Читать книгу Resources for Extraordinary Healing: Schizophrenia, Bipolar and Other Serious Mental Illnesses - Emma PhD Bragdon PhD - Страница 6

•Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.

•All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.

•Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body's innate healing response.

•Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.

•Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.

•Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.

•Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.

•Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.

But, when we approach the spiritual side of health, do we know what we are trying to accomplish?

When someone does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

--Seneca

Today there are many many options open as far as where to pursue spirituality--maybe too many. Do we go to church? Attend spiritual retreats? Be in nature or our garden as our place of communion with the sacred? Attend a twelve-step program? Meditate and pray by ourselves? Get a Reiki treatment from a practitioner who can channel the energy of the Divine to us for healing and balancing? Seek a spiritual healer? Visit a psychic who can help us contact loved ones who have died? Drink in Chicken Soup for the Soul? Do we get overwhelmed and just forget it because we don’t easily recognize our path? Is our path not yet created? Questions, questions, questions.

Gerry (from the Introduction) came to me after her parents asked if I could help their daughter with what appeared to be a “spiritual emergency.” Although her psychiatrists labeled her “psychotic,” there was room to believe Gerry was highly sensitive and in need of one or more teachers to harness her abilities as a healer. Gerry immediately was drawn to an acupuncturist, who modeled how to be a healer and maintain balance within. Gerry learned from her when she received acupuncture. Gerry also took part in training seminars with other teachers.

It is up to each person to sort through the options and find their own path, but find it one must. We each are a spirit and hold a spark of Divine light within us; and we must attend to this side of ourselves or suffer the consequences. These usually turn up as a lack of meaning in life, or lack of an anchor point when the seas become turbulent or a tsunami approaches.

That said, this book you hold in your hands is not meant to indoctrinate you into the path or the destination that is right for you. My intention is only to introduce you to some ideas you may not have been aware of--new viewpoints that may facilitate you finding your own way.

I like to keep in mind a dear friend, Gerald Magnan, whom I met when traveling in Brazil. He is a Frenchman who lives in Brazil. He has been the supervisor of more than 100 healers who work in the community of Porto Alegre, Brazil. In that role, he paid attention to and gave advice about the ways the healers maintained a state of balance in order to help others. He always made it clear that our meditation and prayer life, as well as practicing healing for others, must be balanced with eating well, getting enough rest, enjoying our family, and having time in nature. He would, at times, send the healers to the beach to make sure they got enough direct sunshine, exercise, and communion with nature.

Recovering Mental Health

Selene Almeida, a pediatrician who is also a medium and healer in Brazil, was inspired by her spiritual guidance to define mental health and the way we achieve it. It is deeply spiritual but should not be confused with the accepted philosophy of Spiritism, as written in Spiritist books. What follows below in italics is a transcribed quote from Dr. Almeida—the rest is paraphrased (as the original is quite long):

There are spiritual guides to give us direction if we just listen to them in prayer and meditation. With their guidance we become inspired to become more knowledgeable, aware, and loving.

On this journey, we must learn to confront and overcome our shadows. Our current preoccupation with science and technology also provides countless mental and emotional challenges to our spiritual evolution.

Spiritual evolution is accelerated as more people become aware of the information that lies in subtle energies. The individual practitioner of energy medicine needs to maintain inner harmony. This state of balance is ideal for encountering the Real Self and being connected to the Divine. Without this encounter with the Real Self, we do not truly find mental health. When we have mental health, we feel reverence for life, and we can perceive beauty in all things at all times. Immaturity is reflected in those who do not have this kind of connection.

The more expanded our consciousness is, the more mature we are. The more we mature, the more we realize we eternally continue to grow, and our growth is enhanced if we are deliberate in focusing on spiritual matters. Spirit is everywhere, all the time, as the Source of all Creation.

What we focus on and think about becomes more real to us. When our minds are clear and connected to the Divine, we are the most powerful. This power stems from aligning with Love. We are given many opportunities in many lives to get to know ourselves better and become one with all of life. We may get caught in our shadow side at times, but the more awakened we become, the easier it is to return to clarity and love.

Mental disease is like a parallel reality built upon the foundations of pain, guilt, sadness, anger and fear. Thus, this state indicates a profound alienation with oneself, causing lack of belief in life and in the beauty that is present inside oneself. It is a mental construct separate from beauty and harmony. Each painful thought or emotion is like a brick that blocks us from our true Self. Each brick represents illusion, but the truth that feeds our dreams and nascent hope remains stored in the memory impregnated in its structure.

When we are able to drop the illusions perpetuated by pain, pride, anger and doubt, we see again and can feel our innocence. From that vantage point, we recognize each one of us is like a child of God, with a direct relationship to the Divine. This is the turning point in which true healing begins to occur.

Once one is in touch with the Divine self within, healing then progresses, inspiring images become more accessible, and one can feel again the purity of happiness one first experienced as a child. From this point, firmly connected to the Divine, one truly knows what he or she is born to do, and can set about accomplishing his or her mission.

As we go through the stages of life guided by unawareness, we are like vessels at sea, wandering without a compass to direct us, sometimes getting stuck at the edge of the waters, hindered by branches that were generated in us in the past. When we take over the situation, and humbly decide to change, accepting our condition, strengthening our personality under the command of the Light that dwells within us, we find that we are bearers of skills hitherto unknown. Thus, we can take control of our boat without guilt, fear, inadequacy, doubt or pain.

Knowing the multidimensional nature of life and maintaining connection with the Divine both within and outside of us leads to wellbeing. Separation from the Divine and a sense of isolation occur whenever we get wrapped up in anger, fear, and/or guilt.

We limit ourselves when we engage in habits of negative thinking. We not only lose our connection with Spirit and the Real Self but we create splits between the essence of our being, the Divine and our personality. In that situation, it is hard to feel connected to our conscience, and we may then act unethically.

If a religion knows how to reconnect a person with the Divine self within, it can help an individual regain his lost sense of unity.

When someone regains the direct knowing of the Divine self within, he or she opens to accept all the blessings of life. Guilt and ego-driven fears dissolve. A positive sense of life and the future is rekindled. One feels connected to and protected by the Divine again.

Care and acceptance of oneself and one’s community enhances one’s inner experience of spiritual connection. To summarize, the development of one’s own consciousness is essential to spiritual, emotional, mental and physical healing.