MENTAL ILLNESS AND SELF-REALIZATION: THE FINE LINE AND COMMON SYMPTOMS

It’s easy to feel like you are going crazy when you come into your realization, because your perception of reality changes, and your relationship with your mind, thoughts, and emotions all change. Your own identity breaks down and how others see you begins to change and it feels as if the ground beneath was ripped apart. Then, all the excuses come up such as having mental illness in the family, your mother or father was crazy so now it has been passed down to you through the DNA. Or you took too many drugs and hurt your brain. You may have your own excuses that come up that are unique but follows the same pattern of limited explanations.

​Maybe you are crazy, but let’s go deeper and take a look below the surface…

Many of the so called “symptoms” of mental illnesses such as psychosis or *schizophrenia are displayed and are common experiences during the process of enlightenment. Nothing like this has come before, so there is nothing else to compare it to. The mind can only find the answers within its own confine, and after that it will make you feel like you are losing it. Well, because you are. It’s more like you are loosening up the stronghold over your mind and thoughts, and when that occurs you fall out of what is considered the range of normalcy. You are “splitting apart” or confronted with your different aspects and opening up to all of who you are.

Psychology tells us that the mental disorder of schizophrenia is characterized by abnormal behavior, strange speech, decreased ability to understand reality, false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, hearing voices that do not exist, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, lack of motivation, anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder. The list goes on. If you look at most of these symptoms, they are commonly experienced when realizing the self and all of who you are.

Western cultures tend to look at anything they do not understand that resides outside the box of science and psychology as crazy. There is no such thing as a crazy person in indigenous cultures. So, what happened with this split in understanding? They do not have mental institutions or doctors for such a thing, but what they do is integrate these people into the community. They understand if someone is displaying themselves as different and unique from the rest of the tribe, this is their gift. It is not a curse, and something to fix, and certainly not something to suppress with drugs. If someone gets violent the community works with them and assists to bringing them to a state of well being again.

The gift can also come as being a shaman. This individual works with unseen forces which is out of the jurisdiction of western science understanding. In the indigenous communities it’s recognized, honored, acted upon, and integrated. Science is simply unable to help these people because they do not understand consciousness and energy, so they recommend endless counseling sessions and drugs to bring them back to a state of “normal”.  It’s a constant loop of suppression that will never be resolved with this way of thinking, and limited understanding.

So, I would be clinically diagnosed with psychosis to the science community because I work with the unseen forces as a shaman and also someone who has come into self-realization. But the thing is, crazy or not, the techniques that I utilize work. Years of psychotherapy can be taken care of in a session or two. It took me more than a year to realize all of this. I was one of those who happened to be born to a “crazy” family, so it was easy for me to go there in my mind about it before I understood the dynamics. It’s a perfect recipe for coming into realization.

Everybody has their own unique way of expressing all of who they are. The symptoms of coming undone at the core of your being will mimic what science calls as crazy.  When you go through the “dark night of the soul”, you are recognizing and integrating so many aspects and parts of yourself that you didn’t see before. You literally turn into a quaking mess. And while all of this is going on your relationships start changing, and how you lived your life. You are so busy trying to get through each hour of the day while adjusting to this new way of living.  

So, can you see there is such a fine line between realization and crazy? Are people afraid of losing their minds? Yes. Why? Because they are afraid of who they are behind their mask of identity. They are holding onto life and the normal way of living, a singular identity, following the same old patterns generation after generation. This is the matrix. I used to say they are afraid of their own power, but this has nothing to do with power and everything to do with realizing how enormous they are. 

​*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia