My Book

I am in the process of writing a book about my theories concerning the "mentally ill" and how they are not merely disadvantaged individuals who are wired differently.  I believe that mental "illness" is actually a bridge toward one of the next important stages of human evolution. 
Just like the webbed foot was an inconvenience for that poor creature in the sea, who was wanting for a fin like all of the other creatures that were so much more graceful and quick (and it was even more difficult to use it as a foot when the creature finally ventured out onto land), that which makes the mentally ill the way that they are is also a challenge and can be quite an inconvenience.  However, the webbed foot was also a necessary evolutionary step.  Without it, we wouldn't be walking around today.  Likewise, mental illness can be an inconvenience, but it is a necessary one. 
For instance, the swarms of different thoughts/sensations that can become tangled up in the heads of individuals with Attention Defecit Disorder often make it hard for the individual to remain focused on certain things for significant lengths of time.  Meanwhile, those who do not "suffer" from ADD find it much easier to stay focused on one thing, because they do not have this tangled web running around up there.  On the surface, this seems like a clear advantage to the "normals" and a disadvantage to those with ADD (and many people with ADD will tell you the same thing). 
BUT... what if the ability to start attempting to process many different things at once is only a portion of an evolutionary puzzle.  There are many people out there whose brains couldn't try to have three thoughts at the same time even if that was their goal.  These same people don't become overloaded by sensory input in a room with 10 different things going on, because their brain is only tuning in to 5 of them.  The person who is "afflicted" with ADD is either processing (or at least trying to) all 10 or is gathering far more information from the same 5 things as the "normal" person is. 
People with ADD frequently make excellent artists (and many people just assume that this is because they can't function well in the "real" world).  This is because they can pick up on and appreciate certain qualities and intensities of sight and sound that most of us don't, and if you ask them if they become easily distracted while working on whatever their art form is, they will tell you no.  This is because another added benefit of ADD is called hyperfocus.
Hyperfocus is the ability to totally concentrate on something with no awareness of time or anything else.  While this is something that most people are capable of (Have you ever completed a project under a tight deadline?), few are capable of doing so for the length and at the intensity that a person with ADD can.  This is like the complete opposite of what ADD is considered to be.  People with ADD are supposed to, by definition, be people who have great difficulty focusing.
What I see here are two ends of a spectrum, struggling to meet each other, and when they do, what you will find is a person who is able to maintain multiple trains of thought simultaneously, all without missing a thing from what is going on in his/her surroundings.  That, my friends, is evolution in progress! 
I use ADD as my example because it is probably one of the most well known mental health diagnoses today, so more people should be able to understand, even if they can't relate.  Many people should even be able to relate on some level, because the odds of being alive on this planet and not knowing a single person who has been diagnosed with ADD are getting to be pretty small.  
I believe that this concept of mental evolution can be applied to most forms of mental illness.  Another area that I am very interested in is mood "disorders". 
While I am very much into all things that are spiritual, "deep", "earthy", or "alternative" (and I plan on getting involved in as many activities and discussions as I can make time for while I'm here), my primary focus right now is on finding enough people to collaborate with in order to complete my book.  I won't allow it to be finished until I have received the input of many different people who are professionals within the medical/mental health field (contemporary and alternative), and even more importantly, as many individuals who have been blessed with mental "illness" as I can possibly find.
So if you are reading this, and you are one of these people, or you know one of these people, please get in touch with me so that we can begin to work towards forming a better understanding of the slow, easily missed process of evolution that is taking place right before our very eyes.

I am also a firm believer that people who have been blessed with the gifts of being different can find ways to harness these gifts in order to speed up their own personal evolution in this lifetime.  That creature with the webbed foot eventually stumbled out of the sea and onto dry land.  It was an ugly, awkward process, but in the end that creature was able to experience something that few others were at that time, and we are all better off because of it.  What I'm trying to say is IT'S TIME FOR THE MENTALLY ILL TO STUMBLE OUT OF THEIR STORMY SEAS AND ONTO THE LAND!
While this could be written off as merely a romantic notion, I have to say that I have good reason for not being willing to consider that.  You see, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder quite some time ago, and although it has caused me some significant difficulties in my life (especially in my adolescence and early adulthood),  I have never stopped searching for experiences to help me better understand and benefit from this condition, and as a result, I have already been able to experience the kinds of things that I've already mentioned here. 
On many occasions, I have quite literally been able to FEEL the emotional pain of others (I spent several years of my life as a successful family therapist before deciding that I am here for a different purpose).  The common term for this is that I am a partial empath (if you do some reading/research, you will find that there are people among us right now who already maintain that ability almost 100% of the time).  I guarantee you that the only things that stand in the way of my being able to improve upon this ability are new knowledge/insight, new experience, and practice. 
My favorite benefit, though, is the guidance that my ability to feel things so intensely can provide.  I never have doubts about whether or not I am following the right path through life, because whenever I have a thought, make a decision, or perform an action that is a key step in my figuring out the universe's grand design for me, my entire body becomes electrified, like I'm plugged into a wall.  The experience rarely lasts more than 5-10 seconds, but it is long enough for me to feel a degree of certainty about some of my choices that I don't think many are afforded in this lifetime. 

My ultimate goal is to create an institution (to give a whole new meaning to being "institutionalized") that is designed to provide sanctuary and education to the blessed mentally ill, so that they may begin to see themselves as bearing an incredible gift along with their incredible burden, and so that they may learn to make use of these gifts to improve themselves, and eventually, the rest of the world around them.