I have been back to look at these meditations over the last few days, and I think Reb Jeff has written a beautiful meditation for our times. I don't think you can actually add or detract anything from them. Rather like the original Ten Commandments themselves. Perhaps they are a new expression for our days present that speak more deeply to our own situation?
I like scripture, I find sometimes I look at a passage in my Bible and it seems to read completely differently to how I remember it before. Is it that Gods word changes for us as we heal and grow in his presence? I don't know. I just know this feeling and this bond, a sense of belonging and warmth. Of an awesome security. Of a sense of power and magesty beyond my comprehension. Being on first name terms, when I don't have a shred of 'right' to speak and listen to what I feel God says to me. I just feel like a child. Like I am growing up all over again, only this time I know who God is, when before I didn't.
You are probably wondering who I think God is then, and how we have those conversations. Well partly I think it has to do with me being Bi-Polar. I seem to lose the 'veil' of self that protects my mind from the infinate, ineffible, and a sense of immersion into the very being of God's presence. It's like being in the same moment in a black warm void where nothing exists except my own consciousness, and this sense of being encompassed in a warm darkness.
At other times it is like travelling beyond the speed of light through aeons of time and seeing the images of other eras, and the continuity of our human and planetory history flashing past me. Like being in a corridoor and travelling at unimaginable speed.
I loose my sense of self sometimes. This is always a bit dicy! Re-establishing my own identity s difficult when I have lost it completely. This is what my latest trip to the psychiatric ward has been about. I just 'went off on one' over about a 24 hour period, and was so 'high' there was no hope of getting back on terra firma without some extra medication, and the safety and process of psychiatric ward life for a couple of weeks.
It's going well. The new meds make my mouth dry, but in a sense I am functioning reasonalbly well with my feet on the ground. I don't have speed recall and I am just settling like a bird nesting. I can't put my hand to getting things done, and have basically come down of a megga high over 3 weeks without any ongoing dangers.
Strangely during these times I feel as though God is using me for something. Well I know He is. If that's how God want's to use me it's fine by me. During the time that I feel as though I have lost my sense of self, I seem to do creative things like pictures that have a kind of eternal meaning or purpose. It is like I am living within eternity itself and the construct of time itself ceases. I described it this time as having a kind of fractal complexity. That within each moment of time was infinately more time. The clock hands don't move around much when I am like this.
Oh well, I don't realy bother asking why, it just happens! The first times it happened I thought I was God Himself, but after a few episodes I realised this was not what was happening. I came to find that self membrane, the self containment within God's presence that meant my own identity could survive this experience without a long period of illness afterwards. I think it's wonderful. Also the drugs are better, and work quickly.
It is such a shame that psychiatric medicine and modern psychiatric care are not put on high agenda. For most patients there is still a perception of social stigma about having 'mental illness'. I just see it as our way of integrating our personality and selfhood, with our very existance. The general figures are about 1 in 4 people suffering with some kind of 'mental health' problems.
Gone are the days when it was the church's preserve to cast out those 'demons'. I see the Roman Catholic Church still has a cheif excorsist! Citing Harry Potter Books to be the work of the devil no less. I do believe in a spiritual world, and one where there are spiritual entities that are 'unwholesome'.
Perhaps these are 'souls in purgatory'. Limned in our collective subconscious. Passed lives of our ancestors that we must re-live during our lifetime until we have reconciled their pain with our own suffering. To treat people with this kind of spiritual disturbance as the demonised is not very helpful. Better to help them reconcile with this subliminal nightmare and where it stems from than make them surpress it. It only pops up even more strongly in successive generations.
I am a bit sleepy today, so no more until tomorrow.
A sweet and blessed sleep, and a refreshed day of purpose tomorrow.
I like scripture, I find sometimes I look at a passage in my Bible and it seems to read completely differently to how I remember it before. Is it that Gods word changes for us as we heal and grow in his presence? I don't know. I just know this feeling and this bond, a sense of belonging and warmth. Of an awesome security. Of a sense of power and magesty beyond my comprehension. Being on first name terms, when I don't have a shred of 'right' to speak and listen to what I feel God says to me. I just feel like a child. Like I am growing up all over again, only this time I know who God is, when before I didn't.
You are probably wondering who I think God is then, and how we have those conversations. Well partly I think it has to do with me being Bi-Polar. I seem to lose the 'veil' of self that protects my mind from the infinate, ineffible, and a sense of immersion into the very being of God's presence. It's like being in the same moment in a black warm void where nothing exists except my own consciousness, and this sense of being encompassed in a warm darkness.
At other times it is like travelling beyond the speed of light through aeons of time and seeing the images of other eras, and the continuity of our human and planetory history flashing past me. Like being in a corridoor and travelling at unimaginable speed.
I loose my sense of self sometimes. This is always a bit dicy! Re-establishing my own identity s difficult when I have lost it completely. This is what my latest trip to the psychiatric ward has been about. I just 'went off on one' over about a 24 hour period, and was so 'high' there was no hope of getting back on terra firma without some extra medication, and the safety and process of psychiatric ward life for a couple of weeks.
It's going well. The new meds make my mouth dry, but in a sense I am functioning reasonalbly well with my feet on the ground. I don't have speed recall and I am just settling like a bird nesting. I can't put my hand to getting things done, and have basically come down of a megga high over 3 weeks without any ongoing dangers.
Strangely during these times I feel as though God is using me for something. Well I know He is. If that's how God want's to use me it's fine by me. During the time that I feel as though I have lost my sense of self, I seem to do creative things like pictures that have a kind of eternal meaning or purpose. It is like I am living within eternity itself and the construct of time itself ceases. I described it this time as having a kind of fractal complexity. That within each moment of time was infinately more time. The clock hands don't move around much when I am like this.
Oh well, I don't realy bother asking why, it just happens! The first times it happened I thought I was God Himself, but after a few episodes I realised this was not what was happening. I came to find that self membrane, the self containment within God's presence that meant my own identity could survive this experience without a long period of illness afterwards. I think it's wonderful. Also the drugs are better, and work quickly.
It is such a shame that psychiatric medicine and modern psychiatric care are not put on high agenda. For most patients there is still a perception of social stigma about having 'mental illness'. I just see it as our way of integrating our personality and selfhood, with our very existance. The general figures are about 1 in 4 people suffering with some kind of 'mental health' problems.
Gone are the days when it was the church's preserve to cast out those 'demons'. I see the Roman Catholic Church still has a cheif excorsist! Citing Harry Potter Books to be the work of the devil no less. I do believe in a spiritual world, and one where there are spiritual entities that are 'unwholesome'.
Perhaps these are 'souls in purgatory'. Limned in our collective subconscious. Passed lives of our ancestors that we must re-live during our lifetime until we have reconciled their pain with our own suffering. To treat people with this kind of spiritual disturbance as the demonised is not very helpful. Better to help them reconcile with this subliminal nightmare and where it stems from than make them surpress it. It only pops up even more strongly in successive generations.
I am a bit sleepy today, so no more until tomorrow.
A sweet and blessed sleep, and a refreshed day of purpose tomorrow.
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