Bipolar Religiosity

It's just a general reminder for everyone So nobody gets hurt.

mbk734:

Part of my mania is religiosity and wanting to believe in God (Christianity/The Bible) and militant atheism (Dawkins -The God Delusion) and Sam Harris (End of Faith). It is nice to have a religion to give you hope and comfort you during hard times and there is a lot of wisdom in the Bible, but it also seems like it's all made up and a cult and gang like crafted to control people. I am grateful to the Catholic Hospitals and good Christians that take care of the mentally ill and also the Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish doctors that I have seen. America is a great country because you have freedom of religion and also freedom FROM religion. My doctor helped me and recommended a book called A Brief History of Everything.

There is a book called the Three Christs of Ypsilanti about three schizophrenic patients that all thought that they were Jesus Christ. They were put in group therapy together.

I told my Jewish Psychiatrist a joke. What would happen if you gave Jesus Haldol?
He would stop hearing God's voice and go back to being a carpenter.
http://www.bible.ca/psychiatry/psychiat ... hrenic.htm

Does anyone else have a religious aspect to their mania? What are your thoughts?

I have had religion play a big part in this. I believed I knew I was given a message about a matter pertaining to my future. And I heard a voice in my heart or in my head from a dead pope. Pope John Paul II. I question the Catholic beliefs about the Saints hearing God or seeing visions. I also question the Old Testament when Moses was with the burning bush and heard God. I am bipolar and have experienced some out of this world experiences and so I think I am only doing what I should do by questioning theses occurrences. To the faithful and normal mind it can be easy to accept this as truth since they know no one who has heard God speak to them, and if they did, then they would immediately think they are crazy anyway, yet they accept these things as true and genuine and coming from God. If I didn't have bipolar I would probably think as they do. But fact is, I am bipolar and I believe that for mysel, I can think like you do mbk734. Who is to say that back in those days any of these people indeed didn't have bipolar or were schizophrenics.

Spent the majority of my life athiest. Unsure which came first, my shift to agnosticism or my mania, but it was probably close to around the same time.

I continue to be agnostic, and yes, I checked into emerg, right around the time I felt I could no longer successfully block out invasive religious thoughts and voices. I had narrowed it down to extra dimensional travelers / magicians.

For sure though, I never believed it 100% for any lengthy period of time, but the imagination running wild all the time starts to break you, and you are left exhausted (mostly anxiety
wrought) fending off all the crap coming into the mind.

Now, I am still agnostic, and I believe in the historical value of the Bible and other ancient texts, and for sure, people such as King James made revisions to those historical texts to suit their moral standard. I think there was a period of polythesiem that was totally eclipsed by newer religions, and survives to this day altered in current texts. For example, I truly entertain the idea that this could be a real possibility...

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

At one point was probably a prayer which was highly sacred to pagans, and probably went like this...

"Our Dead Fathers, Who we articulate in the night stars, on halloween, we call your names."


So I have an imagination, so what... I prefer not to believe anything 100% but agnostically entertain possibility.

Anyways, let me tell you, some anti-psychotics, I don't how they worked, but they destroy any type of immediacy or attention one might give invading or invasive thoughts. All the thoughts, or voices of hallucinations float around and continue to be there, but the anxiety, attention or importance those thoughts take drops to nearly zero. They cease to make sense and become scattered disconnected thoughts. Huge burden lifted with the anti-psychotics. A little collateral damage, but worth it. I don't seem to have any relapsing issues or concerns either. I don't consider myself religious. I mean this would never happen to me, however, I could see how that happened to them.

Police shootings inquest: Mentally ill woman told 911 she was ‘pure evil’

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2013/ ... _evil.html



The phone call on that article is worth listening to...

So, while I have an imagination, I am extremely grounded enough, not to believe or follow any religious system. I never believed anything 100%, it just got to be annoying, and exhausting and I can see how that happened to that lady.

Part of my mania is religiosity and wanting to believe in God (Christianity/The Bible) and militant atheism (Dawkins -The God Delusion) and Sam Harris (End of Faith). It is nice to have a religion to give you hope and comfort you during hard times and there is a lot of wisdom in the Bible, but it also seems like it's all made up and a cult and gang like crafted to control people.

I see the bong in your picture. I don't know how stable you are, whether you are doing marijuana or dmt, etc... however, that scientology stuff is absolutely insane. Stuff to be warry of or to stay away from if you are not fully grounded, perhaps. However if you are bored out of your mind and consider yourself safe, hey, they got some bizarre theories.

I found some more friends on an atheist forum website. I believe thinking about religion can make your mania worse. There are no ghosts, angels, god, demons, in my opinion and believing in them while manic can make things worse.

DISCLAIMER: I am not religious and I have no problem with you being so. I will discuss my beliefs and may even ask you questions about yours, but this is only in order to understand how you see the world. I do not believe everyone has to think the same as me.

OK, so on with the post.

mbk734: I didn't see anything offensive in what you asked. I simply took it as you raising questions on the topic.

Kamia: God does not need gold ceilings. That comes from the egos of humans who prance about in robes and proclaim themselves to be god's voice on earth. 2 very different beings.


Personally, I am an atheist. I am very comfortable with the idea of no god of any description - or not gods, however your religion rolls. I do consider myself spiritual, I believe in a consciousness that imbues everything in the universe with 'life' and unites everything. I also follow Law of Attraction within my belief structure.

When I become unbalanced I do often find myself falling into religiosity. I explored christianity for about 6 years, judaism, hiduism (in the form of the hare krishna movement), buddhism and islam. I have bought religious texts, when I explored islam, I even went as far as wearing a hijab and praying 5 times a day. I cannot for the life of me, tell you why I go into religion to this depth, because in all my explorations, I have never once believed in god. If I could have a religion without god, that would work really well for me I think. I just know I'm looking for something. I think I'm looking for a set of rules I can live my day by so I don't have to think for myself. A way to safely navigate my day I suppose. I can't even tell you if I'm hypomanic or lightly depressed when this happens.

I recently bought a bible to study LOA in the bible, but apart from that, I have no interest.

I'm a hardcore atheist when I'm myself, but that hasn't stopped me from talking to both God and the Devil and various angels and very spiritually enlightened aliens and stuff. I write all that off as psychosis though, but back when I was a teenager I spent several years being very very religious, and tried out various cults & organised religions.

It still happens to me. Last time I was psychotic, which is thankfully more than two years ago now, I was completely on-board the mystical alien train and thought I had supernatural powers. For me feelings of spirituality is basically a warning sign I'm about to go la-la.

Which probably explains why I'm a very staunch atheist the rest of the time. I hate and fear and loathe and other strong words that I can subvert my own faculties to such an extreme degree. Even if the spiritual stuff is usually fairly benign in nature.

Mind this doesn't stop me from being hugely into Mindfullness and Yoga, which I guess is sort of spiritual in a way, but not really. Both are things I heartily recommend to everyone with our particular problems, because they help me enormously. And yoga is also good exercise, which is important in itself when you're prone to long bouts of depression and general immobility.

Ah, the alien thing. I have on occasion, believed I'm really an alien soul in a human body. This isn't helped by the fact I am the result of a holiday romance, with no paper trail to a living, breathing father to be had anywhere and a mother who resolutely tells me her train was followed by a UFO on her way home. *sigh*

Tibetan Buddhism has an idea of tulku, its a being who -in spite of the ability to leave the realm of existence reincarnates again and again to help sentient beings and alleviate suffering.

Naturally when my mania would pick up I thought I was one, I even started to learn Tibetan and thought I had a special connection to the Dalai Lama.

I kept those ideas to myself and when I fell into my latest depression, I lost my faith altogether.

When I was diagnosed with bipolar, I was the pathology in my beliefs and now that the bubble of illusion has burst, its impossible to pick up faith again.

I can understand the appeal of religion. It gives you a sense of cohesion with the world. Gives your a sense of direction and purpose, a way to navigate life, a community.

Religion has ceremonies and beliefs to explain death. If someone truly believes that God loves them and has a plan for them, that their dead relatives are in heaven. These can be very powerful and therapeutic beliefs, especially if a person is alone, sick, has poor social supports. Less an explicit meaning of life than a sense of meaning.

I don't think its fair blame nearly all of human issues on religion as some new atheists do. Numbers-wise way more people died in the name of communism in the 20th century than religion. And communism doesn't have any supernatural beliefs (aside from North Korea). WW2 was one of the bloodies conflicts in human history was not religion based.

Marx said that religion is an opiate for the masses but life can be hard and many people do need that sense of cohesion that religion brings... even if that real sense of peace is ultimately grounded in illusion.