My problem with faith
It's common knowledge on this blog that my mother is a crazy, born-again fundamentalist Christian, and has been since I was 12. As such, you're probably familiar with the stories I've told - such as her calling me at work and attempting to exorcise the demons that were making me mentally, emotionally and physically ill. There are other tales about the demonization of my mental illnesses, but those are commonplace. At least my mother's been obvious about telling me that she thinks what's going on (PTSD, depression, BPD etc) is not really what's going on.
What's pissed me off, really made me steaming angry, is that my stepmother has professed to be "spiritual" but not "religious", and accepting the fact that yes, Virginia, there are such things as mental illnesses.
I think I'd mentioned that she'd given me a copy of The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, touted to be a "guide to spiritual enlightenment". Great, I've been faltering on that area for years (vacillating between agnosticism on a good day (and grudgingly still hating whatever god there might be) and atheism on the rest).
However, the discussion I had with her prior to her giving me this book (amazing, wonderful book!) kind of cautioned me against leaping in blindly with both feet and my ass uncovered. She told me how, when my dad was ill, she met with a friend of hers for lunch who cautioned her (after having been a familial carer for a terminally ill parent himself) about PTSD and how common it is for carers to develop it. She told me she went home, did some research (read, googled PTSD) and determined that she wasn't ever, ever going to get THAT. She saw this same friend after my father died and it came up again. She said she realized that she didn't get PTSD because she'd chosen she wouldn't, and because she had this great outpouring of support, emotional and spiritual.
I was mute in response, mostly because I was so shocked that she compared extensive, long-term child abuse to being an adult carer for a terminally ill man (granted, both situations are tough, but there is a massive difference between them; if you need me to draw them out for you, I will be totally shocked). The way she phrased things not-so-subtly blamed me for my lifelong problems with emotional and mental health, diagnosed by medical professionals she still deems a "waste of time and intelligence."
What does this book have to do with this at all, this guide to spiritual enlightenment?
I opened it to start reading it alongside a few other books last week. I was reading the section titled "The Origin of This Book" and within a couple of pages, I nearly threw the book across the room. Tolle describes his years of depression and obvious suicidality and how they suddenly vanished when:
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into the void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
[...]
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed."
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe people can have spiritual awakenings. However, what this guy describes sounds more like a psychotic break in my mind. That simple bolded phrase up there is what triggered my anger. So many times, by so many people, in the course of my life, I've been told that there's nothing really wrong with me. It's all in my head (considering it's a tri-fecta of mental illnesses, I have but one thing to say to that - YOU THINK SO?!), you see, or caused by demons, but either way, I just wasn't strong enough or smart enough to prevent it from happening.
The fact of the matter is, I have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and will struggle with managing it for the rest of my life. I have had this since I was very young, but it manifested as misbehaviour, childhood depression (just a phase!) and difficulty making or maintaining friends. I have developed, quite likely alongside of PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder.
The funny thing about PTSD is that there are marked and documented physical changes in the brain. It's not imaginary, I didn't choose to have it (by not choosing to not get it, you know), and I will not ever be free of it. (There are many studies on this, but this was the easiest example, there's more info at the link at the end of the quote)
Physical Changes
Fact of the matter is, Mr. Eckhart Tolle, I am happy for you that you've found a way to deal with your depression by finding hope in the spiritual world. However, deeming "the suffering self" as being a complete fabrication of the mind has thrown a wrench in not only my struggle to get understanding from family about my mental illnesses, but in the struggles of millions of other people the world around. It is not my place to judge how people choose to deal with adversity in their own lives - escapism, denial, therapy, drinking, drugs... the list goes on. It is also not anyone's place to tell me my struggles are "fabricated" and that the true, suffering self I have is not real.
The "faith" I've been exposed to recently is tied up tight with this belief that faith and belief in God, or in a higher power, or simply the universe and the spiritual consciousness of society will make everything better.
Got depression? Pray, God will heal you! Cancer? step on up! Epilepsy? cured!
If you prayed and you didn't get cured, you just didn't do it right. Or you ignored the help you were given when it came. Either way, it's YOUR fault.
Get bent. That's all I can say.
What's pissed me off, really made me steaming angry, is that my stepmother has professed to be "spiritual" but not "religious", and accepting the fact that yes, Virginia, there are such things as mental illnesses.
I think I'd mentioned that she'd given me a copy of The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, touted to be a "guide to spiritual enlightenment". Great, I've been faltering on that area for years (vacillating between agnosticism on a good day (and grudgingly still hating whatever god there might be) and atheism on the rest).
However, the discussion I had with her prior to her giving me this book (amazing, wonderful book!) kind of cautioned me against leaping in blindly with both feet and my ass uncovered. She told me how, when my dad was ill, she met with a friend of hers for lunch who cautioned her (after having been a familial carer for a terminally ill parent himself) about PTSD and how common it is for carers to develop it. She told me she went home, did some research (read, googled PTSD) and determined that she wasn't ever, ever going to get THAT. She saw this same friend after my father died and it came up again. She said she realized that she didn't get PTSD because she'd chosen she wouldn't, and because she had this great outpouring of support, emotional and spiritual.
I was mute in response, mostly because I was so shocked that she compared extensive, long-term child abuse to being an adult carer for a terminally ill man (granted, both situations are tough, but there is a massive difference between them; if you need me to draw them out for you, I will be totally shocked). The way she phrased things not-so-subtly blamed me for my lifelong problems with emotional and mental health, diagnosed by medical professionals she still deems a "waste of time and intelligence."
What does this book have to do with this at all, this guide to spiritual enlightenment?
I opened it to start reading it alongside a few other books last week. I was reading the section titled "The Origin of This Book" and within a couple of pages, I nearly threw the book across the room. Tolle describes his years of depression and obvious suicidality and how they suddenly vanished when:
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into the void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
[...]
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed."
Now, don't get me wrong, I believe people can have spiritual awakenings. However, what this guy describes sounds more like a psychotic break in my mind. That simple bolded phrase up there is what triggered my anger. So many times, by so many people, in the course of my life, I've been told that there's nothing really wrong with me. It's all in my head (considering it's a tri-fecta of mental illnesses, I have but one thing to say to that - YOU THINK SO?!), you see, or caused by demons, but either way, I just wasn't strong enough or smart enough to prevent it from happening.
The fact of the matter is, I have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and will struggle with managing it for the rest of my life. I have had this since I was very young, but it manifested as misbehaviour, childhood depression (just a phase!) and difficulty making or maintaining friends. I have developed, quite likely alongside of PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder.
The funny thing about PTSD is that there are marked and documented physical changes in the brain. It's not imaginary, I didn't choose to have it (by not choosing to not get it, you know), and I will not ever be free of it. (There are many studies on this, but this was the easiest example, there's more info at the link at the end of the quote)
Physical Changes
- Once thought to be purely a mental disorder, studies have shown that there are physical changes that take place in the brain of someone suffering from PTSD, especially as it concerns memory. In a presentation to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco in 2008, physicist Norbert Schuff directly correlated PTSD with a substantial reduction in the size of the hippocampus, the area of the brain that processes memory. This occurs particularly in combat-related PTSD, including those who have suffered severe abuse. (http://www.ehow.com/about_5503313_effects-ptsdrelated-memory-loss.html)
Fact of the matter is, Mr. Eckhart Tolle, I am happy for you that you've found a way to deal with your depression by finding hope in the spiritual world. However, deeming "the suffering self" as being a complete fabrication of the mind has thrown a wrench in not only my struggle to get understanding from family about my mental illnesses, but in the struggles of millions of other people the world around. It is not my place to judge how people choose to deal with adversity in their own lives - escapism, denial, therapy, drinking, drugs... the list goes on. It is also not anyone's place to tell me my struggles are "fabricated" and that the true, suffering self I have is not real.
The "faith" I've been exposed to recently is tied up tight with this belief that faith and belief in God, or in a higher power, or simply the universe and the spiritual consciousness of society will make everything better.
Got depression? Pray, God will heal you! Cancer? step on up! Epilepsy? cured!
If you prayed and you didn't get cured, you just didn't do it right. Or you ignored the help you were given when it came. Either way, it's YOUR fault.
Get bent. That's all I can say.