Today we talked about our personal and social psychoses as being an opportunity for spiritual growth if we can understand and deal with them in that way. The way that indigenous cultures found their shaman was to find the people in their midst who heard voices or saw things no one else could see. To understand this better we spoke with local shaman Tommy Hopkins. Our intention is to start a conversation about the possibility that what is going on in the larger world right now is the outward sign of a social psychosis that could precede a spiritual awakening.

We also listened to a TED talk by the social documentary photographer Phil Borges:

If you’re interested in seeing more of Phil Borges’ projects or learning more about Adam (featured in the TED talk) go to Phil’s website and review his Crazywise project: http://www.philborges.com/crazywise. Phil has a documentary on mental health on this page that is worth watching – just select the link for each segment in sequence to see the entire documentary.

Phil also says in his talk that what originally helped Adam to get off of the drugs was a Vipassana meditation retreat. For more information about Vipassana meditation or to check out the retreat centre in Merritt, BC which offers free 10 day retreats: http://www.surabhi.dhamma.org/. You can find many other locations for retreats in British Columbia on the BCalm website: http://www.bcalm.ca/resources/mindfulness-retreat-opportunities/.

Here is the TED talk by Eleanor Longden who suffered from voices and learned to heal herself by using the information provided by them to access her own inner feelings: