schizophrenic

[ophiuchus]

agreed.

a shaman goes right into the heart of the storm. the ability(awareness) to not get carried/swept away into it is what defines them

 

[Crimzen]

Yes that was a very interesting read
brings a few things together for me, good looks on the link

 

[gammagoblin]

Well since I have schizophrenia myself I should be able to see for myself whether or not there is a link between shamanism and schizophrenia.

I recently started a course (is that the right word?) in shamanism from a dutch guy through the internet. The goal we had until now was to always live in the moment. The technique the teacher had for this was to always keep your attention to your feet and away from all the thoughts feelings and ideas since they mostly lead to some other time than the moment. Also it keeps your ego at rest which is useful for the other thing (sorry can't come up with the right word) we do, which is to travel into the collective unconscious in order to meet with certain archetypes so they can be highlighted in your unconscious so it will come through in your personality. The way we do this is through a visualisation technique and then let our minds come up with the images itself. It is kinda like dreaming while awake.

Now, I do notice my mind can come up with images easily so maybe you could say I have a strong connection with my unconscious but I doubt the source is really my schizophrenia. My guess is that everyone, especially if you think in images a lot, can make this connection. I don't think everyone with schizophrenia can come to that other world (as the teacher call's it) easily and anyone without schizophrenia must make much effort so I doubt these two are really related.

I do think that some psychoses, in any case mine, was a bit like the dreaming while awake we also do in the shamanic course since I met a lot of archetypes in my psychosis. From pure good, to pure evil, to the witch, the goddess, Jezus, satan and probably more which I can't remember right now.

 

[ophiuchus]

I don't think everyone with schizophrenia can come to that other world (as the teacher call's it) easily and anyone without schizophrenia must make much effort

well one must remember that there are varying degrees, not only of the schizophrenia itself, but also varying degrees in the ability one has in coping with it. some people may have mild symptoms and find it near unbearable, whereas others could have extreme forms and appear to deal with it quite well. all individuals are different so i believe that factors like this can easily make it difficult to scientifically pin point a correlation like that. it's so subjective.

 

[BrainEater]

if you ask me. it's the illusion of separation. the ultimate illusion... and the first as well?
the prison of your very own imagination?!?!?! a painful commission of will...ring a bell??

the question that if you are in such a position or a similar one, that you may want to ask yourself,
is.. do you control your thoughts or do they control you?? and if they control you, why??? or are
they even your own thoughts?? 8)
in my opinion you should know what you do, but if you don't know who you are, that seems like a
rather difficult task...
a thing that may help is to slowly make a plan, when it is the case that you are schizophrenic and have
a clear mind or to get someone to help you make that plan for you. something like that...
have a look at your mind and for example look at it like a garden and then give it the care it needs etc etc. :x :shock:

peace :roll: :wink:

 

[gammagoblin]

@BrainEater: I do think you're confusing schizophrenia with psychosis. Schizophrenia means nothing more than that you are vulnerable for psychosis.

I have schizophrenia, but I feel more sane than ever before so it doesn't have to say that you're struggling with psychotic thoughts or symptoms. Although this is pretty often the case, and I realize I am lucky not to have any symptoms now.

In a psychosis it is some sensible advice you're giving. But the problem with someone in a fullblown psychosis is that the rational mind doesn't work well anymore. It could still be there but it is taken over by thoughts of mythic proportions which, in my case, warp everything which was said into the frame of the psychosis so it is difficult to have a clear look at yourself when you are in that state.

I am curious whether or not meditation or similar exercises would help in order to make the person having a psychosis more susceptible to critical thoughts about the experience he is having. I have meditated one time in my psychosis and then I realized that it was all pretty fucking weird was I was experiencing and it struck me that it could all be my mind playing tricks on me. However, after the experience my psychotic thoughts brought this experience in the framework of the psychosis again so the insight that it might not be all true was lost again.

But I do think that if this meditation was channeled more, and perhaps guided by someone the experience could last longer so that the insight of it not being real can grip your mind more which would fasten the recovery rate I guess.

In any case, I think it's a shame that the current psychiatry doesn't really look into these kinds of methods.

 

[BrainEater]

i (not 100%, but mostly) agree, but maybe have you thought about it, that schizophrenia and psychosis may be just different forms of each other or of the same thing, so to say?? like for example a different frequency of the same thing... like the literal and figurative illness of the mental.
it's about thought control, if that condition is on you. because especially if the thoughts are ill so to say in whatever way i leave that up to your imagination, then it is not beneficial that they control you, if that makes any sense. that's why i think hypnosis may be the best thing to find a solution, because it's handing over the conscious power which is corrupted in that state, to another person. it's also a matter of perspective whether the thoughts are sick or not... what for one is a sick thought for the other is maybe not??? :!:
so is it about healing thoughts??? no... it's about healing what forms the thoughts, which is the mind, which is a process... our minds are what we DO. :idea:
you have to watch out for some shit or it can happen that your own brain/thoughts/mind turn against you. i see you already noticed that so you can figure it out yourself.
just try to figure out why some thoughts or thoughtforms seem to return more stubbornly than others.. maybe you have a lesson to learn or so... think about it...

by the way on youtube are many very good guided meditations available for free... :shock:

maybe you also want to have a look at this site: http://www.yoga-mind-control.com/yoga-definition.html
yoga means union (with god)...
meditation is indeed a very powerful method to sort shit out..


peace

 

[gammagoblin]

Psychosis is a phenomenom shared by different psychiatric disorders, such as manic depressive, schizoaffective and schizophrenia. Although it is said to be true that a schizophrenic psychosis is different from a manic depressive psychosis, it isn't necessarily true that when one has schizophrenia one has to suffer symptoms. That is why I make the distinction between schizophrenia and psychosis. Psychosis is the symptom of schizophrenia, like pain is a symptom of having a flesh wound for example. It's not just me who sees it like this, I haven't come across a professional who didn't see it like this.

I think the illness in a psychosis is, like you said, not the thoughts per se, but the impact it has on a persons life. In a psychosis the thoughts become so convincing that your rational mind is shut off, and you can't function properly anymore because of it. But I do have to say that I don't think it is healthy for anyone to sit in your mind too much. Then it gets in the way of experiencing life as it is.

It is an interesting idea that hypnosis mee help get people out of a psychosis. I don't know much about hypnosis so I don't know what is possible with it but if it can have an effect on someone's mind it can probably be used for the good. I did however read on a schizophrenia forum that people in psychosis are much less susceptible to hypnosis.

 

[BrainEater]

"Psychosis (from the /wiki/Greek_language ???? "psyche", for mind/soul, and -???? "-osis", for abnormal condition) means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic /wiki/Psychiatry term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with /wiki/Reality". People suffering from psychosis are described as psychotic. Psychosis is given to the more severe forms of psychiatric disorder, during which /wiki/Hallucinations and /wiki/Delusions and impaired /wiki/Insight may occur."

so i dare to say that reality is a matter of perspective. so it's also dangerous because labeling someone psychotic could also at the same time mean discrediting the perspective of reality of that person. which is possibly one of the most cruel form of fascism if you ask me... but fear is still the power of the dark side.

so i agree also with what you say. it's just like different people think in different words, you know??

i would say the mind is not logical. or it is possibly logical on another level... logics is perfection and higher logics are like containers.

all i am saying is beware psycho-logics. take this quote:
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
Albert Einstein

and insanity according to einstein: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Albert Einstein

what i am alluding to is that you don't cure the people. you just show them the right direction/way for curing themselves
when they fallen from their path or so..


know that you are one with your thoughts and one with your shadow... 8)
i hope thats some good food for thought.

peace

 

[voodookyd]

theres this story online called "A Story of One Soul Durring Two Lives" its about a young girl having a pyschotic break down who has horrible schizophrenia, she is then institutionalized and soon relizes that they asylum will only drug her to keep her sedated until death,she realizes this is a half life so she escapes(story takes place in the 60's and is true). after escaping she's a fugitive running threw a strange world of counter culture and uses pyschodelics to cure her illness along with a journy thats a crazy story on its own minus the heavy drug use. she meets all sorts of crazy characters and joins a large amount of insane organizations. but i think reading the story will help you a lot it helped me open up my views in many ways and makes u look at drugs in a new light because sometimes whats hard on the body may be good for my mind and spirit. take a look heres the link


http://www.amanamission.com/transblues/ ... s-round-1/

 

[zezt]

I have recently finsihed reading this great book called Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process, by John Weir Perry (highly recommended!). Perry brought together this very important place, sanctuary, called Diabasis, which was in SanFrancisco and was for people who were having first episode schizophrenic experiences, and were not forced to take suppressive 'medication', but encouraged to allow what is considered a 'self-healing process' to resolve itself.
The place was run by an egalitarian staff structure with people chosen who had had similar experiences themselves, and also experiences with psychedelics, and that they deeply cared for people:

"At Diabasis were were told by several of our clients that [they felt safe to let go]. It becomes clear that in the psychosis something urgently needs to take place in the psyche, and also needs to come into relationship with someone. When a staff member declines to receive this experience, there occurs an appalling sense of thwarting, of the way being blocked; then ensues an upwelling of anger that shakes the individual's foundations. Madness is a state of being mad in both senses of the word (Chapter 8 ibid)
Since the psyche has its own intentions in psychosis, when the unconscious is activated to this extreme degree, a welter of emotions want to come into play, accompanied by images of a mythological cast that become to these emotions...When someone purs out her emotional experiences to me, I am moved with that same emotion in empathy with it." (page 74 ibid)

I see this civilization or culture BOTH suppress these experiences and suppress psychedelic exploration, and they also manipulate peoples consciousness via 'education' politics and general propaganda---All this I see as the CONTROL OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Through their 'education' system--which all children have to attend from being very small onwards--we are inculcated into left-brain thinking which already suppresses right brain/whole mind exploration of reality. Is it it any wonder that our deeeper image abundant mind seeks to heal this assault on the bodymind (an assault which projects out harming others, humans, other species, and nature)? But the mechanistic culture rather sees these self-healings as symptoms of disease that need 'pesticides'---Ie., I see these 'medications' as the equivalent of their use of toxic pesticides on the earth. They want total control, which includes mono-culture and mono-mind.

 

[ararat]

do you know "The Ascent of Humanity" by Charles Eisenstein? I think you might enjoy it. I just started reading it today, so I can't say much, but I think it is about the myth of control and ascent, and ultimately separation. I read his other two books, and both were mind-blowing, so I'm taking a risk and say that this one got a good chance at that too.
it's free to download: http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/ pdfs and ebooks and all that.

 

[zezt]

Yes. He is also dowloading portions of his book at--Google Reality Sandwich, and you can also of course comment and chat with him about points. He may not always answer depending. he's a cool dude> ihaven't read it by the way. I have been reading other stuff, and re-reading lol

 

[gammagoblin]

so i dare to say that reality is a matter of perspective. so it's also dangerous because labeling someone psychotic could also at the same time mean discrediting the perspective of reality of that person. which is possibly one of the most cruel form of fascism if you ask me... but fear is still the power of the dark side.

I think you have a point there, but I don't think I entirely agree. When you're in a psychosis you don't rationally think "hey, that person is the devil" for example, your brain forces this conviction onto your conscious mind so you have to go with it. And often the person in a psychosis doesn't have a good explanation for why he sees that so you could ask what advantage does this state of mind have for the person who has it? Often there is none at all and then I think disease (read: dis-ease, making it less easy for yourself) is an appropriate term. Especially when the person becomes dangerous towards himself or others.

 

[zezt]

two good links I have recently found which dont beat around the bush!

Psyche Down Under: Schizophrenia Drug-free Crisis Centre

“The parallels between Nazism, Soviet human right abuses and coercive psychiatry - particularly in regard to schizophrenia as a 'witch-hunted' spiritual phenomenon - are not as far-fetched as might at first seem. In all cases, a powerful, intimidating elite preaching a pseudo-religious dogma, exercice control through fear and demanded mass conformity, over the powerless, despised, 'diseased', de-humanised adherents of a rival, genuinely spiritual attitude to life. Captive Jews were tormented, murdered and experimented on by Nazi psychiatrists, some of whom later fled to the US and set up practice there after World War II. (See the book Mass Murderers in White Coats, by Lenny Lapon)
… In contrast to this 'social control masquerading as medicine', my 'vision for cultural healing' is that there is an urgent need to realign our understanding of 'medicine' with the imaginal, soul-centred and visionary richness with which it was once inseparable. The 'divine madness' (Plato) that is nowadays considered to be 'schizophrenic', or 'mentally ill' has traditionally been the province of respected priest-healers, shamans, visionary writers, saints, poets, artists, dramatists and others imbued with that naturally authoritive, vitally mythopoeic, often ecstatic consciousness which is the fecund antithesis of the barren clinical jargon, rhetoric, 'illusion of expertise' and 'brain chemistry' dogma that today pass as 'psychiatry'.”

Why I made the video & my experiences - Undercurrents

"Searching for more information on the links between mental illness and spirituality I came across the schizophrenia and shamanism website and decided to interview its founder, Sam Malone who had set it up. She had been sectioned herself, diagnosed with schizophrenia and put on anti psychotic medication against her will. Rather than risking being sectioned again and having to endure another stay in hospital she ran away and spent time alone in nature developing a set of techniques based on studies of shamans across the world, which enabled her to get through it and back to ordinary reality. Shamanism is another form of spirituality, which bears strong resemblance to what is known as psychosis. Historically this was found in Britain and across the world and is still practised by many cultures today. The shaman moves between different realities using techniques such as drumming, fasting and hallucinogenic drugs, to effect change in ordinary reality, generally for healing purposes, and for this reason they are valued and revered by their societies, rather than persecuted or given a diagnosis of mental illness. In Britain, the reason why communicating with, or being possessed by spirits, hearing voices or having visions is considered abnormal or deviant is due to the fact that practitioners of traditional shamanism and the pagan goddess worshipping religions were almost completely exterminated during the Christian witch hunts of the C16th and C17th, and any extra-ordinary, supernatural or spiritual experience became criminalized as devil worship. Herbal medicine with its’ tradition of wise women was superseded by the male dominated medical profession. Thomas Szaz in ‘The Myth Of Mental Illness’ likens the treatment of contempory psychiatric patients to the witch-hunts, and the DSM (Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders) has been called the equivalent of the Malleus Maleficarum, a book used in the Middle Ages to identify and exterminate witches. Most of these witches were actually practitioners of paganism, herbal medicine or politically troublesome and rebellious peasants."

 

[gammagoblin]

It is an interesting viewpoint that a psychosis is a spiritual crisis. However most people who have a psychosis are suffering from it. Guess you can compare it to a bad trip, but then a bad trip from something you didn't know you took it because people in a psychosis don't choose to get one.

If I look at my life I can certainly say my psychosis is part of my spiritual development, whether it really is a tranformational process triggered by your unconscious in order to rearrange the unconscious or something of that kind, or if it is just a mental disfunction which is nothing but a biological dysfunction of the brain, I don't know and I don't really care anymore. Fact is that this stuff happened to me so best to make the best of it.

Why I said that a disease could be an appropriate term for a psychosis is because most of the people I talked to who had a psychosis experienced nothing but the negative consequences of it. They said it only made their lifes worse. So I guess it's all in how you look at it.

I do think shaman's and psychotic people walk in the same world, but shaman's go there on purpose with a certain intention and psychotic people get lost in it. Maybe the trick for psychotic people is to learn the way in that world so to say. I hope this is true, cause that's what I'm focussing at at this moment.

 

[BrainEater]

so just two marginal questions ok...

how do you know for sure whether the people who have psychosis don't have chosen it while not being aware??
why are you so convinced people know what they are doing???
just because they say so doesn't mean it is so...

 

[gammagoblin]

Yeah it crossed my mind before that people may unconsciously choose to get into this state of mind. However this is still different than actively taking a substance for example. So the chance of a 'bad trip' so to say is larger, but I think, like psychedelics a bad trip can still have beneficial effects when you look at it the right way. However it can also be deeply traumatizing and only make you go further away from yourself. But good therapy can fix that that's for sure.

How do you mean "why are you so convinced people know what they are doing???"? You mean why I think regular psychiatry has an accurate picture? Well it is proven that to a certain extend genetics play a part of it (people with relatives have a higher chance of getting psychotic) and factors like stress or drug use are proven to trigger a psychosis. These are facts you can't get around of. On the point of it being an illness I think is something subjective because one person can see himself as sick while the other thought he had a spiritual experience for example. Why someone think's he is sick can come because of the way they are treated by regular psychiatry. That's for sure. Maybe I am in denial about the awful things psychiatry does to us because I only want to see it from the bright side.

 

[zezt]

yes I think you are in denial of the abuse psychiatry has done to people deemed schizophrenic. With respect, theres no exxuse to BE ignore-ant of this, before you you have the internet---the biggest resource of info, and if you do the research you will see the TERRIBLE abuse done to may people who are said to be 'mentally ill'.

I do think shaman's and psychotic people walk in the same world, but shaman's go there on purpose with a certain intention and psychotic people get lost in it.

Not so. If you look at the history of shamanism--ie., actual shamanism from Siberia, you hear that a person does NOT usually have a choice----they become ill, and then are visited by spirits/ancestors and go throough a death/rebirth experience whereupon they gain powers to heal. I think you are confusing what comes after whereby they then have some autonomy regarding techniques of ecstasy

Thirdly, it has NOT been medically proven 'shizophrenia' is a genetic disease.

 

[gammagoblin]

Regarding shamanism, what I meant is what I learned in the shamanic training I am doing now is that you go to the 'underworld' which is another name for the collective unconscious. I think in a psychosis you enter the same realm. And with the proper techniques you can choose to get in the underworld or collective unconscious willingly and knowing you enter it, which is the difference between shamanic journeying and a psychosis. Also I think the link to this world is mostly gone while you still keep one foot in this world while journeying shamanically. Though this is a more western branch, and everyone can get into that world, I meant with what I said that in any case, in a psychosis you fall into your own subconscious and the collective unconscious which is according to my teacher also the place you visit while you journey shamanically.

Well they haven't found the genes responsible for schizophrenia, but if it runs in the family you have a significantly higher chance which does strongly indicate a genetic component. If there are identical twins, and one has schizophrenia, the other has about 50% chance of also becoming schizophrenic so there are also other aspects that play a role. Childhood trauma's for example.

But the thing is, why does one person get a psychosis after using drugs, or having a certain trauma, and the other doesn't? That's why I think that there has to be some genetic vulnerability to fall in the state of psychosis.