elizabethmi.bsky.social
Independent advocate,neurodivergent & mad/ transliminal.Grad in theology,mental health & law. Posts special interests:mental health/capacity,disability,advocacy,social care,law, philosophy/theology, psychology. Xian universalist. Coined ‘Allation’.She/they
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I actually think now that it’s only by passing legal capacity universally, that we can adequately safeguard VAD. I can’t explain why fully here yet but I hope to self publish my idea this year at some point. (4/4)
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where those restrictions can actually fall back on a firmer foundation of parliamentary sovereignty, rather than being the ‘unjust’ creation of an unequal law that will need correcting, & legal challenges for VAD expansion would most likely fail. (3/4)
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But I’ve realised that by placing VAD within my universal legal capacity system, that we can more effectively safeguard it to just VAD & place greater & fairer restrictions on eligibility (e.g. just for terminal physical health conditions, emerging out of the same), (2/4)
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More info here: adhduk.co.uk/nhs-right-to... & MP letter template as there’s no public consultation process!
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Kripal making some great points- on NDE being near not actual death experiences, on people being *drawn into* these altered states of consciousness, not making the state up in some consciously manufactured way- it’s an experience they are reporting on, phenomenologically.
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Just going to drop this link here to Dr Mayim Bialik’s podcast with Prof Jeffrey Kripal on a whole host of differnt parapsychological topics including NDEs that I’m listening to just now. youtu.be/s7owF9FTgDg?...
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I haven’t finished ‘Near death: After-Death Dreams, Spirits, Souls, Astral Projection, Quantum Physics, Evolution, Neuroscience, Spirituality and God Experiences’ but it’s more meaty but also more speculative. That’s all my recommendations I think.
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Ah no it wasn’t Erasing Death that was the best book on explanations. Dr Sartori’s ‘The wisdom of near death experiences’ was far better & approachably written. If you read one book on NDEs, make it this one.
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The first is a little better on explaining what we can interpret from these experiences and the second a little better at understanding the research that has been done &, from memory it also addresses the skeptical explanations for NDEs & why they don’t fully explain the phenomenon.
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we are no where near a complete understanding of consciousness. NDE research is interesting & compelling & accessible however & I recommend exploring it if you’re so inclined. ‘The truth in the light’ and ‘Erasing death’ are both interesting books on the research.
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This is good overview article on negative/distressing experiences: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... As with anything parapsychological, read with discernment, & don’t believe unquestioningly you read about the theories people have as to why & how things happen-
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For those interested in reading first person accounts, you can’t do much better than reading through the NDERF database, particularly the exceptional experiences: www.nderf.org/Archives/exc...
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does share key aspects with more ‘normal’ NDEs, which have been unchanged in the key aspects of the experiences that have been reported throughout history (since Plato). There’s no evidence that distressing experiences correspond with how ‘good or bad’ a person has been in their life.
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fundamentals of NDE experiences. Sometimes reported in negative/ distressing experiences is that the experience can shift & can turn into the more ‘ordinary’ NDE, sometimes after the person reports calling on higher beings’ or God for help, & then often the experience
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Might be worth noting that NDEs that are scary/distressing are rarer than the much more common positive, peaceful and loving ‘light’ & ‘tunnel’ & life review & seeing past loved ones/higher beings (latter are culturally dependent usually) that most report, which make up the
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I particularly like the bit where he appears to express regret that people know Access to Work exists now.
Clearly their favourite kind of support is one that’s never accessed by those who need it. 😒
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That I would seek to occupy such a lonely research space as someone who is quite a lonesome person, is ironic & a little tragic.
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marginalised field of study would be subject to a double whammy of marginalisation-in being rejected as dangerous folly that undermines the validity of the conceptual framework in which it seems fits- seen as untruth by mainstream science & its critics!
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Also, in considering now, to move from the legal fight for equality into the field of spirituality within psychology through investigating transliminality; an isolating change of direction- it’s not escaped my notice that an already neglected &
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This should have said the ableism against people using facilitated communication. As in those who seek to invalidate the words of spellers as not their own bc of the support they need to communicate.
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Why, in people who are questioning the issues with certain explanatory paradigms, is there little interest in being consistent in their critique across related harms of these explanatory paradigms? The myopia here is consistently staggering to me.
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That’s a garbled thread but maybe people catch my drift- does it annoy anyone else that those who want progress in some areas rarely also fight for just progress in other areas?
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In seeing sociology as part of that paradigm & not integrating its insights around structural oppression, they are throwing the baby out with the bath-water. The problems of discrimination can’t be solved with differently orientated discrimination.
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I don’t think anyone sociologically informed could, for example, disentangle eugenics from the materialist enlightenment paradigm that informs so much of the philosophy of science still today, which so many spiritual, religious & parapsychological folk dispute.
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In trying to tackle the challenges of the world devaluing parapsychological & theological research which could lead to changed ontological paradigms, we so often cement in the unhelpful & discriminatory beliefs that root these paradigms in the first place.
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the best theory we have of delusional states shows us that they occur from trying to interpret & understand an inherently different experience of conscious awareness, not that they spring up fully formed as changed beliefs about the world, that are obviously disprovable.
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We ought to be including madness in such explorations of spiritual truths- not excluding it out of hand because those who experience these altered states of consciousness so often struggle to interpret the mind changes they experience-
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madness ought to be seen as part of the puzzle not contrasted with it as meaning that we should value some disabilities more than others because of the gifts they could potentially give us.
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such as sensory deprivation contributing to hypnogogic states, or in disabilities of the body-mind, leading to a different integrations of consciousness or access to universal or collective consciousnesses. The existence of disability &
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verifiable informational telepathic abilities should be hierarchically valued above experiences of madness-when the best evidence we have of psi phenomena such as in the Ganzfield experiments is that it more reliably occurs in altered states of consciousness,
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Or whether it’s the telepathy tapes exploring psi phenomena in non speaking autistic people- & trying to contrast the ableism of people who use facilitated communication with the equally ableist take that their
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quite opposed to pathology which can be evaluated as value neutral even as it is a negation of normal functionality-& is obvs something that has gone individually awry rather than a universally shared state-& too the social systems that underpin and seem to determine so many destructive behaviours).
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Whether it’s Rowan Williams, a theologian I deeply respect, talking about the pathology of sin & individually orientated addictions of our environment (as opposed to the shared intrinsically human nature of sin,
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& medicine restores this consent even in the midst of non-consensual and sometimes unnecessarily violent treatment. It’s that paradox of care that is difficult to hold, but for now, hold it I (& many others) must.
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What medicine removes in agency from me, in both experience & self-identity, it equally well gives back to me in a form of normal agency. Whilst I experience curiosity & a kind of consent entering altered states of consciousness, I am not my normal self.
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my medical needs, are both important. The psychological sense making and the meds that, for all their unwanted side effects, keep me stable & bring me out of those states of mind, are both of equal importance.
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That tension is difficult to exist within for me. The fact is that I cannot contain in my mind the enormity of what I encounter without my body giving into total shutdown. And how I navigate my completely different states of being, and altered states of consciousness, in my identity as well as