Mind-altering drugs, brain damage, meditation and therapy

I came across the video I posted on Tuesday while I actually planned to post the one below. The short excerpt from a talk by Eckhart Tolle (the full talk is here - or well, it was; unfortunately it isn't anymore) seems to me both a good introduction to clarify some unfortunately very common misunderstandings in regard to psychiatric drugs and meditation and its potential to lead to enlightenment - as well as in regard to therapy and its potential to lead to full recovery - and at the same time it sums up the answer to the question whether or not it is possible to recover from emotional distress using drugs, psychiatric prescription drugs, or any other mind-altering drugs.

The concise answer, given in the Eckhart Tolle talk, is no, it is not possible to recover from emotional distress while under the influence of mind-altering drugs. Simply because these drugs prevent the individual, who is under their influence, from getting in touch with his/her true self, from becoming aware and conscious. All mind-altering drugs "work" by enhancing unconsciousness. They stand like an impenetrable wall between the individual and his/her true self.

Although any spiritual teacher knows this just as well as Loren Mosher, for instance, knew it, most mental health professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists or other, seem never to have heard about it. How else would it be possible, that, no matter what kind of emotional distress, the combination of psychotropic drugs and therapy, the combination of two treatment measures, whose aims are diametrically opposed to each other, is promoted as the best treatment option by the system? But, well, in contrast to spiritual teachings, that not only acknowledge the possibility of full recovery, or enlightenment, with a spiritual term, but aim at exactly this full recovery or enlightenment with everything they teach, the mental health system often still denies full recovery to be possible at all.

The consequence of this denial of the possibility to achieve a higher level of awareness, consciousness, which in its turn is a consequence of psychiatry's concept of chronic, biological brain diseases, is that the mental health system aims at the very opposite of what a spiritual teacher would aim at, thus trying to reduce the individual in crisis' increased and increasing (or awakening) awareness, consciousness by all means. Not only "back to normal", but, even more sadly, most often to a level far below "normal", and just as often permanently, through "maintenance medication" with highly toxic chemicals, that not only reduce the brain's capacity while the individual is taking the drugs, but that also cause brain damage, thus reducing the brain's capacity permanently and to an increasing extent the longer the drugs are taken.

So, if you are awakening, if you are going through a crisis that is, beware of mind-altering substances, especially of dirty drugs such as all psychiatric drugs, whose brain damaging potential is somewhat greater than that of pure, natural substances (such as the "leaf").

Here is the video by Jane, who gives an answer more detailed and outspokenly related to emotional distress (so-called "mental illness") than Eckhart Tolle does:

"Meditation, spirituality and drug effects"



Related posts at Jane's blog:

"Drugs and meditation"

"Meditation videos, you asked, I delivered"

"Geodon lies"

Related video by Jane:

"Antipsychotics cause brain damage"

Guardian angels and evil spirits

Saturday, after spelling out to Larry that our conversation was over from my side, I felt a certain need to clean, to shake off the negativity that, although I'd been very aware of it, and had tried my best to keep it at arm's length, anyway had piled up inside me, and to recharge my batteries with some positive energy.

Part of the process was to analyse what had happened. In writing. But a far more important part was to concentrate on something, that could be a source of positive energy.

Earlier that day, I'd noticed that Jane had posted a new video on her YouTube channel: "Meditation experience and spiritual possession". It's a one-hour long vid, and I didn't feel I had the peace and calm to concentrate for so long a time, before I'd finished analyzing the communication with Larry, also my reaction to him, completely. So it had become late, Saturday evening, before I eventually watched the vid. And even if I actually was quite worn out, watching the vid was the best that could have happened. It made me feel both light and soft and full of joy again.

I've wondered a lot about certain "crazy" things I've done in the past. And although I'd intellectually understood that I'd been forced to do them in order to protect myself just as they were some sort of revenge, although I also had understood, intellectually, that even the threatening of the voices, for instance, not necessarily were "evil spirits", but just as much "guardian angels", they still appeared sort of strange to me. Watching the vid brought me, at least, one step closer to real understanding, accepting and loving. "Crazy" me? No, just me. - Time for a cup of Angel Tea...

Watch the video!

How to create your own suffering

I made it, once again: I succeeded in creating some nice suffering for myself. But, well, it's been a while, so I guess, it was about time. If I wasn't to end up megalomanic.

How to do? Well, just take a minor misunderstanding about some weekends off, for instance, that presents you with an additional weekend on duty, instead of the weekend off, you have due, and then - of course without trying to do anything to clear up the misunderstanding! - rush to take on the role of the victim: "What did I say, you're not worth being shown consideration for!" the little voice in the head says. And since you got going this well, why not going all out, why settle for half-baked solutions: "You might as well vanish altogether. After all, there's no one who sees you, and thus would miss you." You just have to take on the role of the victim, whole-heartedly. The role, you maybe once found yourself in, in the dim and distant past, when you actually, and more or less consequently, were overlooked, but that you here and now only need to find yourself in to the extent you choose to ignore the present moment, and instead choose to identify with the dim and distant past. Just choose to identify with your own past, your story - as a victim. There you go.

The part of the ego, which Eckhart Tolle calls the "Pain Body", loooves this. If no one sees me, if I am that invisible, insignificant, that no one notices me, shows me consideration, if I, in the eyes of others, am nobody/nothing, I may as well resort to suffering as a last straw, and become (make myself) "the victim", right? An entire Saturday evening spent in wonderful ego-identification ("I am my story - as a victim, yep!"), and thus in tremendous suffering, and half the Sunday, too. Yeehahhh! I did great. "Voices", momentary "thought disorders", flashes of "delusions", and occasionally full stops. (While all this, and especially that which I call "full stop", prevented me from clearing up the misunderstanding, thus effectively providing the peace and calm necessary for me to be able to continue to suffer.) A little of everything. I wasn't out diving. I was about to drown. Myself in my self-created suffering.

I didn't drown, anyway, because I, deep inside, knew very well that I had hang the millstone, this great big NO! to the present moment, that dragged me deep into the suffering, around my neck myself. So, I could as well just take it off again. Since I'm sooo finished with drowning - myself in my self-created suffering. And that was what I did. At last, and not without also having tried to put an even greater NO! on top of the original one, first. Something that is suitable for applying a furthermore intensifying dimension to the suffering.

I tell this, because I often meet people who say, that all which the mental health system terms "symptoms" of an "illness", "just happens" to them, because of a quality without them, an "illness". That it is totally out of their control whether it happens, or to what extent. And, and this is the decisive factor, that control can't be achieved. Not within themselves, at least. Only and solely through means and measures without themselves, like chemistry or, in case, electricity.

Emotional suffering ("mental illness"), although most often caused by the world, is always created within and by oneself, or: within and by one's reactive (to the world reacting) ego. The end of this suffering thus only can come from within. With the insight: "Your past has no power over the present moment."
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Jane at Bipolar Recovery has an excellent post about meditation on her blog, that also somehow explains, why I nearly drowned this weekend, recently having started to practise meditation on a more regular basis as I have.

I don't expect it to get much worse though, since I've been there, facing my demons, most of them, going through fire and water, and drowning, time and again. Since I've had my "dark night of the soul". And since I've gained some swimming and diving skills in therapy ("meditation light"), too.