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Levels of Perception
Contrary to popular belief, hearing and seeing things other people don’t does not mean a person has schizophrenia. There are a myriad of other mental health conditions that could explain hallucinations, such as PTSD, Major Depression, and Bipolar. Hallucination is the medical term, and I would like to distinguish between hallucinating and experiencing information through pre-conditioned channels of information. Synesthesia, for example, is not a hallucination, but simply sensory data going through atypical neural pathways. Did you know, there was a time when science and medical community not only didn’t believe in synesthesia being a thing, if you pursued it- you were given grief?
The Man Who Tasted Shapes, by Doctor Richard Cytowic discusses how he was ridiculed by peers for just asking questions about synesthesia. He published this book in 1993- which really wasn’t that long ago. This is evidence it doesn’t have to be UFOs or Near Death Experiences or channeling or ghosts resulting in scientists and medical community putting their fingers in their ears and going ‘lalalala.’ Anything out of statistical norm gets shut down as a conversation.
Experiencing ‘different’ does not mean broken. Trying to get differences recognized take Olympian level fighters. For example, you shouldn’t have to be LGBTQ, to appreciate human experience can stray widely away from statistical norms, without catching a label of unnormal. You should be able to accept variance…
