toward more compassion and respect for diversity -- and this seems fundamental.

Here's an example: In my last post, I was awe-struck by a video of the birth of an elephant, the miracle of life, the power of the Mother.

I sent the full blog post to the political commentator Andrew Sullivan because he likes kooky cultural stuff and videos of nature, which he often publishes as a "Mental Health Break" from the madness of politics. I sensed that he would grab this one.

That he did! But he put it to a very different use as commentary on yesterday's messy Republican primary in Iowa. Living now in Brazil, I had not been alert to the fact that the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party.

At first I was miffed because he had put it to such a different purpose than mine. Then, I looked again, saw how perfectly it fit his purpose, and realized (once again!) that two people can look at the same thing and see something very different.

It all depends on your point-of-view... or, perhaps, on what you've been drinking.

Mental health?  I'll let the reader decide.