'mental illness' as a maladjustment to reality

a reply to: gosseyn

All we can do is make sure that the map we use is as precise as possible.

I am rereading Eckhart Tolles The Power Of Now.

correction...I was rereading Eckhart Tolles the Power Of Now. yesterday, not now.

To make sure...sounds like like you fall into the same trap...You are projecting into the future...There cannot be a something to make sure of. I have not been studying this long but I have reached enlightenment. Oh wait I remember, yesterday I read that to speak of enlightenment means that you are not enlightened. But there is no yesterday, only the now, so therefore I am enlightened. Can I fall into the Abyss without self annihilation.

Living in the now calls for complete silence? Why am I on ATS?

a reply to: gosseyn

sanity

Another red herring, is that the correct term? How can someone be judged sane or insane if not from observations of the past of that individual.

a reply to: gosseyn

We have to have a point of reference that is not a process of the mind, otherwise what we call sanity could become insanity,

There was a time where homosexuality was considered an illness in the DSM V.
You yourself used a Paranoid in your OP. You cleverly labeled that person as paranoid. In the light of your post here what colour was that person painted? These are just words on a screen, but they are also thoughts arising in your mind. How is what you say not a space time disorder?

a reply to: gosseyn

But listen, I know you've placed your ego on the line here, you think there is something to "win", and it says more about your insecurity than anything else. So please, go post somewhere else, or if you insist then try to say something meaningful.

Wow talk about an ego-less "directive". Dismissive. There is no ego speaking here? Hmmm...are we even communicating.

Mental illness is what happens when you take sensitive, rational people and throw them in with the wolves this society has become.
The truly ill are the ones making the laws and the profits off the mental health industry

An interesting aspect of this is that mental illness is just as much physical, as it is mental.

For example, a schizophrenic could be considered the result of having such a complex intelligence, a schizophrenic hallucinates a telephone ringing when they hear rain, or they smell something really rancid after seeing a certain image, or laugh at nothing at all, and do nothing at all to something they would have usually found funny.

We can scain the brain of people suffering from these kinds of illnesses, and find anatamoical differences, especially chemical ones.

and with those arguing that reality is largely in our minds, are you saying truth is made up rather than found? Or are there several truths to be found?

This is not a hostile question, but the best argument against those who believe reality is 'what we make of it', is that we can't change the phsyical world without physical means. You can build an airplane to defy gravity, which perhaps is using your thoughts, you can't make gravity not exist simply by thinking it doesn't.

Schizophrenics who jump off of high places and injure themselves attest to this.