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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 22 2007 : 10:41:39 PM
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Eddy, I think I can put it really simply, because I've been through some tough stuff myself (serious depression...I lost decades). Some key things:
1. spiritual practice is not mental health therapy. Practice may or not make a person saner, but that's a byproduct and can't be counted upon. If you're having serious issues, the notion that you just need to get right with God and everything will smooth out is appealing, but getting right with God takes lots of time (for most people) and the process is hampered (i.e. will take a lot longer) if you have a noisy mind. So I'd suggest availing yourself of any worldly tools that can get you "over the hump" and in the direction you want to go.
2. The classical approach to yoga is to straighten out your 'coarse' issues first, then go for finer and finer tuning. As with sandpaper, you're wasting your time if you jump to too fine a grade of sandpaper too soon! Meditation and all that is very fine tuning indeed. You're almost certainly not ready for that. Vernacularly, you need to chill out before that stuff can really be effective. It's time for coarser sandpaper. I suggest 1. following your mental health professional's advice (you can tell her/him, though, that you'd prefer to medicate only as a VERY last resort and see what the reaction is) and, concurrently, 2. doing regular physical exercise, including asana. Asana is very good at relieving coarse issues. It's highly effective rough sandpaper!
At my low, I launched myself on a two year course of intense physical exercise and asana, and didn't touch anything more subtly spiritual. If I was seriously bipolar, I'd have certainly medicated to give myself a leg up (if my doctor urged it). I got my energy straightened out, my issues resolved, and my noise toned down. And then I started AYP meditation, and made extremely fast progress...because I was ready for it.
It's all about skillful sandpaper management, and being patient (if I'd switched to meditation sooner, it'd have been sheer frustration).
Psychiatric medicine is very coarse sandpaper, but for some jobs one needs that. Follow your doctor's advice. And increase the exercise. And go to asana class (I like Iyengar yoga).
Just my suggestion.
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Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Apr 22 2007 10:47:27 PM |
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Apr 22 2007 : 10:58:33 PM
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Anthony said:
But he is neither, as I guess from his descriptions. He seems to me to just be a younger guy with social anxiety and very slight spiritual mania.
Truly, Anthony, you can't diagnose him from what you have read. Anyway, social anxiety and slight spiritual mania, as I know them, do not give people the impression that they are spontaneously controlling events.
Certainly people who have experience sponatenous Kundalini would attest that their symptoms were much more reminiscent of what Western Psychology would call Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder, and very few instances I know of lead to medication and in the end it usually works out. Such is the human journey.
It's complicated because just as ordinaty people are on a spectrum of mental health and stability, so are people who have kundalini experiences. There is no reason why you cannot be shizophrenic / bipolar and get a kundalini experience.
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Edited by - david_obsidian on Apr 22 2007 10:59:47 PM |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 03:19:53 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by david_obsidian
Anthony, I don't think it's good to give psycho-pharmacological advice over the internet to someone you don't know. With some mild drugs that you know something about, for a condition you understand, maybe (like say prozac in a case of ordinary mild depression). But no, without knowing the details in these circumstances, advising someone to come off significant prescribed medication is not a good idea.
I don't mean this as a reprimand. This is a commong mistake and it usually happens because people don't know any better. It only becomes truly irresponsible if still done after awareness is brought to it.
why not?? if i just take everything with a grin of salt like jesus sadi how could i go wrong??
i appreciate the advice anthony by the way |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 03:22:28 AM
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| i'd like to update that i've almost comepletley oliterated my social anxiety (and when i say this i'm referring to all of it, even the kind of anxiety that peopel who don;t consider themselves to have anxiety have) and perhaps almost all of my neauosis put together... but hey i could just be a deluded spiritual megalomaniac.. hehe, i'm only 20 so you know that means that i must be stupid |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 03:26:21 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by anthony574
But he is neither, as I guess from his descriptions. He seems to me to just be a younger guy with social anxiety and very slight spiritual mania. Certainly people who have experience sponatenous Kundalini would attest that their symptoms were much more reminiscent of what Western Psychology would call Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder, and very few instances I know of lead to medication and in the end it usually works out. Such is the human journey.
I don't want this to turn into a big anti-psychology argument because obviously my views are controversial here. I understand the stigma of not taking prescribed medications and I will only trust he will make the best decision his intuition can offer.
don't you jsut love osho by the way... "i love to disturb people""..
that's good that you ahve controversial views and don't let anyone try to tell you otherwise... the only thing you should trust is yourself.. take everything that's deemed "notself" and take it with a grain of salt...
with that being said.. i reguard medication as an "initial push", a little coaxing if you will... there's other "initial push methods out there (like a million) that i f i wanted to i could spurt out with a drop of a hat. medication ahppens to be one of them.... after the initial push you can start to develop bigger intentions and such and you know it's a complex but very simple process |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 03:30:32 AM
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| it's all good guys |
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david_obsidian
USA
2602 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 10:28:51 AM
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Eddy said:
why not?? if i just take everything with a grin of salt like jesus sadi how could i go wrong??
Eddy, it's a bad idea whether it actually works out well in your case or not.
Natural selection has made mmost of us decent armchair psychologists. But it does not make us decent armchair psychiatrists although we may have a tendency to think it does. Psychiatrists deal with more severe, more 'organic' mental conditions. There is no such thing as a decent armchair psychiatrist. The insights of ordinary psychology just do not extrapolate to certain psychiatric conditions. The necessary insight into psychiatric conditions is gained by learning from a large body of former experience.
I'm sticking to my ground here -- giving armchair psychiatrist advice on public forums on significant psycho-active medication is not a good idea. Think of it like advising a 7-year-old, on a few incoherent scraps of information they give, which may or may not be accurate for all you know, whether or not to run away from their parents.
Yes, "it's all good" -- in a sense. But in the sense in which it is 'all good', something can be good and need to be corrected.
Cheers,
-D |
Edited by - david_obsidian on Apr 23 2007 11:25:19 AM |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 11:47:48 AM
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Of course it is dangerous to take advice from someone on the internet that is not qualified. I have schizophrenia myself and i know too well the danger of this.
To be honest, i do not believe that mental illness and kundalini can happen at the same time. The only exception to this that i can think of is if i point out that everyone is mad, just at a different level or degree than people that go over the edge. It is either that, or i am in the same category of illness/kundalini. But i very much doubt this. Personally, i don't even believe in the kundalini. I think every kundalini experience is psychosis. Take a look at any kundalini forum on the internet and read the people's experiences there. They all sound nuts. I know because i used to sound very similar myself before i got help.
To put it simply, if you have mental problems, they need to be addressed completely seperately from anything spiritual. That is my opinion.
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anthony574
USA
549 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 12:48:19 PM
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| there are people who have said that most psychosis are undirected or untamed spiritual phenomena...i believe that especially in the case of schizophrenia. I only gather this from various readings by Clifford Pickover, Stanlislav Grof, among others but there are many startling similarities between Schizophrenic accounts and spiritual accounts whether Shamanic, Eastern, ect. It is a very interesting parallel. |
Edited by - anthony574 on Apr 23 2007 1:33:48 PM |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 1:36:27 PM
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i certainly think that psychosis are spritiually related... seriosuly how can they not be... it all depends on what you define as spiritual..
i guess spiritual for me is everything, particularly the core illusion of thinking yourself to be a thing... everything stems off from there.. and my kind of spirituality is the kind that cuts that damn illusion right where it stands |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2007 : 4:53:49 PM
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anthony wrote:
quote:
there are people who have said that most psychosis are undirected or untamed spiritual phenomena...
I think that's a pretty unfounded statement by those people. How could you possibly know such a thing? You would have had to test thousands of mentally ill people and have some means of quantitatively evaluating spirituality!
Many years ago I had a girlfriend who was very spiritual and every year or so would have a mental episode so severe that we needed professional help. One year she decided that it was all spiritual, and moved to a christian community in another state, where they performed "Laying on of hands" healing, and constant praying, etc. After she refused to eat anything for a couple months, I flew there and got her, and brought her home to her family doctor. He put her on an IV and said a couple more days and she would have been dead from starvation. She looked like a skeleton.
The psychiatrist put her on lithium, and she had no more episodes. She continued to be extremely devout with unshakeable faith. |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Apr 25 2007 : 09:19:55 AM
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| Psychosis and spirituality are as far apart as the sun and the moon. Enlightenment is about becoming sane not insane. Take it from me, i've been there. Actually though, i tend to think so-called enlightened people are insane anyway. So there might be a correlation. Besides, what is enlightenment anyway? I personally don't believe in any such thing. |
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anthony574
USA
549 Posts |
Posted - Apr 25 2007 : 11:26:58 AM
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| If you don't believe in englightenment, but you believe in insanity? |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Apr 25 2007 : 3:03:12 PM
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You should define Enlightenment before you assume i didn't know what i meant.
I am pretty sure that any definition of enlightenment must include omnipotence and omniscience. If enlightenment does NOT include those things, i contend that such a label doesnt even exist.
It is entirely fair for me to ask you if you are omnipotent (?). And if you aren't, i want to know why? |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Apr 25 2007 : 5:40:38 PM
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| why waste time trying to define enlightenment in the first place??? i mean you can use other words than to be soo naiive as to imply that such a thing as enlightenment has a possible definition that you can understand.... as yogani said to me in a email, a piece of advice that i will not soon forget..... "whatever yo uthink it is it isn't.... assume all you want just know that your assumptions are incorrect and you are oly assuming to shatter the way you look at things, completley and utterly... but hope it goes smoothly... perhaps that is why peopel need to practice compassion?? |
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Eddy
USA
92 Posts |
Posted - Sep 28 2012 : 10:54:09 PM
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holy hell, I was out of my mind...
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hey ya'll
