Mental Illness
and the Meaning of Life
by
Suzanne Gold
 EACH
OF US is born with an innate sense of why we're here, of the purpose
of this particular adventure. Our challenge is to realize that in our daily
lives. Luckily, our circumstances are tailor-made to reflect it. In my
case, when my difficult younger sister became schizophrenic, I was filled
with grief, and guilt. A continent away, I had ample excuse not to face
my own discomfort, regret, and helplessness. But the mere fact of her illness
haunted me, demanding to teach me its lessons. It took years, and a first
draft of Daddy's Girls for me to develop the sense that my sister's
spirit had a lesson, and a teaching, in what she was going through even
if I had no idea what it was. Toward the end of that first draft, I found
Cherie's spirit making a pre-birth deal with God to take on a life of service,
in which she'll become psychotic, forcing the others in her family to find
the inner resources to be able to love her as she is. Her extremes are
exactly proportional to how desensitized the circumstances of her family's
lives have made them to their ability to love.
| According
to the US Surgeon General, one in five Americans will become mentally ill
at some point in their lives |
MY
FAMILY IS far from unique. According to the US Surgeon General,
one in four Americans will become mentally ill at some point in their lives.
As I see it, the other three are their families. Families like mine, struggling
with the fine line between "sanity" and "insanity." Even if, on the surface,
they may seem unremarkable, everyone has an internal monologue, or dialogue
or however-many, playing in our minds-- judging, interpreting, lusting,
plotting, hating, fearing-- all illusion, or delusion, layered over pure
living and experiencing. The fabric of these delusions is the myriad of
automatic patterns we develop in rubbing up against everyone elseís patterns.
Paranoia, grandiosity, fantasy all flit through everyone's consciousness.
The difference between "normal" and "crazy" is in how often, how long we
entertain those feelings, how seriously we take them, how important they
are to us. If you look at it like that, we're all crazy... like, who's
really running the store while we're thinking about all that stuff?
BUT
ON THE other hand, we're all sane too, because any feeling ever
felt by anyone is part of the human experience. All those feelings combined
comprise human nature, and are available to and exist as potential within
everyone all the time. So, at the core, everyone's idiosyncrasies reflect
their spiritual mission. A divine mission, because the meaning weíre born
to realize is part of the ground of being that includes all possibilities,
what some may call "God," divinity, or the universe.
VIEWED
THIS WAY, insanity is not actually a qualitatively different state
of mind, but a variation in the degree of repression or expression of qualities
we all have. It's part of human nature, one whose potential exists in all
of us. How we appear to others depends on how well we stay balanced in
stressful situations while respecting the truth of our emotional reality.
Sane and crazy are like
| Mental
illness can be interpreted as a gift because it reflects the inner life
in a way we can't ignore |
different points on the same continuum,
more a sphere than a straight line, around which our psyches bounce almost
imperceptibly in every moment. It may even be a hypersensitivity to the
metaphysical; to the presence of the Eternal in the everyday, and to the
distortions we humans create as part of our evolution. Aside from the usual
suspects -- brain chemistry, heredity, environment, trauma -- the potential
to become mentally ill exists in all of us, but manifests only if the right
factors combine. I see the most important factor as each spirit's quest
to express more of the divine in the physical, to do its job of helping
the personality to embody spirit.
MENTAL
ILLNESS CAN therefore be seen as a gift because it reflects the
inner life in a way we can't ignore, and ignoring it can lead to neurosis
or psychosis. The stigma of needing therapy, of having an inner life, is
perpetrated by those who donít understand its value, who are hiding themselves
out of fear. Whoever "drives us crazy" also shows us how to get sane. Whatever
attracts or upsets us is a signal as to what part of our mission needs
attention now. Difficult circumstances stimulate us to deepen enough to
touch spirit and discover what it takes to have a fruitful life. The process
of family life touches our hearts and tests our strength like nothing else
as we play out together issues we understand at a metaphysical level even
as they overwhelm and confuse us in our normal operations. Although everyone
in a family, or "karass," as Kurt Vonnegut calls a group of significant
others, participates in the development of an identified patient's personality
and illness, it's nobody's fault. The factors are bigger than individual
responsibility. The best we can do is be honest and intend to love.
EXPERIENCE
IS THE teacher, no matter the specifics, whether we experience it
as good or bad. Whatever happens shows us the theme of our lives, and whatever
has the most attraction and/or repulsion shows us the area where we have
the most to learn. Only when we bring our inner life to light, can we come
to terms with and transform it.
Only
when we bring our inner life to light
can we come to terms with and
transform it |
WHEN
WE GLIMPSE the meaning of our own lives, we begin to see other's
lives as meaningful, allowing us to forgive each other and tolerate difference
and difficulty. Our vision is illumined by something beyond the personal,
and we begin to consider the possibility of a reality of spirit. And why
not? Physicists are finding evidence of other dimensions beyond the ones
we can see. It's becoming clear that the physical is an illusion. When
you look at our material world on the atomic level and beyond, everything
is simply energy, vibrating in harmony. If we apply this perspective to
our own lives, we can transform what we once considered bad or unremarkable
to having dignity, even sanctity, to touch a level beyond time and personality
where spirit permeates everything.
LOOKING
AT MENTAL illness this way can make a difference both individually,
and to society. Traditional treatment focuses on causes, which aren't certain,
and cures, which aren't reliable. Our fear of how easily it might happen
to us, or of being the target of someone else's distortions makes us shun
the most defenseless among us. By considering insanity in a spiritual context,
we dignify the lesson within it as well as the person teaching it. When
we search for meaning in the tragic, we tap into deeper levels of understanding
that transform our vision of life. If we treat our psyches as the ground
where spirit and personality meet, we can find love and peace of mind.
FROM
THAT PERSPECTIVE, we can celebrate that life is all good, even mental
illness.
Suzanne
|
