Norman Tang's Blog

Have you ever felt so self aware that the world seems to revolve around you, and occasionally experience bouts of paranoia?  I felt like that when I was suffering from schizophrenia.

Because everyone is talking about the Olympics at the moment, that becomes part of your personality, and you become sporty and energetic.

During the Commonwealth Games in 2010, I watched the events and especially admired the gymnastics and running, and found myself running mini hurdles and jumping over desks and chairs.  I also found myself breaking barriers in my own spirituality, attaining enlightenment and well being in the process.  This I attained when I was 28, a whole year before the Buddha attained enlightenment.

When I was ill in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), I meditated like crazy under my appointed “Bodhi” (sacred) tree – but everyone thought I was sleeping.  During these sessions I saw space and time how they really were, and felt like a time lord – the Doctor in particular.

While I was in hospital , my schizophrenia allowed me to become different personalities – mainly God, the new Buddha (Maitreya), Neo from the Matrix, all the members of the Simpson’s, and the Doctor (from Doctor Who).

During my breaks from meditation, I found that the TV was talking to me.  The nature documentaries in particular were especially good at this, when they were showing evidence of tigers in Bhutan – I became scared that the population of tigers would put the population, mainly Buddhists, in danger – so the TV responded by discovering incidentally that the full grown cats were only the size of domestic cats, so to not put the population in danger.

The music videos on TV were also good at communicating with me.  I sang along to the lyrics of Crossfire by Brandon Flowers and found myself identifying with his experiences with ninjas (who were representing the Antichrist or the devil’s foot soldiers).