Any advice on helping someone with both mental illness AND spirit trouble?

[BaguaKicksAss]

This person started sending me very regular emails outlining all of the people who were supposedly magically attacking him. Then one day he accused me of doing so. I sent him an email tearing him a new one and told him no I actually have a life. Apparently that worked! He seemed to calm right down after that. I did get to pondering how many places he was getting talismans from and if I was on his long list of people he was giving to them or not. I hope for his sake that this was not the case as I doubt he's rich.

Edited January 12, 2014 by BaguaKicksAss

[Flolfolil]

you are such a respectable person for not capitalizing on this person's suffering by cutting them off from buying more stuff.

 

as far as helping them...it sounds like they are already in a position to not listen to you. At this point they might need to just go through the pain and realize they are doing it to themselves :/

[voidisyinyang]

Call 952-953-5555 the Spring Forest Qigong center http://springforestqigong.com to get a phone healing from Chunyi Lin

[BaguaKicksAss]

.

Edited April 1, 2013 by BaguaKicksAss

[BaguaKicksAss]

.

[gendao]

They even had results from the psychological aspect only in some cases.

Spiritual aspects are basically just another for of expression of one's soul's inner psyche.

 

My generic guess is that he is paranoid of some aspect of himself that he fears - and has yet to come to terms with it. Is he homophobic, perchance? You cannot banish any part of yourself. It will keep trying to come back to reintegrate with you - which is what he probably "misinterprets" as "attacks."

 

Anyhow, the "real" solution here is likely to uncover, make peace with and accept whatever part of himself he may fear...

 

[Flolfolil]

maybe tell him that the tools only work if you believe they will. (just my experiential opinion)

 

the mind is stronger than any tool and it will win the battle every time. the mind has to work -with- the tool or else there is no point

[Zhongyongdaoist]

For mental/emotional symptoms manifesting on a shen/qi level you can learn Neuro-Linquistic Programming, usually referred to as NLP. As a suggestion of how this might help, you could covertly do some personality integration work as part of a "special protection trance" experience. In a lot of ways it would be a special protection trance because personality integration is an important part of psychic self-defense.

 

Then learn how to diagnose in Chinese medicine for mental/emotional symptoms that are rooted in the qi/zhanfu level, herbs are the easiest way to deal with it and are much better for the long term then anything a therapist can give you because they can address the fundamental imbalance, while Western medicines are likely to perpetuate and even make things worse.

 

Both of these approaches can be combined and would be beneficial in the qi/zhangfu case, but you can't neglect the herbs, it would be like using psycho-therapy to treat gallstones.

 

And yes I have a lot of experience, I just don't talk about it.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

I don't have experience at the level you're talking about, but you might want to explain to him the power of thoughtforms/belief/words/memes which can act the same as entities yet are not. The Kehemtics/Egyptians embodied this by a god, I forget which one though I believe he was represented by a gorilla, to show how words have power to control one's perception of reality.

 

Otherwise, I would be inclined to refer him to a reputable, traditionally trained, shaman who does sweat lodge and sacred pipe ceremonies This might at least lead to finding out what was the cause of his issue. Then a good therapist will have a good base to start with.

[BaguaKicksAss]

.

[BaguaKicksAss]

For mental/emotional symptoms manifesting on a shen/qi level you can learn Neuro-Linquistic Programming, usually referred to as NLP. As a suggestion of how this might help, you could covertly do some personality integration work as part of a "special protection trance" experience. In a lot of ways it would be a special protection trance because personality integration is an important part of psychic self-defense.

 

Then learn how to diagnose in Chinese medicine for mental/emotional symptoms that are rooted in the qi/zhanfu level, herbs are the easiest way to deal with it and are much better for the long term then anything a therapist can give you because they can address the fundamental imbalance, while Western medicines are likely to perpetuate and even make things worse.

 

Both of these approaches can be combined and would be beneficial in the qi/zhangfu case, but you can't neglect the herbs, it would be like using psycho-therapy to treat gallstones.

 

And yes I have a lot of experience, I just don't talk about it.

 

Very good idea about the "protection trance"! Unfortunately (or is that fortunately?) I'm not local to him, so I would have to devise something online... which shouldn't be a problem, just more prep is all.

 

Well I should be there in many years with the Chinese medicine heh. Just starting on that path. Not like he will be the last person with this scenerio though. Perhaps I can refer him out; he does have some trust issues though to say the least. I am definitely not a fan of western medicine either, but also I wouldn't tell someone else to avoid it. I more recommended he get therapy than see a psychiatrist though, as those tend to favor prescriptions and not as much figuring out the core issues. On a side note, I find it fascinating that the ghost points in acupuncture help with mental illness and/or actual spirits (or at least that is my very very limited understanding of such things at this time).

 

Btw, what is zhangfu? Google wasn't helpful... .

 

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Btw, what is zhangfu? Google wasn't helpful... .

 

Google comes up with a question, "Did you mean: Zhang Fu" which I didn't, but a couple of links down comes up with:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zang-fu

 

So the simple, but very misleading answer is that zhangfu are the "organs" as conceived of in Chinese medicine. Why I didn't mean "Zhang Fu" is because Chinese like German runs words together to make new words, contrast the German Plattenspieler with the English record player, thus Zhangfu is the yin and yang organs, taken as a totality, not individually. Notice that the Wikipedia article then proceeds to hyphenate the Zhang and Fu, the Chinese characters, taken from the article are: simplified Chinese: 脏腑; traditional Chinese: 臟腑, notice any hyphens?

 

So when I say that anything that comes from the qi/zhangfu level I am saying that when qi, which is the medium of emotion, is generated by the pathological action of one or more of the zhangfu, it has taken on a life of its own, you might say, and looking for some "issue", or other type of psychological cause is a waste of time. That is why my analogy of treating gallstones with psychotherapy. In the case of anger that originates from liver qi stagnation, it is really what psychologists call free floating anger, it will build up like an electrical charge and then like lightning discharge in a suitable situation. Most people have learned to use these anger outbursts for social manipulation, which is why counseling can help to redirect them, but it will not directly undo the underlying cause. Rather what will happen is what is typical of counseling, people will keep on finding reasons for why they feel angry, counseling will go on for years, nothing will be accomplished, because the anger is not at something, it is like pus or gallstones generated by a pathological condition rooted in the zhangfu level.

 

Emotions generated by pathological organ patterns can be addressed by acupuncture, they can be addressed by meditation, but they are far more easily, effectively and most importantly quickly addressed through the relevant herbs, and in the case of people who are suicidal this quickness can mean the difference between life and death.

 

Emotions can be manifestations of shen/qi, for want of a better rendering, consciousness/energy, these lend themselves to counseling and meditation and can often be resolved in a satisfactory fashion through these means.

 

All of this is complex in practice and even the theory of zhangfu runs aground when most Westerners think about it because they usually start from a cultural meme created by Descartes a few centuries back which makes even pre-1600 Western thought hard to understand, much less Chinese medical theory. Obviously I don't have time to clarify all of these issues, but to give one example, even my use of shen/qi and qi/zhangfu is misleading because the cultural meme is mind/body, conceived of as radically different things, but in Chinese medical thought they are two poles of one whole which is functionally conceived of as shen/qi/zhangfu.

 

I hope that this is helpful.

 

There were some aspects of your first post which I also may comment on if I have time, but you asked for suggestions not a detailed critique.

 

All the best.

[Birch]

That was an excellent post Donald. Thank you very much for it.

As a sort of an example that I hope illustrates something like what you're referring to, I sometimes wake up in the morning with some amount of anxiety feelings and if I don't take the time to settle myself before getting up, it can really affect the day that follows on a mental level. I will think different things. Reasons for being anxious.

 

 

I noticed that on days I let myself go back to sleep, I'd wake up the second time in much less anxious state. And if I just sleep in altogether and get up late then no anxiety at all. Nice chill day:-)

 

So the other thread about cortisol got me curious. I looked about for information on cortisol levels upon awakening and it does seem to suggest they are higher very early in the morning. There's other stuff about blood-glucose being an issue at the same time (because you've basically fasted for several hours).

 

I've been trying quite hard to better understand the directions of influence of mind/body. It seems our current setup promotes 'mind over matter' more often than the reverse. So someone might have adverse mental events due to undetected diabetes (which was what sprung to mind when I thought of the person the OP was talking about) but current psychological treatment would miss it entirely.

 

---opinion etc--

[Warrior Body Buddha Mind]

What tailsmans u using, who taught you and what sect?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

-K-, I am glad that you found my post useful and interesting. I hope that other people do also.

 

I've been trying quite hard to better understand the directions of influence of mind/body. It seems our current setup promotes 'mind over matter' more often than the reverse. So someone might have adverse mental events due to undetected diabetes (which was what sprung to mind when I thought of the person the OP was talking about) but current psychological treatment would miss it entirely. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

As I mentioned Western thinking about mind/body was significantly messed up in the 17^th Century by Rene Descartes. The phrase "mind over matter" and a related one, "ghost in the machine", arise because of Descartes and are symptoms of a condition that I call "closet Cartesianism" which is pandemic in Western Culture and subverts any society strongly influenced by modern Western thought, which is almost everyone these days. I started to write more about it, but decided I didn't want to take this thread too far into a long digression. Maybe some other time and place.

 

In Chinese medicine the influence goes both ways, shen/consciousness to zhangfu/Organs by way of the luo/meridians through which the qi circulates, so "mental" states can over time create organ imbalances of greater or less seriousness, but organ states can influence mind/emotion states right away.

 

People are always making judgements based on unconscious opinions, they tend at the very least when thinking about these things to import the mind/body dichotomy into "nervous system"/organs and think that because the organs are not a part of the nervous system they cannot influence emotions, but this is really old fashioned thinking, even among the people who have brought up neuro-plasticity. I think of the body as a "section" of an entity that consists of at least four dimensions, like a conic section is a slice out of a cone, the body can be thought of as a "slice" out of a hyper-sphere, and more importantly it obeys the holographic principle, traditionally the Microcosm/Macrocosm relation, in that everything is reflected in everything else and information is exchanged in many ways throughout the system, chemical, electrical, and other ways, some of which science doesn't even know about yet. The liver is thus reflected in the brain whether one wants to believe it or not. This is much more inline with traditional Chinese views, such as were given expression by Mencius who said "all the 10,000 things are there within me".

 

In traditional Chinese cosmology everything is a modification of qi, as guided by li. principle (理). This is called liqi (理氣) and is in some ways very similar to Aristotle's hylomorphic theory. Shen is the most refined qi, and jing, which is the source of the organs the most dense, and that is part of the key to thinking about the relation between organs and consciousness. Anything less dense has trouble influencing something more dense, that doesn't mean that it can't, only that special techniques are needed, but it may be easier to simple influence the dense with the dense, thus the use of herbs in mental states that are rooted in the zhangfu or "organ" level.

 

Your example, "undetected diabetes", is a good one because diabetes is an extreme manifestation of zhangfu imbalance which may be headed off by appropriate traditional Chinese treatments. The zhangfu imbalance will be obvious long before the person goes into insulin shock, but Western medicine cannot spot it before it has reached a very advanced stage.

 

One final note, I used zhangfu instead of organ level in my earlier post because I wished to avoid misunderstandings which can arise from using "organ" with its immediately reductive implications. I have seen posts on Tao Bms criticizing Chinese medicine to "reducing" emotions to the organs. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that doesn't stop people from projecting their own reductive tendencies on to it. I regret any confusion that may have arisen from using zhangfu. Attempting to avoid one type of confusion I may have unwittingly created another.

 

All of the above is a very quick outline and may not be as clear or comprehensive as anyone reading it might wish, but I hope that it is helpful and suggestive.

[BaguaKicksAss]

Google comes up with a question, "Did you mean: Zhang Fu" which I didn't, but a couple of links down comes up with:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zang-fu

 

So the simple, but very misleading answer is that zhangfu are the "organs" as conceived of in Chinese medicine. Why I didn't mean "Zhang Fu" is because Chinese like German runs words together to make new words, contrast the German Plattenspieler with the English record player, thus Zhangfu is the yin and yang organs, taken as a totality, not individually. Notice that the Wikipedia article then proceeds to hyphenate the Zhang and Fu, the Chinese characters, taken from the article are: simplified Chinese: 脏腑; traditional Chinese: 臟腑, notice any hyphens?

 

So when I say that anything that comes from the qi/zhangfu level I am saying that when qi, which is the medium of emotion, is generated by the pathological action of one or more of the zhangfu, it has taken on a life of its own, you might say, and looking for some "issue", or other type of psychological cause is a waste of time. That is why my analogy of treating gallstones with psychotherapy. In the case of anger that originates from liver qi stagnation, it is really what psychologists call free floating anger, it will build up like an electrical charge and then like lightning discharge in a suitable situation. Most people have learned to use these anger outbursts for social manipulation, which is why counseling can help to redirect them, but it will not directly undo the underlying cause. Rather what will happen is what is typical of counseling, people will keep on finding reasons for why they feel angry, counseling will go on for years, nothing will be accomplished, because the anger is not at something, it is like pus or gallstones generated by a pathological condition rooted in the zhangfu level.

 

Emotions generated by pathological organ patterns can be addressed by acupuncture, they can be addressed by meditation, but they are far more easily, effectively and most importantly quickly addressed through the relevant herbs, and in the case of people who are suicidal this quickness can mean the difference between life and death.

 

Emotions can be manifestations of shen/qi, for want of a better rendering, consciousness/energy, these lend themselves to counseling and meditation and can often be resolved in a satisfactory fashion through these means.

 

All of this is complex in practice and even the theory of zhangfu runs aground when most Westerners think about it because they usually start from a cultural meme created by Descartes a few centuries back which makes even pre-1600 Western thought hard to understand, much less Chinese medical theory. Obviously I don't have time to clarify all of these issues, but to give one example, even my use of shen/qi and qi/zhangfu is misleading because the cultural meme is mind/body, conceived of as radically different things, but in Chinese medical thought they are two poles of one whole which is functionally conceived of as shen/qi/zhangfu.

 

I hope that this is helpful.

 

There were some aspects of your first post which I also may comment on if I have time, but you asked for suggestions not a detailed critique.

 

All the best.

 

This makes me wish that my friend who had gall stones had gone to his chinese Dr. (I recommended he try it out) for longer than a month... He opted to just have the gall bladder removed instead. It will be interesting to see any personality changes. On a side note he is a very very angry person.

 

It is interesting how much interplay goes on here. Also interesting to note why therapy only goes so far for more people. It sounds like the organs if not healthy can lead the emotions and psyche to be unhealthy, but then the emotions and psyche being unhealthy making the organs worse; a viscious cycle!

[BaguaKicksAss]

What tailsmans u using, who taught you and what sect?

 

.

[BaguaKicksAss]

To prove that internal organs affect emotions, just do too many of one particular ogan out of any of the qigong organ sets! Or at least so I found surprisingly and accidentally .

[Zhongyongdaoist]

This makes me wish that my friend who had gall stones had gone to his chinese Dr. (I recommended he try it out) for longer than a month... He opted to just have the gall bladder removed instead. It will be interesting to see any personality changes. On a side note he is a very very angry person.

 

It is interesting how much interplay goes on here. Also interesting to note why therapy only goes so far for more people. It sounds like the organs if not healthy can lead the emotions and psyche to be unhealthy, but then the emotions and psyche being unhealthy making the organs worse; a viscious cycle!

 

Had gall stones: This is the key phrase, gallstones can be excruciatingly painful, I can't blame someone for getting impatient. The Chinese do have medicines that will dissolve gallstones, "Chinese herbal formulas can successfully reduce or dissolve gallstones and prevent gallbladder surgery" (Jake Paul Fratkin, p. 682, Chinese Herbal Patent Medicines; the Clinical Desk Reference, Shya Publications, 2001), but they run into problems with FDA and other regulations. As a piece of operating room humor, if not gallows humor, I have wryly noted that, "by the time people seek out alternative medicine, there is no alternative."

 

the gall bladder removed: So much for him ever practicing Thunder Magic.

 

It will be interesting to see any personality changes: You shouldn't expect any. The Gallbladder is considered to be the Liver's release valve, with this gone there is no natural way for the Liver Damp heat which is the root of his problem to escape. Sadly in the long run his symptoms will just shift to another organ, possibilities include high blood pressure, which he may have had already, turning into a stroke. There are other possibilities too...let's not go there.

 

Don't show him any of this, he may get very very angry.

 

They are basically folk magic based talismans which I have been taught how to make, and usually work amazingly well.

 

Ah, the joys of folk magic! When you mentioned in your first post, your student buying graveyard dust, I thought this might be the case, though Chinese sorcerer's use spirits of the dead, so I wasn't sure. Circa 1980 I spent a lot of time studying and practicing "folk magic" within the context of Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy, because book one is on Natural Magic, where it forms an important part of practice. I have much more respect for the magical abilities of a good folk magician, if they come from a real tradition, rather than modern revivals, than I do for the vast majority of modern "magicians". Lacking any understanding of Western thought before 1600 they ignore some of the most valuable, fun and powerful aspects of the magical tradition. Oh well, their loss not mine!

[Birch]

-K-, I am glad that you found my post useful and interesting. I hope that other people do also.

 

 

 

As I mentioned Western thinking about mind/body was significantly messed up in the 17^th Century by Rene Descartes. The phrase "mind over matter" and a related one, "ghost in the machine", arise because of Descartes and are symptoms of a condition that I call "closet Cartesianism" which is pandemic in Western Culture and subverts any society strongly influenced by modern Western thought, which is almost everyone these days. I started to write more about it, but decided I didn't want to take this thread too far into a long digression. Maybe some other time and place.

 

In Chinese medicine the influence goes both ways, shen/consciousness to zhangfu/Organs by way of the luo/meridians through which the qi circulates, so "mental" states can over time create organ imbalances of greater or less seriousness, but organ states can influence mind/emotion states right away.

 

People are always making judgements based on unconscious opinions, they tend at the very least when thinking about these things to import the mind/body dichotomy into "nervous system"/organs and think that because the organs are not a part of the nervous system they cannot influence emotions, but this is really old fashioned thinking, even among the people who have brought up neuro-plasticity. I think of the body as a "section" of an entity that consists of at least four dimensions, like a conic section is a slice out of a cone, the body can be thought of as a "slice" out of a hyper-sphere, and more importantly it obeys the holographic principle, traditionally the Microcosm/Macrocosm relation, in that everything is reflected in everything else and information is exchanged in many ways throughout the system, chemical, electrical, and other ways, some of which science doesn't even know about yet. The liver is thus reflected in the brain whether one wants to believe it or not. This is much more inline with traditional Chinese views, such as were given expression by Mencius who said "all the 10,000 things are there within me".

 

In traditional Chinese cosmology everything is a modification of qi, as guided by li. principle (理). This is called liqi (理氣) and is in some ways very similar to Aristotle's hylomorphic theory. Shen is the most refined qi, and jing, which is the source of the organs the most dense, and that is part of the key to thinking about the relation between organs and consciousness. Anything less dense has trouble influencing something more dense, that doesn't mean that it can't, only that special techniques are needed, but it may be easier to simple influence the dense with the dense, thus the use of herbs in mental states that are rooted in the zhangfu or "organ" level.

 

Your example, "undetected diabetes", is a good one because diabetes is an extreme manifestation of zhangfu imbalance which may be headed off by appropriate traditional Chinese treatments. The zhangfu imbalance will be obvious long before the person goes into insulin shock, but Western medicine cannot spot it before it has reached a very advanced stage.

 

One final note, I used zhangfu instead of organ level in my earlier post because I wished to avoid misunderstandings which can arise from using "organ" with its immediately reductive implications. I have seen posts on Tao Bms criticizing Chinese medicine to "reducing" emotions to the organs. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that doesn't stop people from projecting their own reductive tendencies on to it. I regret any confusion that may have arisen from using zhangfu. Attempting to avoid one type of confusion I may have unwittingly created another.

 

All of the above is a very quick outline and may not be as clear or comprehensive as anyone reading it might wish, but I hope that it is helpful and suggestive.

 

Thank you Donald, very helpful indeed! At one point during practice I (misunderstood, I now think) the concept of 'Gates' to be specific points at which Shen/qi/jing - or as I sort if had it (yes I know wrongly but I didn't bother differentiating 'mind' from the larger consciouness it's in) 'mind/body' had more effective flow between them.

 

The emphasis (too much) I was putting on the mind affecting organs was running me ragged. You, know, since 'stress' now seems to cause everything, I was getting stressed about being too stressed out hahaha.

[BaguaKicksAss]

Had gall stones: This is the key phrase, gallstones can be excruciatingly painful, I can't blame someone for getting impatient. The Chinese do have medicines that will dissolve gallstones, "Chinese herbal formulas can successfully reduce or dissolve gallstones and prevent gallbladder surgery" (Jake Paul Fratkin, p. 682, Chinese Herbal Patent Medicines; the Clinical Desk Reference, Shya Publications, 2001), but they run into problems with FDA and other regulations. As a piece of operating room humor, if not gallows humor, I have wryly noted that, "by the time people seek out alternative medicine, there is no alternative."

 

the gall bladder removed: So much for him ever practicing Thunder Magic.

 

It will be interesting to see any personality changes: You shouldn't expect any. The Gallbladder is considered to be the Liver's release valve, with this gone there is no natural way for the Liver Damp heat which is the root of his problem to escape. Sadly in the long run his symptoms will just shift to another organ, possibilities include high blood pressure, which he may have had already, turning into a stroke. There are other possibilities too...let's not go there.

 

Don't show him any of this, he may get very very angry.

 

 

Ah, the joys of folk magic! When you mentioned in your first post, your student buying graveyard dust, I thought this might be the case, though Chinese sorcerer's use spirits of the dead, so I wasn't sure. Circa 1980 I spent a lot of time studying and practicing "folk magic" within the context of Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy, because book one is on Natural Magic, where it forms an important part of practice. I have much more respect for the magical abilities of a good folk magician, if they come from a real tradition, rather than modern revivals, than I do for the vast majority of modern "magicians". Lacking any understanding of Western thought before 1600 they ignore some of the most valuable, fun and powerful aspects of the magical tradition. Oh well, their loss not mine!

 

My friend with the gall stones really really wanted to go another route and NOT get it out, that is why it is unfortunate. Here we have no trouble with the FDA (well aside from not being america I mean, we have our own version). Basically we have many many chinese herb stores around here, with chinese doctors who work there. Basically seeing the Dr. is free as long as you purchase your herbs from there (and I think around $10 if you don't). We have a very large asian population here. Perhaps 20 such stores in chinatown alone. Anyways, I have never had success with western medicine, and found that the chinese medicine works REALLY well for me. So upon seeing my success with them, sometimes friends will try it out, but they don't stick with it long enough unfortunately.

Edited January 12, 2014 by BaguaKicksAss