Monday, April 14, 2008

Mental Illness or Spiritual Experience?

Watched a show on ABC last night about Mental Illness and it occurred to me just how many similarities there are between symptoms of mental illness and deep spiritual experiences.
Such as, feeling "between the worlds", disassociated, feeling that the other world makes sence whereas this one does not, hearing voices, fatigue, bouts of extreme energy then feelings of exhaustion, a sence that many of your choices and actions are not yours, leaving your body etc...
Obviously, the major difference is that mental illness is all pervasive and does not leave you with a feeling of elation, you are required to contain your emotions by using drugs and rehabilitation to allow you to function whereas a spiritual experience is uplifting and profound and mostly transitory...

but yet, these experiences are in many ways very similar - I discussed this with the man and said to him that I felt that most of us have a "screw loose" and can relate to one or more of these feelings,and his comment was that I don't have any screws left to come loose anymore, they all fell out years ago!.
Hmmmmmm.....

5 comments:

Myst_72 said...

It's true.

If you told a shrink you were 'hearing voices' or 'seeing "things"' they'd say you were schizophrenic - but if you said the same to a clairvoyantly/spiritually minded person you would be 'gifted' and having visions/connecting to the spirit world - it's hard to know where the line blurs I reckon!

G
xx

Unknown said...

Hmm yes your soo right...maybe there is something inn the hearing voice that is not of this world and should never really be

Hippy Witch said...

I agree completely, so many people are on medication and you wonder if they really need it, maybe they just need to be taught how to understand and control their gift.

Im sure that most of your screws are tight enough my darling. Husbands have no idea, do they. Hey! I drew a picture about that a long time ago (man has no idea), I will paint it one day.

How is your painting going?

Did you bid on that camera for me?

Kathie said...

It also sounds a lot like what we will be studying with the transpersonal art therapy!

Michelle said...

Stop trying to justify your freakiness Mary!