Pursuing illusions or finding joy?

One that induced joy to the point of euphoria was at a festival watching the moon rise above the stage and being aware God was doing this on purpose to show how majestic he is

Cracked

CrackedGirl wrote:One that induced joy to the point of euphoria was at a festival watching the moon rise above the stage and being aware God was doing this on purpose to show how majestic he is

Cracked

That's neat stuff! I have euphoric times during some of my meditations - it's a sensation that sweeps through my body and tingles quite a bit. Hard to explain.

I think spiritual euphoria is very powerful. Because of this I find I need to be careful it does not run away with me. Your meditqation experience sounds cool

Cracked

Something that has helped me a lot in my struggle is going to Quaker meetings for worship. It is a unique form of meditation. It's an hour of almost complete silence, except when people feel moved to stand and speak. I believe it has let me tap into those special insights we bipolars have, but in a healthy, stable and miraculous way. When you really feel it, your heart starts beating fast, and you may start to tremble.

Despite all the bad things about bipolar, I think that we have some very special things in common in the way we experience life...seeing life from high and low to the supernatural. I think that when I go to the meetings I can harness that and experience it with other people.

I found an interesting example of negative "illusions" or "fancies" as Shakespeare wrote. Macbeth includes a call to the "divine" (similar to Cracked_Girl's exmple) to remedy the negative sorrow.

The following is taken from an article by T. Szasz. Overcome by guilt for her murderous deeds, Lady Macbeth ‘goes mad’: she feels agitated, is anxious, unable to eat, rest or sleep. Her behaviour disturbs Macbeth, who sends for a doctor to cure his wife. The doctor arrives, quickly recognises the source of Lady Macbeth’s problem and tries to reject Macbeth’s effort to medicalise his wife’s disturbance:

This disease is beyond my practice . . . unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:
More needs she the divine than the physician. (Act V, Scene 1)

Macbeth rejects this diagnosis and demands that the doctor cure his wife. Shakespeare then has the doctor utter these immortal words, exactly the opposite of what many on this forum would believe:

Macbeth. How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor. Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon her heart?
Doctor. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself. (Act V, Scene 3)

I found this part of Shakespeare's work to be particularly interesting becuase of the statement "Not so sick, my lord, as the is troubled with thick coming fancies" - which is exactly how I feel about my 9/11 troubles and my "fancies" or "illusions" concerning my negative responses that eventually landed me in mania and the hosptital.

As Shakespear described - it was my ministry to myself - not a doctor that aided my recovery most.