Your “Shadow Self.” How To Face It, Bring It To Light & Transcend It

 

By Milan Kareli in Collective Evolution

“What you most need will be found where you least want to look, but you have to look purposefully. If it chases you, then you’re the prey; if you confront it, you can transcend it.” – Jordan Peterson

There is a lot written about shadow and what it is. The direction is clear. Shadow is something we repress and hide from others, and in most cases, from ourselves. Where does it originate and what can we do to integrate or heal it?

Let’s begin by asking ‘why we have a shadow?’ Is it because we carry darkness at our core or does the shadow take shape over our lifetime as residue of fear, rage, shame and guilt, and their avoidance? I’d say a little bit of both. On the human collective level, we carry trauma related to suffering and aggression of our ancestors. But for the most part, our shadow develops during this lifetime in the form of a complex and sophisticated personality, that keeps us with a sense of control.

Deep down we feel vulnerable but try to hide it

Our inner world is complex and for some, unbearable. We continuously face and fear exposure of our contradictory complexity, towards ourselves and others. Instead of delving into the depth of our psyche and inviting more consciousness, we would rather guard ourselves. The more conscious we are, the more responsible we become for our actions. One of the reasons we so meticulously hide our shadow is because we don’t want to carry the consequence of our actions. And so, our vulnerability and shadow are closely linked.

There are many effective ways not to feel vulnerable and retain a sense of innocence. Abiding by a strict morality, adhering to ideologies, be they social, political or spiritual, or relying on religious dogma, all achieve exactly that protection. The kind of protection in which we cradle ourselves in feelings of righteousness and innocence. This is not to imply we shouldn’t seek for our actions to be moral or avoid believing but to become aware when they are used in service of feeling superior over others. Interestingly enough, our wish to remain innocent is a big shadow in and of itself.

So, while we’re busy repressing and controlling, the shadow feeds and grows with every attempt to fight off rejection, humiliation or punishment, as well as situations that leave us feeling guilty and ashamed

Here are some examples of how our shadow hides our vulnerability. Let’s say we want to be recognized for something we’ve done. Instead of asking for acknowledgment, we hide it through false humility and become resentful for not getting the attention we feel we deserve. Another example is our need to belong and be important to others. But again, instead of communicating this need, which makes us vulnerable to rejection, we make others feel important in the hope of being praised for our actions. Over time we’ve developed innumerable sophisticated ways to sugarcoat our shadows and feel in control.

Shadow integration begins with an honesty that seeks nothing in return

We can see, that most shadow has to do with survival attempts of some kind. This happens when we try to control our environments by behaving as victims, gaining respect through false humility, moral superiority and other forms of manipulation. When we talk about shadow integration, it’s crucial we are precise as to what the facets of our shadow are.

We want to, for example, be able to say, while refraining from any judgment, that ‘I smile at others, in order not to be attacked’ or ‘I control my partner by making him or her feel guilty’. Any judgment of what we discover in ourselves is a hidden attempt at victimizing ourselves and finding excuses. The ‘why’ is of secondary importance here, because the list of reasons is endless and the absolute source is difficult to pinpoint, but the urge to limit our vulnerability is still there.

This may be a good moment to say, that shadow integration is not about redemption, but about understanding the inner workings of vulnerability and protection, which are closely linked to our sense of survival, both physical and emotional.

Furthermore, we want to face our shadows, not to feel better or lighter in the future, but in order to become more integrated within ourselves and lessen the sense of separation that the shadow produces. We want to return integrity that comes with the responsibility of belonging to a history and culture that experiences a great deal of suffering and is greater than our individual selves. Integrating our shadow implies allowing the darkness to be part of us, without the desire to surpass it.

Drop the hope for a pain-free life

When we face our shadow, we want to fully own the aggression, fear, selfishness or greed living inside us. We want to clarify first and foremost to ourselves how we play power games and seek control. This acknowledgment doesn’t necessarily reduce the hurt to ourselves or others or enable us to change. There is no certain outcome from shadow integration and that’s a tough pill to swallow. What we’re ‘simply’ doing, is bringing something hidden to light, without the attempt to make it more or less significant or dramatic, but rather see it as it is, thereby becoming more aware.

The more emotionality we induce into the characterization of our shadow, the less integration takes place. Shadow integration should be a non-dramatic act, surrounded by a hint of coolness, where we observe who we’ve become. We will feel the pain of lies, betrayal and hurt to others during this observation. And in the process of doing so, holding back judgment, positive or negative, is truly challenging. How is it possible ‘not to comment’ on what we regard as a personal experience? We need to understand that any commentary also contains the attempt to change the experience, be it freeing or punishing to us.

Healing the shadow is a magical process in which we are the participant, not the director

The great challenge in shadow integration is to grow our capacity to be with or hold an experience without having the ability to change it. What has been done is in the past and can’t be undone; it can only be held and by holding it patiently, more facets can emerge and be seen. Like when a child injures itself, we can only hold them to share the pain of waiting for healing to take place, but the magic of healing has its own mysterious timeline.

When we own our shadow, it puts us in a helpless and humbling place. It shows us our limitations and that is something we don’t want to feel. Maximizing our potential for our own feelings of greatness is just another shadow. Acknowledging the limitation of our potential, without minimizing our strength or exercising false humility, allows us to share our light.

Life comes with a lot of limitations and the shadow tries to interfere with life itself. Facing our shadow is a spiritual act as we embrace and allow a little more of our human totality to be included. Through this experience, we can get in touch with a humility and simplicity, that can often touch something at our core, which is mystically meaningful and expanding.

Integration comes from a place that is non-dramatic, because drama always takes sides, and it makes us miss the simplicity lying in the acknowledgment of human complexity. Shadow integration is a lifelong and even a magical process. It happens when we are completely truthful, giving up all deals with God or fate, and surrendering to what we essentially are: vulnerable. We want to invite feeling the pain our shadow reveals to us without seeking redemption. In a way, every time we say yes to a shadow part in us, we agree to re-enter continuous vulnerability of being human.

This is where integration begins.

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Psychiatrist Blows the Whistle on Pandemic Fearmongering

 

November 29, 2020 by Derek Knauss

From Dr. Joseph Mercola’s website:

Story at-a-glance

• There’s an entire school of research within public health on how to frighten people, known as “fear appeal”
• Fear appeal is based on the premise that to successfully implement a public health measure, you must first highlight a threat. And, to work, the threat must be made personal, so that people fear for their personal safety
• Next, you give people something immediate to do that will set them on the path of cooperating with the plan in its entirety. Examples during the COVID-19 pandemic include not leaving your house, wearing a mask, staying 6 feet apart, closing certain businesses and keeping children home from school. In the future, we can expect to be told we must get vaccinated and digitally tracked before we can resume life as normal
• By adding confusion to the mix, you can bring an individual from fear to anxiety — a state of confusion in which you can no longer think logically. In this state, you are more easily manipulated
• Eventually, when the fear and anxiety are great enough, desperation sets in, at which point people are willing to do just about anything to get relief

Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist, has written more than a dozen bestselling books on psychiatry and the drug industry. He’s frequently referred to as “the conscience of psychiatry” because he was able to successfully reform the psychiatric profession, abolishing lobotomies and other harmful experimental psychosurgeries.

This past year, he’s homed in on COVID-19 and the fears around it, which is the topic of this interview. He also started researching the history of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, learning more than he bargained for in the process.

“He just looked like this kindly gentleman, until I started to listen to what he was saying and to look into what he was doing,” Breggin says. “In early April, [my wife] Ginger brought this scientific article to me and said, ‘Honey, this looks like it’s impossible, it’s fake or something.’ 

It was a 2015 article by a big team from North Carolina [led by] Ralph Baric,1 He’s the final author on it and the power behind it, although the lead author is Vineet D. Menachery.2 This article is talking about making a coronavirus that’s going to be a new epidemic agent. They’re talking about it. They’ve actually accomplished it — and it’s a SARS coronavirus. 

It’s a virus that will infect the lungs that comes from bats … And they’re checking it out and they find that it will infect human lung epithelium. They give it to mice and the older mice are getting very sick and ones that are compromised die.

It sounds … [like] the precursor of SARS-CoV-2. They even tried, by the way, to make a vaccine for it and they couldn’t. And I’m thinking, ‘My God, what’s going on here?’ And then I look down the line of all these authors. There are [two] Chinese names there … and they list themselves as being from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

And then I look who’s funding it. Well, China is funding it. And Fauci is funding it from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’m thinking to myself, ‘My God, we’re giving the Chinese a biomedical weapon’ … [The two Chinese authors] turn out to be two of the very, very top Chinese people in this, what is essentially a military lab. The Wuhan Institute, nothing like that is anything but military in China.”

What Is Fauci’s Role in the Bio-Assault on the World?

Breggin claims he was able to share the information with someone close to President Trump, and three days after sharing this finding, the president canceled the U.S.-Chinese research collaboration that was working on coronavirus gain-of-function research.

However, Fauci quickly took hold of the American research efforts and in October 2020 injected additional funding. Some of that funding will surely still end up in China, Breggin says, by way of the EcoHealth Alliance, which for years has subcontracted research work to the Wuhan Institute. Fauci also gave additional money to the University of Texas. Breggin explains:

“In Galveston, there is a Level 4 biosafety lab that can work with the most dangerous viruses. So, I decided to look into this. It’s not great magic to it, you have to use some search engines like DuckDuckGo. I [searched for] ‘China’ and ‘the Galveston Institute,’ and I got … a press release … bragging about their relationships with the Wuhan Institute, working on viruses. 

So, no wonder he’s sending them money. I start digging deeper and I come across a letter from the education department to the University of Texas, saying they’ve not been forthcoming about their connections to China and the Communist Party (CCP), and in particular from the institute in Galveston. 

So, I’m looking at this network of connections with China. They list them all. We have a blog out about that too now. And I realized there’s nothing stopping Fauci. Absolutely nothing is stopping him. He is going to carry on his assault on the world. And Fauci knew that the Wuhan Institute was unsafe.”

Breggin delves into some of the backstory that helps explain what’s been happening. In 2014, then-President Obama called for a moratorium on gain-of-function research [making harmless viruses virulent] in the U.S. He did not, however, mention collaborations with the CCP. To get around Obama’s moratorium, Fauci outsourced the gain-of-function research to the Wuhan Institute.

Based on the evidence, which Breggin details in a recent report featured in “Fauci’s Treacherous Ties to China and Globalists,” Fauci appears to play an important role in the global takeover by technocrats.

Technocracy is an economic system in which the world is ruled not by democratically elected politicians but by technocrats — a conglomerate of ultra-wealthy elites, scientists and technicians whose aim is to rule the global population and the allocation of resources through the use of technology.

Fear Is the Tool of Tyrants

Breggin was asked to be the medical legal expert in a lawsuit to put a stop to the never-ending emergency edict by the governor of Ohio. In his medical legal brief,3 Breggin detailed why shutdowns aren’t working, and the harm they inflict on the population.

This lawsuit has also stirred up other anti-lockdown projects around the U.S. You can find more information about all of this on Breggin.com. It’s important to recognize that the primary tool that enables local and state leaders to implement unconstitutional mandates such as universal mask wearing, business shut-downs and draconian stay-at-home orders is fear.

Unless people are terrified, they won’t agree to such freedom-robbing edicts. This is a well-known fact, and as noted by Breggin, there’s an entire school of research within public health on how to frighten people, known as “fear appeal.”

“What an odd name: Fear appeal. It’s a euphemism for scaring people to death. That’s how you ‘appeal’ to them. And it’s a very long standing [field of research]. 

The particular article [Ginger and I] studied together made several points. It said, first, you have to not only create something or have something that people are afraid of in order to get your public health measures imposed, but you have to make it personal to them, you have to make them afraid personally.

Then you have to give them something immediate to do to begin cooperating with the plans that you have. We have many examples of that. Things to immediately do [are]: Don’t leave the house; wear a mask; stay 6 feet apart; start closing down businesses and so on. Don’t let your kids go to school and on and on … 

That got me into looking more deeply at the whole question of public health. And public health, sad to say, is essentially a totalitarian model. It does not raise issues of collateral damage, it doesn’t raise issues of the Bill of Rights, the constitution, of liberty, the right to people to die with their boots on, the American tradition of individuals and their own communities making decisions. 

There is no such concept. It starts with the assumption that what public health officials think is true and must be applied regardless of the context. And we see this with this globalism. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re working in Africa or in Communist China, North Vietnam or America, these are the principles, they’re about politics above everything. It’s quite astounding. So, [public health] became something that was perfectly usable by the most extreme totalitarianism …

At the top is extraordinarily wealthy and powerful people and organizations. I see it as a kind of a cooperative but competing group that welcomed Communist China, which shows how little these people — like Fauci and the World Bank and our governments in the Western world —worry about anything except wealth and power. 

Once they invited Communist China into this circle, China became a big, big player along these world predators and let each other be. Until Trump came along, no major figure stood up and said, ‘No, no, we’re going to go back to the [way things were].”

The Psychology of Learned Helplessness

Fear is undoubtedly one of the most powerful motivating emotions for individuals, and the single most powerful intervention capable of controlling an entire population. It’s certainly hard to miss that fear has been used to control the masses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By adding confusion to the mix, you can bring an individual from fear to anxiety, a state of confusion in which you cannot think straight anymore.

Governments now have access to incredibly sophisticated technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is being used for all it’s worth to push this fear propaganda. The end goal is to push us into a state of helplessness, so that they can come in and “rescue” us. For decades, Breggin has studied learned helplessness and its remedies.

“When we’re born, we’re fundamentally helpless. All we can do to be taken care of is to express pain, we can cry, we can wiggle, we can express suffering. But we have no ability to take control of the environment other than by hopefully attracting our caregivers that cuddle us or look for a thorn in the side or whatever. 

And that remains an aspect of humanity. That never leaves us. All of us can at some point be made to feel helpless again. And when we feel helpless, we become like the infant. We feel we have to be saved, basically. We look to other people, we look to drugs, alcohol, we look to authoritarian religions, we look to leaders of all kinds.” 

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QUESTIONS OF OUR TIME – CAN WE FINALLY HEAL OUR COLLECTIVE TRAUMA?

 

Kingsley L. Dennis, Contributor
Waking Times

‘A painted bird of paradise in a cage’ ~Aurobindo

Why are so many things going on in the world right now that are detrimental to our own well-being? It appears self-evident that there is something fundamentally wrong with how the world is – in so many ways and upon so many levels. We are a species with noble character, with a great spirit, and with a sacred soul. In our hearts most people wish only for the betterment of all others – for equity, compassion and communion. And yet what we see going on in the world is nothing less than complete madness. We have to say it exactly as it is – we are experiencing a collective trauma on a global scale.

In my recent work I proposed the possibility that some kind of mental and/or unconscious infection or contagion has produced a form of irrationality – or ‘madness’ – that has now become so normalized within us that we hardly recognize its presence.[i] Further, this ‘presence’ has embedded itself into various forms of social conditioning (or perhaps even produces this conditioning) in order to veil its existence. This normalized madness then usurps genuine thinking patterns, with the result that when everyone shares the collective psychosis then the madness of the world appears to be a ‘normal feature’ of human civilization. And those people who are ‘awake’ to the irrationality and madness are considered the ‘crazy ones.’ Here is an illuminating tale:

There was once a wise and powerful king who ruled in a remote city of a far kingdom. And the king was feared for both his might and his love of wisdom. At the heart of the city was a well whose water was cool and crystalline, and all the inhabitants drank from this well, even the king and his courtiers, because there was no other well in the city. One night, while everyone was asleep, a witch entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well, and said:

‘From now on, anyone who drinks this water will go crazy.’

The next morning all the inhabitants drank the water from the well, except the king and his lord chamberlain, and very soon everyone went mad, as the witch had foretold. During that day, all people went through the narrow streets and public places whispering to each other:
‘The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Naturally, we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him!’

That night, the king ordered a golden cup of water from the well to be brought to him. And when they brought the cup the king and his lord chamberlain drank heavily from it. Soon after that there was great rejoicing in that distant city of a far kingdom because the king and his lord chamberlain had regained their reason.

The King and his love of wisdom (Genuine Mind) was corrupted by the poisonous drops of the witch’s liquid (infection/contagion) that resulted in the mass epidemic of craziness (irrationality/madness). This corrupted mind, we can say, has now become the dominant narrative that influences social behavior. This disease of irrationality is a contagion that infects individual and group minds as well as infuses the whole array of our social systems.

The collective ‘cultural mind’ is continually being shaped by dominant social-cultural narratives that normalize our mental and emotional behavioral patterns. These norms are then transferred into cultural myths that serve to transmit and reinforce these mass-minded belief systems. We end up validating our own corrupted thinking through unconscious affirmations. Once this seed of psychosis is planted then it aims to propagate and strengthen itself in order to legitimate its own ‘logical’ existence. Like a mental cancer it ingratiates itself into our own neural pathways as an insider rather than an outsider so that we fail to notice its toxic presence. Yet there remains a niggling sense of something being ‘not-quite-right’ deep within any sensible/sensitive person.

This corrupted reality then becomes internalized so that people adapt to a form of the ‘new normality’ and anyone who speaks up or questions this ‘paradigm of normality’ is considered either odd, eccentric or, at worst, a crazy heretic. A more recent category for such people is now to be designated as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ which is a quick brush to dismiss people with ideas or thinking contrary to this ‘norm.’ And those people who appear to accept and encourage such norms are quickly brought ‘into the fold’ and supported by the orthodox, mainstream systems. The majority of those supporting and propagating the disease of irrationality are not in psychiatric care but running most of our social, political, and financial institutions. A great majority of the asymptomatic, unknowing carriers of this mental contagion can also be found in the streets, in shops, and everywhere in society. Positions of great power, especially, represent this irrationality, and often knowingly so, as it supports and strengthens their own continuing structure of power. An irrational mind corrupts, yet an irrational mind in a position of power corrupts totally.

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WINNING THE WAR ON CONSCIOUSNESS – HUMANITY’S GRAND AWAKENING FROM DEEP STATE

Juliet Tang, Wake Up World

Waking Times

2020 is the year many in this world find themselves in an ultimate spiritual war of good and evil.

It started with a global lockdown that quickly escalated to race war, the talk of mandatory vaccines, 5G, transhumanism (the merging of human with AI), etc.

The war with Deep State (Cabal, Illuminate, the 1% elite, Satanists, etc.) has been going on for a very long time and involves multiple timelines. If you’re reading this, trust that you’ve chosen to come to this exact time to play a role during the end game, and the new beginning for humanity.

While reading this post, my advice for you is to use your discernment and do your own research, rather than take everything you watch and read to be the truth – this includes my words.

I am merely sharing with you the highest truth that is available to me at this time, after long hours of research and tuning inward.

The Time Has Come

Back in February, weeks before the lockdown in the United States occurred, I was in an unusually long and heavy psilocybin mushroom journey that foreshadowed what was to come – much of it didn’t make sense at the time because uncovering the agenda of Deep State was simply never my focus in life.

During the journey, I saw a giant light grid being formed by awakened leaders around the world; each was standing tall in their own pillar of light and holding their unique frequency of consciousness, truth, love, and liberation. This grid then activated what looked like a new earth grid inside of earth, shifting Gaia and the entire humanity into a different timeline where sovereignty reigns.

I was given the message over and over,

“The time has come. Be the message.”

Truthfully, I am not the type of person who invests time reading about ascension or galactic channelings, as I realized years ago a large percentage of the new age spirituality and plant medicine community has been hijacked by a lower consciousness, which is why there are many distortions such as scarcity mindset, emasculation of masculinity, as well as surface understanding and over-application of “love and light.” So the visions caught me by surprise.

In the next few months as the dominoes began to fall, the purpose of the visions is becoming clearer and clear, hence the birth of this post.

In order for me to share what it takes to win this war of consciousness, I’ll first address how Deep State has maintained its control over humanity.

The Matrix Has You, Neo

This one particular timeline of our current reality goes beyond what many spiritual seekers believe to be an illusion.

Our very culture is a fabricated and socially engineered existence created by Deep State to maintain a generally accepted storyline to enslave humanity, through distorting our ability to discern what’s artificial and what’s real, while children are being trafficked and sacrificed, and the puppets of Deep State (high level officials, celebrities, etc.) are committing crimes against humanity.

Symbolism and giving away clues to their plan are all part of the game Deep State plays. In fact, many Hollywood movies such as The Matrix, V for Vendetta have pretty much dropped the major clues.

Many know the harmful effects caused by GMO, vaccines, Big Pharma, fluoride in water, etc. What they don’t realize is that there’s a far more sinister agenda behind what many believe to be corporate greed.

Every industry within this Matrix has been planted and infiltrated by Deep State to maintain its control – food, health, medical, entertainment, money, politics, education, etc.

When we consume genetically modified foods that are toxic to our bodies and cells, drink fluorinated (a neurotoxin) water that calcifies our pineal gland, mindlessly tune into Hollywood movies or news that are full of hidden dark symbols and lies that hypnotize our minds, and surround ourselves with wifi, cellphone and towers that are disruptive to our brainwaves, we become an unconscious participant in their game.

In short, our bodies and minds have been greatly altered, our emotions manipulated, and our consciousness hijacked so that we are susceptible to what Deep State wants us to think, feel, and do.

Many are not only unable to discern lies from truth, but also depend on this false matrix so much that the mere suggestion of questioning the mainstream media narrative is enough to trigger cognitive dissonance or anger, because a part of their identify has been threatened.

This is the reason why the moment Google labels anything a conspiracy theory, people either dismiss it, or are triggered by the person who’s had the nerve to bring it up. That in itself is a conditioned response planted by Deep State so no one questions what they are being told, while they carry out their bigger agenda in the dark.

Divide and Conquer and Communism 

Currently, a socialist regime is being rolled out in most countries in our world by Deep State, with the intention to create a one world government, or the New World Order.

One of the signature moves of socialism/communism is divide and conquer by naming a group of citizens “common enemy” of the society. This “common enemy” group then becomes a label of hate and everything that is wrong with the society, whilst other members of the society are free to “cancel” them.

I am the granddaughter of a woman who was canceled (persecuted) by Communists in China during the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths and lasting famine in its ten year duration. The social justice warriors back then were called Red Guards.

The Red Guards of China were youths and school kids – brainwashed and recruited by the government to carry out acts of what they believed to be justice, using tactics such as public shaming, property destruction, gaslighting, virtual signaling, and physical assault/torture of other human beings.

If you look closely at how division is being played out in our society today, you will recognize it in a heartbeat.

Essentially, the idea is to turn citizens against and police each other, so that we defeat ourselves with minimal effort on their part. It also divides us psychological and emotionally, which greatly weakens us, as human beings are social animals that thrive when we bond with each other.

A divided population is much easier to manipulate and control.

Information War

Those who control information, control our perspective. And each of us creates our reality from our perspective.

The excessive distortions and censorship, and character assassination of experts who dare to challenge the main stream narrative are all part of the information war we are in right now.

Some light research will help you find out that almost all mainstream media is controlled by 6 companies, owned by a few billionaires of the world.

On an energetic level, information is spelled in-formation, which means what we consume then forms our bodies and cells.

Each word carries a specific charge, and all words are spells (spell-ing).

What we are experiencing goes beyond politics. There is (dark) magic involved.

Watch out when a narrative, chant or image is being repeated over and over by the masses, it’s almost always a sign a spell has been cast.

When the masses fall under a spell, they will make choices and take actions believing it’s coming from their free will, when it isn’t.

Breaking out of a spell requires a shift in consciousness and frequency, which is presented in the solutions below.

What Is the Solution Then?

The long term solution requires us to address all fronts – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It requires the human race to work together as a team to detoxify and upgrade our bodies, communities and institutions, so that all have access to clean water, organic fresh foods, conscious education, and healthcare that is not sick care in disguise.

This will obviously take time. Since our entire history has been manufactured, we are here to remember, and rewrite everything about who we are, what we desire to create in this world, and how we can leave this planet a better place for our children and their children.

These are some of the short term solutions I have received:

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THE SHAMANIC VIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH

By Jonathon Davis on Wednesday October 9th, 2019

UPLIFT CONNECT

A Holistic Approach

In November 2014, the peak psychology body in the UK, the British Psychological Association, released its new flagship report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. It was a watershed moment in the mainstream treatment of mental illness, containing statements such as:

“Hearing voices or feeling paranoia are common experiences which can often be a reaction to trauma, abuse, or deprivation. Calling them symptoms of mental illness, psychosis, or schizophrenia is only one way of thinking about them, with advantages and disadvantages.” 

- The British Psychological Association: Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia.

With mental health problems reaching epidemic proportions in the UK and throughout the western world, this document reads as no less than an admission that the current model of mental health treatment gap has failed, and is a cry for help to anyone with an approach that may be useful. There are indeed a great many cultures who have, and still carry, a deeper understanding of mental illness. While these perspectives don’t fit within the boundaries of rational reductionism, this has little relevance to their efficacy.

“From American Indian shamanism* to esoteric Judaism, this concept has dominated for millennia. As it has now become clear, western civilization Is unique in history in it’s failure to recognize each human being as a subtle energy system in constant relationship to a vast sea of energies in the surrounding cosmos.”  
 - Dr. Edward Mann, Sociologist

Ancient indigenous Shamanic practice

What is the Shamanic View of Mental Health?

Broadly speaking, any form of awareness around mental health that includes spiritual, mystic and/or mythic considerations could be included in a shamanic view of mental health. This ranges from ancient indigenous shamanic practices to yogic methods involving kundalini awakening, through to Jungian and transpersonal psychology (which draw heavily from ancient cultures). Jung, for example, characterised schizophrenia and psychosis as a natural healing process.

“When conscious life is characterised by one-sidedness and false attitudes, primordial healing images are activated – one might say instinctively – and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists… Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality.”    
 – Carl Jung

Another foundation stone of this perspective is the phrase made famous by Joseph Campbell, “The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight” (an idea borrowed from Jungian psychiatrist RD Laing). There has been a long history throughout human culture of people having mystical experiences, and then becoming “weller than well” as Dr. John Weir Perry put it. The key here is that in these instances the person completed a process that western medicine would have labelled as sickness and then medicated. They instead passed through it and went on to lead lives without relapse into ‘psychosis’, living a more fulfilled existence than if they had never gone through their temporary break with consensus reality. Throughout history there have been examples of people who have gone on to use their visionary insights, newly found drive and focus to create great social reform for the benefit of all.

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