Written while hospitalized in KU Medical Center’s psychiatric unit in June 2015. It’s nothing super interesting, but it’s part of my life and my experience. It’s pretty cogent, all things considered. I left out all the parts where I said my father was the devil.

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A psychopath is simply one who structures the world in such a way that control and containment and order and binaries and easy answers prevail. An empath is simply one who for whom prevailing universal ideas of love dominate.

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Use words people understand.

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Explosive and dysfunctional families are the ones in which tension and brilliance come together in such a way that empaths can be created.

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Take breaks. Hydrate. Move slowly.

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Names and faces are hard to remember.

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Every iteration is true but distinct as a dual-state metaphor. Examples: Love is love. Is = Is = Is. People who talk in tongues are actually the ones waking up between these two states.

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Empaths are everywhere. They get activated in situations by other empaths but also by psychopaths.

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Use plain language during activated periods.

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Knowing how to meet someone on their own level is how to keep them safe.

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Are you infinite? Still, the same journey.

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Take whatever you can in the process of becoming and you will get what you need. Ask for what you need and you will get something different.

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Waves of empaths = people get charged up all at once while things are moving in the right direction in the world.

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False prophets in poetry are not empaths.

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All speech is code. The erratic voice is the always-seeking voice iterating over a larger sense.

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You can be an empath and do great harm. Both the empaths who harm and the ones who are harmed are bringing about change.

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Call-out / call-in culture. Bring all voices in.

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True speech parts seas.

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Know your empath legacy.

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Strife. There will always be lots of it. Talk through it. Write through it. Trust when to stop engaging and when to reengage.

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Avoid people who call themselves healer or shaman.

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Poems and where they go are a test of the testimony.

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You will confuse any traditional workplace.

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Hate is the false avatar of love.

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In other cultures, to be means to emerge.

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A word is a word when a word is needed.

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The difficulties, all of them, are important to the journey.

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Do before thinking everything you need to do to get where you are going.

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What encourages a crisis is part of the path presented.

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Strong times of need require strong signals.

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What words emerge from journey, crisis, sojourn?

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Revelations close to death

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A condition by any other name is still a condition.

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Withhold

Crisis of God / of whole

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We become the core crisis of our family, the tension that wants to resolve.

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The book of poems is the breath.

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People will say definitely do something.

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Pain is necessary for our suffering parts to come into alignment.

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What leads to love: hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, but also support, forgiveness, and acceptance of impermanence.

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Even those who harm deserve forgiveness because we all harm each other and heal each other in the same moment. I love Jon even though he harmed me some of the time and healed me other times. I love Jon especially because he loved me through the ways I harmed him. Neither of us wanted to stand beyond good and evil, but we do. I stand at the lips of my maker and breathe and wish him the best in this life and the next. Holy. Holy. I love you, Jon.

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The world is five times our size.

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Every life is equal. Everyone, even your greatest enemy, is also an angel. I have already met my enemy and can call him my best friend. I thank him for showing me the beauty of the world. Sacrifices are worth it. I love everyone now equally. I would love to spend the second half of my life inside this love, with the friends I have never known as well as I know them today.