We Must Get Out of Our Minds
- Astra Soulfeather
- Nov 9
- 7 min read
“We must get out of our minds … our thinking minds. I’ll tell you how I do it …”
Ram Dass
Beginning a new job, I was struck down with a mystery illness within the first three weeks. Was it an allergy to my new workplace? A change in the seasons? Or something more mundane – an overexertion of previously dormant energies which I hadn’t exercised in several years?
Alongside feeling rundown and shivery, I suffered with the mild case of self-flagellation which tends to emerge when I am unwell. I become self-pitying, rather than self-compassionate, and find myself believing that because I sick, I am less worthy. Because now, I am not productive. I am not useful. I am just unwell.
But this time I felt a surge of resistance to this state. I didn’t want to berate myself for being unwell, and in doing so suppress the efficacy of my immune system. Instead, I wanted to allow myself to rest and heal. I wanted to ‘be cool’ about being unwell – but it felt so difficult. Some part of me desperately yearned for my sickness to be gone as soon as possible, for my suffering to stop – not so I would feel energised and vibrant again, but so I wouldn’t feel like a useless lump who wasn’t fit to be in human society.
Despite my desire to see things differently, it was hard to extricate myself from this thinking pattern. The pattern was a pit of quicksand: the more I flailed about, wanting to get out of it, the more this way of thinking dragged me down. So, I did what we all know to do when stuck in quicksand. I stopped moving and became very still.
In this stillness I began to learn.
I learnt – or rather, I remembered – that suffering can be a gateway to enlightenment. Not because suffering should be idolised as a spiritual path; you can eat steak and chips or bread and water and still have a close relationship with God. But suffering is a gateway to enlightenment in the same way that anything can be a gateway to enlightenment if you are open to seeing and walking through the gate. What physical suffering offers is a mirror to how we, as humans, interact with the materiality of our world, because there’s nothing like vomiting, shitting, bones and blood to remind you: “Hey, you’re a person! With a tangible, manifested body! Living in a physical, material world! Enjoy!”
Humans habitually believe the illusion of the material world is ‘real’. We make judgements about what appears to be, not what truly is. We spend most of our time evaluating the illusion of material ‘reality’ through our thinking mind and our manifest senses. One evaluation of reality our thinking mind is highly preoccupied with is finding and solving problems, obstacles and perceived threats to our survival. We identify them and immediately begin to puzzle out how these obstacles can be overcome.
The aim, biologically, is to find a place of restfulness: a place where we do not have to exert any effort, physical or otherwise, to survive. The more we can eradicate obstacles from our environment, the more rapidly we can relax into doing nothing except surviving – also known as sleeping, eating, and procreating.
However, our ability to discern what is a true threat to our survival, what is an obstacle to it, and what is instead a momentary suffering to be endured is not as simple as that. The construction of our mind, the life experiences we have had, the blueprint on which we base our decisions, the social context we have grown up in – all these contribute to and often distort our ability to distinguish and remedy true survival threats, whether physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual.
If we have developed hypervigilance in response to a childhood characterised by unsafe, risky conditions, then we cannot tell the difference between an immediate and imaginary threat, or between scales of obstacle. If we are neurodivergent, or survivors of trauma, we may find restfulness ‘boring’ or uncomfortable, and end up manufacturing challenges to keep our dopamine flowing. If we are a more sensitive being than those around us, we may be masking from ourselves the extent to which we are startled by the world and will ignore the laborious energy it takes to navigate these daily obstacles.
The result is that we believe our mind above any other somatic, emotional, or spiritual knowing. If the mind says it’s an issue, then it is. We do not often pause to ask why this particular problem is an obstacle, or to question the mind’s dominance. Instead, we let it lead the way in attempting to eliminate that issue from our lives. But the mind may not be right.
One of these perceived problems, according to the mind, is illness. The mythos of capitalism with Christianity as its sidekick has led us to believe that productivity is the same as worthiness, and that to be sick is morally sickening. Our thinking mind has been persuaded that to be an unwell person is to be of lesser value and worthiness than the healthy person, because when we are sick we cannot work, and to work is to be worthy.
If we are ‘sick’ in a way that does not kill us but changes the way we must live – some chronic issue, or long-lasting illness, or diagnosed condition – our thinking mind has adopted the belief that we are, fundamentally, less worthy than those without this ‘sickness’: those without diabetes, heart conditions, physical disabilities; those who are not ADHD, Autistic, who do not have a developmental or cognitive condition; those who are not Blind or Deaf, who do not need assistance to move around in our world.
Whether we are briefly ill with a cold, or whether we have been deemed ‘ill’ by a diagnosis, there is some part of us which aims to eliminate that illness because our thinking mind has been led to believe it is a barrier to productivity. And if your ‘illness’ happens to make up a component of your identity, to filter into the many different aspects of who you are like tributaries branching out from a river, then that obstacle-crushing part of you will be attempting to eliminate you. This will look like pushing through, gritting your teeth, insisting you can do it all yourself, white-knuckling it through life and rationalising your actions by telling yourself that overcoming challenges is honourable, and meaningful, and makes you a good person.
The spiritual purpose of each soul here on earth is to experience the illusion of material reality, to let it change us and affect us, and then to still find our way home to a close relationship with God. We come out into the world to discover what it is like to be a feeling, thinking, separate being – and then, eventually, we take all that wisdom and knowledge back home into Oneness on our physical departure. The game is whether we can come back into relationship with God before then; if we can remember the truth of things, and detach from the illusion, before the illusion is detached from us.
Perhaps sickness and disability, whether momentary or ‘made official’ with a diagnosis, is an opportunity to practice detaching from the illusion – or, at least, from one element of it: that you are only worthy if you are physically healthy, if you are working, if you are making money, if you are a good little cog in the machine. The illusion of Western capitalist reality has trained our thinking minds into measuring our value against a mythological creature of productivity. He is the 6ft tall, eyes of blue, beefy white man who labours happily in the factory for 10 hours a day, six days a week, then goes to church on Sundays. Few of us deem ourselves adequate against this brute, and we should not aim to do so; because he, just like the Capitalist Universe™, is an illusion. If all of material reality is an illusion, then the fantasies we construct to try and control that illusion are even more of a mirage – including this capitalist hero and the mythology of capitalism itself.
In experiencing sickness and disability, perhaps there is a chance for us to detach, even slightly, from these fantasies; to practice feeling worthy, and valuable, and a meaningful member of our communities even as we are tired or ill or unable to do a food shop for ourselves.
Even as we ask for reasonable adjustments in the workplace, and insist on fully accessible public spaces; even as we refuse to push through the flu and instead take time off work so we can properly recover; even as we listen to our hormonal cycles and give our bodies what they need; even as we make no apology for the way our minds have been constructed which ensures we listen, learn and respond differently to others; even as we do these things which contradict all that our thinking mind has been taught, which seem to slow or halt profitable activity, which differentiates us even further from capitalism’s mythological Productivity Man – can we believe we are worthy? We are valued? That we deserve to be here?
Even as we are deep in suffering, can we have faith that we are unconditionally loved?
This is how you break through the illusion. It is one of the many steps on the path to closeness with God.
When you finally, and joyfully, know the true answer to this question, you will have done as Ram Dass suggested. You will be out of your mind.
This piece of original writing was created by Astra Soulfeather. No AI was used to ideate, write or edit this work. The featured images are digital artworks created by Astra Soulfeather in open-source software GIMP using three photographs: aerial landscape by Nick Jones on Unsplash. eye by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash and star by Dns Dgn on Unsplash. © 2025 Astra Soulfeather & Higher Love Co. All rights reserved.
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