Ancient Intelligence, not Mental Illness

“If it can't be measured, it doesn’t exist.” This has long been science's guiding principle: only what can be observed and verified is accepted as true. However, being human extends beyond what the eyes see, the ears hear, or the heart can perceive. Our humanity was never meant to be confined to what our minds can understand only; our brilliance extends beyond what the brain folds can grasp. I discovered for myself that life's most interesting moments came when I let myself step out of my mind's confinement, when I allowed grace for the unknown.

Elements of the unknown will always remain untouchable and beyond human control, yet we still feel the need to control them. This need intensifies after traumatic events, when safety becomes essential, and predictability becomes our small zone of operation. Being powerless and at the mercy of circumstance is a pain beyond words, yet it is the reality of our human experience. We all face moments when we can't take control, no matter how hard we try. When life washes over us like a tsunami, we hold on to our pieces of self. That is the paradox of life.

And a question I always ask and look forward to: how will life unravel it- how to show up in the unknown?

The human experience is subjective, exclusive to the person experiencing it, and forcing it into a box of eye measurements has perhaps produced the deepest grievances, human injustice, and imbalance the modern world has inflicted on itself.

It raises the question of what is actually making us ill—us, the system, or both? Are we responding to a sick system?

The scientific system centres on measuring, isolating, disconnecting, and developing a uniform, standardised metrics formula, then repackaging it for commercial purposes to benefit producers, manufacturers, and sellers. However, this often neglects the user’s perspective. For example, consider the widespread use of the DSM-based diagnosis of depression. The DSM criteria reduce a deeply personal and varied human experience to a checklist of symptoms, meaning that two people with entirely different backgrounds and life stories may receive the same label and be prescribed the same treatment plan. This generic approach may streamline and simplify the process for practitioners and ensure predictability, control, and ultimately profit, which translates into power and currency. Still, it risks overlooking the complexity and individuality of the person behind the diagnosis.

Genericism opposes human individuality; no two people are identical. We tend to forget this because we wear mass-produced clothes and shoes and consume food engineered to last beyond Earth's expiration date. We learn through the same standardised education systems designed to create generic thinkers and followers, and we're told which dreams to chase and what appearance is socially acceptable. Genereism is so brilliant because it keeps poking at one of our fundamental needs: acceptance—the same generic pattern: be the same to belong.

If we can be measured in the same way, we will belong. If we can reduce complexity to simplicity, we can succeed in the modern world. This shift is especially clear in Eurocentric, Western-centric psychology, which emphasises the psychological separation of the mind from the rest of the body and from the environment, heart, soul, culture, characteristics, faith, animals, tribe, and purpose—in other words, everything that makes a human being whole.

Hence the implication and categorisation of “mental illness” when a person is out of sync with themselves, the world, and others. This divides the human being, isolating their mental state and examining symptoms from the narrow perspective of the mind alone. Traditional Chinese medicine, Indian Ayurveda, and Islamic healing sciences have always considered the human being as a whole, recognising that the whole cannot be separated into its parts: the mind from the body, the heart from the mind and body, or the person from the earth. When we ignore all these factors and generalise symptoms to make prescribing easier, we lose our ability to be fully human.

Our mental state, governed by the brain and its complex nervous system, cannot operate independently of the other deep intelligence systems within us. Because the brain doesn't process new actual data but instead functions like outdated software, it relies on a scanning system to predict our current state based on past references. Essentially, our daily life is guided by old software: the autonomic nervous system and our subconscious mind, like a childhood blueprint maintained by our inner children. Scanning for familiar patterns, it classifies anything that feels similar as either safe or unsafe based on data we received in childhood.

Our brain's primary function is to keep us safe, not to help us thrive, flourish, grow, or reach our full potential. It operates on outdated references of what is considered safe, which vary by individual. For instance, if in childhood it was unsafe to speak up—because doing so or stepping out of line could lead to emotional/physical harm—one way to mitigate harm and survive can be to elicit the external fawn response; becoming very agreeable can be a safe way for the child to survive in a hostile environment. While fawning through childhood is a clever strategy, using such an outdated system in adulthood can diminish one's quality of life. Essentially, a child's operating system may be running an adult's life.

Therefore, an isolated brain disadvantages the whole human unless other inner intelligence systems balance it. This is why the term “Balance” matters—we either operate in balance or out of balance. Maintaining balance is more dignified for our human state than being labelled as mentally ill.

Connecting additional internal intelligence systems to support the imbalance is an approach of enhancing, of adding, rather than just looking at the system and asking, "What's wrong with you?"

Nothing is wrong; the question is, why does our system respond so? The system is intelligent, ancient intelligence the original AI: our body, our heart, our mind, our totality is not “ill”, but responsive. That isn't a human manufacturing flaw but intelligent design: a system that responds, always seeking balance, compensation, and a return to homeostasis, the natural state of a human being. Everything inside us wants balance; it seeks it. If we know how to return to balance, what it feels like to be centred, if we've lost our balance a thousand times, we know how to find our way back a thousandfold, back to home, to balance.

So, the question is: what do I need to return to myself, my home, and my centre?

Follow-up questions:

What specific practices or steps can help me regain balance when I feel out of sync?

How can I connect with my other ‘intelligence systems’ beyond the brain in daily life?

How can I identify which childhood patterns are influencing my current responses?

When should I seek outside help rather than trust my own process of returning to balance?