Psychosis and Spiritual Growth. The Right to Be Yourself.
Hello everyone! This post focuses on our self‑perception through the lens of spiritual growth. The specific aspect explored here is the suffering that arises along our path.
Disclaimer!
In this post, I will speak extensively about suppressed emotions, and I will touch on suicidal thoughts and depression. I will discuss the problems that emerge when our soul seeks to know the truth about itself, but runs into the limitations we ourselves have created.
I am not imposing my views. Whether you integrate the information from this post into your own life experience is entirely your choice.
I have no intention of offending anyone's faith or religion. I am not encouraging anyone to change their beliefs in favor of something else, nor am I forcing anyone to agree with me or take my word for it. Our life experiences may differ greatly. Each of us will have their own perspective on this and that is absolutely normal.
I am not a clinician — I am an occultist studying psychology. I have no intention of triggering anyone's trauma with this post. I will not give instructions on how to deal with any kind of trauma. Please, if you feel that these topics might trigger you, reach out to a professional psychologist for support.
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Classically, we don't turn to magic or religion when everything is going well. We usually stumble upon it by accident, precisely at a time when we are going through various kinds of emotional suffering. Buddhism — an Eastern teaching that has spread widely into Western culture — teaches us that the root of our suffering lies in attachment to life and to material desires, which in turn gives rise to reactions such as aversion to anything unpleasant.
A person raised in Western culture — taught from childhood that the root of their suffering is the cross they must bear, the guilt they must feel for original sin — often finds Eastern religions attractive. Because they are unfamiliar. Because they seem to offer an entirely different perspective on the human being, the soul, and spirituality. And that is true: despite the fact that we are all human beings, equal in our essence (if we strip away all prejudices), our culture cultivates a different perception of the same thing within us. And here, it becomes very difficult not to adopt the idea that you are told: enough to let go of attachment to life, to your ego — and you will stop suffering. The idea of immersing yourself in the unknown seems to give us the right to freedom, the right to lose the familiar chains imposed on you by your own society.
A person begins to suppress their desire for material goods, suppress their aggression, forbid themselves from grieving, but instead of the expected clarity, lightness, and light of love, they are overtaken by psychosis. The attempt to escape old systems and old suffering has only given birth to even greater suffering.
To understand how this happened, we need to look at what the ego is, why we need it, and what different religious teachings tell us to do with it.
The Ego is one of the components of our psyche according to psychoanalysis. While the Id is responsible for our unconscious, and the Superego — for the culture we grow up in, the rules of behavior we absorb from society — the Ego is our Self. It is the connecting link between our inner world and, let's say, the inner critic that helps us regulate ourselves in society. In essence, the Ego is formed when the Superego influences the Id.
The Ego provides us with contact between the inner and outer worlds. The Ego gives us an understanding of where I end and the Other begins. The Ego is the point that helps us feel ourselves in space and time. The Ego is the structure that possesses the tools for perceiving the world. The Ego is the conscious part through which we can come to know both the Id (through dreams or mistakes) and the Superego (through feelings of guilt and perfectionism).
If we remove the Ego from this chain, we lose everything altogether. This alone makes it clear that the Ego is not simply a desire for certain benefits that causes us to suffer. The Ego is the awareness of oneself as a separate individual, it is our will, it is the full spectrum of our feelings.
Where, then, does our right to our Self disappear? Let's return to religions and look at how they teach us to perceive ourselves.
The teachings of the Abrahamic religions share a similar structure: there is a single God the Creator, who gave humanity free will, but with this freedom, a person must always choose to return to God, to choose voluntary servitude. Otherwise, they choose sin, for which they will be punished by God. This is a deeply patriarchal, deeply authoritarian system. We transfer this "ruler-subject" dynamic not only into our relationship with God, but also into our relationships within society. In this way, any authority figure — be it a parent, public opinion, or a state leader — is seen as holding divine authority, the divine power to dominate and command.
These relationships are sustained by the idea that only the authority figure is entitled to their own will. The subordinate, by contrast, possesses no will of their own (and in this, they find their own benefit: "If I submit to authority, I don't have to worry about any problems — authority provides me with all the benefits". What they fail to realize is that the real problem is the inability to manifest their own Self, because it has been sacrificed. The presence of a benefit does not make the "slave position" a free choice. By finding advantage in this situation, a person is simply adapting to their environment.) Thus, inequality is created — the essential condition for the existence of this system. The subordinate acts solely within the bounds of the authority's will; otherwise, they will be punished. In this system, where we entrust our will entirely to others, we lose our subjectivity. When we say “love your neighbor,” it implies: “my love does not belong to me, I have no right to direct it toward myself, because I am not considered a person.” Loving oneself is seen as a sin and is punished — not because it is inherently terrible, but because, through self‑love, we reclaim our right to personhood and our own will. And this is precisely what the authoritarian order cannot allow.
In a system where we see authority punish those who dare to love themselves, we internalize the association that "egoism (regarding yourself as a person!) — is a feeling that must be suppressed." When a person encounters the idea "Suppress your ego, and you will no longer suffer," they end up suppressing an entire structure of their psyche. Unexpressed will, aggression, desires — including the ability to feel joy, pleasure, and love — are all suppressed and driven deep into the unconscious. The feelings remain, but we come to understand that they are no longer accessible to us. They will haunt us in dreams, or manifest as passive aggression; but precisely because we cannot claim the right to feel and live through these processes, we fall into dissociation, psychosis, a loss of the sense of reality, a feeling that our body is unreal, or even hallucinations.
I tend to believe that our souls incarnate on earth in material bodies in order to study and live through material experience. Material experience includes the exploration of one's identity within society, and with it, all the accompanying feelings, whether aggression or love. Buddhist teachings, on the other hand, convey the idea that our material sensations are illusory. By choosing this path, a person learns to dissolve all reactions tied to material perception.
I am not a Buddhist monk, so I won't teach you how they achieve this. What matters here is something else: this process happens neither through suppression, nor through literally acting on every desire you think you have. By adopting the idea of renunciation while still living in the material world, we only distort this philosophical teaching: trying to find freedom while wishing to remain within a system of self‑restriction. As Erich Fromm put it: man lives by the principle of self‑restriction, but thinks from the standpoint of self‑interest.
We still need quality food, comfortable clothing, a good education, and housing — all of which require money. And here we encounter a reinterpretation of the teaching that no longer supports us on our path, but rather devalues our suffering, saying: "You could stop suffering if you just stopped feeling like a person."
We fall into depression, because, in the end, once we are brought to this state, our soul, figuratively speaking, finds it easier to destroy the body, finally freeing itself from all the material limitations it once chose to place itself within. Our physical body limits the soul's possibilities — and the death of the body sets it free.
If we hold the view that the soul incarnates on Earth to experience material life, then by forbidding ourselves to feel, we are in fact insulting the desires of our own soul. That is why I find it completely illogical to constantly blame and stigmatize each other with things like “You’re not spiritual enough because you feel anger and enjoy sex.” Such judgments only suppress desire, and as we have already seen, they don’t make it disappear; on the contrary, they lead to mental distress.
I’m not going to justify all the hardships in your life by saying “your soul chose them itself”, because that is a very sensitive and personal matter. It is a question of responsibility that could be discussed at much greater length. Perhaps it is true, but we can never be completely sure. And even if it is, this thought can give rise to resentment at feeling like a “puppet of fate,” or guilt for believing that “I am actually to blame for everything.” But what I want to say is this: all kinds of situations — and the full spectrum of feelings that accompany them — are part of material life that we cannot deny, ignore, or suppress. Our souls are interested in this spectrum; otherwise, they would be occupied with something else, somewhere else entirely. We can only learn to experience it, and learn to direct our will within it. We cannot know our own will until we reclaim our own feelings. And we will never know the power of our healing love if we keep pushing the destructive force of aggression deeper inside.
Thus, knowing yourself through the elimination of the Ego is a total contradiction. Self‑knowledge on your spiritual path is possible only when you reclaim your agency, reclaiming your will and your right to experience the full spectrum of your feelings.
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Thank you for reading! I would be glad if you shared your thoughts or your experience. Feel free to check out my blog — here I write about occultism and psychology 🤍
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Painting: "The Sirens, 1892" by John Longstaff
