The New Paradigm of Mental Health: Where Psychology, Spirituality, and Society Converge
MAEVE LEE
One of the greatest desires of a human being is to understand what they are experiencing. We want so badly to simply know. We assume that if we could just know, one way or another what might happen next or to have a clear understanding of what has happened in the past; that we will be at peace with whatever it is.
This is a trap of our beautiful human mind. You see, within psychology there are concepts that help us understand the functions of the mind. We like to categorize whatever we are experiencing. We would like to put it in need file that can be tucked away in our memory, in the appropriate place and with a somewhat certain conceptual space that makes sense. However, as I’m sure you know we are more complex than that! Once we know a detail then we could go off in a myriad of ways ruminating on it or resisting it to be true.
We also have something called confirmation bias. It means that once we think we know something to be true then we will seek out the information in our environment (aka data) that will confirm whatever our belief is. This can be our belief about ourselves, how we are in the world or the world outside of us. These beliefs illuminate what is in our subconscious mind & still held within the somatics of our body.
How do we know what is real? How do we know that we can trust the thoughts or conclusions our mind comes to?
Knowing ourselves takes a high level of discernment.
We’ll return to the role of discernment at the end of this publication, so let’s keep exploring. There are many frameworks we must consider when formulating a holistic picture of our mental health, however for the sake of this article and the beginners understanding; we’ll just be discussing three today. In addition to psychology (which is merely the recent historical understanding of the human experience), we also have sociology & soul.
Sociology is “the study of human social behavior, interactions, and organizations. Sociologists study how social structures shape human consciousness and action, and how people interact within groups, societies, and organizations.”
And soul is the up for debate. We all have our own artistic viewpoint on what soul is. We can name it spirit, God-source, source spark, the unknowable, our natural essence aligned with nature, awareness, Love, etc. I’ll gander that we culminate all of these ideas into a central theme of the greater essence that is experiencing the human form we are in. It is the greater consciousness that when we are connected to, we are reminded of our infinite nature.
Our soul gives our life meaning.
Alas, when we look at all three of these structures; mind, soul & society we are leaving out the health of our body, our physical vessel. This too is so incredibly important to this conversation to be sure to join me here so you can see future publications on the way in which our body illuminates our mind (and vise versa).
So let’s get into the details of our topic for today. If you close your eyes and settle in to your seat, you’ll be the thinking mind. The one narrating the experience, noticing the sensations and thoughts that follow. These are the mechanisms of your mind & body working together to paint a picture; your life experience. Our souls are here as well. Our soul is often the quiet whispers of wisdom or comfort.
Sometimes with mental health, the voice of our mind is not kind but is harsh. This is where we discern that those initial thoughts, impulses, judgements, beliefs and all the mind chatter that keeps us from going deeper - is a distraction. It is the ways in which our social conditioning has created overlays within so that we have trouble encountering our soul.
Familial trauma, religious indoctrination, beliefs we’ve picked up from childhood and adulthood about how this ought to be are all social conditionings. Conditionings are the mental frameworks that have been “programmed” into us like computers.
For example, if as a child you were sick often because of environmental toxins (unknown to your family at the time) but you were told repetitively that you are a weak child, easily bothered, highly sensitive & were treated as such… this likely formulated a strong self-belief that you are sickly & an easy predator to illness, disease or misfortune.
Then as an adult, imagine standing in an elevator and someone sneezes. You know you cannot get sick because you have a family and a busy few weeks at work; you worry and fester about this supposed exposure to an illness you had. You become hyper vigilant about your body & attribute a slight nose tickle as the start of this illness. You feel defeated. You live within the reality that you are a sickly person. You’ve accepted this. And affirmed it to be true for decades.
That illness program just ran its course through your computer system; your brain. Your brain then sent the signals to your nerves, cells & immune system to prepare for illness. Instead of that being true, it created the illness or at the very least, created the environment for the illness to take root & manifest.
I hope this example was helpful. Please remember that we all have different programs running all of the time. We all have our areas of growth to explore.
It may be helpful to settle into a quiet place, take some deep breaths, connect with your inner Self & without any filter on your mind - allow yourself to hear or identify the beliefs you have about life or yourself. This is the process.
This is the way towards inner illumination. Be curious & gentle.
Once you have allowed your innerSelf to provide you with some of the beliefs you harbor within, then you can begin to debunk them, analyze them by questioning the ways in which they help your or harm you.
Your soul is always with you. It is there encouraging your highest evolution. It knows everything already. The trick is to quiet the mind & meet our innerSelf without judgement, criticism or shoving it all back and dissociating for three years before everything gets so unbearable that you sit down and look inward once more.
The reason that this process is so important is because there are millions of people experiencing mental health issues and blaming themselves. We have been hoodwinked into believing (hello, social conditioning) that if we are ill, poor or suffering in some way that it is entirely our fault. However, instead of placing the blame on ourselves for having broken families or broken DNA… let us believe that we can indeed extract the parasitic believe systems from our mind that limit our potential!
When you learn that the school system was created to build a workforce and stifle individual genius - then you will understand why you struggled in school. (It wasn’t because you’re broken!) When you learn that your family system was struggling and didn’t have the capacity to meet your needs as they should have (you’ll stop believing you were the problem). When you realize the pervasive programming that social, political and religious indoctrination has on each of us; you’ll realize your true responsibility. It is not in blaming yourself for illness, remaining disempowered & accepting defeat. It is in discovering your true strength, your true nature! That is where your responsibility lay.
And for many, this is scary realization. People often run from being truly accountable for themselves. Doing so requires increased self-honesty, loosing some things that we are currently attached to & upgrading our personal identity! For many because we believe we are weak, then we don’t believe that we can be strong again. Again, this is all an illusion of the mind wired for safety & tricked into submission.
So why face it all? Because the life you envision for yourself, that tugs in your veins & fills your head with fantasies of how you could be living… it is all on the other side of these illusions!
Are you ready to embody your truth?
I’ll see you on the inside!
If you need help with this process of illumination, I’d love to help as it is my life’s work. Explore my website listed below for individual sessions, be sure to subscribe here for future soul food & explore the journals I have on my website as well.
Thank you for being here, I believe in you! Remember, the only promise we have in this life is growth, our own evolution. You can try to resist this however, it becomes painful to do so. Playing small when we know better will not be comfortable. And the growth that you deny? It will show up in destructive ways in your life.
It is best to learn to evolve, to know yourself truly for this is the purest form of self love.
Big Love,
Maeve Lee 🌹
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