greek myth regarding self healing

From The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What i am saying here of the relationship between grace and mental illness is beautifully embodied in the Greek myth of Orestes and the Furies.
Orestes was a grandson of Atreus, a man who had viciously attempted to prove himself more powerful than the gods.
Because of his crime against them, the gods punished Atreus by placing a curse upon all his descendants.
As part of the enactment of this curse upon the House of Atreus, Orestes' mother, Clytemnestra, murdered his father and her husband, Agamemnon.

This crime in turn brought down the curse upon Orestes' head, because of the Greek code of honor, a son was obliged, above all else, to slay his father's murderer.
Yet the greatest sin a greek could commit was the sin of matricide.
Orestes agonized over his dilemma. Finally he did what he seemingly had to do and killed his mother. For this sin the gods then punished Orestes by visiting upon him
the Furies - three ghastly harpies who could be seen and heard only by him and who tormented him night and day with thier cacking criticism and frightening appearance.

Persued wherever he went by the Furies, Orestes wandered about the land seeking to atone for his crime.
After many years of lonely reflection and self-abrogation, Orestes requested the gods to relieve him of his curse on the House of Ateus
and its visitations upon him through the Furies, stating his belief that he had succeeded in atoning for the murder of his mother.

A trial was held by the gods. Speaking in Orestes' defense, Apollo argued that he had engineered the whole situation
that had placed Orestes in the position in which he had no choice but to kill his mother, and therefore Orestes really could not be held responsible.
At this point Orestes jumped up and contradicted his own defender, stating, "It was I, not Apollo, that murdered my mother!"
The gods were amazed. Never before had a member of the House of Atreus assumed such total responsibility for himself and not blamed the gods.
Eventually the gods decided the trial in Orestes' favor, and not only relieved him of the curse upon the house of Atreus,
but also transformed the Furies into the Eumenides - loving spirits who through their wise counsel, enabled Orestes to obtain continuing good fortune.

The meaning of this myth is not obscure. The Eumenides, or 'benignant ones', are also referred to as the 'bearers of grace'.
The hallucinatory Furies, who could be perceived only by Orestes, represent his symptoms, the private hell of mental illness.
The transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides is the transformation of mental illness into good fortune, of which we have been speaking.
This transformation occured by virtue of the fact that Orestes was willing to accept responsibility for his mental illness.

While he ultimately sought to be relieved of them, he did not see the Furies as an unjust punishment or perceive himself to be a victim of society or of anything else.
Being an inevitable result of the original curse upon the House of Atreus, the Furies also symbolize the fact that mental illness is a family affair,
created in one by one's parents and grandparents, as the sins of the father are visited upon his children.

But Orestes did not blame his family - his parents or his grandfather, as he well might have.
Nor did he blame the gods or 'fate'. Instead, he accepted his condition as one of his own making and undertook the effort to heal it.
it was a lengthy process, just as most therapy tends to be lengthy.
But as a result, he was healed, and through this healing process of his own effort,
the very things that had once caused him agony became the same things that brought him wisdom.

All experienced psychotherapists have seen this myth acted out in their own practices and have actually witnessed
the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides within the minds and lives of their more successful patients.
It is not an easy transformation. As soon as they realize that they will ultimately be required by the process of psychotherapy
to assume total responsibility for their condition and its cure, most patients, no matter how eager for therapy they initially appeared to be, will drop out.

They choose rather to be sick and have the gods to blame than to be well with no one to blame ever again.
Of the minority who stay in therapy, most must still be taught to assume total responsibility for themselves as part of their healing.
This teaching - 'training' might be a more accurate word, is a painstaking affair as the therapist methodically confronts patients
with their avoidance of responsibility again and again and again, session after session, month after month, and often year after year.

Frequently, like stubborn children, they will kick and scream all the way as they are led to the notion of total responsibility for themselves.
Eventually however, they arrive.
It is only the rare patient who enters therapy with a willingness to assume total responsibility from the beginning.
Therapy in such caees, while it still may require a year or two, is relatively brief, relatively smooth,
and frequently a very pleasant process for both pateint and therpaist.
In any case, whether relatively easy or difficult and prolonged, the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides does occur.

Those who have faced their mental illness, accepted total responsibility for it, and made necessary changes in themselves to overcome it,
find themselves not only cured and free from the curses of their childhood and ancestry, but also find themselves living in a new and different world.
What they once perceived as problems they now percieve as opportunities.
What were once loathsome barriers are now welcome changes.

Thoughts previously unwanted become helpful insights; feelings previously disowned become sources of energy and guidance.
Occurances that once seemed to be burdens now seem to be gifts, including the very symptoms from which they have recovered.
"My depression and my anxiety attacks were the best things that ever happened to me", they will routinely say at the termination of successful therapy.
Even if they emerge from therapy without a belief in God, such successful patients still generally do so with a very real sense that they have been touched by grace.

Orestes did not go to a psychotherpaist, he healed himself.
And even had there been expert therapists in ancient Greece, he still would have had to heal himself.
For as has been mentioned, psychotherapy is only a tool - a discipline.

END.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aka, therapy is any form one uses to sort their inner issues, and a therapist is the one who does this, aka self can be a therapist to oneself.

That resonates with a me a great deal today - thank you

[Mr Interesting]

What I've been doing lately is somewhat con-current, as well it might be, with what you are desribing here Alternate Carpark though I am taking a somewhat different angle which might or might not serve me in the long run... but I'm willing to look into it as it feels that it's an interesting course - at the moment!

I heartily agree that the sum total of that which binds us is both a wide and deep combination of all sorts of possible causes which can range from within this life, be also of the life that travels through bone blood and sinew, while at the same time being of the nature of past lives and also con-current realities played out in what might be termed parallel universes... which tends to be rather alot!

But in saying that theres also the idea that what's closest to us has the most... what's the word? ah, relevance, and as the distance widens the echoes become fainter but in those quietist echoes we could sometimes find, or even just feel (which may be enough) the kernel of a thing.

And above and beyond all of it, yes indeed, a sense of responsibility that admits a responsibility - an ownership of sorts that allows the sum total of what is us to be the unique and complex flavours that have all come together over ages and eons to be the us of now.

Which is all somewhat daunting... sort of, but is also something we can sort of stand back from and see as a great and beautiful composition that while being us also isn't us.

It's like a big painting we've been working on and at the beginning we made some mistakes, things we thought were right at the time, but now in hindsight they somehow send ripples through the whole picture and we know we have to go back and change those bits... but the odd thing is that we don't mind because we're no longer measuring the sense of ourselves by the finished product... we picked up the Zen thing along the way, and it's the doing that count's and we've also realised those blemishes carry a certain beauty no amount of control could ever replicate - that naivety was, and still is, a beauty that carries it own torch. So we don't altogether rub out what we were, we try to be true to the essence of the thing but we empathically reframe the time and the place to help it be a part of the whole picture so while it's regret may be gone the honesty of it is still there.

So while it starts off as the ownership of a thing it ends up more like guardianship... maybe!

Originally Posted by Alternate Carpark

From The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What i am saying here of the relationship between grace and mental illness is beautifully embodied in the Greek myth of Orestes and the Furies.
Orestes was a grandson of Atreus, a man who had viciously attempted to prove himself more powerful than the gods.
Because of his crime against them, the gods punished Atreus by placing a curse upon all his descendants.
As part of the enactment of this curse upon the House of Atreus, Orestes' mother, Clytemnestra, murdered his father and her husband, Agamemnon.

This crime in turn brought down the curse upon Orestes' head, because of the Greek code of honor, a son was obliged, above all else, to slay his father's murderer.
Yet the greatest sin a greek could commit was the sin of matricide.
Orestes agonized over his dilemma. Finally he did what he seemingly had to do and killed his mother. For this sin the gods then punished Orestes by visiting upon him
the Furies - three ghastly harpies who could be seen and heard only by him and who tormented him night and day with thier cacking criticism and frightening appearance.

Persued wherever he went by the Furies, Orestes wandered about the land seeking to atone for his crime.
After many years of lonely reflection and self-abrogation, Orestes requested the gods to relieve him of his curse on the House of Ateus
and its visitations upon him through the Furies, stating his belief that he had succeeded in atoning for the murder of his mother.

A trial was held by the gods. Speaking in Orestes' defense, Apollo argued that he had engineered the whole situation
that had placed Orestes in the position in which he had no choice but to kill his mother, and therefore Orestes really could not be held responsible.
At this point Orestes jumped up and contradicted his own defender, stating, "It was I, not Apollo, that murdered my mother!"
The gods were amazed. Never before had a member of the House of Atreus assumed such total responsibility for himself and not blamed the gods.
Eventually the gods decided the trial in Orestes' favor, and not only relieved him of the curse upon the house of Atreus,
but also transformed the Furies into the Eumenides - loving spirits who through their wise counsel, enabled Orestes to obtain continuing good fortune.

The meaning of this myth is not obscure. The Eumenides, or 'benignant ones', are also referred to as the 'bearers of grace'.
The hallucinatory Furies, who could be perceived only by Orestes, represent his symptoms, the private hell of mental illness.
The transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides is the transformation of mental illness into good fortune, of which we have been speaking.
This transformation occured by virtue of the fact that Orestes was willing to accept responsibility for his mental illness.

While he ultimately sought to be relieved of them, he did not see the Furies as an unjust punishment or perceive himself to be a victim of society or of anything else.
Being an inevitable result of the original curse upon the House of Atreus, the Furies also symbolize the fact that mental illness is a family affair,
created in one by one's parents and grandparents, as the sins of the father are visited upon his children.

But Orestes did not blame his family - his parents or his grandfather, as he well might have.
Nor did he blame the gods or 'fate'. Instead, he accepted his condition as one of his own making and undertook the effort to heal it.
it was a lengthy process, just as most therapy tends to be lengthy.
But as a result, he was healed, and through this healing process of his own effort,
the very things that had once caused him agony became the same things that brought him wisdom.

All experienced psychotherapists have seen this myth acted out in their own practices and have actually witnessed
the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides within the minds and lives of their more successful patients.
It is not an easy transformation. As soon as they realize that they will ultimately be required by the process of psychotherapy
to assume total responsibility for their condition and its cure, most patients, no matter how eager for therapy they initially appeared to be, will drop out.

They choose rather to be sick and have the gods to blame than to be well with no one to blame ever again.
Of the minority who stay in therapy, most must still be taught to assume total responsibility for themselves as part of their healing.
This teaching - 'training' might be a more accurate word, is a painstaking affair as the therapist methodically confronts patients
with their avoidance of responsibility again and again and again, session after session, month after month, and often year after year.

Frequently, like stubborn children, they will kick and scream all the way as they are led to the notion of total responsibility for themselves.
Eventually however, they arrive.
It is only the rare patient who enters therapy with a willingness to assume total responsibility from the beginning.
Therapy in such caees, while it still may require a year or two, is relatively brief, relatively smooth,
and frequently a very pleasant process for both pateint and therpaist.
In any case, whether relatively easy or difficult and prolonged, the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides does occur.

Those who have faced their mental illness, accepted total responsibility for it, and made necessary changes in themselves to overcome it,
find themselves not only cured and free from the curses of their childhood and ancestry, but also find themselves living in a new and different world.
What they once perceived as problems they now percieve as opportunities.
What were once loathsome barriers are now welcome changes.

Thoughts previously unwanted become helpful insights; feelings previously disowned become sources of energy and guidance.
Occurances that once seemed to be burdens now seem to be gifts, including the very symptoms from which they have recovered.
"My depression and my anxiety attacks were the best things that ever happened to me", they will routinely say at the termination of successful therapy.
Even if they emerge from therapy without a belief in God, such successful patients still generally do so with a very real sense that they have been touched by grace.

Orestes did not go to a psychotherpaist, he healed himself.
And even had there been expert therapists in ancient Greece, he still would have had to heal himself.
For as has been mentioned, psychotherapy is only a tool - a discipline.

END.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aka, therapy is any form one uses to sort their inner issues, and a therapist is the one who does this, aka self can be a therapist to oneself.

We all have our roles to play in the grand scheme of the wonderful divine world we live in...each one contributing to bring us all to the space of our true essence.........even self to self...

You're welcome sesheta

Enjoyed reading your post Mr.I.
One clarification, the post is M.Scott Peck's words from his book, not mine.
everything between the "----------------" is his words.
And that you have seen what he was pointing to, taking responsibility for one's own life is one vital key to healing and transformation,
and no doubt you have accepted long before.

And regarding past lives, i don't concerm myself with such things, just with the life i know i have, this one.
To me past lives are theory only.
I only concerm myself with the problems of my current reality of now, not past or future, or other dimensions, etc.