From Breakdown to Breakthrough ~ the crazy truth of spiritual emergence (intro excerpt)

We heal as a collective human family when we pay attention to the truth of people’s experience. This requires that we hear each other. Just as we have begun to do for specific social groups that suffer stigmatization and mistreatment, it is way beyond time we give people who have experienced the most extreme social neglect our full attention.

A movement to radially reorient our approach to this neglected group is now due.

I’d like to initiate that movement by placing attention and focus on the need for social change when it comes to how we speak and think about those deemed insane. With our use of language, each of us has the power to directly improve the treatment of those suffering with illness and/or struggling with transformation. The power resides in a willingness to change the words you use to reference those you do not understand.

In writing this book I aim to contribute my voice to develop a foundation for a growing chorus of voices who care enough to say: hey everyone…stop and pay attention to your family members and friends, your neighbors with homes and without. Go beyond the separation, the stigma of diagnosis and become curious about what people actually experience. Challenge what you’ve been told to believe about the experience of others. Challenge the status quo method of casting people off as crazy. 

To understand is perhaps our most valuable human exchange. To understand, we begin by questioning. Question your unconscious conclusions and our collective measures of insanity. Check in with your heart and allow yourself to wonder why a distinct group of people have been identified with illness and stigmatized as less than. Wonder why so few of us seem to care. 

Our mental healthcare system is in need of a radical overhaul in terms of the treatment it offers.

It is my hope that more of us will align in willingness to engage change when it comes to mental, emotional and spiritual health.