- Day 5 Miraculous Esteem
- Today’s Centering Thought:
- I am a perfect, divine creation.
- Our Sanskrit mantra:
- Om Bhavam Namah
- I am absolute existence. I am a field of all possibilities.
Sign up for it here, it’s totally free: https://chopracentermeditation.com/programs
What really moved me was the thought, ‘I am a perfect, divine creation.’ We are so used to living from our flaws, leading with them into every encounter and conversation, telling anyone and everyone what’s wrong with us, especially in the insane world of mental health, where everyone lives from their diagnoses.
That’s one of the reasons why I love Peter Breggin so much, an esteemed psychiatrist and whistleblower on the psych/pharma industries and the harm they do. This is from a recent blog of his:
There are solutions to madness, psychosis, and personal crises. What I mean by madness is an experience of overwhelming emotional distress that leaves us feeling isolated, abandoned, frightened and helpless. Sometimes we feel it as demoralizing guilt, at other times burning shame or terrifying anxiety, and sometimes all three at once. We may escape into frustration, anger and rage, but beneath always lies fear and helplessness. We may hear voices or see things that others don’t experience, or more mundanely tie ourselves in knots with obsessions and compulsions. At the root is always the core human experience of fear and helplessness. In my book Toxic Psychiatry I call it “emotional overwhelm.”A psychiatrist may diagnose madness as psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, panic disorder, or bipolar disorder, and then insist that it needs a medical fix. From the other side of the human spectrum, saints in the midst of madness have felt they were being tortured by the devil and tempted by evil, and they turned successfully to faith. Some of us think madness is an inevitable part of the human experience, especially if we open ourselves to discover our true nature and purposes in life and to transform ourselves in new directions.
I don’t think any of us should be living from a psychiatric disgnosis, and I’ve been trying to write a blog on this for the past week, but its so important to me that I haven’t got near to it. However, I want to say this much today, we don’t need to be ‘fixed’, or ‘cured’, there’s nothing wrong with anyone of us. And those who have endured emotional, mental and physical distress and trauma need love and support not harmful drugs and judgement.
One of my favourite pictures that does the rounds on Facebook is this one:
that shows a cracked bowl that’s been repaired and is now more beautiful and valuable for having been broken. That’s how I feel about surviving great trauma in life, we are more beautiful and precious because of what we have gone through.
I’m going to spend the weekend scribbling and hope to put my thoughts on why we accept and indeed start to live from our psych diagnosis, rather than doing the hard work of living and healing. I hope it’ll be worth reading.
Cynthia Curry 