BEYOND DIAGNOSIS

If I diagnose you something, you come to believe something is wrong with you, and you need my help to be like me:....normal.   What is normal?  Was Christ normal?  Gandhi?  All the medicine women and men that live in jungles, reservations and cities?  Or Shamans?  Are Shamans normal?  What is normal?  A diagnosis labels you something that makes it easier for me to deal with you, 'cause you see things different than me.  And I can prescribe pills and medicines for you, so you stop sensing and hearing things that I do not sense or hear. 

Labeling children is a way to make them wrong.  That is what the educational system does around the world.  The expectation is that you will sit still, be quiet, raise your hand to go potty, and respect the authority...anyone but yourself.  If you want to move around, dance, sing, go outside, speak up, you are labeled.  That label sticks, and goes on your record, and you come to believe you are wrong.  You come to believe that others know better than you.  You grow up, become an adult person, and question yourself all the time, especially when "friends" find fault or judge you.  If you defend yourself, you are "in denial."  You are too defensive.  You are something other than wonderful 

The mental health systems generally needs to label you something.  Schools need to label you smart, dumb. need to improve, talk too much, or never quite good enough.  We learn this way of seeing people.  There are some people, that simply see people in a creative way, without  need to categorize or find a label for that person.

A diagnoses is a convenient way to make me feel comfortable around you....cause you see things differently or see more than I do.  We name call all the time.   Labeling, naming and diagnosing allow me to write you off based on the words, "She must be .....or he must be......or ...."
But, if I am aware I am doing this...I can release all my judgments, and labeling and then I can SEE you...who you are inside beyond your personality and behaviors.  If you kill someone, well, that is not good.  You may need to be put away somewhere.  But then, governments constantly send their armies to kill and bomb people they do not know or see.  
 
Who are those people that judge others to be crazy?   Does a uniform worn by an uniformed person justify destroying people and cities?   Who creates these labels for others?   Who is this human teacher sitting in a classroom making the children compete against each other, and deciding who is good and who is bad?  So, for now, what happens for me, if I decide to notice how I am judging people, and instead release them without my needing to box them in?  

The people most influential in my life, have been those who see who I am inside, despite my personality or weird behaviors?   No naming, labeling or diagnosing, allows me to simply be with you without having to neatly place you in some category. 

Part II of this lecture will come later.  But for now, I must take my wondrous self outside and harass people different from me...which is most of them.  I don't know why God created people so different from me.  Must have been a gross error on her part.