BI-POLAR DISORDER AND SPIRITUALITY
 
 
 
I have bi-polar disorder and sometimes experience
extravagant cognitive states.  I am a spiritual person and
sometimes experience uncommon relatedness.  I am beginning
to understand that mania and major depression are organic
subversions of healthy life processes.  I am beginning to
understand the parallel between mania's omnipotence and
mystic merger, between depression's isolation and spiritual
separateness.
 
                Despair and Depression
 
Despair and desolation are often part of spiritual growth. 
The inner self is questing for a goal it senses, has once
attained, knows is there, yet has not reached.  The anguish
is energetic.  Psalm 22 that begins "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me" is David lamenting this isolation of
his soul.    
 
During depression, the world is closed and small, the self
overly fearful, clogged, fragmented, selfish.  Major
depression can carry with it anxiety, phobia, hyper-
perception, perseveration in the misery, fatigue,
loneliness.
 
"Despair is different than depression.  Despair is noble. 
It's being windswept, standing on a rock, arguing with God. 
Depression turns in [on] you.  It's useless."  
 
                   Merger and Mania
 
Mystic and religious authors write often about merging.  The
feeling of oneness between self and other that mystics, and
worldly lovers, sense is belonging that reaches an unusual
transcendence, a fusion.  There is an inner and outer unity,
a sense of tender global compassion, spaciousness,
fearlessness, self-emptiness, equanimity.  There is a
delight in solitude, all the better to sense the cosmic
reunion.  There may be prophecy.  
 
During the escalating phase of mood swings, exhilaration can
become uncontained.  You can't fuse with the Other if you
are bio-chemically caught up in the Self.  What could
complete as fusion stalls at grandiosity.  There can be a
hyper-psychic, arrogant, attention-seeking flailing.  This
may be medically diagnosed as mania and the mood chemically
suppressed.   
 
 
          Bi-Polar Disorder and Spirituality
 
These are some parallels between the cycles of mental ill-
health and the development of spirituality.  The nouns in
the previous sentence mean nothing unusual, mean only the
well defined medical diagnosis and the generally accepted
non-corporeal meaning of spirituality.  
 
Bi-polar disorder, especially when under some control, can
look like the mysticism and despair described by poets.  But
for the person in mental ill-health, attempts at
transcendence can fail.  The disconnection of major
depression is the awry manifestation of spiritual despair,
natural process derailed.  Spiritual separation can
transform into community, spiritual isolation into union. 
Major depression remains a heavy weight, reinforcing
inertia.  The omniscience of mania is mysticism's fusion
gone wrong.  Both depression and mania encapsulate me from
spirit's warmth.  Bi-polar disorder may be diverted
actualization.  The task is to set the course again.
 
 
 
Sharewrite (s) 1991 Sylvia Caras.  You may reproduce this
material if: your recipients may also reproduce it, you do
not change it, you include this notice and my name.
 
 
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