Becoming Mad and Asking Why the River is Flowing

This bold and provocative work is a compelling story about the author's spiritual quest as she journeyed to the inner worlds to comprehend the "Mind of God", supposedly, through comprehending the enigmatic and elusive Will of God which her Christianized mother always referred to whenever she ran out of answers. To aim and then claim to understand the Mind or the Will of God is certainly very ambitious, if not an outrageous attempt. The quest had been very daunting but which, in the end, the author was able to accomplish, in her own fashion, at least.

This work is the result of a thorough process of philosophical inquiry which started when the six-year-old author, pointing to the river flowing in her hometown, asked her caretaker, her very old shaman grandmother, the question, "Where the river begins and where it ends?" This childish question was only the beginning of a profound experiential journey into the mysterious worlds of dreams, storytelling, hallucinatory visions, through the angst of existentialism, and through the high abstractions of metaphysics - all of which unfold against the backdrop of two powerfully contending paradigms presented by a reputed shaman grandmother and a strong-willed catechist mother.

The narrative takes the form of the retelling of indigenous folktales, parables, anecdotes, unusual dreams, and original visions-elements which are an integral part of the biographical episodes of three generations of indigenous women, upon which the story was based. As a philosophical undertaking, the narrative takes an existentialist approach with a distinct shamanic undertone and a saturnine humor. Fundamental questions about God, life, death, the afterlife, purpose, and identity are explored. Abstruse and weighty topics such as free will, good vs. evil, human suffering, consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality are also discussed.

Anybody with an interest in indigenous peoples, storytelling, metaphysical philosophy, religions, anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, or just anybody looking to be entertained, will certainly find this work highly entertaining and informative. Although the narrative is taken to the level of metaphysical discourse, the heart of all themes discussed stems from very deep personal experiences and actual historical occurrences-which every human on earth can relate to, as everyone is affected both by personal and social issues while, consciously or unconsciously, searching for meaning, for enlightenment, for happiness, for a heaven on earth.