Spirituality vs Insanity

originally posted by: FlyersFan

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

originally posted by: AgentShillington
However, I can take the same action she took without having any spiritual inclination at all. The actions weren't spiritual they were corporeal. She didn't use magic to get stuff done.

It took belief in the spiritual to inspire her to do her positive corporeal actions. Therefore, the spiritual DID have a positive effect on her and, in turn, a positive effect on those she helped. Some folks have the good stuff come naturally. Others have to be inspired. The spiritual is what inspired her.

I could easily point to stuff that religions and dogma do that are negative. But I can also point to things that spirituality has inspired people to do things in a very positive manner. Sorry but spirituality is a mixed bag ... some really bad and some really good.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

I'm not going to continue to defend my use of the word "Spirituality" as it is best ambiguously defined by man.

a reply to: AgentShillington

Then what instance are you looking for?

A guy that died two thousands years ago? Ghost and goblins haunting people? Finding peace of mind or God for that matter?

Your not really specific on what your looking for? U seem to be more interested in disproving Santa clause with specific terms for such a big brain?

a reply to: Specimen

I'm going to assume that your hostility comes for frustration and I am simply going to withdraw my question. Good day.

a reply to: meomy

It's okay, I'm the same way so we can be weirdos who distrust charismatic people together, lol. I think the odds of a single individual entrancing (not implying witchcraft or anything outside of just regular charisma) everyone is probably impossible. It's kind of like Hitler--sure a whole lot of people followed him blindly but even in Germany, there were people speaking out against him, frequently at the loss of their lives. Jesus would've been considered a charismatic but not everybody who viewed him was an instant believer and the same occurred with Buddha. There's always doubters and, in cases where those doubts contradict anothers' belief, they can get a little testy about it.

I've checked out a few videos of channelers myself and I had pretty much the same mixed response. Part of me thinks the individual is insane. Another part of me thinks that the individual is a prolific con artist with the ability to cold read. I don't tend to think that they are tapping into some higher power or entity. I do, however, think there are still a whole lot of things about the world we don't understand so I'm not a total unbeliever. I just also have a heavy distrust of people who do these things as they tend to do it to line their pockets. The only time that I have been impressed with anyone claiming supernatural ability was a Native American medicine man, who lived in relative poverty (one does use ones' powers for personal gain being the rule there). He was very interesting.

a reply to: FlyersFan

- If your kids are depressed and/or cutting then they need consistent mental health help. A mental health professional can help with charting this and getting to the root of the problem that is causing the cutting and/or depression. The whole family should go together as well. Some depressions need chemical balancing with medication.

I'll just answer to this right now and come back to everything else later because I think there is a wrong impression.

That issue was dealt with a couple of years ago. She's much better. She doesn't suffer from a mental illness. She was mentally ill at that time from a severely traumatic experience where no justice was served because it was her word against two others. She refused to go to counseling, but the doctor managed to convince her to try meds for a couple of months to bring her out of her self hatred.

a reply to: Specimen

So why the Hell would it matter to you? Hell, I will look bad on purpose. Don't give me that patient, looking good crap.

I INVENTED IT.

You wanna challenge spirituality, a coined word or definition of various invisible or supernatural forces that with different meaning depending on where that term could of been coined from?

What, trying to find some satisfaction about Santa Clause not being real?

If you don't like it, go to oxford and ask them to get rid of it? What, you got the lowest grades in science class?

Do you see the frustration now?

a reply to: Specimen

This will be the last time I address you. Please stop making me the target of your posts. Good day.

a reply to: AgentShillington

l'll be a devils advocate then.

What term or definition does spirituality mean to you, in context?

"Traditionally spirituality has been defined as a process of personal transformation in accordance with religious ideals."

As such, spirituality doesn't claim anything paranormal. Actually, spirituality and philosophy aren't that different. Just one is more rational, and the other more... poetic?

What spiritual people believe in is an other subject. The main goal of spirituality is personal growth following ethical and religious principle. In that regard, it's not a bad thing, nor supernatural. Actually neurosciences often turn to monks and yogis to understand better the amazing control they have over their emotions and bodies.

Even if this is all based on the idea that the spirit (soul) and the body are separate, it's only a matter of definition and the objective remains to increase ones awareness of his own consciousness to be able to better control it. It's not a bad thing. Plenty of people do it, athletes, artists, etc... That it's based on religious texts (the ancestors of philosophies) doesn't disqualify it as irrelevant.

originally posted by: meomy
This is a question that I don't seem to be able to find an answer to. Why is one person considered a spiritual leader or having a spiritual experience while another considered to be going through psychosis?

I will start by confessing that as I've read through threads on this site and others I have come to snap judgements about the commenters mental status. I've read comments and right away thought "Woo you're delusional." At the same time I have read books that were purportedly channelled and given them merit. Why? I don't know if it's because of the writers' popularity or if there is something in it that struck me as being probable.

There are followers of so many who are channelling books, speeches, lifestyles and they take their belief very seriously.Two that come to the top of my head are Esther Hicks and Doreen Virtue. What makes them different to the run of the mill schizophrenic who is being medicated and/or hospitalized for the exact same experiences? If these things are a mental illness for one, should the same thing not be considered a mental illness for all?

I've had experiences in my own lifetime, spiritual, paranormal, an NDE so I can't really sit in judgement. I couldn't tell you for sure if these things were real or just real to me. Even while going through them I was wondering if I was hallucinating. This almost makes me wonder while some people are sure enough, like our celebrity channellers, that what they are going through is real to be making books and giving performances based on these experiences.

Ideas?

You do know that most of the "mental illnesses" in the DSM are subjective. No chemical imbalance in the brain has EVER been proven. You go to 10 different psychiatrists and you will get 10 diagnoses.
Psychiatry is based in science about as much as God is.
With that said, is it any wonder that some people get diagnosed with one thing and others with something else when showing the exact same symptoms. Psychiatry is about sellings drugs, nothing more nothing less. The history of psychiatry is a real life horror story. Just look up Ewan Cameron(MK Ultra), one butcher in a long line of butchers.
If you went by the current DSM 5, then we are all mentally ill.

a reply to: OneManArmy

Hey don't that, C.G.Jung was pretty good and just because most of the practising psychiatrist are as sensitive and intuitive as a gourd doesn't mean it's all for the drain. It's still in it's baby shoes compared to other sciences like maths or medicine we do that since the Greeks and Jung lived some time around 1903, or a little sooner or later... And there are actually some conversational therapists that can be helpful, or ergotherapy, or neurosciences are making big leaps forward now, so that's just unfair.

a reply to: Peeple

Its a lot older than nuclear physics, but see how far we have come there?
Space study is a new science, we have sent robots to mars and Voyager has left the Solar System.
Psychiatry has not progressed because its mostly a giant turd, practiced by conmen.
Its modern snake oil sales. Whats unfair is the way people are manipulated into taking expensive drugs that are actually harmful. Have you seen the side effects of Prozac?
They include psychopathic episodes, and suicide.
Is that really what you want to give to someone that is depressed? For a "Chemical Imbalance" that doesnt exist, or at least hasnt ever been proved to exist.

Demons and spirits havent been proven to exist either, theres just as much chance that the voices in peoples heads are those. There is just as much evidence for it as there is for a chemical imbalance. But to think the former is considered "crazy" talk.

'Loss of contact with reality'...

Missing diagnosis based on exclusion of 'other realities' - since the implication is that there is only One...and it is the ultimate one...straddling several 'realities' is no easy feat, while negotiating the democratically accepted one true reality(?), functioning in an adequate manner to appear 'normal'.

Any number of agencies can trip the trapdoor - and explaining it, or rationalising it becomes a behemoth task, failing to describe in their own words and actions what they are experiencing, and finding descriptions inadequate (with the resulting frustration)...

Itisnowagain has nutshelled what task this is - discovering non-duality in all its forms - making sense of it(?), but having to function in a simalcrum of 'reality'...no amount of literary genius can communicate this adequately and satisfy the logic of this 'reality'...

...and some 'leaders' are plain charlatans...

Å99

For everyone's perusal-The Stigmata, a spiritual experience that several Christian saints have had

It was in Pietrelcina on September 17, 1915 — the same date as St. Francis Assisi — that Padre Pio received the first invisible stigmata. These signs of the Passion of Our Lord gave him so cruel pains some days, and especially on Fridays, that his confessor, the only other person to know about his stigmata, thought it wise to excuse him from saying the Mass. However, Padre Pio did not use this dispensation, and continued to celebrate Holy Mass in an old chapel dedicated to Saint Pius, martyr.
Three years later, in 1918, after his transfer from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo, the wounds of Christ appeared visibly on the hands and feet of Padre Pio, who was from now on no longer able to hide them. He relates himself the event (as reported by Bernard Ruffin in his book “Padre Pio: The True Story.”):

“I was hearing the confession of our boys when suddenly I was filled with extreme terror at the sight of a heavenly Being who presented himself to the eye of my intellect. He held some kind of a weapon in His hand, something like a long, sharp-pointed steel blade, which seemed to spew out fire. At the very instant that I saw this, I saw that Personage hurl the weapon into my soul with all His might.”
That was on August 5, 1918, and it was the onset of Pio's side wound. His hands and feet were pierced later – on September 20: "Between nine and ten in the morning, while my students were taking their recreation in the garden, I was alone in the choir, sitting on the bench in the spot reserved for the vicar,” he wrote. “I was there making my thanksgiving after Holy Mass. All of a sudden, a great light shone round about my eyes. In the midst of this light, there appeared the wounded Christ. He said nothing to me before He disappeared.”

www.michaeljournal.org...

Other saints who have experienced the stigmata: St Francis of Assissi, Saint Catherine of Siena, St Catherine de' Ricci(in Feb 1542), St. John of God, and Therese Neumann

Someone's spiritual experience will usually look like insanity to most people. About 2 years back my family and cousins of my age thought the same about me when I started to walk this path but now most of them agree with me. A spiritual person would not bother about what others think of him/her.