Religion can provide a “cure for the soul” by educating people to
be self-aware and accepting that their inner world has an impact on
the world outside, Friar Christopher Jamison, abbot of Worth Abbey
and star of the BBC documentary series
The Monastery told
the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Annual Meeting this week.
Friar Jamison said that, while psychiatry had
made “immense” strides in improving the cure of minds, hearts and
bodies, there is still a “cure of souls” that is specific to
religion. This cure lay in the development of self awareness, a
lack of which was bad for mental health, he said. A more self-aware
Britain would be a mentally healthier one.
Friar Jamison, author of Finding
Sanctuary, said individuality and the belief that something
was good, so long as it did no harm to others, was central to the
idea of modernity and that this was fatal for wellbeing.
Self-awareness, on the other hand, was being
attentive to how we relate to ourselves and the outside world. “It
involves understanding how my outlook affects the way I see the
world and how it affects the world itself,” he said. “This
self-aware life does not accept that there is a private world of
introspection and a public world of actions.”
Without self-awareness, the inner life of
human beings will lead them to do wrong. “Legislation and policing
alone will not prevent public harm to others nor will telling
people that harm to others is bad,” he said.
He said children need to be taught
self-awareness at an early age so that it became part of their
lives. “If we want to protect the environment, then ask people to
contain their greed. If we want to reduce violence, then help
people to contain their anger. We have to enable each person to
live out the discipline of self-awareness, not only for personal
happiness, but also for society’s happiness.”
Friar Jamison said the great religions of the
world offer the disciplines of prayer, actions and thought and are
a “unique respository of wisdom for wellbeing”. “If we rubbish
religion we are in danger of sweeping away this tradition and
making it unacceptable to ordinary people, while having no effect
on violent and bigoted religious disciples,” he said.
Friar Jamison recalled being asked to see a
psychiatrist in distress. Life held no joy for him and his life
seemed to be pointless and the future bleak. He came to Worth,
talked to Friar Jamison and found great solace. “We came to realise
that beyond the depression there lay the wider issue of hope. This
was not so much finding religion but rather finding the visceral
experience of hope. From hope started to flow a renewed sense of
love, love of family and love of life itself.”
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References:
The Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Imperial College, London, 1 – 4 July 2008