This week’s reading What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital by Stephanie Marohn is both intriguing and abstract. At first, the author explained that “mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.” (Marohn 3) Moreover, Dr. Some’ also mentioned that there were “entities” that were invisible to most people, and “they were causing the crisis in these people.” The article then took the case of Alex as an example of mental illness could be connected with a being from another world. Alex suffered trauma when he was 14. Ever since he had hallucinations and was suicidal. He was in a mental hospital for a long time without any progress. After spending eight months in Africa, Alex had become quite normal and found peace in his life. When he returned to the U.S., Alex was in graduate school in psychology at Harvard. Surprisingly, nobody expected that he would go that far. Perhaps the land, people, and atmosphere in Africa had cured his mental illness. In fact, every culture has its own deity. For instance, Western culture worships God while Asians worship Buddha. Likewise, Indians idolize Shiva. As an Asian American, I was told when I was a young boy that there were some taboos in our tradition. More specifically, we are not supposed to shout at other people’s names at night on the street. Additionally, we should not comb hair or look at ourselves in front of the mirror at midnight. Theoretically, supernatural forces may appear and haunt us if we do those things. Although I am not too superstitious, I believe that God and demons do exist in our world. Overall, we should do good things for people around us, so that good things will come. Likewise, we should not do any harm to people, otherwise, karma is not a friendly company.
Reference:
Marohn, Stephanie (2016). What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital
Picture retrieved from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/inspiring-interfaith-top-quotes_n_3678988.html
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