Ok, now to respond to Patti.

You sound very strong and firm, and grounded in your beliefs.

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On the other side of the coin is my 'spiritual' (as opposed to religious) conviction that psych medications are in themselves a negative energy. They desensitize me and separate me from myself. I don't like how they make me feel. I feel poisoned and totally out of touch with myself

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I have never taken psychotropic meds, though I've never really had a conviction per se about taking or not taking them. But when I read that, I thought... sheesh, my whole reason for being in therapy is that I feel so separated from myself, and this causes so much suffering. I certainly don't need meds to feel cut off from me, dissociation does that all to well already!

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In the meantime I benefit everyday from becoming more disciplined with my prayers, meditations, nutrition, fitness, thinking and behavioural patterns. I face every symptom with prayer and holistic wellness therapy. I live by the medicine wheel where I learn to practise balance and harmony. I transcend into spirit to cope with and heal my physical realities.

I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I can centre my physical pain until I don't feel the pain anymore. I can mentally travel to the source of the physical pain and take it apart in my mind. I can centre my mental anquish until I don't feel anquished anymore. In spirit I can overcome anything my physical form wrestles with. I'm disciplining and centring myself into a state of greater and greater wellness.

Some call it 'hokky' I call it my spiritual journey to physical and mental wellness. Holistic medicine led by spiritual enlightenment and faith in what I know but can not see.

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I would really like to learn how to live more in a spiritual way like that. I have this fear and avoidance of it, I think because spirituality wasn't really a grounded, centering, kind of experience for me growing up as a Mormon. It just doesn't fit with my sense of my spirit, you know? It's hard to sort out my spirituality from my past. I told my T that sometimes I judge my spiritual side because I'm afraid of being "flaky." She said that sounded like internalized racism to her (against Native American beliefs).

I don't know much about scientology, and I wouldn't ever become one. But I am a firm believer that just about every religion or pattern of beliefs has some grain of wisdom and truth in it. And I guess in this thread I was seeking for that balanced perspective, because I feel very bombarded with the negative comments re: scientology. The media is in such a frenzy over it with the Tom Cruise thing. I want to find the midpoint between over-acceptance and under-acceptance. I don't want to go to a scientology forum though! lol! I feel quite at home here at PC.