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From: https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/the-absent-father-and-the-devouring-mother/ This almost perfectly describes my childhood into adulthood. In common with the author, I have begun recovery on my own terms and I am now in a very good place. The best standard of life I have ever had. And, just like him, there can and will be no going back. I am posting this out of the hope that it may help someone else here. Also, I would greatly appreciate comments from anyone else that has gone through this themselves or is learned in the subject. I think it can be hard for many to understand the carnage such an upbringing can bring and that it can perpetuate into the future. That is, of course, unless an individual, like myself, takes the measures necessary and does the work necessary to change the script. I have alot of hard graft under my belt and I approach the future on my own terms. THE ABSENT FATHER AND THE DEVOURING MOTHER January 17, 2014 The title of this post comes from the first two chapters of the book – Going Mad to Stay Sane: The Psychology of Self-Destructive Behaviour by Andy White. It is one of my favourite books as it explained my parents to me so well and so clearly that there were moments when I wondered if the author knew them as I did. He also helped to explain myself, my behaviour, self hate, self-destructiveness, and otherwise, to me and show me the roots of it and how to deprogram myself. The book is out of print, hard to find and expensive if you do find it. However I have written to the author and he replied to say that he is about to publish a new book and is also working on getting Going Mad to Stay Sane reprinted and perhaps also available as an ebook. His publishers might need a bit of encouragement regarding the reprint based on supply and demand. I did consider starting a petition… I will let you know if and when the book is available in case you are interested. I feel slightly guilty for recommending it to people because of how important a part it played in my self-therapy, but I don’t regret recommending it and I hope you’ll soon have access to it at an affordable price. The author uses mythology – The story of Midas – to give insight into the psychology behind self-destructiveness. This mythological perspective is invaluable for those who are children of Narcissists, because Narcissists are living a mythical life. They are living a lie, but that lie is very grandiose, larger than life, of mythic, epic and legendary proportions. The use of mythology was the difference which made reading this book clarify my confusion. I have read a lot about Narcissists and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The best information I have had has come from children of Narcissists who have written about their experiences. The information which comes from psychologists I have usually found to be too clinical and logical, reflecting the professionalism of the author and their need to appear professional, detached from and above it all, sane and healthy, and show that they understand the subject and the patients affected by it. But this is not helpful to those affected by those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder because there is nothing sane or logical or clinical or healthy about it. Not when you live with it as a victim of Narcissists. It’s a confusing mess which seems impossible to clarify and tidy – a Gordian Knot. As much as other authors have captured the basics of Narcissists, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Narcissistic parents, they rarely understand what it is like to be completely screwed up by it and fight to stay afloat in a quagmire which is both outside and inside of you. They never explained Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a living and breathing experience. And they certainly never captured what it feels like to grow up in such an environment where you are a tiny thing being lorded over by giants who think they are gods who own you, and who create a surreal version of reality populated by mythical quests and mythological creatures that you have to carry out and conquer for the Narcissists. And they never charted the course of the child’s psychological development as it tries to cope with the illogical reality, the paradoxes and irreconcilable conflicts, imposed on it from the moment it is born, and how to survive that child must split itself and deny itself, and learn to loathe itself, and sacrifice itself on the altar of its parents fantastical illusions and imagined greatness. “The awful contradiction in expectations that Gordius (ed: Midas’ Absent Father) and Cybele (ed: Midas’ Devouring Mother) have of their son, coupled with the utterly polarised views that each parent holds of Midas, threaten to tear him in two. He cannot succeed in the eyes of one parent without damning himself in the eyes of the other. Gordius relates to Midas as a failure. Cybele relates to him as a personal saviour. Gordius uses his authority to dismiss, Cybele uses hers to possess. Gordius withholds his blessing because Midas has fallen short precisely in those realms that Cybele demands that he must fail, in his autonomy and individuality. Gordius is cold and disinterested, utterly dismissive of Midas’ fate except that he should divest Gordius of his depression and low self-esteem. Cybele is the opposite, hysterical and invasive, holding the threat of her wrath over Midas should he have any aspiration towards his own independence, crushing his free spirit with her neediness and anxiety. If Midas embodies the hero demanded of him by Gordius with its connotations of personal mastery, ingenuity and leadership, those qualities personified by the transcending spirit of Alexander (ed: who slices the Gordian Knot with his sword and inherits the kingdom), he must betray Cybele whose covert injunction it is that he live life in her service. If he renounces his independence and personal potency in order to kindle his Mother’s affections then he fails in Gordius’ eyes and earns only his father’s contempt. Midas is caught in a trap. His true self is not only under attack but also caught in a crossfire. His only hope is to internalise this crossfire and to make of his soul a battlefield where the remnants of his own authority are firmly trampled into the irreconcilable mud of a profoundly self-destructive neurosis.” – ©Andy White – Going Mad to Stay Sane – Chapter 3 Self-Hatred: A Legacy. When the father is absent, physically, mentally, emotionally, etc, from the child’s life it leaves a void. This void isn’t empty, it is filled with longing, yearning need. The child seeks to make a connection with the father in some way, any way possible. Whatever the child has to do to win the father’s love has to be done even if it means sacrificing everything that belongs to the child as an individual being and becoming someone else to please the father. The space left by an absent father gives the mother more space in the family to take over and devour the child in whatever way she pleases and chooses, usually driven by the mother’s needs for which she seeks fulfillment by and through the child. The child has to allow the mother to devour it because it is the only form of love and connection it can have with the mother. And it is the only way to survive with a mother like that. She devours the child whether it is willing or not, being willing makes it a little bit less traumatic, but not by much. When confronted about his absence by the child, the absent father often plays the victim and blames the mother – the mother may be at fault, probably is, as she often shares with her child her grief and anger at the father, making the child responsible for it and for her emotions and needs – the child of a devouring mother and absent father may be turned into a surrogate spouse by the mother. However when the father blames the mother for his absence, he also blames the child. He is basically telling the child that it must challenge and fight its mother to win the father’s love and attention because the father is too weak to fight the mother to be with his child. What is the child to do? When the mother is confronted… not something the child does very often due to the way she reacts, but should the child be bold enough to do so, the mother blames the father, thus blaming the child. The mother quite likes these sorts of confrontations because it gives her another opportunity to devour her child and to justify the devouring. She had to fill the space vacated by the father, play the roles of mother and father, the child needs to be eternally grateful for the invasive devouring love of the mother. The child owes the mother its life. And then she points out that the father obviously does not love the child or he would be there for the child regardless of how he feels about the mother and how she feels about him. She has tried to protect the child from the awful truth that the father does not love it, but since the child has confronted her, all must now be revealed. What is a child to do? The extract from Going Mad to Stay Sane above completely describes my relationship with my parents and how it affected me. I’ve spoken about it at length in many of my posts so I won’t elaborate on it here. Even when I cut off all contact with my parents, the dynamic continued inside of me threatening my new life, and inspiring self-sabotage of myself and of any relationships I had with others. It’s been a long, hard and exhausting battle to free myself from my legacy of self-hatred, to stop my urge to self-destruct, and to deprogram myself from the cult of my family, my absent father and my devouring mother. It’s become less of a battle now and more of a jousting contest. It’s been worth it. If you have been affected by parents like mine and similar issues as those which I have and have had… don’t give up on yourself, you have great strength and a very resilient spirit. You have a rich reserve within you of personal power, and once you tap into it, your life will become yours, gradually at first, baby step by baby step, and slowly it will pick up momentum. The hardest step is the first one, that’s when you cross the threshold from victim into victor. The victiory will take time and the campaign will be a long one. Have patience with yourself. Be determined. You may falter at times. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself. You will make it. Trust yourself. The process to heal yourself and your life is painful, difficult and challenging, but one of the gifts in the curse which your experiences have given you is the knowledge that you are a survivor, you can face anything if you want to, and now you are ready to thrive. Take care of yourself.

The monsters inside us and how they get there. Why do targets stay with narcissistic abusers? Why do people stay in contact with abusive family members?

I think I had a dream that might be very helpful to some people if it means what I think it means. I was lost in an airsoft arena (for anyone who doesn't know that's paintball but with plastic bbs) that was more of a plywood maze than a coherent arena. I had one of my real steel guns with me (I'd been shooting the day before) but it had no ammo. I wanted to find my way out, but I had no clue where I was. I decided to follow this kid, a 10 year old boy in full gear who navigated like a pro, and as I followed him I'd get lit up by players who either didn't see my hands up or just wanted to shoot at me because I was defenseless. Another thing, I only had shorts on, no protection so the bbs stung like hell. We were making our way very slowly, and I had taken a lot of shots and was getting irritated. Finally I started searching around on the ground for airsoft magazines that would fit my gun and still had some bbs in them. I found a small magazine with odd looking bbs. They had the shape of practice rounds for police training courses, like little pills cut in half. I loaded them and let the bolt chamber a round, but it discharged and accidentally shot the kid in front of me in the head. The sound was deafening and everyone around us stopped. The kid in front of me collapsed to the ground. I threw my gun and picked him up. I saw there was a hole in the back of his helmet. I'd somehow loaded live ammo. I checked his cheeks to see if any blood was trickling. There wasn't any flowing, but I knew he was dead. I started to cry. I could feel myself crying, but I could only hear ringing. And right in front of us was a huge hole in the wall, right around the corner, that lead to a park with a calm pond, sunny and beautiful. I think the dream represents my journey through FDR so far and how I've been backsliding into forms of verbal abuse online. The arena represents the world. The airsoft bbs/guns represent dysfunction and abuse. The child who leads me is my true self/inner child. The arena/world is a place of uncertainty and fear where dysfunctional people can pop out of nowhere and attack you at any time. Me having my gun means I have the capacity for abuse, but keeping it unloaded means I choose not to participate. Wearing only shorts means I'm very vulnerable, which makes sense considering striving for virtue requires vulnerability. My child self is the kid in all the gear picking players off and slowly advancing towards the exit. But when I pick up bbs that I can fire back at these people, they aren't just bbs. They turn into real bullets. That's why I had a real gun. I realized how deadly and corrosive this abuse can be, and that's why I kept it empty. I still have the capacity to abuse, but I choose not to. And that explains why everyone else had bb guns. The shots didn't hurt like bullets, they only stung like bbs because I'm becoming immune to abuse. Everyone has real guns and real bullets. The abuse is 100% deadly, but only if you shoot back. And that explains why I shot the kid. By loading what I thought was just bbs, in truth I was loading 100% deadly live ammo, because abuse is perceived to the true self as just that. Live fire. And when I loaded my gun, I was choosing to abuse. And the only person an abusive me hurts is my true self. That's why I accidentally shot him in the back of the head. The second I choose that path, my true self is dead. And freedom was just around the corner. Is anyone else struggling with resisting the urge to be snarky or "clever" in comment sections and discussions? I can resist it to the point of seeing it for what it really is and losing the urge but sometimes things slip through.

My son is almost 8 years old. Sadly for him my wife and I have not always practiced peaceful parenting. For the first five years of his life we were rather authoritarian and then began learning and transitioning to peaceful parenting. He has been spanked, ordered around and made to do things he didn't want to simply because I'm his father and he should listen to me. While we were never complete monsters to him, we made mistakes that bring me great shame to admit. I mention this as an attempt to properly frame our past behaviors. While I would never attempt to excuse or justify the wrong things we did, I find it just as important to properly assess exactly how bad we were. Since we have made the change in parenting styles everything has improved. From his behavior inside and outside the home to our relationships as well as his understandings of exactly how he should expect to be treated and how he should treat others. It really has been a wonderful thing for all of us, seeing him act appropriately because he decided it's what he should do is so much more rewarding them seeing him simply act the way I say because he is afraid of what I may do to him. However I am aware that we have done damage to him. Some of this was obvious and fairly straightforward to begin repairing. Such as the trust and bond between us, it started with an apology for spankings and a discussion about how it was wrong to have done that to him and no one is ever allowed to treat him like that. This has been supported by further discussions and talks where much of the information is repeated. There are other things though that are more complex and I feel I need help addressing. He has issues with self confidence and self esteem. While I can see how the way we've tested him in the past has created these problems I am not entirely sure how to help him with them. Im also worried that there may be other potential problems I've inflicted upon him that haven't manifested yet or simply don't know to look for. I want to help him minimize the negative impact our mistakes may cause. Any help you guys can be to that end will be greatly appreciated.

Hello fellow freedom lovers, It seems like an eternity since I was last on this site. I don't know what the 'topic' really is for what I want to say, but I would like to share my recent experiences with some relatively like minded people. The world can be a lonely place for an anarchist. So, in October I got married. I am super happy about my relationship with my wife. She is the best. And she herself is not the problem. The problem is that I committed the cardinal sin of marrying a rival gang member. You see, my wife is American, and I am Scottish. Not the original West Side Story, but you get the idea. To cut a long story short, the visa process in the UK is now extremely convoluted, expensive, and deliberately confusing. After months of reading the forums, reading the small print reading the forms, we started to make our application. Then as far as I can tell, the UK Border Agency changed a few details and forms. So we made our application online for a marriage visa. This would allow my wife to come and stay in the UK for 6 months so that we could be married, and then once she was here we would apply for her temporary residence status for 2 years. In theory that would allow her to live and work in the UK as my spouse. So this was always known as a 'fiancee' visa. It is now known as a marriage Visa. We didn't know that there are two types of Marriage Visa. They are stamped as 'Marriage', or 'Marriage-Visitor'. So we filled out the paperwork, made our appointments, paid our £1000 ($1600 USD) appointment fee, to make the application in person. So, we went to a prison style detention centre in Glasgow. It is literally crawling with thug like security guards, and all of the immigration officers were behind bullet proof glass, for obvious reasons. The incompetence of the guards was the first omen that struck me. We went through the pat down and metal detector just like at an airport. Except this guard who searched my bag removed a leatherman multi tool/knife from my bag. I thought 'great, here we go'. But to my astonishement, the guard said, 'oh wow, thats a nice tool, etc, and started showing to the other guards, before handing it back to me on the other side of the gate 'Great Leatherman Pal'. Unbelievable. Anyway, we were shoved from window, to window to be interrogated by various thug-aucrats. Nobody really cared about our marriage certificate (We had a beautiful god-free marriage, but we were forced to at least have a city registrar do our ceremony in Edinburgh. It hurt deeply for me, to ask any kind of permission to marry. Let alone, only be allowed to marry in 'city approved locations'. But I had no choice but to play the statist game.) Instead, they were more interested in me proving my income is greater than the 'legal minimum required to sponsor a spouse as a resident'. This is a recent requirement in the UK. In any case, I was not worrried because our marriage was legitimate in the eyes of the state, and my income is double the minimum requirement even after tax. So I brought my contracts of employment, and salary statements for the past 18 months as proof. But that wasn't enough. I had to leave the immigration centre, and run around town for an hour to get bank statement s for the last 2 years, stamped as authentic by the bank. Of course my question was 'why didn't you tell us that requirement on the form or on the website?'. She looked at me, like I was an idiot. Her reply was 'How else do I know that your payslips actually mean you are recieving money?'. Anyway, after an epic run around town, and coming back through security, they sat us down and told us, that because our fiance visa had one little word extra on it, my wife had to leave the country. We replied, 'but the fiance visa no longer exists. This is a marriage visit visa. Now we're married, she's applying to stay'. Imagine a Big 'Game-Show sty;e noise of incorrectness'. They started trying to explain to us like we were idiot children that 'you got the same visitor visa that madonna got when she visited Scotland for her wedding, what you need is the other one'. Rage building. So, what do we do now? Well, you leave the country and apply again. Which form do we fill out? The same one you have in your hand now. Right. How long does that take? Oh, nobody knows. What? Yeah, 2 months, up to 8 months, no guarantees. OK. So we have no way to appeal this? Here's an email address where you can complain, but the error was yours, so it's unlikely you have a valid complaint. Excuse me? Yes. OK, but your website specifically says 'we cannot tell you which form to fill out'. So how were we supposed to know? I'm sorry, thats all I can tell you. (THIS WAS THE MOST GALLING BIT:) "If it's any consolation, the marriage visa used to be the easiest one to get until quite recently, but now they're cracking down on dole (welfare) cheats" Right. So I said, 'but my wife has £12k in her checking acct, I have £6k, and my salary more than double meets your requirements. You are telling me that she will be kidnapped and forced away from her husband for getting one word wrong on a form, that you guys invented. So she and I have no right to be together, and even a government sponsored marriage certificate means nothing any more. 'I'm sorry, that's the rules', was the predictable reply. My wife was in tears, and I was shaking at this point. Rather than take someone hostage with my trusty Leatherman, as I apparently DID have the right to do, we dragged our Non-Aggressive arses off out the door. It was at this point my wife told me, that whilst I was running between banks trying to get evidence for my 'Application-Not-To-Be-Kidnapped' form, that a South African (White) woman was sitting in the window next to us explaining 'why she had been arrested so many times whilst she was here on a student visa'. Literally, her response was 'It wasnt my fault, they just came into my house and set me up. My wife was shaking and crying and saying 'I don't understand? If they government gives out welfare, but they don't want me to take welfare, then WHY DONT THEY JUST 'NOT GIVE ME WELFARE'? Exactly. And here is kind of my tralking point in this post. This was as clear an epiffany as I have ever had. They create all these bullshit departments, so that when they do something bad that causes you pain, they can call it 'Immigration'. When they do something you like, that gives you relief when you're in another form of pain, they call it 'The National Health Service', or 'Welfare', or 'Free Shit'. Just like Zeus blames Thor when it rains, or whatever. You get all these little subdivisions of government departments, to obfuscate the concept of 'Government / Governance by force'. Just like the bible bashers say, well I like this little bit of the bible, but ignore the rest of it, so I cannot question the concept. And none of it made any sense. My wife literally had her dream job, lined up and waiting for her in Edinburgh, managing a bridal store. There is some tax-paying economic value they are missing out on right now, because of their retarded policy. Anyway, I work offshore in North Sea Oil. This all happened on the Thursday of that week. I was due to go back to Sea on the Monday. My wife had to book a flight home for the sunday night. I had to strip down our apartment, and move everything into my folks house for storage. At the same time all weekend I had to look into a green card application for me to go the US now, since it is the only way my wife and I can both continue to work and earn money. She had abstained from working for over 12 months, so she could be with me in the UK. The stress of moving out of my apartment, and preparing to go back to Sea, in the middle of a North Sea winter, was so much for me, I had my first panic attack. I went to hospital, in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. A prestigious looking building, until you get inside the emergency room of this Socialised healthcare hell-hole, and find bloody bandages under your seat in the waiting room, the hallways FULL of people in beds with no ward to go to, folk in wheelchairs pissing and shitting all over the floor, and the sound beeps turning to solid tones all around you. Truly, a bad fucking weekend for us. Get one word wrong on a form, and god help you. Anyway, my free market god-send of an employer is very kindly now paying for my flights to the US every month. I have the lofty privilege of 'Visitng' my wife, for up to three months at a time now, under the US Visa Waiver Program. Last week I sent in my application for a Green Card, and my wife has kindly spent half of her savings setting us up in a lovely apartment in Charleston. So now, I'm living without the right to 'work' in the same land as my wife. This obviously adds all kind of risks and stresses to our plans on having a baby at the moment. (Yes, Charleston, SC. My father btw is an Alex Jones fan, and even after knowing that I'd been hospitalised the night before with a strong panic attack, spent our last few hours together as we gutted my Scottish apartment, telling me exactly how, if I make it through the airport without being irradiated in the US, then I'm just gonna get Nuked in Charleston. Way to show some empathy Dad ) The upside of all of this trauma, is simply this: My wife officially posted on FB 'I'm now an Anarchist'. So that is my story. Here is my question. To what extent do our 'statist priestly class', use the ideals/tricks of polytheism, to manipulate our emotional attachments to government? And how does epistomology help us deal with this trauma, of threats of violence inflicted upon us at every turn in modern society? I think seeing violence and tax farming for what it truly is, has really helped salvage the first year of my marriage, and helped reassure my wife that we are not 'deserving' of such treatment. Knowing for sure, that injustice has been done to us, and what caused it all, was very little to do with our own actions, has truly, truly helped our emotional survival. Does Philosophy help you survive?

Forgive me if this is in the wrong forum section, general knowledge seemed to be the only one fitting for this rather specific topic. My question is in relation to alcoholism and addiction. I can only imagine that Stef has addressed the topic in the past but I can't recall, does anyone know where his best discussion on this is? I grew up in a religious institution that was very rigid and determined at age 24 that it was not making me happy anymore. I figured at that point I was atheist and began studying in the area of philosophy to come to a better understanding what my individual perspective was, and not what others had taught me. What also occurred though was a period of experimentation and trying new things as I was now untethered from dogmatic moral restrictions. I believe issues with depression and anxiety and a relative confusion as to how to deal with that left me prone to struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. For the last 3-4 years I've dealt now with an entirely knew community that seems to be steeped in its own brand of dogma. I don't want to single out the AA and 12 step philosophy but it is the dominant one. These past few years I have developed a belief that the entire rehabilitation business is capitalizing on an epidemic ailment in modern society without any definitive and apparent impact. I can't say my rehab experiences were entirely without merit, but I feel like they are addressing mindfulness more than really determining the biological problems that exist and occur in people who become addicts (or always were addicts) however you want to term it. It seems to me there is a HUGE lack of philosophical perspective on this dilemma. The psychology community has all but given it over to this rehabilitation money mill as I believe there is economic incentive to do so. Anyway, I'm essentially looking for more opinion, ideas, and thoughts in the area of reason when it comes to addiction. I believe there is far more to the problem of addiction then merely being genetically predisposed. In my experience, I've recognized a rather fundamental existential crisis that lies at the core of my personal struggle. In terms of the recovery community, I am not keen on the idea that now my life is essentially defined by being "in recovery". This isn't to say I want to be able to drink or use recreational drugs, but I'm opposed to some of the black and white thinking, the dogmatic perspectives, on what it takes to either remain sober or avoid the pitfalls of substance abuse.I've said a lot so I'll leave it out there to the folks to bat around. Any response will be appreciated Thanks Mike V

Renowned Doctor Gabor Mate on Psychedelics and Unlocking the Unconscious, From Cancer to Addiction Drug addiction expert speaks on the mind-body connection and the medical and emotional potentials of psychedelics. Photo Credit: By Gabor Gastonyi (Clare Day) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons May 30, 2013 | Gabor Mate, M.D., says the "unconscious mind" can cause medical afflictions like cancer, addiction and trauma. In his speech at the Psychedelic Science 2013 conference, Mate rejects the assumption that the human mind and body are separate entities, and points to an inherant connection between psychological/environmental experiences and medical afflictions. He contends that the war on drugs is actually a war on drug addicts, and speaks to the addiction cessation potential of psychedelic substances. He also discusses the potential ability of psychedelic substances, particularly ayahuasca, to reverse medical issues like cancer and addiction when coupled with therapy.The following is the transcript of Dr. Gabor Mate's speech, "Psychedelics and Unlocking the Unconscious; From Cancer to Addiction," which he delivered at the Psychedelic Science conference in Oakland Calif., on April 20, 2013. My subject is the use of ayahuasca in the healing of all manner of medical conditions, from cancer to addiction. And you might say what can possibly a plant do to heal such dire and life-threatening medical problems? Well, of course, that all depends on the perspective through which we understand these problems. Now, the medical perspective, the allopathic Western medical perspective in which I was trained is that, fundamentally, diseases are abnormalities that occur either due to external causes such as a bacterium or a toxin, or they’re accidental or due to bad luck, or their due to genetics. So, the causes are outside of the usual internal experience—the emotional and psychological and spiritual life—of the individual. These are biological events, so the medical assumption goes, and the causes are to be understood and the treatments are to be administered purely in a biological fashion. Underlying that set of assumptions are two other assumptions. One is that you can separate the human body from the human mind, so what happens to us emotionally and psychologically has no significant impact on our health. Number two: that the individual is to be separated from the environment. So, what happens to me if I get cancer? That is just my poor personal, pure personal, misfortune, or maybe because I did the wrong things like smoked cigarettes. But, that my cancer might have something to do with the lifelong interaction which I’ve engaged in with my environment—particularly the psychological social environment—that doesn’t enter into the picture. But what if we had a different perspective? What if we actually got that human beings are bio-psycho-social creatures by nature, and actually bio-psycho-spiritual creatures by nature—which is to say that our biology is inseparable from our psychological emotional and spiritual existence—and therefore what manifests in the body is not some isolated and unique event or misfortune, but a manifestation of what my life has been in interaction with my psychological and social and spiritual environment? Well, if we had that kind of understanding then we would approach illness and health in a completely different fashion. What if, furthermore, we understood something in the West which has been the underlying core insight of Eastern spiritual pathways and aboriginal shamanic pathways around the world, which is that human beings are not their personalities, we’re not our thoughts, we’re not our emotions, we are not our dysfunctional or functional dynamics, but that at the core there is a true self that is somehow connected to—in fact not connected to but part of—nature and creation. An illness from that perspective represents a loss of that connection, a loss of that unity, a loss of that belonging to a much larger entity. And therefore, to treat the illness or the symptom as the problem is actually to ignore the real possibility that the symptom and the illness are themselves symptoms, rather than the fundamental problems. CONTINUE ARTICLE===>> http://www.alternet.org/drugs/gabor-mate-ayahuasca-maps-conference-2013