Supposing that, like Socrates, I had been "a long time sick" -- it was Western metaphysics alone, that had made me so. The idea that "the individual" is responsible and to blame for anything that happens to them was the cause of my distress. I had internalized too much blame for the political disruption in my life that had led to me having to start all over again, in a different country, at the age of 15. The cure I found for the Western metaphysics that I had inadvertently internalized was shamanism.
To obtain a shamanistic cure, one has to let go of one's need for control over the circumstances of life, even though this is the last thing one wants to do. In fact one may not be able to do so, immediately after a disastrous event, when the power of the event threatens to annihilate one's very sense of self. (The fact that the victim blames himself or herself straight after the event is an attempt at first aid recovery: the victim intrinsically knows that it's more important, at this early traumatized stage, to restore a feeling of control than to be considered right or wrong. Once the ego is much stronger and a sense of control has been restored, a shamanistic cure can be tried.) The curative power of shamanism is in the realization that the world has no moral structure. By gaining experiential (rather than intellectual) knowledge of this, one is released from feeling guilty or ashamed as a result of events that were outside of your control.
While it is noble to take on the responsibility for event not of one's making, this attitude of mind wears one down. It is far better to understand who one is, without this heavy emotional baggage -- which one only accepts as a means to trick oneself that one has full control, when one hasn't.
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For more on how I inadvertently internalized Western metaphysics, see: http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2011/01/deep-structures.html
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