and purpose. People come to their own answers within a supportive classroom setting, inspired by the writings of various authors, as well as their classmates, and all continue as members of whatever religion or philosophy they choose. Classes are also offered for those who want to learn how to perform laying–on of hands, a therapy that is healing for both receiver and giver. These centers also perform charity for those in need of food, shelter and free medical advice. Participation in these centers can strengthen mental health and wellbeing. As such, we can view the Spiritist Centers as preventing mental imbalances, or lending support to those in emotional crisis so that the crisis does not turn into an imbalance. When patients dealing with emotional imbalances leave Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals, they are encouraged to participate at Spiritist Centers to further strengthen their stability.
Let’s consider, as Spiritists do, that the origin of most mental disturbances—when they are not obviously connected to a transient life circumstance, or an organic disease—lie in our own spirit and its history over lifetimes. The Spiritist point of view is that our spirit is eternal and never dies; it is the more powerful part of who we are. Our bodies and our psychology are only a reflection of our Spirit. According to Henry (2005), reincarnation is a belief held by most of the religions of the earth except Christianity and Islam, and 20-30 percent of Christians in Western countries who may report they are Christian also believe in reincarnation.
Life in a body presents an ocean of possibilities. Each of us has free will and can choose how we are going to respond to our circumstances. Spiritists believe that we are here to grow in wisdom and compassion—to learn to fully accept ourselves with compassion and treat others with empathy, respect, and care. The way we choose to treat others will come back to us: when we are kind to others, we will be more likely treated with kindness. When we are mean, we will more likely be treated unkindly. This bundle of cause and effect (karmic) consequences goes with us from lifetime to lifetime. Challenges in this lifetime may relate to mean-spirited experiences we had in prior lifetimes.
According to Spiritists, optimal wellbeing is ours when we are (1) doing the mission that we agreed to do before coming into this life and (2) treating ourselves and others with compassion consistently. If we lose our way and cannot steer ourselves to the goal of why we were born, then we may become despondent and need time out to get back on course. Our spiritual guardians (always represented by positive, life-affirming messages) are ever with us to help us remember why we are here. They are part of our inner circle, the “still, small voice within” that helps guide us whenever we quiet enough to enter the silence and listen humbly to their advice.
Emotional extremes can arise when we meet one or more experiences on the high seas of life that are traumatic or highly challenging. Emotional extremes can also arise out of a passion for one’s life purpose—an absolute need to write, compose music, do research, figure something out, etc. Either or both of these can influence us in the direction of not eating, sleeping, getting adequate exercise, or enjoying the nurturing that comes from being in nature.
A Spiritist considers that pervasive and long-lasting mental imbalance that threatens life may come because a person is rebalancing him or herself after a life experience that was not compassionate or may come from having lost his/her purpose in life. What needs to happen? The “unbalanced” person needs to find out what was done in the past without love and compassion, balance the books, and/or discover the life purpose that must be fulfilled and get about doing it.
Laurence Kirmayer is director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Transcultural Psychiatry Journal. He believes:
“Americans are unique both in being willing to openly express distressful emotions and feelings to strangers and in our penchant for viewing psychological suffering as a health care issue…[Whereas people] in other cultures find social and moral meaning in such internal distress, they often seek relief exclusively from family members or community elders or local spiritual leaders.”
--Laurence Kirmayer, MD (in Watters, 2010, p. 196)
How does a Spiritist proceed? If it is possible: meditation and prayer may provide the needed insight and energy to right what needs righting, or recommit to the mission to be achieved. If that quiet work is out of reach:, highly-trained (clairvoyant) sensitives (also called mediums in Brazil) may be consulted to apprehend the origin of the problems and ways to rectify imbalances. In either case, those firmly grounded in Spiritism can help with prayers, blessed water, and energy work to clear the individual’s physical- and subtle-energy pathways of unwanted debris. This clears the mind and balances emotions.
Doing this clearing in a positive energy field of a Spiritist group at a Spiritist Community Center maximizes the positive effects in the same way a fuel additive can make regular gasoline burn more cleanly and effectively.
In addition, group and individual psychotherapy may also be used. (Psychiatric medications are used as needed, but typically not used on an ongoing basis as readily as we do in the USA.)
To continue with the analogy of navigating the ocean: the rebalancing helps clear the decks that have been swamped by large waves, awakens the navigator, and rights the ship. We might call this extraordinary healing because some it is done through nonphysical agents: guardian spirits, clairvoyant sensitives who can see into our past lives, and the inner knowing of the deep resources of our own heart. These are beyond the reach of the physical sciences, which may treat through medication and electroshock, and analysis of genetic factors. The rebalancing may also bring individuals into states of consciousness that are extraordinary, where they awaken deeper resources of love, vision, and connection to God, as well as their own healing abilities.
Safety Rings for Those Needing Help
If you are currently feeling adrift, out to sea, and/or amidst waves that seem too big for your skill or craft, and you are tired and in need of extra support:
In Brazil, there are more than 12,000 Spiritist Community Centers available that offer free help to those with modest psychological issues. There are also 50 Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals offering an integrated approach to serious mental disturbances that includes psychiatric drugs, psychotherapy and Spiritist treatments by mediums and healers.
Two of the best groups to assist you in the USA if you do not have financial resources are The Icarus Project (www.theicarusproject.net) and the Freedom Center (www.freedom-center.org). Two of the Freedom’s Center’s goals are to support effective alternatives, such as nutrition, exercise, holistic healthcare, nature, and animals and to provide voluntary, non-paternalistic social supports such as peer-run programs, housing, a modest amount of spending money, and individual and family therapy.
Some supportive groups in the USA are listed in the back of this book under “Supportive Organizations.” The book Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (2007) lists resources for support groups and individual counselors. In the United Kingdom a good resource is MIND, (http://www.mind.org.uk).
To explore what Spiritism has to offer, look into the US Spiritist Council for a list of Spiritist Centers in the United States: http://www.spiritist.us/spiritist-centers/. Those outside the US can visit the International Spiritist Council: http://www.intercei.com.
What This Book Offers
We endeavor to consider mental imbalance as a wake-up call to rebalance
