[spiritual_emergency]

Anyone reading this post, whether it be at the time of it's creation or in some distant future might be wondering -- What does the Hero's Journey have to do with schizophrenia?

The connect is... those who go through the experience in a benign environment -- that is to say, without stigmatizing labels, drugs, or forced care that seeks to stifle the emerging content -- in those individuals, the emerging content itself begins to coalesce into a pattern that looks remarkably like The Hero's Journey. Here's an excerpt from Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth where he addresses that aspect...

<hr width=100% size=2>
<blockquote>
BROWN: As a psychiatrist I'm particularly curious about your work with John Perry. How did you first meet him?

CAMPBELL: That was a marvelous meeting. Mike wrote to me one time and said he'd like me to come out and talk with John Perry, a psychiatrist in San Francisco, about schizophrenia. I said, I don't know anything about schizophrenia. He said, Well, he'd like to have me give a lecture anyhow. I said, Well, how would James Joyce be? And he said, That would be just fine.

So I agreed to come out and talk with John Perry. And Perry sent me some of his monographs, his articles, on the symbolism of schizophrenia. The sequence with which these images emerge in a patient's mind, who's in a deep schizoid crack-up. And it matched The Hero with a Thousand Faces, just like that, step by step.

And so there again I came to understand the relationship with something that had been simply a scholarly interest of mine in mythology to actual life problems.

And it's been pretty exciting ever since.

Source: The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work</blockquote>

<hr width=100% size=2>

Perry relates his own discovery of this pattern in his earlier book, The Far Side of Madness...

<blockquote>The terror of psychosis – and the terrifying treatments to which the “mental patient” is subjected – remains a source of bafflement to the outsider and a source of frustration to many practitioners in the mental health field. Although the literature is fraught with descriptions of symptoms, diagnoses, theories, and methods of treatment, few researchers address the patient as an equal. Rare, indeed, is the practitioner who has come to view psychosis as a strange sign of health: as an attempt to heal or as a stage in a developmental process that transports the subject beyond sickness or health and into a positive transformation of the self.

Such an exception is John Weir Perry. His Far Side of Madness remains a classic in the field for all these reasons. Working in the lonely tradition of Carl Jung and R.D. Laing, who each viewed psychosis as potentially purposive and telic in nature, Perry describes the goals – and the terrible dangers – that are typically portrayed in the psychotic journey.

Perry’s work in traditional psychiatric settings led him to conclude that those in the thrall of an acute psychotic episode are rarely listened to or met on the level of their visionary state of consciousness. Instead, every imaginable way to silence the patients – to ignore and to disapprove of their nonrational language and experience – was called into play, thereby increasing their sense of isolation, alienation, and so-called madness. (Although the book was first published in 1974, things have not substantially changed in state mental hospitals or in community residence settings. To explore the strange imagery of psychosis with a client in a counseling session is viewed as “feeding into their delusional system,” and it is sternly discouraged by psychiatrists and social workers.) Perry’s work with those in acute stages of psychosis revealed that their pre-psychotic personalities were the true source of the “sickness.” Forced to live an emotionally impoverished life, the psyche had reacted by forcing a transformation in the form of a “compensating” psychosis, during which a drama in depth was enacted, forcing the initiate to undergo certain developmental processes.

Such psychic processes, which are accompanied by rich, emotional imagery, yield amazing parallels to classical myths and to obscure rituals of antiquity:<blockquote><font color=DC143C><font size=3>The individual finds himself living in a psychic modality quite different from his surroundings. He is immersed in a myth world ... His emotions no longer connect with ordinary things, but drop into concerns and titanic involvements with an entire inner world of myth and image.</font></font></blockquote>Although the imagery is of a general, archetypal nature (“imagery that pertains to all men and all times”), it also portrays the key issues of the individual undergoing the crisis. Therefore, once lived through on this mythic plane, and once the process of withdrawal nears its end, the images must be linked to specific problems of daily life. Thus, the archetypal affect images await a reconnection to their natural context: to the personal psychological complexes (which are externally projected).

Perry searched for and finally discovered a regular pattern of imagery and ideation in the psychotic process. The “negative self-image” is typically compensated by an “overblown” archetypal one, the latter manifesting in imagery such as that of the hero, clown, saint, ghost, or sovereign leader. In addition, there is a sense of “participating in some form of drama or ritual performance.”<blockquote><font color=DC143C><font size=3>Most significantly, ten sets of motifs emerged:
[*] symbols of the center[*] death[*] return to beginnings[*] cosmic conflict[*] the threat of the opposite sex[*] apotheosis[*] sacred marriage[*] new birth[*] new society, and [*] the quadrated world </font></font></blockquote>Following the Jungian school of thought (from which Perry emerged), comparative symbolism and cross-cultural studies were used to uncover a holistic context in which to view such motifs in a larger context. Research led to the discovery of the same sequence of imagery in archaic religions and in other cultural structures. Most significant to the author is that “the myth and ritual form that resembles it is the principle and central rite of the civilizations of remote antiquity, and parallels the image sequence step for step.” That is, the “ceremonial pattern of sacral kingship,” found in the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Far East, which involves an annual renewal of the cosmos during the New Year.

The author devotes an entire chapter to the psychic significance of kingship, and he refers to its importance throughout The Far Side of Madness. Indeed, the correspondence is striking: in the New Year festivals, we find “a creation rite also emphasizing the center, the beginnings, death and renewal, the sacred combat and sacred marriage, and the other elements of the process.” The sacred functions of kingship represents a projection of “man’s spiritual potential as an individual.” Only with the integration of such functions in the psyche of the common man was the era of the sacred king to give way to a new era: one ushered in by “great prophets and founders of the great religions,” and characterized by a revaluation of the individual and the Eros principle. Thus, kingship reflects an archetypal pattern of growth: one progressing through dismemberment, reconstitution, and the rebirth of psyche, paralleling the “outer” historical processes (which themselves were probably based on inner archetypal correlates) and ending in the Eros principle described above (the return to love).

Source: Psychosis as Purposive</blockquote>

.

[spiritual_emergency]

The Experience of Schizophrenia

<center><img src=http://spiritblogpics.homestead.com/beautifulpictureAutumninGermany.jpg></center>

... We start again from the split of our experience into what seems to be two worlds, inner and outer. ...

The person who has entered this inner realm (if only he is allowed to experience this) will find himself going, or being conducted -- one cannot clearly distinguish active from passive here -- on a journey.

This journey is experienced as going further "in" as going back through one's personal life, in and back and through and beyond into the experience of all mankind, of the primal man, of Adam and perhaps even further into the beings of animals, vegetables, and minerals.

In this journey there are many occasions to lose one's way, for confusion, partial failure, even final shipwreck, many terrors, spirits, demons to be encountered that may or may not be overcome.

We do not regard it as pathologically deviant to explore a jungle or climb Mount Everest. We feel that Columbus was entitled to be mistaken in his construction of what he discovered when he came to the New World. We respect the voyager, the explorer, the climber, the space man. It makes far more sense to me as a valid project -- indeed, as a desperately and urgently required project for our time -- to explore the inner space and time of consciousness.

No age in the history of humanity has perhaps so lost touch with this natural healing process that implicates some of the people whom we label as schizophrenic. No age has so devalued it, no age has imposed such prohibitions and deterrences against it, as our own. Instead of the mental hospital, a sort of reservicing factory for human breakdowns, we need a place where people who have travelled further and, consequently, may be more lost than psychiatrists and other sane people, can find their way further into inner space and time, and back again. Instead of the degradation ceremonial of psychiatric examination, diagnosis and prognostication, we need, for those who are ready for it, (in psychiatric terminology, often those who are about to go into a schizophrenic breakdown) an initiation ceremonial, through which the person will be guided with full social encouragement and sanction into inner space and time, by people who have been there and back again.
<blockquote>
What is entailed then is:
(i) a voyage from outer to inner,
(ii) from life to a kind of death,
(iii) from going forward to going back,
(iv) From temporal movement to temporal standstill,
(v) from mundane time to eonic time,
(vi) from the ego to the self,
(vii) from outside (post-birth) back into the womb of all things (pre-birth),

and then subsequently a return voyage from
(1) inner to outer,
(2) from death to life,
(3) from the movement back to a movement forward once more,
(4) from immortality back to mortality,
(5) from eternity back to time,
(6) from self to a new ego,
(7) from a cosmic fetalization to an existential rebirth.
</blockquote>
[...]

One would hope that society would set up places whose express purpose would be to help people through the stormy passages of such a voyage.

Source: <a href=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039471475X/sr=8-1/qid=1151458135/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3659112-5412662?ie=UTF8>The Politics of Experience - R.D. Laing</a>

[spiritual_emergency]

"...85% of our clients (all diagnosed as severely schizophrenic) at the Diabasis center not only improved, with no medications, but most went on growing after leaving us."

- John Weir Perry

<center><img src=http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/persistence.gif>
<font size=1>The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931</font></center>

An Interview With Dr. John Weir Perry - Michael O'Callaghan

MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN: How does one define so-called schizophrenia?

JOHN WEIR PERRY: Jung defined it most succinctly. He said...

<blockquote>"Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality." This means that the unconscious overwhelms the ego-consciousness, overwhelms the field of awareness with contents from the deepest unconscious, which take mythic, symbolic form. And the emotions, unless they're hidden, are quite mythic too. To a careful observer, they're quite appropriate to the situation at hand.

The way "schizophrenia" unfolds is that, in a situation of personal crisis, all the psyche's energy is sucked back out of the personal, conscious area, into what we call the archetypal area. Mythic contents thus emerge from the deepest level of the psyche, in order to re-organise the Self. In so doing, the person feels himself withdrawing from the ordinary surroundings, and becomes quite isolated in this dream state.</blockquote>
O'C: Did Jung really see this as a healing process?

PERRY: He did indeed! He believed that "schizophrenia" is a self-healing process - one in which, specifically, the pathological complexes dissolve themselves. The whole schizophrenic turmoil is really a self-organising, healing experience. It's like a molten state. Everything seems to be made of free energy, an inner free play of imagery through which the alienated psyche spontaneously re-organises itself - in such a way that the conscious ego is brought back into communication with the unconscious again.

O'C: How long does the experience normally last?

PERRY: The acute hallucinatory phase, during which these contents go through the re-ordering process, usually lasts about six weeks. This, by the way, corresponds to the classical description of visionary experiences in various religious texts, such as the proverbial "forty days in the wilderness" often referred to in the Bible. Anyway, six weeks is roughly it. ...

O'C: Who experiences a "schizophrenic break"?

PERRY: Well, there's a lot of controversy about this! There is a constitutional element, which is often interpreted as a "genotype of pathology", but this depends on how you see it. I see it as a genotype of sensitivity! Among adolescent siblings in a family, for example, its usually the most sensitive one who's going to catch it. ...

O'C: What does it feel like to go through a "schizophrenic break"?

PERRY: The overall experience is described as falling into a kind of abyss of isolation. This comes about because there is such a discrepancy between the subjective inner world that one has been swept into, and the mundane everyday world outside. There seems to be a total gulf between these two. Of course, this is exactly what happens in our society: the individuals around such a person are bewildered and frightened. They have absolutely no trust in what is going on! So everything is set up negatively, and this gives rise to fear - on both sides.

O'C: So it starts with a feeling of isolation...

PERRY: Yes. Now the symbolic expression of this is falling into a death - not only a death state, but also a death space - the "afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the "spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to look about and think that half the people around him are dead too. While in this condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really alive or not.

Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied by the feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. This involves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one's personal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling of slipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Garden of Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is the child of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is very symbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psyche at the start of one's individual career after birth.

So these are the outstanding features. All kinds of imagery comes tumbling across the field of awareness. It's like the mythological image in a perfect stained-glass window being smashed, and all the bits and pieces being scattered. The effect is very colourful, but it's very hard to discern how the pieces belong to each other. Any attempt to make sense of it is an exercise in abstraction from the actual experience. The important thing is to find the process running through it all...

Source: <a href=http://www.global-vision.org/interview/perry.html>Mental Breakdown as Healing</a>

See also: <a href=http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2006/05/dr-john-weir-perry-diabasis.html>Dr. John Weir Perry & Diabasis</a>



.

[spiritual_emergency]

<center><img src=http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/clancy_RedBones.jpg>
<font size=1><a href=http://www.clancycavnar.com/index.html>clancycavnar.com</a></font size>

<font size=4>- A Tale of the Inuit -</font></center>

She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.

The fisherman's hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman's rib cage. The fisherman thought, "Oh, now I've really got a big one! Now I really have one!" In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.

The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.

"Agh!" cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. "Agh!" he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths.

"Agh!" he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral white corpse of skeleton woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down.

Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact, she grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes, safe thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all bountiful Sedna, safe... at...last.

Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she - it - lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man... but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words softly like a mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line.

"Oh, na, na, na." First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. "Oh, na, na, na." On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman's bones were all in the order a human's should be.

He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word - she did not dare - lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly.

The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer's eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man.

Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked.

While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it: Bom Bomm!.....Bom Bomm!

As she drummed, she began to sing out "Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, Flesh, Flesh!" And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs.

And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man's clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way.

The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true and that is all they know.

<hr width=100% size=2><blockquote>In reading through the following excerpt from the chapter on Skeleton Woman and the Life/Death/Life cycle, it's important to not romanticize the relationship between Skeleton Woman and the fisherman. We each have a masculine and a feminine nature; the man in this story could just as easily be a woman. It is the task of Skeleton Woman to initiate each of us into the deeper mysteries of relationship with the largesse of life but she can only come into the temple of spirit by our explicit invitation...</blockquote>
Giving the Tear

As the fisherman sleeps, a tear is released from the corner of his eye. Skeleton Woman spies it, is filled with thirst, and awkwardly crawls to him to drink from the cup of his eye. What, we ask, could he be dreaming that would cause such a tear to come forth?

When one has ventured this far into relationship with the Life/Death/Life nature, the tear that is cried is the tear of passion and compassion mixed together, for oneself, and for the other. It is the hardest tear to cry and especially for men and certain kinds of "street-tough" women.

This tear of passion and compassion is most often wept after the accidental finding of treasure, after the fearful chase, after the untangling - for it is the combination of these that causes the exhaustion, the disassembling of defenses, the facing of oneself, the stripping down to the bones, the desire for both knowledge and relief. These cause a soul to peer into what the soul truly wants and to weep for loss and love of both.

As surely as Skeleton Woman was brought to the surface, now this tear, this feeling in the man, is also brought to the surface. It is an instruction in loving both self and another. Stripped now of all the bristles and hooks and shivs of the daytime world, the man draws Skeleton Woman to lie beside him, to drink and be nourished by his deepest feeling. In his new form he is able to feed the thirsty other.

This is the man healing, the man growing in understanding. He takes on his own medicine-making, he takes on the task of feeding the "deleted other." Through his tears, he begins to create.

To love another is not enough, to be "not an impediment" in the life of the other is not enough. It is not enough to be "supportive" and "there for them" and all the rest. The goal is to be knowledgeable about the ways of life and death, in one's own life and in panorama. And the only way to be a knowing man is to go to school in the bones of Skeleton Woman. She is waiting for the signal of deep feeling, the one tear that says, "I admit the wound."

Source: <a href=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409876/ref=pd_bbs_null_1/104-0114688-1387144?s=music&v=glance&n=5174>Women Who Run With The Wolves</a> - Clarissa Pinkola Estes


See also: [*] <a href=http://manningmusic.homestead.com/lay_me_down.html>Music: Lay Me Down</a>[*] <a href=http://www.soulfulliving.com/july02features.htm>Shadow Work</a>

[Sarah116]

Thanks for posting all of that. I found it very interesting information.

[spiritual_emergency]

<center><img src=http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/clancy_BirdCry.jpg>
<font size=1><a href=http://www.clancycavnar.com/index.html>clancycavnar.com</a></font size></center>
The fragmented psyche does not automatically require or seek mending; or at least there may be a kairos space of time during which it may need, indeed can thrive upon fragmentation. In certain crisis situations the psyche, instead of putting all its eggs in one basket, to play safe and ultimately protect its integrity, may choose to invest fragments of libido into splinter personalities for safe-keeping until the crisis has abated. In therapy situations I have seen this anticipated in dreams, then worked out in situations where a person was facing imminent, possibly life-threatening danger and in an attempt to cushion the impending blow, split into several ego stances. I have called this phenomenon "pre-traumatic dissociation" as an anticipatory move which, unlike the more severe and overridingly pathological Multiple Personality Disorder, does not interfere significantly with the individual's ability to function normally in day-to-day reality.

As a second parameter in the assessment of the overriding effect of pathology, placing woundedness in its mythic context, it's worth bearing in mind, for instance, that Osiris and Dionysus were dismembered, that Psyche had to journey to the Underworld, that Prometheus had his liver repeatedly torn out by Zeus's eagle, and that Medusa was beheaded. As well, in terms of the psyche's ultimate goal of attaining wholeness, centredness and integration, fragmentation is a blow to the hubris of the stable ego, which must relinquish its sense of a fixed identity and must eventually step aside in order to allow the paradoxical Self to displace it as the centre of consciousness.

Shamanism &amp; Schizophrenia
What we call schizophrenic is, as Joseph Campbell has discussed, called (positively) visionary or mystical in shamanic cultures, hence is valued, not feared or sedated with chemicals. As he clarifies in the well-known [1988] TV series, "The Power of Myth", 'The shaman is the person, male or female, who ... has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward. It's a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it. This shaman experience has been described many, many times. It occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego.'

Hence working with sufferers of schizophrenia from a shamanic angle can be helpful, since the shaman has in all likelihood experienced similar experiences to those of the schizophrenic. Mainstream reductionist psychiatrists, on the other hand, by and large presume that if an experience (such as chronic depression) is unpleasant, it must be stopped or band-aided, but because an experience is painful or difficult, it doesn't necessarily follow that's it's not valuable, or therapeutically worthwhile as a 'wound which heals'.

As Mircea Eliade has recounted in detail, shamanic initiation is often unpleasant, even at times horrific, and can involve being mythically stripped to the skeleton, dismemberment, or being taken to pieces. If the schizophrenic can work through these kinds of processes with an empathetic therapist, s/he may be able to find healing and some ego stability at the other end of the ordeal. I know of other schizophrenics who have courageously gone off of medication and helped each other through such processes, or (more rarely) who have worked through them alone.

Schizophrenia: The Shaman Sickness
The path is always lonely and demanding for those called to shamanism, and doubly so for those who must contend with Western culture's refusal to accept the overwhelming reality of the disturbing realms of vision and torment in which these potential shamans dwell. Along with having to endure the loss of ego stability, hence the frightening blurring of outer and inner realites, sufferers of schizophrenia are often forced to contend with psychiatric notions, ruled by the Apollonian myth of reason, monotheism and normality, which demand that such "deviant" Dionysian states be subdued with medication, or punished with incarceration in mental institutions.

The schizophrenic's reason and senses, like those of the shaman during initiation, are assaulted by concrete revelations of the heights and depths of the vast Otherworlds of the collective unconscious. Simultaneously, the schizophrenic is forced to slot into the sometimes petty humdrum and routine of daily existence. The invasion of the ego by archetypal forces transforms the individual profoundly and irreversibly; no-one who has endured such a crisis can confine the expanded horizons of their consciousness to the tame boundaries of cultural norms. Yet instead of encouraging and bolstering the development of such transcendental levels of awareness, mainstream psychiatry seeks - out of fear of the unknown, the unconscious, the numinous, the irrational and the abnormal - to stifle it under the euphemistic and patronising guise of 'treatment'.

The schizophrenic, being intensely introverted is automatically poorly adapted in a society which narrowly defines personal identity in terms of appearance, behaviour and social status. S/he lives in a discontinuous reality which can become a terrifying bombardment of overlapping realities, voices and chaotic perceptions. Everything takes on mythical overtones. The players in the archetypal dramas are often gods who are potentially both benevolent and destructive. Mainstream psychiatry deals with this overload by numbing the mind and trying to force the individual to readjust to cultural norms. At the same time, the "patient" is robbed of a unique mode of learning that many schizophrenics sense to be immensely valuable and worth pursuing. And unfortunately the law is in the psychiatrists' hands to take away what others treasure as an experience of the awesome power of the sacred.

Self Retrieval vs Soul Retrieval
Jung once remarked that his work would be continued "by those who suffer", and he was undoubtedly including in that phrase all who have the courage to confront - with the peculiar aloneness and risk that's unavoidable in such work - their inner depths, soul pathology, and shadows. From the perspective of effective therapy (bearing in mind that 'therapy' means 'serving the gods'), the bottom line is that sufferers of schizophrenia as individuals have the right to choose what sort of treatment they wish to accept, but at present they're not being presented by mainstream psychiatry with the option of working through their experiences as an alternative to fearfully band-aiding the symptoms. Coming to terms with the illness takes a lot of guts - on the part of both patient and therapist - but the option exists and sufferers of schizophrenia are surely entitled to be informed that it does.

Paraphrasing Hamlet, then, to intervene, or not to intervene, that is the quesion. During solitary Self retrieval, for instance, when a person may be recovering from grief, or from an ended relationship, or from plain old unrequited love, the energy is gradually reclaimed, in the same way as a snail's stalks, or the leaves of some touch-sensitive plants tentatively re-emerge or unfold after they've been touched. Similarly, the soul's energy doesn't need to be yanked back, or forcefully torn away from its attachment. It needs gentleness and slow movement, not sudden jolting or other forms of hasty retrieval.

Through my own experiences of grief, loss and wounding, and though being privileged to share the painful experiences of others, I have learned that the soul lets go when in the kairos of its own time-frame it is ready to. It undergoes a gradual transition from acknowledging the soul-bond, to relinquishing dependency and belongingness, to acknowledging the reality of separation. The soul like a child must in such times be weaned off, because its vulnerability and woundedness so often belong to the Puer, the eternal child archetype of trust and openness that has more often than not drawn it into the situation in the first place. The hopeful and idealistic Puer, earthed and sometimes shocked through the harsh facts of human relatedness into the realm of Soul, thereby becomes, if it accepts its lot with growth in understanding and no bitterness, the willing victim of sometimes painful reality. In some circumstances, then, interventional soul retrieval, perhaps out of a desire for a quicker remedy, or even out of a well-meaning shamanic longing to help the suffering soul escape its pain, could become a hasty substitute for a more gradual, natural process of Self retrieval. For it is through bathing in the gentle alchemical fire in which the agony of passion is gradually transmuted to the gold of 'com-passion', that the Wounded Healer is most thoroughly forged.

Source: <a href=http://www.jungcircle.com/embrace.html>Embracing the Fragmented Self: Shamanic Explorations of the Sacred in Schizophrenia &amp; Soul Loss</a>

[okiedokie]

Hi,
I see from your profile that you use "spriritual emergency" as a synonym for schizophrenic and/or psychosis and/or mental breakdown. I'm really having trouble with your logic for many reasons but frankly, am too tired to list them all here, now. What I do find concerning is that you seem to try to merge many concepts into only one construct. You write of shamanism, spiritual rupture, altered consciousness, psychosis as mind-healing, even kundalini energy as interchangeable with schizophrenia. The one thing I do concur with is that societal definitions of all of the above vary by culture.

Having said that, have you perhaps considered that you may still be suffering from schizophrenia and only comfort yourself with the notion that it is some sort of a spiritual awakening? One of the characteristics of psychosis is that this state is "unknown" to the person experiencing it. Thus, it is by definition a very difficult, if not impossible, illness to self-diagnose let alone, self-treat.
Also, it is important to recognize that societal norms in the society in which we find ourselves, do define for us parameters of behavior that we either find ourselves within (hence "normal") or without.

I am concerned that someone with schizophrenia may see your posts and elect to not treat their illness by conventional means, i.e. by seeing a doctor, based only on the snippets of information you choose to quote here. Without having read the full works of some of whom you have quoted, they would neither have a full understanding on which to base such an important, potentially life-changing decision. In short, you may be doing more harm than good, although I'm presuming that is not your intent.

Those are some of my thoughts. Now, I'm off to my dreams!
Thanks,
Okie

[spiritual_emergency]

okiedokie: I see from your profile that you use "spriritual emergency" as a synonym for schizophrenic and/or psychosis and/or mental breakdown. I'm really having trouble with your logic for many reasons but frankly, am too tired to list them all here, now. What I do find concerning is that you seem to try to merge many concepts into only one construct. You write of shamanism, spiritual rupture, altered consciousness, psychosis as mind-healing, even kundalini energy as interchangeable with schizophrenia. The one thing I do concur with is that societal definitions of all of the above vary by culture.

In an earlier post I made as related to Spiritual Interventions in Psychotherapy, one of the participants, alexandra k noted: "I was getting a little concerned that the suggestion was that people who experience themselves as having a spiritual crisis were now regarded as being mentally disordered!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". In response, I offered the following brief description:<blockquote>As our outer and inner worlds dissolve, we lose our sense of reference. There arises a great sense of unease, leading into a realm of fear and terror. "Where is there any security? Wherever I look, things are dissolving."

We can experience this dissolution and dying within our own body. We may look down and see pieces of our own body seeming to melt away and decay, as if we were a corpse. As the realm of terror deepens, periods of paranoia may arise. In this stage, wherever we look, we become fearful of danger...</font></blockquote>How do you think you might respond okiedokie, to an individual who was paranoid, fearful and whose body (to them) appeared to be melting away and decaying to the extent that they experienced themselves as a skeleton? The process described above is well known within Buddhist circles as "ego death". It is considered to be a stage in the Higher Samadis and associated with long-term meditation practices. To those who have never been exposed to the process however, it looks very much like psychosis or the experience of someone diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Here is another example...<blockquote>Interdisciplinary dialogue within these particular schools of psychology has now established some common criteria in order to describe this condition. Motor symptoms are thought to include tremors, shaking, spontaneous or involuntary body-movements and changes in respiratory function. Sensory symptoms are thought to include changes in body-temperature, a feeling of energy running along the spine or progressing upwards in the body, a feeling of electricity in the body, headache and pressure inside of the head, tingling, vibrations and gastro-intestinal problems. Cognitive and affective symptoms are thought to include psychological upheaval, stress, depression, hallucinations (inner visions or acoustical phenomena), depersonalization or derealization, intense mood-swings, altered states of consciousness, but also moments of bliss and deep peace.</blockquote>The above process is associated with the practice of yoga and is known as <a href=http://www.haryana-online.com/Culture/kundalini.htm>kundalini syndrome</a>. Someone familiar with spiritual practices in Hindu culture might be aware of that syndrome, someone who is not might make a different assessment.

Another vignette for your consideration...<blockquote>"I then felt some part of myself slip down through the crack in the pavement, down to the underworld, while another part of myself remained upon the pavement. I am currently trying to make further sense of this experience in relation to Ancient Egyptian belief, as, certainly during the early dynasties, they had a working knowledge of the Land of the Dead, much of which has been fortunately rediscovered, and is known to us as The Egyptian Book of the Dead."

-- David</blockquote>David is a diagnosed schizophrenic, although the experience he describes is known within some cultures and settings as a shaman's initiation.

Another participant in that earlier thread I mentioned, sunrise, immediately recognized that I was discussing a branch of psychology known as transpersonal psychology -- The simplest definition is that transpersonal psychology is spiritual psychology. It recognizes that humanity has both drives toward sex and aggression and drives toward wholeness, toward connecting with and experiencing the divine.

My own experience began with an episode of intense fear and a desire to "go underground". If I was to map that out on a schizophrenic model it would be recognized as falling within the prodromal phase of a full-blown episode of psychosis. For me, that episode came many months later. It lasted approximately six weeks and I was accompanied through it by a mentor who served as my therapist. Both God and the Devil did make a cameo appearance. Meanwhile, by the time that experience was done, it wouldn't have taken much to convince me that my mentor could walk on water. I adored him, and had no difficulty in expressing that to him via some rather tender acts that just might make some readers blush.

Following that episode, I then went through a stage of intense withdrawal during which I was not able to function as I had previously. I didn't shower, I didn't change my clothes, I wasn't capable of working. I didn't seem to care about anything around me and I sometimes had difficulty determining if I was dead or alive. That stage lasted roughly a year in length although elements of it are still with me, even now, five years later. For example, it has been difficult to reinvest my faith in a world that I once invested in very heavily. It has been difficult to come to terms with the harsh reality that death, pain, suffering, grief, loss -- these are all part of the human experience and I'm not going to be able to avoid that reality any more than anyone else can. It has been difficult to come to terms with aspects of my experience that some might label as "extraordinary" or "gifted" when I find it difficult enough simply to be human.

Anyone who has read the summary of my experience will have no difficulty recognizing the aspects that could be identified as psychosis and/or schizophrenia. Yet my experience also contained a number of other elements which I've referred to in the thread: What's in a name...?.

Those who identify most closely with the medical model of psychosis and schizophrenia seem to find my experience to be a discomforting one, because it doesn't fit neatly into the box they have in mind. They can easily accept the "psychotic" aspects of my experience but they don't know what to do with the parts that hang over the edge that might fit into other boxes: shamanism, mysticism, alchemy, kundalini syndrome, ego death, individuation. A few people do grasp those aspects immediately however. Typically, they're either familiar with those cultures and settings (e.g. Buddhist/Hindu) or they have a background in one of two disciplinary streams: depth psychology or transpersonal psychology.

okiedokie: Having said that, have you perhaps considered that you may still be suffering from schizophrenia and only comfort yourself with the notion that it is some sort of a spiritual awakening?

You may be right. How would we go about determining if you actually are? How would we test the reality of that hypothesis?

okiedokie: I am concerned that someone with schizophrenia may see your posts and elect to not treat their illness by conventional means, i.e. by seeing a doctor...

It is worth noting that the article excerpts above are all by doctors or are highlighting the work of same: Dr. John Weir Perry; Dr. R.D. Laing; Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and Dr. Maureen Roberts.

Meanwhile, I've noted on your own profile that you also identify yourself as a "professional" -- I'm assuming you mean within the fields of psychology or psychiatry. For that reason, I suggest you review the following article: From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Problem: The Transpersonal Roots of the New DSM-IV Category. It is one that any professional should be aware of, particularly if they work with those who have had experiences identified as psychosis and/or schizoprenia within this culture and setting.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts -- I've enjoyed the exchange and hope you have too. May your dreams be pleasant ones.

.

[spiritual_emergency]

<center>... we are beginning to realize that we cannot fix on the outside what is broken deep within the human heart and psyche.

- John O'Dea</center>

<hr width=100% size=2>

Visionary Experience in Myth and Culture:

The initial disordered state that I am describing contains two distinct elements. The first is an experience of dying or of having already died, which symbolizes a dissolution of the accustomed self. The second element, closely related to the first, is a vision of the death of the world. In an acute psychosis individuals undergo a profound reorganization of the self, effected by a thoroughgoing reintegration through utter disintegration. Life cannot be repaired, it can only be re-created by returning to the sources. And the 'source of sources' is the prodigious outpouring of energy, life and the fecundity that occured at the Creation of the World.

Since the acute episode of visionary turmoil can have, along with its tormenting aspect, some ecstatic features, I will enlarge on the basic Dionysian principle that the exuberance of vital aliveness is born out of the realm of death. This is the miraculous revelation at the heart of the famous Dionysian rites, the Eleusinian mysteries.

Now this disturbing information is, in our culture, very unwelcome news. Here ecstasy is desirable as long as it is easy to attain. Yet, in truth, to have access to this state the price of admission is to take full account of the role of death. This is a difficult point, for we seem to find ourselves firmly biased against suffering and death as the ultimate enemy, dark and sinister, to whom we give no quarter and show no tolerance. You might say suffering and death are on an equal footing with madness in this respect.

We have seen that the growth process of the psyche, on the other hand, sees all this quite differently. According to the psyche's purposes, in order to break out of the security of solid consensus and convention, one must encounter the experience of the death process in psychic depth, and also at the same time the dissolution of the familiar, accustomed worldview. Though all this demand might seem at first glance overly drastic, it consists actually of the death of the familiar self-image and the destruction of the world image to make room for the self regeneration of each. These two images move together in the process, each an aspect of the other, and both assume the form of the mandala images.

Source: Trials of the Visionary Mind - John Weir Perry

See also: [*] The Relevance of Visionary Experience to Culture
[*] Strange Days ~ Beautiful Midnight

.

[spiritual_emergency]

(removed at request of the member)

[spiritual_emergency]

<center><font color=191970>One Flight Down

One flight down
There's a song on low
And your mind
Just picked up
On the sound
Now you know . . .

That you're wrong
'Cause it drifts like smoke
And it's been there
Playing all along
Now you know
Now you know

The reeds and brass have been weaving
Leading into a single . . . note

In this place
Where your arms unfold
Here, at last, you see
~ Your Ancient Face ~
Now you know
Now you know

The cadence rolls in broken
Plays it over and then . . . goes

One flight down
There's a song on low
And it's been there
Playing all along
Now you know
Now you know

© Norah Jones ~ One Flight Down</font></center>

[b]Listen here: One Flight Down


.

[spiritual_emergency]

You get the idea of who you are from others.

It is not a direct experience.

It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it.

You come with it.

You are born with it.

So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, your ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are.

The others have given you the idea.

That idea is the ego.

Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self.

And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.

You will simply be confused, a chaos.

Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.

Source: Osho The False Center

.

[spiritual_emergency]

To return to an earlier question...

okiedokie: Having said that, have you perhaps considered that you may still be suffering from schizophrenia and only comfort yourself with the notion that it is some sort of a spiritual awakening?

spiritual_emergency: You may be right. How would we go about determining if you actually are? How would we test the reality of that hypothesis?

<hr width=100% size=2>

Having had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the concepts of spiritual emergency okiedokie , I think you might agree that it is a bit of a puzzle trying to figure out precisely which box my experience fits into, and therefore, which label should be applied to it.

Am I a mystic? Am I a shaman? Am I a schizophrenic?

Truth be known, I don't know. What I do know is that I am well. My relationships are all stable. I have been working for roughly 3.5 years -- the last 3 in a full-time position. My cognitive abilities appear to be fine. I have never entered into a formal therapeutic relationship with a psychiatrist or psychologist. I have not had any form of psychiatric medication -- during or since. I suspect that most people would be hard-pressed to differentiate me from most anybody else.

I also know that regardless of what my experience may or may not be, many people recover from schizophrenia and psychosis. Will all of them recover? No.

It should be borne in mind that Eugene Blueler, who originally coined the term "schizophrenia" originally added an "s" to the end of it to designate that there were different forms of the experience. If I am "schizophrenic", perhaps I lucked out and got a "milder variety" -- one that's easier to recover from. Then again, would I even be considered schizophrenic in another culture or setting? Maybe. Maybe not.

.

[okiedokie]

Hi Spiritual,
I'm very glad that you are well. That, after all, is what we all wish to be.

I do appreciate your energy and your articulate, intelligent posts.

For clarification, I am a professional although psychology is not my field.

I guess from your most recent post I'm left with the question that if you have never entered into a relationship with a psychiatrist, how were you able to diagnose yourself as having schizophrenia? I also am a little nervous about using "psychosis" and "schizophrenia" interchangeably. Psychosis can be a symptom of many psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia. I do agree with you that people can and do recover from psychosis.

Please do not be bothered by my pushing back a bit. A friendly exchange of ideas is always a positive thing in my opinion.

I really am not qualified to discuss schizophrenia in any more depth. I simply don't know enough about it. And, I certainly don't know your personal experiences like you do.

Please accept my sincerest well wishes.
Best,
Okie

[spiritual_emergency]

okiedokie: I guess from your most recent post I'm left with the question that if you have never entered into a relationship with a psychiatrist, how were you able to diagnose yourself as having schizophrenia?

No one has any difficulty recognizing the "psychotic" aspects of my experience. Whether or not it is/was schizophrenia ... that gets a little dicier. In some ways, my experience matches the diagnostic category for brief reactive psychosis, except it was longer than the 2-4 weeks typically alloted. It also matches the diagnostic category for schizophrenia, except I recovered and that alone is cause for some to say I couldn't possibly have "schizophrenia" because "schizophrenia is incurable".

Whatever the label may be for me alone, that doesn't alter the reality that many people recover from both psychosis and schizophrenia. If one has the foresight to pencil an acute schizophrenic break into their calendar, I recommend they try to arrange to have it in India, Nigeria, or any other developing nation. Three studies by the World Health Organization have revealed that the recovery rate from schizophrenia in developing nations is as high as 90%. The recovery rate in the West is so poor that the same organization has determined that those who go through the experience in a developed nation will likely never recover. "Never" is not very good odds.

If you can't make it to some remote village in Africa or India, try Finland where 80 - 85% of those who have had the benefit of Open Dialogue Treatment return to active employment and are symptom free after five years. If you can't work Finland into your travel plans, try the Czech Republic or perhaps Switzerland where there are programs modelled after those developed by Drs. John Weir Perry and Loren Mosher respectively; Perry's program had an 85% recovery rate whereas Mosher's, while lower, was still substantially higher than that offered in the current climate. Bear in mind that in the Vermont Longtitudinal Study they took the bottom 19% and found that 62% - 68% significantly improved or recovered. To quote, Dr. Edward Knight: The cohort is the least functional ever studied in world literature on schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is not incurable. Any physician who says as much is not only out of touch with the most recent research, they're not even up to date on the old research. Many, many people have recovered.<blockquote><font color=DC143C>"It's miraculous how people come back," he says. "If you talk to someone who is doing better, he or she will tell you that someone--a friend, a family member, a pastor, a therapist--reached out with warmth and gentleness and kindness."</font>

Source: New Hope for Recovery</blockquote>Recovery is possible but bear in mind, no one else can do it for you. It may or may not include medication, it may or may not include therapy, it may or may not include hospitalizations, it may or may not include psychiatrists, psychologists, or spiritual practices, but it most certainly will include the belief that you can.



.

[spiritual_emergency]

This one belongs in this thread:

It pairs well with the concept of the The Hero's Journey.

[spiritual_emergency]

<center><font color=purple>

<img src=http://spiritblogpics.homestead.com/beautifulpictureTheMoonandStaronEarth.jpg>

May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How far you are from home

Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

May it be the shadow's call
Will fly away
May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun

Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

</center>

[spiritual_emergency]

This fits well here...

Please note that individuals undergoing chemically induced psychosis experience much of the same content as "schizophrenics" and for this reason, their experiences can serve as a helpful guide as to the inner realities of the "psychotic" individual.

This entry is not and should not be interpreted as a suggestion to explore altered states of consciouness via the use of hallucinogens. As noted in a separate entry, meditation, drumming, and chanting can be far safer means of exploring transpersonal states of consciousness for those who are so inclined.

<hr width=100% size=2><blockquote>
What Psychosis Is Like

Psychosis, caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain due to mental illness or drug ingestion, is much like undergoing an inner death. Some experts literally call it ego death, an inner catastrophe of enormous dimensions. Researchers of persons experiencing hallucinations due to drug use describe psychotic reactions to LSD, such as:<blockquote>“an abysmal sense of physical destruction, emotional catastrophe, intellectual defeat, cultural/moral failure, and absolute damnation of transcendental proportions.” Subjects face agony and develop a conviction that they will explode and the entire world will be destroyed . . . in this situation it is extremely important that the sitters (individual guides) repeatedly emphasize the safety of this experience” (Grof, 158)

The experience of ego death is “the destruction of everything the subject is, possesses, or is attached to.” There is an “expectation of a catastrophe of enormous dimensions,” horrific panic, a fear of disintegration or, more violently, implosion. The patient feels the fate of the entire world depends on their ability to “hold on” (or conversely, to commit suicide).</blockquote>Researchers say the psychotic person is hyper-aware, constantly thinking, deluded in contemplating the processes of respiration [breathing], digestion [eating], procreation [sex], elimination [urination, defecation], etc. Quite distressing are psychoses in the latter category, labeled ‘scatological.’<blockquote>Major symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations (sensing things that most others do not), ideas of reference, delusions of persecution, delusions of grandeur, etc. Experiences of death, rebirth, religious, spiritual and messianic delusions (special identification with Christ and/or the Anti-Christ) are common. One feels an annihilation of Biblical proportions is imminent. Elements of destruction (self-, world-, universe, etc.), re-creation of the world, salvation and redemption all are common psychotic phenomena.</blockquote>Researcher Grof says psychosis is caused by “the release of highly-emotionally charged traumatic unconscious material . . . the unusual nature and power of the material that emerges from the depths of the unconscious causes the person to explode, having an episode of dramatic and often chaotic release of pent-up energies . . . The psychotic activity has been chemically externalized.”

[...]

Cues for Navigating the Waters

There are ways to assist in positive psychedelic experiences, time-tested methods of providing guidance to persons undergoing a psychedelic experience.

In taking LSD, the greatest importance is on set and setting. The ‘subjects’ of research studies were given individual instruction and helpful techniques as they went through their psychedelic experience. “Sitters” gave individual attention to those undergoing this LSD experience. These trained professionals were responsible for the creation of a simple, safe and supportive physical environment (a/k/a set and setting). They are called on to “establish trust, freedom from anxiety, an ability to remain centered, deep empathy, and an intimate knowledge of the dynamics of psychedelic states.” (Grof. 316) They may offer comforting psychical contact.

[*] When providing care to those undergoing the psychotic experience, emphasize safety and care. Researcher Grof asserts that facing one’s [or another’s] madness, destructive and aggressive energy SHOULD NOT BE treated as a pharmacological state to aggressively confront and resolve” (Grof, p. 313)<blockquote>Mental health centers have an always had such an inhibiting effect. Time on the psychiatric ward represents serious social stigma - which is immediately internalized in order for survival. Any psychiatric facility has an atmosphere of danger and urgency, so psychotic experiences in this environment in particular can cause a lifetime of trauma for patients and staff alike. Caregivers appear as the enemy. Anyone on a psychedelic and/or psychotic trip, Grof says, “may physically fight with the sitters (in this case, hospital staff, family, or friends), seeing them as the oppressive element. They may “be driven to violent, self-destructive actions, mistaking them for the liberating ego death.”

Hospital treatment is usually swift and strong [restraints, injections of tranquilizers (contraindicated when the use of psychedelics is suspected), seclusion]. These “drastic measures often reflect the helpers’ own feelings of threat and insecurity in relation to their own unconscious . . . Exposure to another person’s deep emotional materials tends to shatter psychological defenses . . . The prevailing tendency to put all such experience into the category of schizophrenia and to suppress them in every way reflects not only a lack of understanding, but also a convenient self-defense against the helper’s own unconscious materials” (Grof, p. 314) Caretakers must reflect a psychotic’s experience as therapeutic opportunities, not clinical problems (and still take care of their own needs).</blockquote>
[*] People in psychosis have deep feelings of doom, without hope of escape, feeling one is crazy, in hell, and it will last forever. It is important to integrate, emphasize and clarify the distinction between psychological time and clock time. Try to connect the patient’s intellectual knowledge with the actual experience.

[*] Use non-verbals. Consensual reality aside, your body may intuit what another is going through. Follow good instincts.

[*] Emphasize that the person experiencing psychosis is not facing real biological death. One can feel the conceptual frameworks break down. Cultural and cognitive barriers dissolve. One must surrender, accept, and go through it. The psychotic material can be seen and synthesized in a totally new way that was not possible within the old systems of thinking (Grof, p. 270).<blockquote>“LSD can mediate access to vast repositories of concrete and valid information in the collective unconscious and make them available to the experient.” (Grof, p.267) So, similarly, persons undergoing psychotic experiences are synthesizing and integrating data in new ways, “resulting in unconventional problem solving.”</blockquote>[*] Respect the person undergoing this experience. If psychosis was treated akin to a rite of passage, in caring, empathic ways, we might emerge less destroyed from the waters scientists study and quantify.

[*] If you’re in psychosis (again), trust. Helpers in this effort, be they friends, family, shamanic initiators, guides -- each offers their help for individual recovery of the essential self.

[*] Hold the beliefs that relief and recovery are possible. There is a place in recovery for non-conventional modes of healing. Patients, families, friends, helping professionals, and policy makers must realize the helpfulness and utility of these old studies, despite psychiatry’s reliance on neurochemical theories. “Today, most psychiatrists assume that mental illness almost always has a biological or genetic basis rather than a social or psychological or even spiritual origin” (Pinchbeck, p. 178). We must invite a psychiatry that includes spiritual or mystical experiences without pathologizing them. The challenge is in expanding the biological model. It won’t be easy.<blockquote>“The psychiatric community argues endlessly over verbal definitions within the general framework of insanity. The framework itself is rarely challenged. It should be! Like personality definitions, insanity labels unjustly evoke self-fulfilling prophecies . . . Psychiatric diagnoses, unlike diagnoses in other medical specialities, define, and in so doing, create, pathological conditions. The diagnosis or definition becomes part of the illness and creates a series of self-fulfilling prophecies . Once an institutionalized diagnosis is made, a reality is invented in which even normal behavior appears disturbed. After the diagnosis, perceptions that reinforce the diagnosis are manufactured. The process quickly moves beyond the control of patients, diagnosing physicians, family, staff and hospital administrations. All participate in the construction of a reality that supports the diagnosis.”

The Age of Manipulation - Wilson Brian Key</blockquote>Despite the horrors of hallucinations and psychotic activity, Grof says they can be opportunities for therapeutic change. Researchers emphasize there IS something better on the other side. “Talent . . . its expression was blocked by strong pathological emotions” (Grof, p. 266) Successful psychedelic therapy allowed for full “affective liberation.” That means freedom of mood. Further, one develops deep insight and empathetic understanding. We must learn to accept, work through and integrate these experiences. As the Chinese icon for crisis is devised of the separate icons for opportunity and danger, we survivors of psychotic experience must dare to give an answer to the questions “What was going through your head? What happened to you?”

Source: Getting Through Psychosis

See also: [*] Guidelines for Making it Through a Spiritual Emergency[*] Tips for 'Dark Night' Journeyers[*] How to Treat Difficult Psychedelic Experiences[*] Death &amp; Rebirth in Psychospiritual Transformation[*] Assistance in Spiritual Emergency[*] Guidelines for Family and Friends

[orionvega]

I am happy to have found this forum and this post. I would like to share my story as I had a schizophrenic/shamanic experience. It was truly awe inpsiring and changed me forever.

About two years ago, I was working at a commercial reality firm on the executive floor as a receptionist. I had been there for three years, and being in that position was at times degrading and killing my soul, for lack of better words. I was trying to do the responsible thing by finding another position before leaving and my efforts became more and more frantic. I had a lot of free time to read and at that time I was reading Shamanic Spirit, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, reasearching spirituality and religion and watching movies like What the Bleep Do We Know.

I remember the day when things started. I was in the bathroom at work, and being on the 45th floor we had an amazing view from there. I stared a long time into the sky. After awhile I started to see shining flying particles zooming about everywhere. It was so beautiful, I began to cry.

When I left the bathroom, I decided at that moment to leave this place for good as the social pressures of the environment were not holistic to my soul. I asked one of the executives I had connected with in my time there, to lunch; which I never had done before, and told him I was leaving. After lunch I put my things in a box and told my supervisor this was not a positive place for me. It was met with much negativity, understandable as this was drastic, yes. However when I got into my car, I screamed what I could only call a primal roar, I was finally free. I felt exhilarated and renewed.

That week I felt as though I was on a journey. I saw symbols and connections in everything. I began to write in my journal word associations that popped into my mind. Everything was connected and there was a greater purpose to everything I saw and did. I felt as though I was just following a path, and there was something larger leading me.

I set up an altar in the spare room of my apartment with different objects that meant something to me at this point in my life. The night I set up my altar I chose clothing to wear that reminded me of the women whom I admired. I wore it to a performance of a local band. I chose a black and white striped tunic and red &amp; black Chinese styled shirt. When I arrived to the club there was a strong smell of skunk, friends of mine not in the state I was in recall this. It was odd as we were in the city. A stranger at the bar said to me "You have great potential". At that moment, I knew he was the embodiment of the dark side. During my journey I did feel as though I had power, but realized it could easily be used for evil.

When the band began, the lead singer came out with dyed bright red hair and was wearing the same colors as I, along with the black and white stripes. They made me think of the skunk. During the performance I felt so much energy inside me, I had to continually stretch and move. There were times I spoke in tongues. Later on the police came and sat outside with their lights, almost interrupting the performance, not sure why they were there. I talked with the singer and another friend after the performance. She pointed to the three buttons on my tunic, counting aloud: one, two, three. I thought of the three of us, as some sort of magic circle, that our union would be a powerful one. I declined the thought right away, as I knew this wasn't the purpose of my journey.

I had experiences in the bath when I spoke in tongues. I felt as though there was an ancient presence with me when I was in the water. There was so much energy inside me, speaking in this way was releasing it.

Walking in the city, I felt the earth's presence and sensed the atrocities that man was inflicting on nature, I felt power and at times felt the dark side calling me to bring buildings down. I felt the feminine of the earth, having these enlarged penises raping her soil. I heard sirens more often than usual and was aware of them. I thought of my friend who was hit by an ambulance in her car. She very sweet, connected to life, progressive and very youthful for her age of 60. She has breast cancer now. I kept my eye out while crossing the street. I felt as though I should not drive as the earth wanted me walking on her ground, when I did drive, my car sputtered as if almost threatening to breakdown. So I walked.

For a brief period of time, I forgot about personal hygiene, and relished in being natural and untouched.

I would read the paper and understand everything, it's words showing the connection of everyone and how I could see pieces of my existence in their pages. USA Today was the paper of choice for me.

I saw Men in Black during two occasions. They were nameless, solo figures, all too plain. I went to purchase a hanging basket for Mother's Day with my fiance. Behind the aisle of plants I saw him watching, obviously not interested in buying anything, but odd and out of place. We talked with the cashier, she mentioned the weather, I looked up at the sky and the clouds began to go dark. At that moment, I felt as though I had an effect on the oncoming storms. I felt as though I did that to let the man in our presence know he should be wary. I didn't feel overly threatened just aware he was there to watch. We went to lunch with a friend and I saw another man sitting at the table alone, not eating just sitting with a glass of iced tea. He was very similar to the man earlier. Wearing sunglasses inside the restaurant, appearing to be very out of place and just watching. This day made me think of the JFK assassinations.

My entire journey lasted about a week. I had both amazing moments of clarity and awe as well as ominous moments showing the dark side. Through it all I felt as though I was able to resist the temptation of being lost forever, and I did have the support of my finance and friends. However, talking with them now they say how scary it was to see me, and everything they knew of me was gone. I can understand why without a support group how people can be greatly discriminated against in a schizophrenic/shamanic journey. It's been two years and while maybe someday I'll journey there again, I know now what must be in place to have a worthwhile experience.

It was by far the most awe inspiring week of my life. We know so little and what we do know, humans choose to make negative something that can be so beautiful wondrous. To be strong, is to not allow this society and reality inhibit who you are at the most primordial level and to stop feeling guilty because someone says you should. These experiences can help a person grow at light speed, but it is important to enter without fear, knowing there is a greater purpose to it all and not allow the ego to take over for its selfish purposes.

I am thankful for this forum to share my experiences

[whisperslf]

Thank You!!