Mental masturbation

Warning: A Looong post ahead, with some SERIOUS navel-gazing.

In response to my recent post about how I still thought that some of my so-called "psychotic" experiences contained a genuine element of supernatural phenomena Raine posted the following telling questions:

I wonder just how much of a difference it would really make in your life if you decide there are links rather than it being psychosis or if you decide its all psychosis. What will actually change? Will you live your life differently? Make decisions differently?

These questions are actually a HUGE part of my life right now (as if they haven't always been...). This past week or 2 I've been in a state of fairly deep confusion and flux. I find myself in a quagmire of diverging philosophies, beliefs and decisions. Maybe it is the upcoming "Should I emigrate" or "Shouldn't I" decision that has thrown everything into such sharp relief and forced me to re-examine my life. So Raine's questions are at the crux; deeply involved with my entire belief system and personal identity in the world. Something I don't always see (thanks, Raine)

The problem is that once you've been through an industrial strength psychosis, you can never really put it behind you. I don't think there can be any other experience which is so intense, frightening and life changing (think a bad acid trip x 1 000 000). For sure there have been years in my life where I've put the memories on the back-burner. But even in those years I never shelved them because I had finally realised they had been 100% psychosis and that the supernatural part was mental masturbation. No, I repressed them because I felt that dwelling on them was not useful at that stage in my life (usually stages where financial goals were high).

But right now the Big Question is right at the fore in my thoughts. Truth be told, I have NEVER (not even for one second) in the past 20 years totally accepted that my experiences were ALL psychosis. (not something I'd ever admit to a P-Doc)

Why is this so? Why do I cling to the notion?
I have come up with several possible explanations:

• As I said, this whole Big Question is integral to my belief system. I have basically equated the "All-Psychosis" route with a world with ZERO understandable meaning and ZERO answer to WHY. It goes like this: If all the coincidences and links I saw were totally random, then the whole universe is also just one big random coincidence. That, for me, is not an easy thing to accept. It renders life MEANINGLESS (other than He-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins). As a deeply philosophic type ( I was born with my fist under my chin like Rodin's famous sculpture "The thinker". see left) this would be an extremely depressing situation. Existential Angst to the absolute MAX. (It is not for nothing that it was said that no philosopher should be taken seriously except for the philosopher whose philosophy has driven him to the brink of suicide) (Or that Marx said that "Religion is the Opium of the Masses")
  
  
• Possible explanation 2: Besides leading to the greatest depression, my dismissal of "Meaningful Messages" has another implication: that I, BiPolarGuy, am/have been a SERIOUSLY mentally deranged person. Not just a BiPolar type 2 or even Type 1, (which I've pretty much accepted in the past 3 years) , but a person who the military psychiatric ward called "the worst case they'd ever seen".
  
  That is not an easy thing to accept. Prior to my institutionalisation I had everything going for me. Not least of all a sense of total confidence in myself and total confidence with the future. And yes, pride too. So right from the first day I was released, it might be said that I invented this more acceptable (maybe even admirable) reason for what happened to me. My way of rationalising the whole ordeal and keeping any notion of self-respect intact.
  
  
• Possible Explanation 3: Or maybe all of the confidence and pride were false? Maybe deep down I was a very unhappy and disturbed teenager? Ask anyone from my High School days and they'd endorse this for sure (but not necessarily after I left High School). Maybe the whole reason the psychosis even started was because I needed an "Escape" from my world. In BiPolar literature so much has been said about a manic bout leading to bad depression, and less ius said about it working the other way too - unbearable depression leads to flights of mania (mental masturbation).
  
  Maybe in that light it's not even a bad thing, maybe it's the minds survival mechanism for avoiding suicide.
  



• Possible Explanation 4: Or maybe masturbation (simulated sex) is a more profound analogy than realised. Maybe the very fact that simulated mental sex exists implies that somewhere out there exists REAL mental sex. The blissful union with an Other Worldly Mind. And at the pinnacle of the bliss a whole new realm is created. And those of us that participate in mental masturbation are the only ones that know that the Reality exists somewhere out there. And we pine after it...

***
The truth is that I WILL NEVER know.

And so I've rambled on and on here and have just seen that I have not fully answered Raine's questions yet: Will you live your life differently? Make decisions differently?

But best I leave that for a Part 2 sometime lest I reveal too much of the Master Secret (this one especially for WBF ;)

My next book

In 2001 my first book was published (technically it was my second as the very first book published was on Investments, but is so far from where my head is now that I'm not even counting it anymore).

The 2001 book was a big dissapointment. After selling my biz I decided to take a year off and write what I thought would potentially be a best seller. Dreams of living in my little cottage penning a comfortable living abounded. Yeah right! I barely recouped the publishing costs.

Not surprising actually, as I recently re-read the book and to be honest it's crap. Not the subject matter mind you, just the way it is put across. Partly this is the fault of the subject matter. It is just so damn complex, non-linear and philosophical.

I wrote about my first psychotic breakdown and the delusions I experienced for 3 months in a psychiatric ward. Then began the Quest (semi-spiritual, semi-philsophical) about where my life had been and where it was going. And this Quest was continually guided by a long string of profound sychronicities which eventually led me to the East.

At the time I wrote the book (2001) I had not been officially diagnosed, and still believed that some of my experience were a genuine connection with a higher spiritual realm and not entirely to be dismissed as psychosis. But then after my diagnosis, and faced with the bleak reality of financial worries, I trashed that whole thesis. Yes, it was all delusional crap.

But in 2005 I experienced another full-blown mania. I managed to stay out of trouble and more importantly out of hospital. But once agian there was a MAJOR uptick in the coincidence flow in my everyday environment and I couldn't help thinking that there were important meaningful messages in all of the synchronicity. A Quaker woman I know later told me that it was like "the telephone was ringing and ringing but I was not picking it up".

I put that "journey" behind me too. I'm wary of these Delusional diversions, they can completely derail you if you get too caught up in them.

But I keep coming back to those experiences. Unlike on the previous psychotic occassions, I kept a journal at that time, and have reams and reams of my ideas documented. I recently went back to them and read through them.

The incredible thing about the whole "journey" is that it linked up with my previous Quest, exactly where I left off. And the link up was a prefect fit, like it was meant to be, and it extended all of the dicoveries I had documented in my first book. And, believe me, there is some exciting subject matter. Like the most unbelievable evidence that that an ancient prophesy is coming to pass. I keep thinking that if I were just to write another book detailing all of my experiences in 2005, together with "the evidence", readers will vindicate me and say: "yeah, you're DEFINITELY onto something of major importance".

But them I'm alway left with a major question:

WAS IT ALL JUST PSYCHOSIS??

A freaky coincidence

Anybody who knows me reasonably well will know that I have one magic talisman that has followed me through life - the Letter Y. It has always cropped up in weird synchronistic ways that point to a hidden esoteric knowledge.

A few years ago (when I was in an esoteric phase) I designed my own personal mandala:



A circle with 8 large Y's in it, each at the 8 points of the compass.

Y hasn't appeared on my radar for some time.

...until the other day when I was surfing over my house in Google Earth. Across the road from us is some empty land owned by the Navy. This is what I saw on Google Earth in the navy land (about 200 metres from my house):

Yeah, a friggin circle with 8 Y's at the 8 points of the compass.

Am I reading things into nothing, or is this a fairly high-strength coincidence???

The 3rd Consciousness

Been in somewhat of an esoteric mood over the last week. So I may as well keep on posting about it.

By most accounts, there are 2 principal states of consciousness - Awake and Asleep. But on various occassions in my life I have found myself in a 3rd zone. This has occurred at night in an extended moment between waking from a dream and entering fully back into reality. For a small period of time, I find myself in this no-man's land between the 2 states. But it's not a "nothing" state. Rather, there is actually something more solid about it than the other 2 states.

Please bear with me here, as the experience is not easy to encapsulate in words. Perhaps the best way to describe it is like tuning between stations on a radio. "Reality Station" here, "Dream Station" there. Between the two - white noise. But the point isn't the white noise, the point is the realisation at that moment in time that you, yourself, your soul is actually seperated from reality, somehow greater than reality, the Reality Station just being one arbitrary position on the tuning spectrum.

It's a really difficult "insight" to describe. Like you are actually the only one in the universe, and reality is just one of your own creations. That when you finally tune out of the reality radio station, never to return, your higher self, the unchanging one, will still be there fiddling with the radio knobs.

I think I'll keep this one from my psychaitrist...

The Awakening # 3

Read The Awakening, and
The Awakening #2 first.

Yesterday's questioning about the superstitions I have placed so much faith in for the past 20 years threw me into total turmoil. If all these beliefs have just been folly, then what is left?

I took the Pythagorean Tarot out of the magic black box, and relooked at the 6 cards that had been chosen last year. I remember the day well. July last year sitting naked in front of a roaring ceremonial fire. I knew the importance of ritual.

I was planning to write a post about the messages that it had given me back then, and all of the profound signs that have confirmed the message over the past few months. Above you will find the pivotal 4th card that presented itself to me - The Angel. I was gonna scan all the cards, post them on this blog and point out the symbolism.

But I can't. It's just too complex and would require at least 40 pages of explanantion. The unique meaning a person finds in a thing is shaped by that person's whole life experience and linked to a myriad of other significant life events. It cannot be conveyed to others. And maybe it's not meant to be; maybe personal meaning is meant to remain just that - personal.

The same powerful messages were still there in the cards. And it just rubbed in how wrong the message has proved. I felt a tweak of deep sadness. What is left? Where do we go once, as Nietzsche had said: "God is dead"? My personal God who has been talking to me and sending me all of these messages over the years.

Well I went to Nietzsche. Dived into my philosophy notes from 2 years ago. Maybe I would find refuge (as I have so often before) in the cool, rational halls of philosophy. For a few minutes I felt a surge of enthusiasm and vowed to complete my Masters. I could do it, just take off a few months next year...But then I realised, I'm just shedding one security blanket for another. Instead of burying my head in the sands of mysticism, I am rushing to stick it in the mud of philosophy. The time has come to FACE REALITY. LIVE LIFE.

The irony that I was sitting discovering that "God is Dead", on Easter Friday, the day of the crucifixion, did not go unnoticed. Easter has always been a time of turmoil for me. In 1992 I was hospitalised just after Easter. I had been windsurfing on the Saturday and on Easter Sunday I woke up with two deep round sores in either hand. Blisters from the windsurfing? Nah, holes from where the nails went. Stigmata, for sure. And later that week when my therapist drove me to the psychiatric ward, her name was Mary. Mother Mary.

But for me, there will not be a ressurection. "My God, my God...why hast thou forsaken me?" ( Y: hast thou forsaken me?) I've already accepted that my personal God, the one who has been sending me all these messages over the years, will not ressurect. Not on Sunday, not even on Wednesday. I am moving on. Instead of performing the last and final test that I said I was going to on Wednesday, I'm gonna QUIT SMOKING. I've been promising Miss L for ages.

I've been far to wrapped up in the world of thoughts, concepts and analysis, for far too long. Thinking, thinking, thinking....never doing.

What is left? For one - my body is left. I'm gonna start getting fit again. Get back in tune with my neglected body. Feel alive, not just in my head. Take pride in the discipline and dedication. A DISCIPLE OF DISCIPLINE. Which discipline? Just Discipline. Just DOING it.

Meditation is left too. I honestly believe that it is my daily meditation that has cleansed my mind and exposed these blindspots. Everyone thinks meidtation is about the mind. It is not. It is about the whole body. It is meditation which has put me back in touch with my body. Real tactile touch.

That's where i reckon I'm going now. For now...

The Awakening # 2

Read The Awakening first.

I am a excessively superstitious person.

<= This black box sits next to my bed containing a mutlitude of magical talismans. About 30 Y shaped twigs. A Y shaped crystal. A Y shaped piece of coral I found in Thailand. A deck of Pythagorean Tarot Cards.
A sticker that Miss L found.

There are many things that harbour incredibly mystical meanings for me. Rainbows. Dolphins. The letter Y.

Most of it stems from my first accute psychotic breakdown. I have never denied that I was out of touch with reality back then. But I've also never relinquished the deepest belief that at that point I actually harboured mystical abilities to see things that other people couldn't. I clutch onto this belief in my deepest heart of hearts.

Ever since then I have been on the lookout for coincidences. Usually I see most when I'm approaching a manic phase. In fact, the mystical nature of events that unfolds when I am manic has always been defined by profound coincidences and my intense belief in their synchronistic meaning.

And so far my superstitions have always born fruit. Signs lead to events and more signs in incredibly strange ways. For 20 years now.

Last year when I had my most recent little flirt with psychosis some very powerful signs and messages came through. They've only revealed themselves to me over the months bit by bit , starting with a Tarot reading with the Pythagorean deck. Everything was pointing in the same direction, and last week I took the plunge and did what the messages had confirmed. (I will explain what the messages were, and what they said, in the next few days). It failed miserably. Which largely explains the shitty moods I was in and especially why so much doubt had crept into my life. The next day I tried again, a different method. Again: Nothing.

So by the weekend I had already started wondering about the validity of my bizzare superstitions. And for the first time I questioned whether this 20 year obsession with coincidences and subversive meanings has been doing me any good? They are without doubt the toxin that pushes me into Mania Land. Yeah, I've always enjoyed the ride, but what is the long term cost? And why this paranois about giving up these irrational beliefs? Is it maybe because if I do give them up, then I am faced with finally accepting that my 4 psychotic breakdowns were NOT a mingling of mystical abilities and overwhelming confusion, but plain garden-variety mental illness. Purely a brain chemical defect?

And what does my continuing faith in mystical forces do for me? It definitely doesn't help me synch with reality. No matter what happens in reality land I always have this undying belief that the Y's will swoop down from the sky and rescue and vindicate BPG. Is this healthy? And I'm always bored with pure reality, hankering after the fanatastical worlds of mystics and magic. A contributor to depression?

So with these questions and thoughts in my head, the dream I had 4 nights ago ("The Awakening") is hugely significant. Anybody with an inkling of understanding of Carl Jung will know that superstition, magic, synchronicity and myth belong to the domain of the unconscious. And dreams, without doubt, are the playground of the subconscious mind. So when you're in a dream featuring hostile signs and messages, and you overthrow those messages by knowingly awakening, then it is HUGE personal progress in breaking out of your dogmatic "slumber" and "seeing things as they really are". Truth be told, I don't think I could have scripted a better dream myself to symbolise the transformation.

Maybe this is the breakthrough I've been needing my whole life. Time to acknowlegde reality, instead of burying myself in self-concocted myths. Time to let go of the ghosts that are forever in the shadows. Time to heal.

It brings to mind a pivotal scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind. John Nash, the schizophrenic genuis whose role won Russel Crowe an Oscar, was plagued by subversive links and messages contained in otherwise normal things. In his most psychotic phases, the scenes of Nash connecting up cut-up magazine articles with complex threads of wool dominate. And finally, when the Nobel Peace Prize committee member goes to check out whether Nash is stable enough to receive the coveted prize for Economics, he asks Nash: "How do you stay stable". Nash's answer is telling: "I don't look too far or too deeply into the patterns I see."

But it's not completely over yet. As I said yesterday, the mystical world requires one last chance. That message that the Tarot gave me last year, and all the synchronisitc signs that have followed, needs a third shot. This time I'm gonna use a totally different method. Scheduled for Wednesday. Will elaborate tomorrow.

Who knows maybe this time it will be third time luckY??

The Awakening

So I went into this large bar, parts of which were still under renovation. There must have been about 30 dudes hanging out in the bar. They all checked me out, hostility evident. But I stayed on, listened to some music, and did a little tour of the place.

The hostility got worse with a few guys taunting me. But something deep inside told me that they weren't real. I told them so: "you guys aren't real, I can make you disappear at any time." I had this hunch you see.
"Listen to the little fcker", came the retort, "Should be locked up in a looney bin".
So I punched that guy, in the face, and he went reeling off his barstool. A whole bunch of the other guys circled me and started moving in. It was getting shit scary. My hunch was still there, but I was not convinced. I was taking a huge gamble, if I messed up I was dead meat.

As they got about 2 foot away, I took the gamble. "Awake!" I cried...and woke up with a jump lying in my tent, Mrs M to the left of me, Miss L and friend a couple of feet away. I had made them dissapear. They weren't real.

This dream, 3 nights ago has to rate as one of the most symbolic and important dreams I've ever had. A millimeter for mankind, but a huge leap for BP Guy. This could be the turning point I've been awaiting for 20 years.

I'll have to go into a bit of explanation, calling on some Jungian dream analysis in the process.
But first I need one last test. And that's going to take place next Wednesday. The first 2 tests have been affirmative, all that is needed now is the final affirmation.

There's a lot to say about this latest development. But it's gonna have to wait a while. As predicted, BPG is in "Pretty-Shitty" territory right now - back home after a fantabulous holiday.

Feeling not Thinking

Not every meditation session is equal. Some go good, some go bad. Hopefully they get slowly better as time goes on.

This morning was my best session of the whole year. Focusing on the breath alone was not doing it for me, so a few weeks back I tuned into the ringing sound in my ears. But I struggled with that. It's just too monotone to hold my attention. Maybe one day I'll be able to zone in on sound alone.

Today I just cocentrated on feeling my body, the breathing vessel attached to my mind. The weight of it. The pulse of it. The subtle tingle of air on the surface of it. The aliveness of it.

And I started feeling a bliss. Like the universe was gently tickling me. I could hear my heart beat. My whole body felt like it was in a mild hard-on state, but an eternally sustainable hard-on, not a momentary one that collapses in ejaculation. An exhilerating but peaceful itch.

And I felt how good it was to be alive. Not doing anything else. Just being alive. Pulsing with the universe. Aware of my full being.

When the meditation ended, a spacious calm stayed with me for at least an hour. Mrs M was doing the dishes, I offered to take over, feeling the warm water enveloping my hands. The smooth surfaces of the plates. The cold iron of the spoons. All connecting with me.

Aware.

So today's been a special day. But I'm gonna give it a "Half-way House". I'm never satisfied with Halfway Houses, they're just not as exciting as "In-the-Pinks". But if you treat them right, and trade a little contentment for excitement, it might just be that Halfway Houses are the best place to be.

Delusions of Grandeur

And then there is Apophenia. No, this is not an ancient Greek Goddess. It is, in fact, a genuine medical term coined by K. Conrad in 1958, defined as:

• "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena"
• "In statistics, apophenia is called a Type I error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist"
• "The propensity to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects or ideas most closely links psychosis to creativity ... apophenia and creativity may even be seen as two sides of the same coin."

Apophenia would be an interesting way to dismiss my "mystical experiences". Maybe it would be a lot easier for all concerned if it did. But I'm afraid it doesn't. Having ploughed through the second half of the book "Beyond Coincidence", I can assure you that the coincidences that have crossed my path in my manic phases are every bit as profound as those deemed worthy to be included in the book.

Admittedly, there is an element of subjectivity in this appraisal, so what I am presently doing is writing a second book (see my first book: http://www.thewordproject.com/branchofwisdom.htm) detailing the strange string of events that happened to me three months ago. "Delusions of grandeur" is the title.

Book Titles, book titles... I find them about as addictive as domain names. I've got a list of about a hundred book titles. Here are some of the better ones:

• Snakes and Ladders (for bipolar depression)
• The Source Code
• Learning to Swim
• The Pythagorean Letter
• Why
• The Relative and the Absolute
• Blindspots
• The Awakening
• Perhaps

Anyway back to "Delusions of Grandeur": the idea is that once all of my coincidences are chronicled in this potential bestseller ;-) then the reader can choose the verdict for my synchronistic trips themselves.

I'm in the zone today - right where I want to be.

Religious and Spiritual Problems

Actually this whole "cause or effect" debate concerning mystical type experiences is moving much more mainstream into academic psychology. Fringe psychologists such as Jung, R.D.Laing and Grof have long maintained that psychosis harbours something sacred. Now the possibility that religious and spiritual experiences can CAUSE severe psychological trauma, rather than simply being an EFFECT OF, is up for serious academic investigation.

Dr. Martina Belz-Merk of the Psychological Institute at the University of Freiburg, has launched a project for "Counselling and Help for People with Unusual Experiences". Some interesting snippets:

• "The term "unusual experiences" is meant as a collective term for occurrences which are variously described as psychic, transcendental, supernatural, magical and so forth."
  
• "We prefer to use the term unusual experiences in order to avoid confounding these experiences with aspects of psychological disorders. With this term the special nature of the experience is respected as such without initial prejudice, diagnosis or unjustified labeling."
  
• "There is currently a controversial debate concerning whether unusual experiences are symptoms of a mental disorder, if mental disorders are a consequence of such experiences, or if people with mental disorders are especially susceptible to or even looking for these experiences" (for the full article go here: http://www.igpp.de/english/counsel/project.htm)

The most concrete evidence to date that mainstream psychology is beginning to widen its net is the inclusion of a new category in the latest version of the DSM IV (Diagnostic and statistic manual for mental diseases) named "religious and spiritual problems".

Disovering information like this is very exciting for me. I've spent the last 20 years trying to convince many, many people that the first psychotic episode I experienced was more than just a case of malfunctioning chemicals in my brain. It can be a very lonely and soul destroying battle.

Don't get me wrong. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that my bipolar disorder is a hereditary brain chemical condition. But that does not neccessarily mean that there weren't other factors at work too. It's this Western notion of ALL or NOTHING that I'm fighting against. Because All or Nothing always results in THE EXCLUDED MIDDLE.

And I'm tired of being excluded.

Coincidences

Things are better today. I've been reading a book "Beyond Coincidences". Coincidences have been very significant in my life. I've had 4 Manic episodes in my life to date (I'm talking genuine mania here not hyper-mania). The single most common denominator between the 4 has been a startling upswing in the coincidences that seem to involve my life. In fact, the upswing starts before the mania and becomes so profoundly overwhelming that I am not sure if it is an effect of the mania or a cause of the mania.

That's what I mean about my involvement in "practical mysticism" when I am in my Yeehaaa! sate. The coincidences are so uncanny that they start taking on a supernatural quality, defying any kind of rational explanation. You cannot help but become convinced that someone or something is trying to communicate with you. Kind of like a telephone ringing and ringing - but you don't answer.

It might sound strange but I sincerely hope that at some future time in my life I can visit the Yeehaa! state again. Sure I don't want to get hospitalised, and I don't relish the inevitable down which hits about a month later. But there is no doubt that the manic states have been a kind of "pinnacle experience" in my life, a peek into an incredibly magical world that most souls don't even know exists.

Problem is - you can't stay in the state, it's just not sustainable. And when you come back to reality land its dull, mundane hues are soul destroying. The ideal, I suppose, would be to live somewhere on the border between "In-the-Pink" and "Yeehaa!". Just far enough to keep one foot in the Other World and one foot firmly rooted on planet earth.