The post is part of the series: The Four Horsemen of Spiritual Ego.Am I compassionate enough? Have I experienced a satori? Have I had a kundalini awakening, or was that indigestion? Am I as Zen-like as I should be, considering how much I meditate? Am I betraying my divine essence by buying new clothes? Does my anger or lack of love and light make me a fraud? Welcome to the world of spiritual imposter syndrome, feelings of fraudulence in a spiritual context.
In Ideology and Insanity, Thomas Szasz expresses concern over classifying people with mental illness. Szasz noted how classifying a person has a direct influence over their self-image, and what they believe is possible. Decades later, research by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, captured in Mindfulness, shows the extent people unconsciously adapt their behaviour to their identity. We are what we think, and the concept becomes reality, a lens through which we see the world.
Synchronicity signals something significant unfolding. Usually, that significance is an emerging insight. But occasionally, personal synchronicities relate to collective emergence. Recently, these synchronicities related to a process I was going through with reframing mental illness. I read Thomas Szasz’s Ideology and Insanity, discovered by chance at a bookstore, weeks before a significant review was published, which argues there is “no convincing evidence” the chemical imbalance theory of depression is true.
As my head touched the pillow last night, and I entered the halfway house between waking and dreaming, I heard a whisper: “Thomas Aquinas.” Aquinas was an influential theologian whose work I’ve encountered over the years, yet never dived into. The echo of his name in my half-conscious state made me alert, intrigued. The whisper arrived again, along with a sense of ‘knowing’ that I was him in a previous life.
Systems theory is a science of complexity. Multiple fields have applied its principles for deeper understanding, including sociology, medicine, economics, psychology, physics, and engineering. I’m particularly interested in how it can make sense of individual, collective, and cosmic consciousness, to unite spirituality and science.