Client Question: Can mental illness be played-out in a conscious community/spiritual group?
There's a lot to be said about this topic. Here’s one perspective that is based in the psychobiological approach. And, as a side-note, the question was asked in reference to the members of the group, not the teacher/leader of the group. Dysregulation within spiritual groups/conscious communities is almost always a two-way street (from teacher to student and vice versa). I’ll address the teacher/leader aspect in another blog post.
I see one of (if not THE) greatest addictions being: the need to be accepted. This need usually stems from being annihilated in one’s family of origin. To cure the horrendous sensations associated with annihilation, the individual goes about trying to find a "tribe" who will unconditionally accept them. Many spiritual communities make this delusive claim and so these individuals project onto the members - and especially the leaders - a sort of unreasonable omnipotence. They unconsciously go about trying to get met what they didn't get from their caregivers and other origin family members. This can create a codependent relationship - among the group and the leader(s). This dynamic additionally creates an unbearable experience if a severance takes place, as it may read like a double-hit of annihilation.
It is critical that we do the groundwork of finding our individual place on this planet, having a right-relationship with reality, and integrating into the material world before we start doing "spiritual work." Otherwise, we risk getting disassociated into the highly ethereal realm that exists in the spiritual world: dreamy words and ideas, far-off concepts and worlds that are intangible begin to create an existential crisis because we haven't done our own existence work in the first place. Roots before fruiting, to use a tree metaphor.
It becomes extremely challenging - by way of confusion - when the members start picking up and speaking a common vernacular; there is a sense of being understood and connected - an element that often goes missing relational trauma. This vernacular is usually coming solely from the mind (where disassociation takes place). The mind is a fabrication storehouse, so it's not rooted in anything reality-based. And, soon enough, the chasm between one's dis-integrated nature and their split-self (spiritual self in this case), will be brought to surface by the world.
Us humans are masters at detecting incongruency. So, while not everyone will be able to clearly identify what is giving them an "off" feeling about these people, they will eventually get called out on their incongruence in some form or another. Incongruence being: words not matching up with actions. An adept (learned teacher) will be able to quickly detect how and where these individuals are off and compassionately re-direct them to the correct place on the path.
Unlike the eastern world, us westerners do not have a spiritual practice imbedded in our culture. So, many people will go straight up to trying on the clothes of the spiritual world without first knowing their size. We will eventually get kicked down and told to start with the groundwork. This seems to be a rite of passage for many of us.
Unfortunately, for some who are prone to disassociation - and as an adaptive measure - the spiritual world can act as a vehicle for splitting, delusion, and even hallucination. Left unfettered and for an extended period of time, one can believe they are truly (and for the first time - maybe ever), accepted and, therefore, invincible. Who doesn’t want to be bathed in a near-constant stream of positive affirmations? This is very dangerous territory as it's a paradigm built from the ego and is destined to implode. So, yes, it can be a slippery slope, leading to a mechanism on which one can met-out their mental illness if they are headed in that direction.