Spiritually Saved Psychologically

Written by Mathew Naismith

I tried to put this on the TED site but it was declined so I thought I would post it on my blog. This is all about how spirituality & a fair bit of humour saved me from literally going crazy.

Can excessive long term pain cause one to go insane? According to what I went through & what various psychologists say one can.
Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. An extract from Patrick Rothfuss book, The Name of the Wind.

This isn’t just about physical pain but how physical pain can give you mental pain as well which of course can cause inanity if one allows it, insanity is what we choose not what we don’t choose.

Sitting in the corner of a small dark room rocking back & forth just sitting their mumbling to oneself, sitting as still as possible because if one moves there is something else in the room that will harm you more.  Can anyone choose to live the rest of their days like this, many have!!

At this point all known physical & mental pain had vanished so the question was, will I stay here in relative comfort or will I venture out in the rest of the world again in pain???? I chose the latter but by no means was it an easy choice.

The rest I have added for my blog:

At the point of choosing if I will stay or not within this consciousness I was consciously aware that if someone one, even a psychotherapist, tried to talk me around they had no chance in hell of doing so unless I decided to listen. I knew that if I stayed I would go deeper & deeper within this realm & eventually no outside force would register to me.

This new reality was scary because of what else I perceived was in the room other than that no & in actual fact I was at peace even though I was rocking back & forth mumbling to myself, you could say that the mumbling was very similar to chanting or even praying.  I could accomplish this state of consciousness because I had no outside tress or worries similar to what a guru however there was that fear within the room as well which was stressful & alarming to a certain extent but not to the same extent to what I was experiencing through normal consciousness, my new found consciousness elevated most of my stress & discomfort as all I had was the fear within the room which was nothing to what I had to put up with normally.

So what was this fear within this dark room? Me, I did not want to rediscover myself so what took its place was fear in rediscovering myself.  The fear within the room was a choice, stay & keep rocking back & forth within a dormant conscious state until death or move around in the room & be rediscovered or of course come out of this state of consciousness altogether which I did. The fear was me telling me that this consciousness is also uncomfortable & it was up to me if I stay in my dormant consciousness or not.  To face this fear in the room who was me could have done two things, one I could have gone off into another reality altogether giving up this physical life or two re-enter my previous conscious state of physical painful life, to sit there in a dormant state of consciousness wasn’t really an option but if I chose to do this I would have had to fight against myself within the room for the rest of my physical life.

In all I’m glad I did even though I was going to go through a lot more physical & mental trauma, this little period of humanistic psychological experience help me in things to come & because of this one experience I was able to help others also get through their own traumas in life, successfully.