I imagined you many times as I sat at my desk in Raumati, early in the morning, looking out to Kapiti Island, thinking about this talk. I tried to see your faces. Look in your eyes. I wanted to know who I’d be talking to. I wanted to know what spirituality meant to you.

Sometimes, I spirited you over. My imaginary audience. I brought you onto the beach where I live and together we looked at Kapiti for inspiration. So if any of you got a strange tingle of being somewhere else recently…

Sometimes, as I worked on the talk I felt I got to know you, even though we hadn’t met. I thought about how some of you would be coming from a long way away, like me. Some of you would be here alone, maybe not knowing many people. Others would be meeting up with old friends the moment you arrived.

I thought who are we, these people going to Vancouver? Why are we getting together? A group of survivors, family and friends, psychiatrists, nurses, researchers. Every one of us here has the capacity to hurt and be hurt, to heal and be healed. Would we be able to acknowledge that? Would we be able to communicate with each other meaningfully at this conference?

I so hoped we would share more than just information and knowledge. I hoped we would take the risk of relating our experiences to each other – our uncertainties and fears, our discoveries and dreams, our deepest insights about mental health. Because then, we would really connect with each other – on an individual and international level. That way, we would enter the realm of healing for ourselves, each other and the mental health system itself.

2: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIGNS

Photograph. Rooftop at Assisi, 1987.

We look for a sense of connection, with ourselves, others, and the universe.

I will take a risk right now and tell you that I felt I was called to give this talk, and I don’t mean by Professor Roy phoning New Zealand from Canada!

We don’t use words like vocation much any more. Smacks of missionary zeal. Not cool. To say one is called to do something seems grandiose, pretentious. Ideas of reference, perhaps? Yet many of us look for signs. Especially when we are lost. Or we just notice them, when we make the space to do so. Seeing signs can give us a sense of personal significance, personal meaning in life. They spell out our sense of connection with the universe.

There were so many coincidences surrounding my invitation. Things far beyond my control and far beyond my imagination. Jung and Koestler would have been in their element[2]! From my point of view, it could not have been clearer that I was being called to give this talk, than if a golden dove had landed on the roof of my house with a signed invitation in its beak.

But I had been very ill and wasn’t sure if I would be able to prepare a lecture, or even travel to Vancouver. Also, the set topic was vast. Although, my friend Ian said “Spirituality and mental health? Well that’ll be a short talk! Stand up, say ‘Hope and Acceptance’ and sit down again.”

I knew I was no expert and also could only talk from my limited Western perspective. I said to my friend Robert “I don’t know of any culture that doesn’t have the concept of spirituality”. He grinned. “You should come on down to the Otago Medical School!”

I really didn’t know if I could do this, but I felt I was supposed to. I said to myself “I’ll find the words”. What I meant, of course, was “They’ll find me.”

3: THE MEANING OF SPIRITUALITY

Painting. Gathering of Yogis. Govardhan, 1620.

Spirituality is a subjective experience, unique to each person.

The first question – and the one I paused on for longest – was what do we mean by spirituality. I began to re-read familiar writers – C S Lewis[3], Jung[4], John Donne[5], to remind myself what they said, but somehow I needed to move on from my loved and familiar world of literature. I starting asking friends and acquaintances “What does spirituality mean to you?”

Manda was succinct. “Knowing you’re connected to everything.” Jim was even briefer. “ Nothing.”

Dorothy, said “God! I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with churches. It’s more to do with sunsets, the sea, things like that. The open air and natural beauty. Water. And birds. Definitely something to do with birds.”

Robert, said “I think it comes down to three questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? And why are we here?” Eric said “A connectedness to some place. In my younger days – a religion. Like knowing a place. Knowing people.” Margaret said “One of those glimmers in time, when you have a feeling of how life really is, and the wholeness of it.” David told me that his son was a very spiritual person. “He’s an atheist, mind you. But a very spiritual atheist.”

Then a young woman at the hairdressers pulled me up short. She turned the question on me. “Are you a spiritual person?” she asked. “Can you read my fortune?”

Everyone – I asked about thirty people - said something different. I finally asked myself. What does it mean to me?

I had been avoiding the question. It seemed too difficult, and anyway, it’s always easier to get other people to talk about the really hard topics in life, isn’t it?

4: SPIRITUALITY IS SPACE

Photograph. Ullapool Harbour, detail, 1993.

Spirituality is a space where I find meaning and peace.

I experience spirituality as space.

I call it the space within my heart. It is my most precious self. My spirit. My soul. My essence. My being. It is the breath of life[6]. The innermost part of me.

It’s the place where I meet myself. It’s where I belong. It is where I find a sense of connection - with my self, and with something beyond my self – a spirit greater than myself. And sometime, very occasionally, with another person, who is standing in their space.

It is the space I go into when I need to find meaning in my life, when I need to come to terms with life or death, or when I need to accept that nothing stays the same. It’s where I go when I need to cope with the knowledge that I walk alone in this world, or experience the comfort of infinite love.

It is the space between reason and imagination. Space where time is in different perspective, where things happen which I could not have predicted. Space where I feel loved, where I feel at peace, where I discover things.

It is a kind of coming home. For me, the meaning of spirituality is meaning itself.

5: RELIGION IS INTERPRETATION

Illumination. The Evangelical Symbols. Book of Kells , 8^th Century.

Spirituality is an experience whereas religion is an interpretation.

Spirituality is an experience, not a religion. Spirituality is beyond doctrine, beyond cultural difference. It is something deep within our core.

Religion is an interpretation of the experience of spirituality. A means of expressing it. A means of honouring it. Religion shapes our spiritual experiences because it is linked to culture, upbringing, a sense of history, but it is not the experience itself.

Religion is also one of the ways we try to share our experiences of spirituality, but this can be dangerous. It can actually create a barrier to sharing spirituality.

Doctrine can be a divider. An excuse for wars. Spirituality is a connector. A reason for peace.

Religious beliefs can be so easily misunderstood. Even the simplest phrases we use to talk about our beliefs can be alien. Let me tell you a cautionary tale:

A few years ago. I was writing a book on why people give up crime[7] and was interviewing a young woman about major changes in her life. I was very aware that her boyfriend, a heavy-duty gang member, had come out of jail the day before the interview and was staying with her.

He wasn’t in the room but I felt ill at ease. I figured he was having a rest – in fact, once or twice she talked about the man upstairs. How she only ever did what he wanted. I realised he was asleep and, to be honest, I was glad not to meet him because he sounded a pretty bossy kind of character. She seemed to worship him.

A week later, listening again to the tape, and really listening to the woman, rather than worrying about myself, I realised she had been talking about God. She called him “The man upstairs.”

I also believe in the man upstairs, by the way. I believe that when I talk, he listens and much more importantly, I believe that when I listen, he talks. But that is a doctrine. My interpretation. The meaning I place on my spiritual experiences. To say more now, might create a barrier.

6: MENTAL HEALTH IS FREEDOM

Painting. I Dreamt I was in Marseille. Matija Skurjeni, 1898.

Mental health is the freedom of knowing and accepting one’s self.

Defining mental health is almost as tricky as defining spirituality. It is an another elusive concept and like spirituality, an utterly subjective experience. For me, it means knowing who I am and accepting that.

Mental health is the state of freedom which comes from accepting one’s self and taking responsibility for one’s actions. It is many other things as well of course – acceptance of others as they are, acceptance of life as it is, knowing when and how to change and when and how to let go.

My definition of mental health has a lot in common with the way I define spirituality. Both concepts are concerned with the experience of self. One reaching into dimensions of space to discover self, the other realising the freedom that comes from accepting self. That is why spiritual experiences and their interpretation can have such a profound influence on mental health.

7: PERSONAL STORIES ARE PRECIOUS

Cover. A Gift of Stories. Gathered by Leibrich, Otago University Press, 1999.

Relating our experiences with others makes it possible for them to relate to us.

In my last year as Mental Health Commissioner, I put together a book called A Gift of Stories[8]. This is a collection of personal accounts of dealing with mental illness. Many of us in the book talked about spirituality but I won’t try to sum up what we said. Actually, I don’t want to. Stories about people with mental illness have been summed up for too long, by other people, in things called case histories, notes, files. Personal stories are not data to be analysed. They are worth much more than that.

When I first imagined A Gift of Stories I saw something that would be precious. That is because personal stories are precious. Stories are the most wonderful way to talk about experience. A story is not just a plot or a theme. It is inextricably linked with character and place and voice. A personal story often reveals insight and has the power to evoke insight within others.

I wanted us to relate our experiences because I wanted to make it possible for other people to make a connection with their experiences through reading about ours. Through us. To them.

Producing the book – the telling and the gathering - was an act of love. A gift. It taught me that illness can also be a gift.

8: ILLNESS CAN BE A GIFT

Photograph. Ullapool Harbour, 1987.

Illness can make people discover a deeper, stronger sense of self.

In a Gift of Stories, I began by using the word recovery to describe how people dealt successfully with mental illness. I wanted to challenge the stereotype that people who experience mental illness never get better. But as I worked with the people in the book, and we talked about this word, it began to seem too limited a concept.

Recovery is commonly used to mean “Hey! Here I am! Completely better!” Yet this, as a goal, would deny the experience of many people with ongoing experience of illness, for whom getting well means learning how to manage the illness – whether it comes in episodes or is ever-present.

Recovery can also imply that the goal is merely to return to some prior state - to get back what you have lost, or, worse, to cover yourself up again, or both. To makes things the same as they were before. But this denies the power of illness, which often leads to new things.

Eventually I used the word discovery rather than recovery. Our stories were full of discovery - not just about dealing with mental illness but through dealing with it. I described dealing with mental illness as “making our way along an ever-widening spiral of discovery in which we uncover problems, discover the best ways to deal with them, recover ground that has been lost, discover new things about ourselves, then uncover deeper problems, discover the best ways… and so in an intricate process of growth.”[9]

I made a comment in the text about being fearful of committing myself to the permanence of publication. I was right to be cautious.

A year later, I thought the word transformation might have been better. When someone experiences severe illness, it changes them. They are never the same again. People who have had to deal with mental illness say that it gives them strength of character, a greater capacity for compassion, a deeper, stronger sense of self.

Two years later, after my own experiences of the last year, I wondered about the word transcendence. It means that although we are ill, we are not imprisoned by that experience but go beyond it. We transcend the illness and claim its power. Illness teaches us about being well. Vulnerability teaches us about being strong. Loss teaches us about finding.

Several people in our book called their mental illness a gift. Sometimes I even do so myself.

9: RELATING SPIRITUALITY TO MENTAL HEALTH

Photograph. Isle of Tiree, 1987.

Mental illness can be a spiritual journey which leads to greater health.

Every time I have had an episode of illness in my life, I have been on some kind of spiritual journey by the time it is over. In the long term, through these experiences, I see myself becoming more and more whole. In fact, I see myself as a mentally healthy person, who is sometimes ill.

When I experience severe depression, I seem to lose my sense of self. I feel like I am disintegrating. Depression is a potential killer. It puts everything into shadow. Colours fade, voices and music become harsh. It whispers in my ear that life has no value. Sometimes, it is as if I have died, and the depression then becomes a state of mourning for the dead me.

When everything seems so pointless and full of pain, I have to find some kind of comfort if I am to survive. Although I need to accept the illness, I also need hope.

Sometimes I have a kind of miraculous experience, a kind of turning point which involves spiritual insight. I know, deep within, that at these times, I am healing. That is why I have to reach the space within my heart[10] to get well. There are many ways into that space for me[11] - through reflecting with gratitude on the things I have, through focusing on the smallest point of here and now, through letting go of all the things I am trying to control. Almost always, though, the way in is through silence and solitude.

Sometimes, it is too hard and I am lost or locked out from myself. Then maybe someone else can show me the way home through my connecting with them and their spiritual self. Maybe they are able to say “I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there too”. Or maybe all they can say is “I don’t know what it’s like for you, but I care and I’ll be there with you”. Maybe they just take my hand and sit a while. I call such people soul mates.

Photograph[1]. Kapiti Island, 2000.

Photograph. Rooftop at Assisi, 1987.

Painting. Gathering of Yogis. Govardhan, 1620.

Photograph. Ullapool Harbour, detail, 1993.

Illumination. The Evangelical Symbols. Book of Kells , 8th Century.

Illumination. The Evangelical Symbols. Book of Kells , 8^th Century.