In a normal persons mind
the sub-conscience and conscience mind are separate, or at least
appear to be. Our deepest parts of ourselves are hidden in the
sub-conscious mind, just out of reach. These hidden aspects of the
self can be reached either through dreams and or meditative states
particularly that of shamanic journeying. Lets say we have a
redundant dream about someone following us. Depending on the person
and circumstances it could signify a hidden fear. Imagine your mind
had no filter, no wall between the conscious and sub-conscience mind?
I believe this to be schizophrenia. There is no difference between
any sort of consciousness, their mind is open to all realms. Their
hallucinations are no more false than a dream and we can find a lot
of helpful information in dreams. This can be true of schizophrenia
or any psychotic mental state.
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| Flickr by Lorrainemd |
I do not believe for one
second that mental problems like that of schizophrenia are illnesses
that need to be medicated. The person experiencing the problem needs
to learn how to navigate and function in these states. It is
absolutely possible and successful. I have done it and many before
me. Seth Farber talks about this in his book The Spiritual Gift of
Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and The Rise of The Mad Pride
Movement. I listened to an interview through a pod cast at Why Shamanism Now (which by the way has great tools and resources through their pod casts) talking about the gift of madness and how and why
psychiatry has gone the route it has. I am not an anti-psychiatrist
but it has failed us. I will not focus why in this post but I believe
that medication can be useful for acute crisis moments. For long term
use it is disastrous and more damaging then the illness itself.
Why is looking at mental
illness as a gift such an important statement? We are at a turning
point in our history, I believe mental illness to be the next
evolutionary step of humanity. Our minds are becoming more open to
other realms, wider ranges of consciousness, places the normal
everyday person could not reach unless in an altered state; we
experience it without even trying. Imagine you wake up one day and
every moment you flip flop between waking reality and dream reality,
that would be horrifying! But that is what is happening. People who
were called to shamanism most often than not always have a spiritual
crisis like that of a psychotic episode or break from reality. The difference is that they
see the psychotic break for what it is, the need to transform
themselves mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. They
interpret and find meaning in their waking reality and psychotic
reality and learn through discipline how to walk between both worlds
in a balanced way.
Transpersonal psychology is
the closest arena in professional psychology that closely comes to
the truth with mental illness. This aspect of psychology tries to
explain human experience, understand the need for spirituality and
human growth in a scientific way. They bring age old wisdom to our
contemporary world. What comes out of this is the realization that
there is a need for us to understand our true reality, our
consciousness, and how to maneuver in it in a balanced way to create
well being in our lives. This is done through guided meditation,
music therapy, peak experience, spirituality, etc. It is still
obviously very under practiced in our western world.
Understanding it as a whole
What is the difference
between someone who hears voices and one who does not? How loud they
are. We all hear voices. We all have voices in our head, our inner
critic, our ego, our imagination, etc. Some people just have the
volume control all the way up. Some voices are louder than others,
for example we have all experienced an angry voice. One that gets so
fed up with others and yells at them in our head. Your voices are no
different than the person on the street that talks to themselves.
There is no difference
between you and someone who sees things that others do not. Their
filter is off, they are reaching states that you yourself can reach
anytime you want either by dreaming or meditation or even taking
hallucinogens. If you can learn how to induce those states, to reach
higher states of consciousness than you can surely learn how to tone
those states down so you can function day to day.
The first step I went
through to learn to control these states is by accepting I had a
problem. Then I began really thinking about what is the truth, what
voices speak truth and what are lies. The voices that rung true, that
spoke of beauty, love, goodness, things that nourished me I listened
to and fed energy to. The ones who told me I was worthless and
nothing I ignored them. Just as John Nash did in a Beautiful Mind, he
figured out what was a lie or hallucination and what wasn't. He
started to ignore the bothersome hallucinations and focused on the
brilliance of his ability to get inspiration for his mathematics. He
was able to function, he still saw his hallucinations, but they
didn't trip him up anymore.
There is an epidemic on our
hands in our modern world. The more advanced technologically and
“civilized” (whatever that is) the more our society devalues
spirit and the more we become unwell and unbalanced. Being spiritual
does not mean religion, dogma, or a belief system, but wisdom. Truth.
The essence of our true nature. Awareness of our self and how we fit into the world. It isn't even about sitting around philosophizing about
reality, it is wisdom gained from direct experience.
This is why I share this
with you, because I have been there, I have gone through madness and
back and have lived to tell about it. Walking away from traditional
therapy and really taking it upon myself to master my mind was the best
thing I could have ever done. I hope my articles have been helpful
and I encourage any feedback good or bad. Thank you everyone for
reading!
Resources:
Why Shamanism Now: http://whyshamanismnow.com/
Interview with Seth Farber: http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/06/the-spiritual-gift-of-madness-with-seth-farber/
fantastic post, love the way its written. So easy to understand. I love the idea of accepting the whole person, taking the problem as part of you and it becoming a strength, something that sets you apart from the crowd, I can see this in what you have written, you learn to go around the bad bits and focus on the benefits it brings.
ReplyDeleteThank you Atom for your comment. It isn't so much going around the bad bits as you said, in my experience going around or ignoring the negative behaviors can lead to ignorance and you cannot change that which you don't see. I have done that, I jumped on the new age band wagon of "positive thinking" and by ignoring the problems and living in a positive delusion the negative behaviors I was ignoring swept me off my feet. I hope that makes sense. There are lots of ways to transform the negative sides of mental illness or bad habits and behaviors but they need to be seen and recognized first and of course accepted.
ReplyDeleteYou did say focus on the benefits it brings and that is absolutely true. It is crazy but every tragedy in our lives always brings a gift, you just have to train your mind to see them. When you do though life gets much easier to maneuver through! Thanks again Atom!