Mental health: fundamental things, or a housewife’s philosophical view on mental health

Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve problems using the same level of thinking that created them.”

This article is broken into two parts, or a biner:
·essential level – thesis,
·functional level – antithesis. After all, it is precisely in the binary system that our thinking and perception of the world take place.

Essential: the immaterial level, the world of causes, motives, ideas, the world of stimuli. This level relies on the world-famous laws of hermetism, or – principles of hermetism. The main one of which is the law/principle of mentalism: everything is a thought and this thought is primary.

Functional: the material level – the world in which we live. The world of reactions, the creativity of our thinking and the consequences of creative imagination, results (behavior, habits, somatic health, social roles, achievements / defeats, business results, medical interventions) – this is the level of manifestation.

Let’s add input data for a deeper penetration into the topic:

We will not deny that the formula of life is – stimulus – reaction. Also we know well that there is a law (or principle) of cause and effect relationship, which in everyday life sounds like this: what you sow, you reap; he who comes with a sword to others will die by it; do not dig a hole for another, because you will fall into it yourself; or this: treat others the way you want to be treated.

The concept of mentality – is the level of a new positioning of oneself as a personality, outside of its emotional life, but with developed feelings. This is the sphere of meanings, significances and values, and it must change over time, grow, scaling the personality.

Let’s pose a few additional questions which we will try to answer

·What meaning for a healthy psychic life do a person’s thinking and their capacity for creative thinking have?
·Does distorted thinking matter, when analyzing this issue, and is it necessary to understand the nature of distortions?
·Why does a person need the scaling of personality and how does this affect psychic health?
·Are emotions and feelings different things?
·Why is the key to health in the ability to consciously possess one’s imagination?
·How does faith become a condition for spiritual self-healing?

Why is thinking critically important?

Let’s break down how our mechanism of thinking is structured, or as it is also called – the wheel of thinking. The process of thinking begins with imagination and representation, an impression is added to them, all this together forms a sensation already in the body, and this forms the general state of a person, since the body chemistry has worked. From the general state, imagination and representation are formed again… and so on in a circle.

This happens quite quickly. A person doesn’t even have time to tame momentary reactions.

Where is the weak link in this wheel and what do emotions, feelings, reactions have to do with it?

First, about reactions. They have a different basis, or origin – emotional (uncontrolled), mental (feelings, usually such a person controls their state – their emotions and feelings) and spiritual reactions (also feelings, only the process of thinking is already conscious, creative)
How are the mechanism of thinking and its “product” – the state of our health, particularly psychic, connected to each other?
If in the process of thinking a person “filled” their imagination with emotions, then in the end there will be mistakes, stress, disorders, illnesses. The wheel of thinking forms the corresponding reactions and state, they determine the level of stress, because this affects physiology. But the main thing – it determines the choice.
If, however, a person controls their process of thinking, forming and sensing feelings instead of emotions, spiritualizes their thoughts with them, creates their better inner world, that is, utilizes the ability to think creatively – the ability to see alternatives, the skill to go beyond the boundaries of templates and not get stuck in problems. This is also a choice – “our actions are God’s consequences”

What conclusion will we make?

1.Emotions come down to us as an inheritance from parents and have a nature lower than feelings. Feelings are mental and one needs to acquire them independently, grow them like those roses on the windowsill of the girl Gerda, whom we know from the fairy tales of Mr. H.C. Andersen.

2.Personal growth (scaling) must happen proportionally – intellect and feelings (or mind and heart). If intellect outpaces feelings (or vice versa) this distorts thinking in the same way as it is distorted in the case when emotions are involved. Because of this, even some of those who engage in spiritual development – suffer from illnesses. Purity of thinking, transformation of thinking – is a very high bar, beyond the overcoming of which lies the awareness of the essential level and essential relationships between people.

The nature of distortions: fear as a basic interpretation, sacrificehood, a sense of guilt, extremes (black-and-white thinking), catastrophization, dependence of self-worth on the external. Distortions also “live” on the level of causes, while symptoms manifest on the level of functions. Awareness means seeing one’s thoughts, separating oneself from automatic reactions, recognizing beliefs, taking responsibility for interpretation. Awareness is a bridge between two levels. It is precisely what unites, rather than separates.

Faith as a condition of self-healing. How? – trust in life, conviction in the possibility of changes, readiness to go beyond the boundaries of the old. Without faith, a person is unable to rise to a level higher.
Without creative thinking, a person revolves within the boundaries of one and the same level, they do not grow.

That is, the problem is not solved if it “cruises” between the sublevels of the functional level.

Is it possible to solve a problem, conduct research, create something completely new, if one doesn’t touch the essential level?

Simply create a better version of oneself? More moral, ethical? Go on a diet? Go to courses? In medicine – invent more modern equipment? – this is all the functional level. If a person does not touch the essential level – they simply optimize the symptom.

The fundamental solution to the problem of mental health lies not in the separation of the spiritual (essential) and material (functional), but in the awareness of the causal level, the revision of beliefs, the change of identity. Through new decisions on the functional level – backed by action. Only when change happens simultaneously on two levels – it becomes stable, and you – become yourself.

Mental health is not about “feeling better”, “being positive” and “treatment of symptoms”

Mental health is about:
·wholeness and balance between meanings, thoughts, emotions, feelings and actions.
·wholeness between cause and effect. Between thought and action. Between faith and responsibility.

© Galyna Mudrovska, 2026