SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING

Society can stifle individuality

MENTAL WHOLENESS and spiritual health go hand in
hand, says Vancouver psychologist Andrew Feldmar.

But he recently told the Sunday
congregation at the North Shore
Unitarian Church that acquiring a
healthy spirit is an uphill battle in
our society.

“*We are afraid to let our souls
come alive"? he said. ‘‘Through
our daily defensiveness, we have
pushed the spirit world and its
apparitions aside... until the
senses that could have appreciated
them have atrophied."

Feldmar says that as soon as we
are born, society starts condition-
ing us to act Out acceptable roles,
and to stifle aspects of our char-
acter that do not correspond with
society’s view of ‘‘normality.’’

But this ‘‘normality,” he says,
is ‘‘an arrested state of being’’
and as far from true sanity as is
madness.

*“We are endlessly obedient citi-
zens who are estranged from our
own experience. ‘Normality’ is
truly being ous of one’s own
rind.”

But society rewards such com-

By Peggy Trendell-\Whittaker
News Reporter

pliance with affluence and other
comforts, he claims, and it is
scary to give up the “‘safety of
normality"? and begin living out of
one’s own experience.

“Why we avoid this as much as
we possibly can, even though
salvation lies that way,” says
Feldmar, ‘‘is because we have to
give up the familiar... I usually
advise my clients to go in the di-
rection of their greatest terror.’

The ‘‘journey towards sanity’
is often labelied mental illness or
instability and usually viewed with
suspicion by the rest of society,
Feldmar says.

For example, in the process of
dying to their old way of life,
people can become very depressed.

Feldmar interprets such a
depression this way: ‘‘Every time
we learn something we get very
sad. Learning something means

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letting go of an illusion, and it
hurts. Tears and mourning are a
good sign... they don’t require
medications.’

Through such processes, indi-
viduals who have left the security
of ‘normality’? will eventually
know their own mind and act out
of their own experience.

But because people are not
guided through this journey by
understanding helpers, some get
“‘shipwrecked in madness’’ along
the way.

Feldmar hopes that mental
health professionals will learn to
become more empathic towards
clients experiencing this process,
and less ‘‘psychophobic.”’

Feldmar is the executive director
of the Integra Households
Association, a non-profit
organization that is planning to
open a_ residence for people
undergoing mental, spiritual or
emotional distress, and who are
resistant to conventional
psychiatric treatment.

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