Mental illness is savagely stigmatized. 

Even saying “mentally ill” immediately conjures images of people who are crazy, who are dangerous, who are not like us. But lots of people have mental health issues that do look just like us. They are your child’s teacher, your mechanic, your neighbor, your friend…your doctor.

People who confide in me that they have mental health issues often immediately follow with a list of their accomplishments, as if they need to defend themselves against the world’s instinctive reaction to disqualify or de-legitimize them. The truth is, we are surrounded by people who have mental health issues. We love them. We do business with them. We trust their professional opinions. None of us is removed by more than one degree from this issue.

People who have mental health issues, even if they’ve accomplished a lot in their lives, often feel like they’ve struggled so hard in their lives to keep it together. Get through the depression. Get through the anxiety. Find their way to the other side of compulsive thinking or jacked up emotions. Feeling like they are not in control of themselves. Trying not to let it show too much.

It’s no wonder people with mental health issues gravitate toward spirituality. The Buddha looks so freaking calm! No one can wipe that smug, benign smile off of Tolle’s face. Life is good on the other side, right?

There is a difference between spirituality and spiritual enlightenment, and it is not uncommon for people who have mental health issues to seek enlightenment as a kind of cure. After all, if the disordered thoughts and emotions are all arranged around the central character of the false self, then when one wakes from the dream of self, would not the rest just fall away?

Your mental health issues are like any other physical ailment.

Would you forgo seeing a doctor, or seeking some kind of ongoing treatment if you had cancer or diabetes? You would not. I’m not a fan of psychiatry, at least not the way it is practiced by most doctors, so I understand why a person wouldn’t want to get labelled and then be put on a cocktail of psych drugs, presumably for the rest of their lives. I get it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t at least seek an opinion from a psychiatrist. There is no harm in going for a consult. It is often an eye opening experience. It’s up to you what kind of treatment you seek after that.

It might surprise you to learn that in some cases, spiritual seeking or religiosity is one of the indicators of mental illness, a symptom, if you will. This is very distressing for people to hear.  It’s not the case all the time, but you should be aware that spiritual seeking can be like any other compulsive behavior, such as sex and shopping. One thing to ask yourself: can I stop? Could you take a six month break from all things spiritual? Stop reading spiritual books, cruising spiritual blogs, meditating, doing spiritual practices?

Even if spiritual seeking is compulsive, it doesn’t mean that at the core, you aren’t sincere.

You probably are very sincere, but the compulsive mind machine has infiltrated this part of your life and is turning it into a compulsion. If you were able to wrest it back from the machine, you would still have a sincere interest in spirituality, it just wouldn’t be contaminated by compulsion. These disordered mechanisms of the mind can take any “content” and turn it into a path of compulsive behavior and thinking.

I don’t know how frequently people become enlightened, but I’m pretty sure it’s not all that common. Which means you are better off dealing with your mental health issues directly, intelligently and consistently, than chasing enlightenment as a cure.

You can work toward better mental health right now, from where you are.

But it’s not easy, and you don’t get any holidays from it. You can’t be on again, off again with it. And this isn’t even limited to people with mental health issues. Everyone needs to take back their mental and emotional bodies, gain sovereignty over their own being, become true adults. Everyone’s mind has been corrupted by programming, mind parasites and the like.

There are only two games in life to be played: mastering the self and transcending the self. Since no one has a reliable system for the later, and it seems to happen so infrequently anyway, why not start where you can actually do something, right now? Know yourself. Master yourself. You are your own vehicle in life, it’s time you learned how to drive it.