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It is hard in today's culture containing many fear-inducing things to prevent oneself from having symptoms of paranoia.

In modern times, it seems that paranoia is prevalent. Finding someone who isn't paranoid--that's a rare find. It would be someone who does not have any real difficulties in her or his life. Perhaps a toddler whose mind has yet to be corrupted by parents. Or maybe a dog who has Buddha Nature. Even most Zen students and teachers seem find it prudent to employ caution about the world. I've been to a Zen monastery that had a sign saying the premises are monitored by video cameras. This is because, above all, successful meditation practitioners are connected to reality. And the reality is, things are scary.

These are insane times, and if you are not affected by this, something is probably wrong with you. 

Where does that put us mentally ill people? By that I mean those of us who were considered mentally sick before Trump came along, before coronavirus came along, and before a nearly successful attempt to overthrow the U.S. Government? It puts us in a category of extreme disadvantage. 

If we can't sync our minds to some splinter of the fractured consciousness of the human species, we are lost. We then would have to find our own way. And how are we to do this while medicated, while disabled, and while regarded as incompetent? 

Many of us continue to live in the past. I mean the recent past, a time before this weird stuff took hold and shattered the foundations of something we thought we could always rely on. We considered the U.S. Government to be like a bedrock on which we could always build. Now it seems unreliable. 

How does a person find a sense of safety within this context? The easy and quick answer is: You don't. The other answer is, you do your best to arrange a relatively secure situation, one that works, for now, and you hope for the best. A "sense of security" is just that, a sense. 

Security doesn't exist. Or, as Buddhist philosophy suggests, all things are impermanent. Thirty thousand years from now, our descendants, if they exist, will be uncovering our bones and preparing them to put up in their museums. And that, to me, is somehow a comforting thought. It makes me feel that I'm merely part of the evolution of our planet Earth, and I feel this is a good thing. 

To feel safe, you just need to trust that, for now, things are safe, and that's the best you can hope for. If you feel safe and peaceful, it becomes far easier to emerge from a paranoid state into a healing state of mind. And healing is what we need. 

I have specific memories that stand out in my consciousness of recovery from psychosis. In all those memories, the emergence from delusion took place at a time that I was very peaceful. Peacefulness means you are not scared. If you are not scared, you can recover from psychosis. 

The United States needs to heal and not fight. Mentally ill people need to heal and should not have to fight with ourselves and with our symptoms. We will not be able to go back to the past. 

Thus, if you want to keep up, you need to study what the world is changing to and adapt to that. But it doesn't have to be ridiculously hard, to do that. It takes less effort to acknowledge the truth than it does to fabricate self-deceit or lies to others. 

If you are paranoid, you are in the new normal. If you are hyper-paranoid, it is an impracticable state because you are excessively defending and can't function. You need to have a middle ground, one in which you look after yourself, but in which you maintain internal calm. 

If all of this seems like science fiction, it is because we've made it to the future. And we do not need to be afraid of the future. The human species has a very bright future as soon as we get past a few more bumps. I really believe this. I believe we have a lot to look forward to. There is every reason to be hopeful, and we should not give up.