A number of mental health approaches like Soteria, Diabasis, Open Dialogue and various others operate on what has become known as the Wellness principle. While often dismissed or derided by conservative vested interests, there is substantial evidence that this approach offers a proven and credible alternative to the predominant biomedical model.
Two important elements found in all the Wellness approaches include a supportive environment and a practice known as Active Listening. Both can also be found in one form or another in many ancient spiritual practices but are invariably lacking or not present at all in the biomedical approach to mental health. An examination of how these methods work, interwoven with my own personal journey, may be helpful in seeking a better understanding of mental health and future possibilities.
A Bad Start
One early sign of a troubled life to come occurred at kindergarten when I was about four years old. The teacher was reading the story of Hansel and Gretel. While most kids would have been happily engaged in the story, I was terrified. I responded accordingly, much to the annoyance and probably the distress of others.
Growing up with this sort of “sensitivity” soon got me labelled as a weird and troubled kid. These days I would probably be diagnosed and medicated but that didn’t happen back then in the early 1950’s.
When I was about 22 years of age I started hearing “god” voices. What was at first a curiosity became a problem. Soon after mentioning these experiences to my local doctor and the minister of the church I attended, I was certified insane and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. According to some who knew me at the time, I went to hospital a somewhat troubled but functional person and emerged several months later seriously disturbed and quite dysfunctional.
In Australia, it was easy enough in those days to obtain a disability pension with subsistence-level government accommodation and an ongoing supply of medication. After looking around at others in similar situations, I decided that was not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I walked away from the mental health system and tried to get on with my life as best I could. I was also acutely embarrassed and ashamed about what had happened to me so I tried to hide my experiences from everyone, even to the point of self-denial. Despite my best efforts, however, I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for short stays on many occasions over the next fourteen years.
Then came a significant turnaround.
A Mad Priest
I joined a peer self-help organisation called Grow. It had been started by a Catholic priest named Con Keogh who had himself been hospitalised and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Before being hospitalised he had studied and taught philosophy at the Vatican. With the help of his training he put together a psycho-spiritual 12-step program for mental health, loosely based on Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
I found the spiritual aspects of Grow confronting at first but in time came to realise that spirituality could exist outside a religious structure or context. At its essence I now see spirituality as being predominantly about the development of conscious awareness; a somewhat contested and disputed subject for many.
Grow described itself as a caring and sharing community which was an important part of their system. Being accepted without demands or judgement helped keep people connected and coming back each week, long enough for other elements in the program to start having an effect.
Good support appears to play an important part in mental health. Support groups are often considered to be a cheap therapeutic alternative but the evidence shows that well-run support groups can be just as effective if not more so than individual therapy. Of course they are also significantly cheaper to run. Unfortunately, many therapists find group work difficult. This is particularly so if those running or leading the group lack the appropriate skills, particularly active listening skills, or have an agenda for group members to achieve specific outcomes.
For a support group to work, one or more members of the group must be able to “hold the space” for the group. This is essentially the same as active listening which raises the level of conscious awareness in the group. This in turn enables people in the group to feel listened to and valued.
It is possible to draw “energy” from a good support group indefinitely. While this can certainly help, it is essential that group participants use the group’s supportive energy to develop self-awareness by becoming mindfully aware of their own mental activity, emotions and bodily feelings. This allows us to deal better with life’s inevitable challenges without having to rely so much on others for support.
Keogh’s program challenged many of the unquestioned ideas and beliefs of contemporary society including the way we deal with thoughts, emotions and feelings. This in turn has a significant effect on the way we respond to life’s events. Learning about and following some of these new practices together with the support and encouragement of the group started to turn my life around.
Unfortunately Grow had also come to the attention of the psychiatric fraternity who were less than impressed with the idea that groups of people with serious mental health problems could help each other achieve results that they couldn’t. Over time, with the aid of government funding, Grow was taken over by so-called professionals. The organisation still exists today but my understanding is that it has become institutionalised and moribund.
Grow also triggered an interest for me in philosophy. If Con Keogh’s knowledge of this subject had led to the Grow program, maybe more could be gleaned by studying it.
Philosophy
I came across an advertisement in the daily newspaper for a course in “Practical Philosophy.”
It turned out to be a private worldwide organisation established many years ago in the UK by a man named Leon MacLaren. The school taught a metaphysical system based on Eastern and Western philosophy that included mindfulness and meditation practices together with the study of classical music, art, literature and poetry.
There was occasionally talk about how the school’s metaphysical “work” was not suitable for anyone who had any form of mental illness so I kept my own problems very private. There had apparently been a couple of psychiatric hospital admissions and at least one suicide within the organisation in the past.
On a couple of occasions, some of the practices triggered some quite bad psychotic episodes but fortunately by this time I was becoming reasonably skilled at dealing with them.
I learned a lot at the School of Philosophy but I believe there were some important elements missing in regard to emotions and physical senses (feelings).
After five years, my inner voice told me it was time to move on. I had acquired some knowledge of both Zen Buddhism and Sufism from the school so I started looking around.
Sufism
Sufism is the esoteric teachings and practices of the Islamic religion. It can be difficult to determine where the religion ends and metaphysics begins so Sufis have often had an uneasy relationship with religious traditionalists.
I joined the Melbourne Mevlevi Sufi order, better known as the Whirling Dervishes. The Mevlevi are one of the best-known Sufi orders because of their whirling or dancing meditation known as Sema, which means listening. This order, based in Turkey, was started by the son of the well-known mystic poet Jalalauddin Rumi, shortly after his death in 1273.
An important Sufi practice is known as Sohbet. The literal meaning of this word is conversation.
I was intrigued to discover how the practice of Active Listening used in the Wellness model was in many ways similar to Sohbet. Essentially it promotes a connection at an emotional level beyond the limits of the rational mind. This skill, like active listening is developed through mindfulness. It is amazing that such a simple practice can be so powerful but to be effective it must be carried out with conscious awareness, not mechanically. While it sounds simple, it can take quite a bit of practice to master.
Again I never mentioned my mental health problems to anyone in the Sufi community but when the group leader died, the person who tried to take over wasn’t able to “hold the space” and the group eventually disintegrated. I started having difficult psychotic experiences again. I had also just come to the end of a three-year “marriage from hell” and was rather fragile.
For the first time in more than 10 years I reached out for psychiatric help. A senior psychiatrist at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne prescribed a new atypical antipsychotic medication for me to use on an “as needed” basis. I used it this way up until early 2022, monitoring my own prodromal symptoms and taking the medication whenever I felt a period of instability building up and then tapering off as soon as possible after the episode had passed.
Meanwhile my mental health seemed to slowly decline. My main “practice” seemed to be trying to avoid places and situations that were likely to be triggering. I now recognise that this is not a very good way to deal with the problem. This approach is likely to allow things to get worse over time.
Transpersonal Psychology
Around the time I left the Mevlevi I became involved in a relationship with a woman who was a transpersonal psychologist. I got to attend monthly meetings of the Australian Psychological Society’s transpersonal interest group where I met a number of interesting people involved in the transpersonal psychology movement.
This woman had undergone training with Stanislav “Stan” Grof, a Czechoslovakian-American psychiatrist who was deeply involved with psychedelics. When LSD was banned in the US in the 1960’s, Grof developed a breathing technique for inducing Altered States of Consciousness (ASC’s) that he called Holotropic Breathwork. I tried this technique a couple of times and it did induce an ASC but for me it also induced a “bad trip” or psychosis soon afterwards.
Grof coined the term “Spiritual Emergency” and promoted the idea that spirituality and mental health can be intricately related. In my view he left open a mostly unanswered question as to the difference between a spiritual emergency and ordinary psychosis. The difference, as far as I can see, is one of orientation, meaning a person’s willingness to confront emotional pain and move into it or to try and avoid it by moving further away into an even lesser state of conscious awareness. Antipsychotic medication works in much the same way. It reduces conscious awareness in the hope that it will also reduce emotional pain.
Trouble with Authorities
Several years ago I was hospitalised for a short time with a medical condition that required me to reveal my use of antipsychotic medication. This led to a number of confrontations with the state mental health authorities who were unhappy about the way I was self-managing my mental health and medication even though what I was doing had been prescribed by a senior psychiatrist from a major public hospital. Practices had changed quite significantly since that time and not for the better. Eventually I got fed up with the very unwelcome and at times intrusive interference in my life and decided to set up the Pink Panther Movement.
The Panthers were initially an angry response towards the oligarchs of the Australian mental health system. That anger has significantly subsided into an acceptance of “what is” along with a quiet determination to do whatever I can to try and improve the situation.
Setting up and managing the Panthers has exposed me to the rough and tumble of the mental health world presenting more than its fair share of challenges and surprises. I soon learned that my own experiences were fairly typical. Tens of thousands of Australians are being routinely subjected to abusive and sometimes horrific practices. Many have had to endure far worse than me. Another big surprise was that many mental health professionals claim to be strongly opposed to the existing biomedical approach but most are reluctant to take any sort of public stand against it.
New Frontiers
Many blame the immense global mental health crisis on pharmaceutical companies, the psychiatric profession, social media, the government and so on. While each of these things undoubtedly play a part in the problem, I believe there is a much bigger underlying issue that could be described as a culture-wide dulling of awareness and empathy together with deep-seated existential fear. When coupled with greed and a lust for power and control that drives the people I call âconservative vested interests,â you have an almost perfect recipe for what has happened.
Addressing this problem requires a much greater public understanding of consciousness and conscious awareness than what exists at the moment. We can find at least some of this knowledge in ancient spiritual teachings and practices.
The Wellness approach, despite years of deliberate suppression, has survived and proven itself to be highly effective. Together with its intrinsic core practice of Active Listening, it seems like as good a place as any from which to try and build a new and better system.
The only problem is in interpreting the spiritual phenomena in a way conditioned by religious teachings or in terms of any of the more progressive psychiatric and therapeutic approaches, e.g. transpersonal psychology, open dialogue and so forth – because truth does not need to be interpreted at all – it needs to be seen and understood, and imagining that accumulating socially conditioned knowledge about religion and spiritual matters actually prevents such seeing and understanding if you ask me. I really mean this. You can’t flower spiritually by following any authority or believing uncritically what other religions, spiritual movements or progressive mental health treatments might say. You may be one of the most clued up people in Australia on the problem of mental health as far as I know – and I sincerely mean that – but this has nothing to do with the spiritual flowering which demands freedom, a freedom made impossible with following, interpreting or practicing anything. Seeing and understanding what is as it is is the only thing universally connecting all meditative religions and all truly therapeutic approaches in psychology too for that matter. I know you are likely to dismiss what I say because I can’t quote an authority to try and justify it. But it’s the truth bruv.
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I agree with No-one. Academic psychology amounts to intellectual hubris.
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Absolutely. That is the plain truth – academic psychology does amount to intellectual hubris. And replacing perceptual experiences of oneself with psychological theories about oneself is a slide towards idiocy if you ask me. Always you hit the nail on the head.
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Thank you No-one. I think you’re really good at hitting the nail on the head, too đ
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No I don’t disagree with what you say at all but communicating these concepts to people at an intellectual level has always been a challenge and that is where the majority of people, mad or otherwise start from. That however is what some of us have “asked” to try and do.
As they say in the “classics”. Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know so perhaps I am just an ignorant fool.
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Active listening is a vital component of analytical psychology and can be seen in other psychological relationships. https://positivepsychology.com/active-listening-techniques/
For some reason analytical psychology hasn’t the big following in Australia seen in other countries such as Europe, UK, Canada and the US. Dismissing Freud and the unconscious is fashionable but that’s about all. Ignore both at your peril. Generally speaking analytical psychology is a long term relationship of many years which explores the meanings an individual gives to his or her life experience. An article entitled ‘On Analytic Listening’ by W. W. Meissner in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, LXIX, 2000 has many good points on the process.
“Multiple dimensions of the listening process as implemented in the analytic process are discussed. Listening is not the same as hearing; it is done with the mind rather than just the ears. Listening seeks meaning, specifically the meaning in the mind of the patient. The meaning of words is often obscure, ambiguous and uncertain, and their deeper implications can only be approached over time through uncovering associative linkages.
Listening takes place in multiple perspectivesâsubjective/objective, active/passive, dynamic/genetic, etc.
Listening is also contextually related to dimensions of the analytic relation, including transference, alliance, and real relation.
Modalities of listening related to each are explored for both analyst and analysand, and aspects of listening empathically and listening to silence are discussed.
Listening and speaking are primary activities in analysis, and along with cognitive and affective attunement to the patient, are essential to the effectiveness of the process as well as the major basis for developing interpretations. As Adler and Bachant (1996) recently observed: âAnalytic listening is a highly sophisticated and disciplined skill that prepares the analyst to be attuned to and to monitor multiple levels of discourse simultaneously (e.g., what the patient intends to be saying,what the patient might be saying if less inhibited, and what the patient is unconsciously saying, etc.) without ignoring his own affectively charged stream of consciousnessâ (p. 1030).1
And on the part of the patient, listening both to him or herself, as well as to the analyst, is essential to the patientâs participation in the process. Thus not only is the fact that both analyst and patient listen important, but how they listen and to what is equally if not more so.2
With respect to listening in the analytic process, the first question is what does it mean to listen, then what is involved in analytic listeningâanalyst listening to patient, and patient listening to analyst. I will discuss complex dimensions of the listening process, particularly problems connected with hearing the meaning in the patientâs or analystâs use of words. Specific to the analytic process is listening within the frame of the analytic relation, including its constituent components: transference, alliance, and real relation (Meissner 1996c).
Related issues concern the role of empathy in listening, listening when there is nothing to hear, i.e., to silence, and listening to oneself. Finally, I will consider some aspects of the listening process in the analysand.
[text]
CONCLUSIONS
In the light of these considerations, I draw the following conclusions:
1. The analyst hears sounds, primarily the patientâs speech but listens to meaningsâthe analyst hears with the ears but listens with the mind.
2. The complete meaning of words is always to a degree uncertain and ambiguous. The full scope of meaning and implication may never be achieved, but can be approximated over time by open-ended inquiry and associative elaboration.
3. Listening for both analyst and patient involves a balance of subjective and objective components. The analyst listens to the patient but that listening is filtered through his or her own subjectivity; the same is true of the patient listening to the analyst.
4. Objective and subjective listening are reciprocalâthe greater the focus of attention on the other, the less on the self, and vice versaâbut the balance between them can differ among analysts as well as among patients. There is no optimal or preferred mode, but overbalance in one direction can increase the risk of mishearing or misunderstanding in the other.
5. Analytic listening is as overdetermined as speaking forboth analyst and patient. Listening takes place on multiple levels of implication and within multiple frames of reference simultaneously and concurrently.
6. Analytic listening takes place within the analytic relation specifically in relation to transference-countertransference, therapeutic alliance, and the real relation. Communication between analyst and patient can take place in any and all of these perspectives in the course of analytic interaction, and the listening perspective differs accordingly. Listening with therapeutic intent and purpose
takes place within the alliance sector, by virtue of which the analyst, and hopefully the patient, are able to turn extra-alliance transactions to therapeutic purposes.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2000.tb00565.x?needAccess=true
I’ve also experienced the bizarreness and rigidity of much of the Australian mental health system. With degrees in philosophy, law and mediation, and a lot of life experience, it’s been a long and interesting journey from there to here. It wasn’t until I found an analytic practitioner, a Buddhist Jungian practitioner, that the complexity of my life experiences were appropriately explored through the basis of active listening.
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Hi Lyn,
While the “Madness” of the mental health system is undoubtedly a major global problem, Australia does seem to have its own unique idiosyncrasies. While I think these create some substantial challenges, at the same time I would suggest that they offer unique opportunities that I do not believe are available in most other parts of the developed world.
Many Australian mental health practitioners have spoken to me about their concerns but only privately and “off the record”. I believe that if and when more practitioners find the courage to speak out openly, things could start to change very quickly.
I have a vision of the day when Australia has the best mental health system in the world and becomes a showcase of best practices for the rest of the world.
You may be interested in what I am trying to do with the Lived Experience Worker (LEW) community. Here is a link to a Facebook group “You and LEW Mental Health” https://www.facebook.com/groups/556736800344723/. Some more input to this conversation would be most welcome.
Regards
Tim
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lyn, thanks for wonderful comments.
But, of all these folks who speak of “active listening,” none, it seems to me, recognizes the full “magic” or “miracle” of what happens, or can happen, when it occurs.
Therefore, I ask again, anyone, Is there a difference between being listened to and thinking we are being listened to when we are not?
I believe there is, and that I could spend lifetimes in trying to prove this, if only to myself, and that they would not be wasted lifetimes.
When I feel myself listened to, I feel empowered and raised up in consciousness; thoughts flow easily; new ideas arrive freely, joyfully, liberatingly.
I donât believe Socrates or Jung or Carl Rogers or Science has offered any (recorded) explanation of this yet. And, if Jesus had any inkling of it (as how could he not?), it was not reported in any of the Synoptic/Canonical or Gnostic gospels that I know of, either, even if he was reported as listening, a while, on the road to Emmaus, post-resurrection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15pjQRA80bs :
Minute 0:55:
âIf the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a step of the way, he must feel with that personâs psyche. He never feels it when he passes judgment. Whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference.To take the opposite position, and to agree with the patient offhand is also of no use. Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity. This sounds almost like a scientific precept, and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract attitude of mind, but what I mean is something quite different. It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a manâs lifeâŠâŠ..We cannot change anything unless we accept it: Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement when we wish to help and improveâŠâ
Thich Nhat Hanh speaks similarly:
âWe know that many people suffer, feeling that no one is able to understand them or their situation. Everyone is too busy and no one seems to have the capacity to listen. But all of us need someone who can listen to us.
Today there are people who practice psychotherapy and they are supposed to be there for you, to sit and listen to you so that you can open your heart. They have to listen deeply in order to be real therapists. Real therapists have the capacity to listen with all their being, without prejudices, without judgment.
I don’t know how therapists train themselves to acquire this kind of capacity to listen. A therapist also may be full of suffering. While sitting and listening to the client, the seeds of suffering in him or her may be watered. If the therapist is overwhelmed by his own suffering, how can he listen properly to the other person? When you are trained to be a therapist, you have to learn the art of deep listening.
Listening with empathy means you listen in such a way that the other piece of person feels you are really listening, really understanding, hearing with your whole being – with your heart. But how many of us can listen like that? We agree in principle that we should listen with our heart, so that we can really hear what the other is saying. We agree that we should
give the speaker the feeling that he is being listened to and being understood. Only that can give him the feeling of relief. But, in fact, how many of us can listen like that?
Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her. Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks, which may be for half an hour or forty-five minutes. During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-product of this work. But first of all listen with compassion.â â Thich Nhat Hanh, from “Anger,” Page 93.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJBKEOe7Pg
âIf this applies to you, observe the resistance within yourself. Observe the attachment to your pain. Be very alert. Observe the peculiar pleasure you derive from being unhappy. Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. The resistance will cease if you make it conscious. You can then take your attention into the pain-body, stay present as the witness, and so initiate its transmutation.
Only you can do this. Nobody can do it for you. But if you’re fortunate enough to find someone who is intensely conscious, if you can be with them and join them in the state of presence, that can be helpful and will accelerate things. In this way, your own light will quickly grow stronger. When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are separated again, the first log will be burning with much greater intensity. After all, it is the same fire. To be such a fire is one of the functions of a spiritual teacher. Some therapists may also be able to fulfill that function, provided that they have gone beyond the level of mind and can create and sustain a state of intense conscious presence while they are working with you.â â Eckhart Tolle, from Page 42 of âThe Power of Now.â
âThe place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.â â Robert M. Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.”
âThe only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought.â – Gandhi.
So funny that LISTEN should be SILENT, all quietly untangled – almost as though even the English universes are not as hostile or indifferent as we supposed.
Thank you for a most wonderful essay and discussion.
Wishing you comfort and joy, and mirth,
Tom.
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Apologies: One sentence of my quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Anger,” read:
“Listening with empathy means you listen in such a way that the other piece of person feels you are really listening, really understanding, hearing with your whole being â with your heart.”
It ought to have read:
“Listening with empathy means you listen in such a way that the other person feels you are really listening, really understanding, hearing with your whole being â with your heart.”
I believe that, whether listening very attentively and nonjudgmentally to another in person or by phone, we can merge our fields of consciousness in some way, and that a similar effect may be accomplished (again, simultaneously) while praying for or attempting “distant healing” for another person, faraway, much as though we behave like two “entangled particles.”
I believe Albert Einstein must have enjoyed this phenomenon frequently when his great friend Michele Besso was with him, as also when he was in the company of Niels Bohr.
I believe that, having struggled with the problem of (special?) relativity for (six?) long years, the very same evening in ?mid-May, 1905, that he had gone to visit Besso, he finally solved it – thanks to Besso’s….listening skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Besso
‘”Not often in life has a human being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you did.”
Albert Einstein in a letter to Bohr (1920).’
– from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
Albert Einstein may have balked at “spooky action at a distance,” and, like the rest of us, also failed to recognize it as the same phenomenon when it happened up close and personal, too, but I believe we can figure out ways to prove it, with or without hypothetical or real cats who come to us and who purr just as soon as we relax, for instance.
Sorry for the error.
Peace and joy, and happy listening!
Tom.
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This is an excellently written article, Tim, and fills in some gaps in my understanding of your history.
Thank you to Denis for forwarding me the article.
Julian
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Thanks Julian
I hope all is well with you. Denis still insists on twisting my brain in a knot but I suppose that is a good thing, LOL.
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Naked women and chicken eggs would be the great basis for an almost infinite array of erotic art photographs, and perhaps also would naked man with chicken eggs, I don’t know, but definitely women are known to like men holding babies or animals with affection. Why is this? Think about it – I don’t need to tell you because it’s so obvious. Anything suggestive of fertility adds something to sex appeal and this is largely unconscious to all fashionistas and beauty seekers. And I think this explains ALL those things that make women or men seem attractive. If you go through the list you can see this, and men being violent or assertive can be attractive because it is protecting the young, you see? And once you nab them you don’t mind if they grow old with you so long as you make the most of their fertility while it’s there. This may seem like a trivial insight but if we don’t know it our whole world comes crashing down, as is evident everywhere. And you can only grow old with grace if you can disentangle beauty from sex and keep the former for yourself and leave the latter to the fertile and non-senile. I am trying to tell myself this every day. Then I’ll be able to find my future dates at the less competitive senior citizens clubs, although I may have to move a few colostomy bags out the way, and have a defibrillator at the ready.
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I have come to similar conclusions that this is how life operates at a mundane level. But I also know from personal experience that there is more to life than this.
“Clean your ears. Do not listen for something you have heard before.
Invisible camel bells, slight footfalls in sand. Almost in sight. The first word they call out
will be the last word of our last poem.”
~ Rumi- Coleman Barks translation
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“Many blame the immense global mental health crisis on pharmaceutical companies, the psychiatric profession, social media, the government and so on. While each of these things undoubtedly play a part in the problem, I believe there is a much bigger underlying issue that could be described as a culture-wide dulling of awareness and empathy together with deep-seated existential fear. When coupled with greed and a lust for power and control that drives the people I call “conservative vested interests”, you have an almost perfect recipe for what has happened.”
Thank you for connecting the dots so expertly.
My journey through life, my search in various places for intelligent, meaningful answers is somewhat similar to yours.
Like you, my observations and experience have led me to conclude that a usually unrecognized existential fear more often than not is the source of people’s misery, a fear imperceptibly exploited by the powers that be.
Out beyond ideas…there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. ~ Rumi
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Mevlan JalÄl al-DÄ«n Muáž„ammad RĆ«mÄ« (or just Rumi as some prefer) has always been a big comfort, guidance and inspiration for me as he continues to be for millions of others today.
Here is one is one of his poems that has nurtured me through some dark spaces.
These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”
Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you
~ Rumi- Coleman Barks translation
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I largely agree, birdsong, but somedays the complete corruption of it all, leaves me sad. But today is my dead brother’s birthday, and a family friend died today, too … so I have legitimate reasons for having a sad day.
I had a “spiritual” journey, similar to yours, Tim, except I was misdiagnosed for asking a psychologist what the meaning of a dream that I was moved by the Holy Spirit meant, and that Holy Spirit blaspheming psychologist thought all dreams are “psychosis.” Thank you for sharing your experience and research, Tim.
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Existential fear: feelings of dread or panic arising when a person confronts the limitations of their existence.
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Which can also occur for some of us when we just dip our big toe into the water of “reality”
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Not freaking out takes some practice.
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See on YouTube: âThe Psychology of the Magicianâ, from Eternalised
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Thank you very much, indeed, Tim and MIA.
In several years of reading MIA, I don’t think I have seen anything finer than this essay.
Is there any difference between being “actively” listened to and merely believing that one is being listened to when, in fact, one is actually not being listened to, at all – say down a phone line, for instance, please?
If there is, what might that be, please?
Thanks, again.
Tom.
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I love the connection you made between spirituality and mental healthâit’s something that isn’t often discussed openly. The idea of Active Listening and mindfulness as tools for recovery makes so much sense to me.
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thanks so much for sharing your story and I was interested to learn about GROW in Australia as I was wondering if would be helpful for a family member. I take it -not!
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Tim thank you so much for this wonderful piece. Rumi has got me through some dark nights of the soul too. I’m in Australia and you are right there is potential but tiny beacons of light. In ten years one human listening psychiatrist. Genuinely beautiful human being. Just one person, no cruelty or malice in her soul. Just one against a tide of cruel incompetent evil. Thanks again sending you love and thanks
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My personal favourite is the quote that begins “Dance when you’re broken open.. And ends with “Dance when you’re perfectly free”.
Good advice that has served me well over the years of bearing witness to the unspeakable cruelties of the Australian MH system and the destruction of my beautiful boy and my family.
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Listening in the deepest, intuitive sense involves empathic listening to all that’s been pushed down, left unsaid and is hardest to bear all alone. Other times, we may pick up on something not especially troublesome but still meaningful in that it validates or challenges someone to question their assumptions about the world and themselves and see things differently. Sort of a trickster energy, if you will.
Beginning in childhood, stories about different situations and people would randomly pop out of my mouth, usually bypassing my conscious awareness. I remember being confused and wondering why I’d said what I’d said, since I wasn’t a child who typically lied.
To my horror, my mother would follow up. Inevitably my stories (which never harmed anyone) would be validated by the individuals involved who were shocked and said I’d have had no possible way of knowing.
I was young (and very empathetic) and could feel how frightened my mother was by what I later realized were intuitive gifts that somehow allowed me to connect to a larger field of consciousness, where past, present and future exist outside linear time.
Without consciously choosing to, and with a few notable exceptions, I repressed my gifts for the next few decades. As a young woman, it took a romantic relationship with someone I felt a deep empathic connection to, a wounded kindred spirit like me, for my gifts to suddenly come alive once again and in new and startling ways. Again, never in ways that harmed anyone.
I’m a crone now, with a lifetime of amazing synchronicities, exchanges and stories that could fill the pages of a book. A number of years ago, a published author who became aware of one of them reached out to me asking for permission to do just that, an offer I declined.
My gifts (which I’ve never monetized) have given my life meaning and bridged the gap between my own unmet longing as a child to be seen and listened to, validated, valued and protected . . . and this same unmet longing in others. I see my gifts as being compensatory.
I think the work you do and what you wrote about consciousness, holding space and deep (active) listening are all important. I also love the poem you linked to by Rumi. Rilke is another favorite poet. Like you, I’m also drawn to Sufism and other inclusive and expansive mystical teachings as well. Growing up in a world of lies made me a truth-seeker.
That said, I understand each of us has our own unique challenges and callings; one of my most important lessons this lifetime continues to be in learning to recognize and respect my own and other people’s limitations.
Thanks, Tim. For turning your challenges into gifts and using them to benefit others.
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Dear Tree and Fruit,
I found reading your post immensely heartening, thank you.
Your story reminded me of the life of Dorothy Chitty as she outlined in her wonderful book “Are You Psychic?”
From reading this, I learned that it may be that, in any lifetime, we may each have at least one particular gift and that suppressing or neglecting this gift may cause us to become ill, one way or another, while finding any way/s to express and so to share it may be our salvation, may restore our wellbeing, may bring us joy and fulfillment like nothing else in the world can.
You may or may not agree with this. Either way, I do beg you for any tips you could possibly share with us all about how to discover and to develop our own intuition, wherever that may lead us, please?
In particular, I wonder if you might have any tips for how to recognize – and therefore to find more courage to trust – the promptings of one’s intuition as they happen rather than merely in retrospect, please?
I suspect that our “subconscious” and/or “superconscious minds” may very well “know everything.”
I am convinced that the more we learn to trust our intuition, and so ourselves, the more peaceful and powerful we become, and the more courage and love we have to share.
Please forgive me if this is putting you on the spot – even if Tree and Fruit is not actually your legal name!
Whatever you decide, my heartfelt thanks for having shared all you have!
Comfort and much joy!
Tom.
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Thanks, Tom. I’m glad you got something from my comments.
As far as intuition goes, it’s important to strike a healthy balance between empathy and discernment. And to remain mindful of our limitations and grounded in reality, which only seems counterintuitive.
Otherwise, we leave ourselves open to being overwhelmed by unconscious forces we may not be ready or able to handle, or else terribly disillusioned and hurt. It’s also important to point out that being intuitive doesn’t necessarily mean being trustworthy.
In both personal and professional relationships, most people can sense someone’s capacity and willingness to empathize and sometimes exploit this; people’s motivations may be very different from ours. It’s not a coincidence that I’ve often felt the greatest sense of connection during my exchanges with strangers. Intuition can be compensatory. I’ve learned my most valuable lessons the hard way.
Take care, Tom. I hope you find a way to nurture, explore and refine your own unique gifts in a way that invites meaningful connections.
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Thank you, Tree and Fruit.
https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
I like Liz Gilbert’s and Ruth Stone’s and Tom Waits’s take/s on genius as a muse to use and/or allow ourselves to be used by – don’t you?
Thanks VERY much to you, Tree and Fruit, and to what you have shared with us, I now have a rather expanded view of this and of how it works, or may all work.
In a previous posting, I and/or some muse or muses may have omitted some pertinent facts that
âHe first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis. He discovered “a kind of paradise” as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.â
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse
Appendicitis, with or without rupture, can be tremendously painful and fateful anywhere, any time, but whoâd want to get it in 19th century, pre-penicillin France? Could it be that Matisse truly died a prior death then – too?
âMost painters ⊠look for an external light to see clearly into their own nature. Whereas the artist or the poet possesses an inner light that transforms objects, creating a new world within them, a sentient, organized and living world, a sure sign of divinity in itself, the reflection of divinity.â
âHenri Matisse, from
https://www.theculturium.com/henri-matisse-chapelle-du-rosaire-de-vence/
Tree and Fruit, you opened me up to the view that some of our spontaneous answers to complex questions may be particularly intuitive, too – something which had not occurred to me before.
Ultimately, of course, if everything in this big bang or in our cosmos has one Source, then we may consider that everything, ina sense, is âchanneled,â and such an understanding or acceptance or attitude may help disinhibit us from ignoring, dismissing or suppressing the promptings of what may well be our intuition?
âIf you never try, youâll never know
Just what youâre worthâ – eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4V3Mo61fJM
Much love.
Many thanks.
Tom.
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âAt its essence I now see spirituality as being predominantly about the development of conscious awareness.â
After I left my comment yesterday, I continued to think about everything youâd written. Last night it occurred to me that most of the struggles in my life have centered around me trying to fit in in a world I was a part of but intuitively understood I didnât belong to. And in seeing things others didnât want to or couldnât see.
When I was 5 or 6 years old, I remember being left alone in the tub for the first time. I remember the quiet and how comforting it felt being surrounded by the warmth of the water, almost embryonic, as if I were a part of it.
As I sat watching the occasional drip from our tubâs faucet, I had another thought, one far too big for someone so small, which was that each individual drop of water held within it the whole and was inseparable from it. And that the same was true for me.
It wasnât something I could articulate and wouldnât fully understand until much later in life.
For decades I worked with teachers, therapists and other professionals in an environment that served children, adolescents and young adults with various behavioral and mental health challenges.
Technically I was part of the administration but since I started out as an administrative assistant to the director, only technically. Informally, people would often say I held the place together, which was probably true to some extent. In a very real way, I was responsible for keeping everyone safe in emergencies, which occurred on a regular basis and usually involved some form of physical violence directed at another individual.
Over the years, and because I lacked the proper âcredentialsâ, teachers, therapists and parents would frequently (and unofficially) turn to me for insights about a particular young person, parent or staff member. In the case of the latter, almost always involving a difficult individual who was part of the administration hierarchy.
This was back in the days when boom boxes and cassette tapes were still a thing, so sometimes Iâd make music compilations (tapes) for staff members or students, always intuitively based on individual leanings and *needs*.
There was a young man whoâd had brushes with the law who everyone seemed taken in by, and yet I always sensed his mental health issues were far more serious and that he was prone to delusions involving power and extreme violence, something no one else seemed to see or acknowledge.
Heâd been adopted as a child, and his adoptive parent was also someone I had serious misgivings about. Again, no one seemed to share my misgivings.
I made him calming musical tapes based on what I was picking up on and was told they helped him relax and sleep, which he said was unusual for him; whether this was true or not, I have no way of knowing. I do know another staff member shared another powerful piece of classical music Iâd shared with her, which was very dark, and that his parent bought it for him . . . something I knew represented a serious error in judgment.
Not long after that, he killed someone, was found sane and as far as I know continues to be incarcerated. During his trial, it came out that heâd been abused as a child and that the person who adopted him continued to abuse him. One of his therapists, who was a casual friend of mine at the time, remained incredulous.
What bothers me most about all this is that there were missed opportunities throughout his life, beginning when he was a child, to recognize and address his needs in an appropriate way and within an appropriate setting, but instead everyone turned a blind eye and chose to see what they wanted to see.
The world we live in encourages and reward us for not seeing. I was once confused by its messages too. In my own psycho-spiritual journey, for a long time, I repressed my emotions, emotional needs and at times, even my conscience trying to fit in, believing there was something wrong with me.
One of my favorite thinkers and mystics, Simone Weil, understood as others before her have, the limitations in relying on intellect alone.:
âAt the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside.â ~ Simone Weil
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In her book, âAre You Psychic?â Dorothy Chitty tells, as I recall, of how she could see dead people as a young kid, of how this scared her mom who took her to a psychiatrist.
When Dorothy told this man about a young boy standing beside him etc., the psychiatrist realized that this was his brother who had died young and, instead of diagnosing âschizophreniaâ and prescribing neuroleptics, advised Mom to take Dorothy home.
Understanding how her gift scared people and caused trouble, Dorothy buried it for decades.
A business failed and she developed a ?ping-pong ball-sized brain tumor. Awaiting surgery, at home, the headaches became unbearable – so unbearable that Dorothy began to bargain with Fate/God, as I recall. Feeling herself rebuked for having abandoned her gift, she agreed to use it for good. The intense headache/s cleared. On returning to hospital shortly afterwards, only a ?scar was found where the tumor had been. Thai is how I recall the story, and I hope Dorothy may forgive any inaccuracies
Despite all compelling evidence to the contrary, could this – or these – be the best of all possible worlds?
Despite how all of us may have felt at times, could this or these worlds be neither infinitely hostile nor absolutely indifferent to our fates, but at least infinitely intelligent and (so) loving and caring?
Whether it is itself infinite or not, is it conceivable that the last big bang is expanding into something which is not infinite, be that our awareness and/or otherwise?
If we believe that we can only give of our very best when at our very best, and if we can only find our greatest joy, satisfaction and fulfillment when we believe we know how to contribute our maximum to the common good, be that through prayer, meditation, listening or any kind of activity, then perhaps we may be persuaded that this world or these worlds may never be utopian or âperfectâ in anyoneâs viewâŠbut are always so much more than that, being (at least) endlessly perfectible?
âIf this world were perfect, it wouldnât be.â – Yogi Berra.
I believe it was Friday 18 or maybe 25th October, 2013 that Maribel entered the fees store, looking for something to feed the wild deer she painted, and, when she asked me
âAre you psychic?â
âI think everyone must be, to some degree, donât you?â
âI do pranic healing.â
âWhat?â
âPranic healing.â
âWhat is that, please?â
âI can see peopleâs energy fields, and I can heal them.â
âOh. How did you discover you could do that?â
âOne day, this, this woman suddenly appeared to me. I asked her, âWhat is your name?â She said âHelen,â and she disappeared again. A few weeks later, I meta man who was very, very ill. I asked him, âDo you know a Helen?â He said, âYes! Helen is my aunt, she is an angel! Helen was my grandmother, also. She was a saint!â I burst into tears.
Then, a few weeks later, another appeared to me. This time, it was a man. And IâŠI was in my bath. I asked him, âWhat is your name?â He said, âMatisse.â I said, âMattias?â He said, âNo, Matisse! I am an artist. You are an artist!â I said, âWell, I paintâŠâ He said, âIf you want, I can help youâŠ?â The next weeks, I paint and paint and paintâŠWhen I got out of my bath, I told my husband, âI met another. Another one. Another spirit.â He said, âWho was this one?â I said, âHe was an artist. French. He said he was Matisse, or Mattias?â My husband, he said, âThat would be Matisse!â â
I went home and googled Matisse. I discovered that he grew up in his parentsâ store that sold grain and household goodsâŠand that he painted bathing female nudes, among other subjects.
The following Monday evening, just before closing time, a French horse dentist, Pierre Clement, came by. As I was loading him up at six oâ clock, I asked him if he was French. He said yes. I asked if I could tell him a story. He said sure. As soon as I mentioned Matisse, he told me that isi mother-in-law had been a student of Matisse back in France, I presume.
âFirst, she was a model. Then she became a student. She paid for the lessons with what she earned modeling for Matisse.â Her artistic name was Celeste.
It may have been that same month that Ilona Radelow dropped by the store. When she told me that her name was Ilona, I asked if this was Helen?
âWell, itâs Hungarian, you know. But, yes, in English, it would be Helen.â
âMay I tell you a story, please?â When I mentioned Matisse, Ilona interrupted me:
âVincent appeared to me.â
âWho, Vincent van Gogh?â
âYes. I was at a self-hypnosis class. It was very hard work. Very, very hard work! I was twenty-five then, and I had a young son, and I was drinking. And he said to me, âDonât let them take away your colors! They took away mine! I gave up the drinking then. That was almost 45 years ago. I am almost seventy now.â
Some six months later, a man I knew as Carl came by the store and said he had not been by for months because of chronic congestive heart failure. I told him the story, laughing that I felt pretty sure that, whatever Matisse/the ghost of Matisse did when he had finished teaching/painting Maribel, whether he ordered another wine or coffee in some cafe or went for a pee, I very much doubted that he hopped back on a cloud to play a harp. For all we knew, he may have had no idea that, in our world, he was “dead” since 1954! Carl laughed too:
âSometimes, I wonder if Iâm living or dead myself!â
âOh, maybe you ARE Matisse, then!â
âYeah! Maybe I am!â
When Carl and his wife came back out to be loaded up with bird feed, I asked him what his full name was.
âMy last name is actually Thyss: Itâs the Dutch/German version of Matisse.â
I began to suspect that Maribel (a Mexican lady, I think, with imperfect English) must have seen and read my energy field and understood that the healing i needed was to understand that we may never die, nor ever suspect that we are embodied ghosts, or that whatever we learn in life we may learn to share with others through all eternities.
âSi je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidĂ© par quelqu’un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent.â
â Henri Matisse.
Happy healings, one and all, and happier and happier eternities!
Tom.
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