Schizophrenia and Mediumship

[flowboy]

I'm wondering if there is any link. Who can shed some light on this?

Psychic mediums sometimes (not often) hear voices, often hear and see thoughts that are not their own (hearing and seeing in their mind's eye), and also often have olfactory hallucinations (smelling things that are not there).

If they interpret those things correctly, it tells them things they could not otherwise have known.

Sufferers of schizophrenia often hear voices, often have olfactory hallucinations, and often are paranoid that someone can hear their thoughts.

So not the same pattern, but there's some overlap. Also they often smell things, but rotten things, that are just disturbing, not giving them intel.

The voices and thoughts they hear are just messing with them, not giving them useful knowledge.

 

What is the difference, what is the overlap?

It seems to me that these type of hallucinations are how spirits communicate, and in one case they are helpful spirits, and in the other, they are mean-spirited spirits.

 

[Leo Gura]

There is some overlap.

There's a blurry line between mysticism and madness.

[_Archangel_]

@flowboy On the use of magical tools:

Always keep in mind that magical tools are merely symbolic aids that are meant to
bring the magician,s spirit into a certain gnosis. By structuring one's universe externally
as well as internally with symbols, one's creating anchors for various states of consciousness.
One consciously projects part of one's self and then retrieves this part by
working with it practically or epistemologically. Although this process can be understood
as rationally and intellectually as just described, the act itself happens in an entirely
different way. A person who looks at his or her dagger and consciously thinks "You
are the projection of my will and nothing more than a tool that I can just as easily do
without, won't have much success when working with the dagger. After all, there's a reason
why magic is sometimes called "controlled schizophrenia,»

- Frater U.·. D.·., High Magic I (2008)

[flowboy]

@_Archangel_  Interesting! So symbols are just tools, but to see them as that prevents them from working. Rationality is an obstacle to magic. So you have to be willing to let yourself go crazy, to access the wisdom or whatever one is after.

 

[mandyjw]

Mental illness is just an opening in the mind. However the ultimate truth is that there is no mind, there is only pure openness. However someone with mental illness can be prone to suffering, because they can still be prone to other areas of the mind holding beliefs and false interpretations. Suffering is an indicator that thoughts should be discarded, the truth or validity of a thought, the measure of clarity is in how you feel. When someone understands that their mental illness is a gift, an opening, and they pay attention to how they feel, they are much more able to find true clarity in it. They find they can reach through that open window so to speak and channel something true or beautiful through it, rather than suffer with delusion. 

Truth is love, and how you feel indicates the clarity of your thoughts and interpretations of them. 

There is a tendency to get stuck when people are told and believe that mental illness is equated with suffering, and that people cannot know things they have no physically explained way of knowing. Then it can be easy to get stuck in a cycle of suffering because none of these things are true, and if you were given a gift and tried to desperately get rid of it, your guidance would tell you that's just insane. 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by mandyjw

[flowboy]

1 hour ago, mandyjw said:

Mental illness is just an opening in the mind. However the ultimate truth is that there is no mind, there is only pure openness. However someone with mental illness can be prone to suffering, because they can still be prone to other areas of the mind holding beliefs and false interpretations. Suffering is an indicator that thoughts should be discarded, the truth or validity of a thought, the measure of clarity is in how you feel. When someone understands that their mental illness is a gift, an opening, and they pay attention to how they feel, they are much more able to find true clarity in it. They find they can reach through that open window so to speak and channel something true or beautiful through it, rather than suffer with delusion. 

Truth is love, and how you feel indicates the clarity of your thoughts and interpretations of them. 

There is a tendency to get stuck when people are told and believe that mental illness is equated with suffering, and that people cannot know things they have no physically explained way of knowing. Then it can be easy to get stuck in a cycle of suffering because none of these things are true, and if you were given a gift and tried to desperately get rid of it, your guidance would tell you that's just insane. 

 

Interesting, thank you for your answer.

So do you think the paranoid aspect of it (voices telling you not to trust your loved ones because they poisoned you), is related to the repression of it by our culture?

[mandyjw]

4 minutes ago, flowboy said:

Interesting, thank you for your answer.

So do you think the paranoid aspect of it (voices telling you not to trust your loved ones because they poisoned you), is related to the repression of it by our culture?

Not directly, it's an indicator of distrusting thoughts and beliefs. If you misunderstand what you are and what flaws you and others have in general any information you receive is going to be twisted and misinterpreted.  

A typically considered "sane" person is not conscious of the fact that they receive their thoughts, that they aren't in control of them, they don't think them.  This is essentially what "hearing voices" is, it's just an awareness of the fact that you aren't thinking the thoughts, that the you is another thought, there's just pure reception. It's opens you up to possibilities of receiving information you would not otherwise be able to access. 

[flowboy]

@mandyjw  Thank you.

When I smoke weed, I immediately start "hearing" my thoughts as if they were voices. The thoughts don't necessarily change, but they seem to be coming from someone-who-isn't-me, and I start feeling uneasy because now it seems like there is a stranger in "my" head.

(and then I start fearing becoming a schizophrenic, and psyching myself out and trying to numb myself until it's over. It always passes)

Your explanation is oddly comforting for this scenario.

"hearing voices" is just an awareness of the fact that you aren't thinking the thoughts, that the you is another thought, there's just pure reception.

I'll remember that.

 

So how could a schizophrenic tune their reception to a channel where they don't receive these gnarly deceptions, but regular loving thoughts or even guidance?

[mandyjw]

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

and I start feeling uneasy because now it seems like there is a stranger in "my" head.

(and then I start fearing becoming a schizophrenic, and psyching myself out and trying to numb myself until it's over. It always passes)

So you're openly experiencing the thoughts that seem like voices, but the thoughts that then say this isn't right, isn't normal, are coming from the "you", and these thoughts believed to be "you" are actually judging the other thoughts as "not you" and fearing the outside otherness of them, and the ramifications that it believes the outside otherness has upon the inside self. You have held beliefs about you and what you should be and these hold up the resistance and the idea of separation, which creates the fear of some outside force having negative influence OR the fear of the inside self being fundamentally corrupted, bad or wrong. 

There's a very, very strange and counter-intuitive surprise that it's not the object the self judges as bad or not wanted but the thought/attitude of judgement itself (coming from sense of separation) that is not wanted. For example, in this case your hearing voices is not the problem, the thought that says "that's a problem!" is actually the very creation OF the problem itself. The pointing out of the problem IS the problem. (Even this statement is wrong, it's also inherently, not a problem.) The pointing OUT of something is NEVER the awareness itself, but is an imposter upon and of awareness. But, but, BUT, it can prompt you to actually bring actual awareness to it. See how crazy, amazingly tricky and beautiful that is?  It's stunning.

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

So how could a schizophrenic tune their reception to a channel where they don't receive these gnarly deceptions, but regular loving thoughts or even guidance?

Meditation, understanding the relationship between beliefs/thoughts and feeling, letting go of thoughts that feel bad and instead paying attention to how they feel. Understanding that feeling itself is a better indicator of truth than what the thoughts dictate. All these methods cycle, build on each other and ultimately dissolve into one. 

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

Your explanation is oddly comforting for this scenario.

? ❤ All this spiritual "knowledge" is pretty much marked by that "oddly comforting" feeling. And it seems to come OUT of it too. 

[okulele]

I was recently psychicly contacted by a group of beings. It's great overall, but sometimes it gets really difficult. When I am with another person that they want to get in touch with "through me" it gets more intense and messy, as know there is myself, this being (or even beins) and the physical person I am with. It sometimes got really confusing and I was feeling like I couldn't tell who was who, what was imagination and what was reallity. Seems to be a part of the proccess of gaining clarity around these new levels of perception. I had these emotional disturbances a couple of times, but every time I would emerge victorious on the other side with a greater depth of understanding as to how to relate to these interactions.

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

I start feeling uneasy because now it seems like there is a stranger in "my" head.

You coud probably disregard them as just voices and go to the "it's all imaginary anyway" paradigm (which is true btw), but you could also go through the emotional disturbance of distingushing what's going on there on a relative level and possibly becoming psychic  

[Nahm]

@flowboy

The key is not believing there is a thinker of thoughts (or an other which is a thinker of thoughts, or spirits), “accomplished” via simple daily (proper) meditation & expression (without someone labeling you). No mind is not a concept, no matter who tells you it is. It’s not even a direct experience. Judgement ‘goes’ intrinsically in the liberation from the ‘monkey mind’, aka ‘the comparator, the knower, the devil, the hallucinator, etc, etc’. Being a ‘thinker’ / ‘believing in thinkers’ at all really is a lot like a child vs an adult, one blooms naturally into the other (short of delusion / belief and the spreading & repetition of). One simply can not see what one does not be... ‘sheep in wolves clothing’, etc, etc. The link less link of not labeling, not believing thoughts. Then, which is now of course, there are no mediums, just ‘adults’, if you will, and of course, not even. 

First the front, then the back, in terms of brain / blood flow (chi). Google ways of getting the blood flowing more. If applicable, see the ‘healthy weight chart’ at the doctors anew, without any projections. That alone could resolve. A simple difference, like breathing from the stomach vs lungs could also be a substantial game changer.

[Bodhitree]

@flowboy As I understand it, mediumship is a much more controlled experience, a temporary opening of a certain door while the schizophrenic charges along without a seeming care in the world and just flings all those doors wide open. Voices can range from almost-present and pieced together out of partial whispers that you think you hear, to a whole bunch of them literally screaming at you. Reckless, incautious, spontaneous personality types tend to have worse experiences, obviously. 

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, mandyjw said:

Mental illness is just an opening in the mind.

Not so simple. There is serious mental illness which is highly problematic and dysfunctional.

It's not all New Agey mysticism.

[mandyjw]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is serious mental illness which is highly problematic and dysfunctional.

Mental illness can certainly be linked with suffering, but unless the nature of suffering is deeply understood, labels and comparisons don't do any good but cause the identification which is the holding onto of the unwanted condition and the suffering, not the healing or letting go of it.

Our society and materialism is a mental illness from one perspective and certainly fuels suffering, but because it's normal and because we have this belief that a "normal" actually exists, we gloss over this and point to people who are different as our scape goats. 

Investigating suffering in your own direct experience is the only "out" and the only way to get real insight into anyone else's suffering as well.