I do not believe mental illness is a disease. I believe it is a state of consciousness that has been labeled a disease. Yet when people hear the concept of “mental health” they experience a conditioned response and really hear “mental illness,” which in turn causes them to experience shame or embarrassment.
“Mental health” started on the wrong path when as a discipline it became known as an “illness of mind” and thus a disease. Psychiatrists, seeking legitimacy from their medical peers, chose to follow the medical model and focus on materialistic or physical pathology of the body and apply the disease model to the mind. Most modern research is still focused on examining the brain function and areas of the brain where disease might be found. While they have discovered many marvelous things about the brain, they still haven’t found a physical manifestation of mental illness. And how can they, when we still haven’t discovered how matter (brain) holds the thing we call the “mind” or consciousness. It is a miraculous mystery how neurons in the brain are able to hold information and organize that information in such a way that we can act upon that information. For example, I cannot explain to you how I am able to write this very sentence, or how you, the reader, is able to comprehend (or perhaps not comprehend) this explanation.
The brain is capable of such incredible feats. It records everything. It records the obvious and the not so obvious. The brain hears what is said but it also records that which is not said. This is particularly true for attitudes held by the self, about the self. There are times when one is told overtly that they are not enough or that there is something defective about them. When this happens the natural defense mechanism will usually adjust the suggestion as false. However, when someone sends the same message indirectly by non-verbal tone or inflection, the brain records it deep in the unconscious. For example: We do not tell others that is it OK to lie, steal, or cheat or to treat someone mean, including self. And yet everyone has at some time or another done one or more of those things. The brain recorded these moments of information in the unconscious, and then the person acted on that information later, again without any conscious understanding of how or why.
What is not said, is what determines the person’s individual sense of self. There is an epidemic being created by the social media that we are “not enough,” through the way events and opinions are portrayed, though it is never said outright, it is having serious consequences on our society. Ironically it’s true: none of us are enough! But so what?! The problem is not the fact that we are not enough – it is the negative sentiment that somehow we are flawed because we are not enough.
The world is full of ideas (consciousness) and the brain is the processor of that consciousness, both the known and the unknown. Simply because we cannot measure something does not make it any less real. This is where we enter the world of spirit. The inner world where we sense a connection to all things, even the unknowable. Yet we are conscious of this unknowable sentiment and we find that it has real consequences in our lives, sometimes intended but often unintended.
An example of unintended consequence is the function of addictive behavior. I have never known anyone who consciously set out to mess up their lives. However, because of their unconscious level of awareness that is exactly what happens. Often when asked “Why did you partake of an addictive substance or activity?” they will give various answers blaming it on the past or even say “I don’t know.” They probably really don’t know because their level of awareness is limited to the conscious mind. To make changes they are required to examine the results produced by the unconscious, thereby raising their level of consciousness. The conscious mind can never know the unconscious directly. It can only know the results of the unconscious.
Honest self-examination is the path to enlightenment. How you think about yourself will determine how you present yourself to your world. Conscious as well as unconscious insecurities will motivate one to present to the world in a way that is less genuine and authentic. Some call that “posing” or we pretend while pretending that we are not pretending.
The energy to manage impressions can be exhausting emotionally and psychologically. The fear of being “found out” takes a huge toll on our happiness and well-being. The negative connotations that come with the concepts of “mental health” or “mental illness” perpetuate this stigma and create an arena of fear and shame.
The term “mental illness” brings a connotation that one is somehow defective at the core level. No one wants to be diagnosed with a mental illness. It brings shame and disgrace, separating them from the rest of humanity. It is not so different as in times past when one was considered to be demonic if their behavior or thought was different than the societal norm. During the dark ages over a million women, children, and men were put to death because they were thought to be possessed by some “evil spirit.” In response, modern psychology was invented to replace this very archaic and inhumane practice.
Despite our advances, our mental health system seems woefully inadequate. There is still an element of inhumanity from what happened in our early psychiatric institutions and what is still occurring with those diagnosed as mentally ill. Studying the “matter” of the brain is not going to answer the question of how the mind works. We need to stop focusing on the symptoms (medical model) and start examining the underlying root of the symptoms, which is to study levels of consciousness that produce behaviors diagnosed as “mental illness.”
Recently there has been a movement, long overdue, in the psychological world toward a science of happiness. Martin E.P. Selizman, PhD has been a strong advocate for positive psychology. I would urge all to read his book “Authentic Happiness.” Having said that, I believe we need to go even further.
We must develop a new paradigm that examines all levels of consciousness. Consciousness is difficult to define in English because it often simply refers to being aware of some phenomenon. It is abstract, therefore it cannot accurately be described because it is not physical matter but it is the stuff that creates matter. From the Tibetan book of the Great Liberation, we read “Matter is derived from mind, not mind from matter.” Professor Han-Peter Durz said, “Whatever matter is, it is not made of matter.” I propose that happiness, unhappiness, mental health, mental illness, are all states of consciousness and each in its own way serves some purpose for the holder of that particular state of consciousness.
In nature all phenomenon has purpose. If it has no purpose it seems the intelligence of the universe does not create it. In other words, the mind of the universe has no need to create something that has no purpose. Even what we call insanity, or mental illness, serves some purpose just as happiness serves some purpose.
Mother Nature, evolution, created within each species an awareness or consciousness (mind stuff) of our environment. It seems that emotions are representations of our relationship to our environment. For example, if we feel fear our consciousness is telling us that there is something that is threatening. If we feel depressed there is something in our environment that we have lost or we are mourning something. If we are angry something is offensive to us. Emotions are messengers that give us information beyond the five senses. The mind itself is a meaning making phenomenon (consciousness) and is constantly evaluating and judging everything around us. Thus, when we allow the mind to examine itself without judgment it goes into a restful, peaceful state. From the space of stillness comes much wisdom.
In this space we are able to change the interior and to know what our consciousness is as it relates to the exterior world. The “out there” changes when the “in here” changes. So while we don’t physically change, our perception (consciousness) changes, and that effects everything. We must conclude that we are not our perceptions; we hold them but they are not us.
There are many who have experienced this dramatic shift in consciousness. In religious circles we call these people mystics. They seem to be in touch with a different or higher level of consciousness. In this state, perception (consciousness) of reality changes; while everything stays the same, nothing is really the same. Buddha is a well-known example: his goal was to discover the nature of the mind that perceives reality.
Most people believe that only select individuals have mystical or altered states of consciousness. I believe all are capable of attaining mystical experiences. In fact, everyone I have ever talked to has had some experience in that realm, whether or not they realize it at the time.
A religious mystic experience or a state of enlightenment is the same as loss of ego identity, commonly referred to as a psychotic break. Most of us would say people who experience any of those changes are very different, but we might be hard pressed to say how they are different. We would certainly be able to discern the difference in terms of consequence.
When one reads the poetry of some of the mystics of old we get a sense of their “insanity” as well as a sense of their serenity and peace. St. Catherine of Siena spent her life serving both the mental and emotional aspects of people suffering. Here is her poem “I Won’t Take No For an Answer”:
“I won’t take no for an answer,”
God began to say
to me
When He opened His arms each night
wanting us to
dance.
When Catherine was seven she yearned to wed God. She left home, found a cave, and sought God out in prayer. She had a mystical experience that put her on a path of assisting others to heal. In today’s world any seven year old who claimed to want to wed God would be taken to a child psychiatrist, given medication, and labeled with a mental illness.
Labels don’t help us in having effective relationships. Labels prevent us from seeing the real person, causing us to relate to the label (the idea of the person) rather than the actual person. For me this is a tragic way of dealing with a level of consciousness that results in shaming the child, or any person. No matter what the symptom we can still relate to that person. Does putting a diagnosis on a person help us in our relationship strategies? No! Most often it creates an artificial barrier in the relationship. Diagnosis and labels create so much pain for all involved. I have always found that true healers see the person. They help the person to find the courage to be honest and authentic, relieving that person of all the doubt and fear, and helping them to find both spiritual and emotional rewards.
