I want to talk a little bit more about what I was talking about yesterday which had to do with talking openly about experiences that we've had in our different altered states of consciousness and in my case my altered states of consciousness resulted in a mental health diagnosis of bipolar one with psychotic features and the conversations that I'm talking about are not necessarily about disputing a diagnosis or trying to get rid of it or explain it away but rather to expand the conversation and expand the language and the vocabulary that we use to describe some of our inner subjective experiences relating to the diagnosis or you know the whole process before diagnosis in my case I was in an altered state for two months before I was hospitalized and then given a diagnosis and during those two months I would have never guessed that at the end of it all it was going to be explained in terms of a mental health diagnosis it felt like some sort of spiritual journey and spiritual experience a lot of it was really scary and a lot of it was really blissful but I never thought that I was mentally ill I was told that so if i could imagine that if I could imagine going back to how I felt about the situation on a daily basis as I was experiencing it before I was given a mental health diagnosis I could probably share a lot of different things if I if I could pretend that I was never given the diagnosis and then you know I just got through that crisis without and got back to some sort of normal functioning without being given a diagnosis and without being given medication I know that didn't happen what I'm saying is I would have a very large amount of things to share and talk about and different wonderings and curiosities and and I would be sort of in awe of the experience and I would think it was kind of mysterious and wonderful and magical even though there was a lot of really scary stuff to I'm not trying to glorify these states as something that I would want to exist in all the time I'm just saying that in retrospect if I was to talk about it without having a diagnosis I would share something a lot different than after I was diagnosed and after I was diagnosed I was told how to interpret everything that went on and just explain it away in terms of a mental illness and and basically that gave me the impression and it wasn't an impression was pretty obvious which was don't talk about what happened there's no point in talking about what happened and what you experience because it was just a mental illness and I think that is a mistake I feel that there's a lot of really interesting conversation that can come out of the experiences and that maybe it's conversation that we need to start having and again that doesn't mean that i say i completely disagree with my diagnosis I'm just saying that's a very small amount of the overall story that's part of the story but it's not the entire story and I think that you know it's troublesome to assume that just because I have that diagnosis that that's the end of the story in terms of everything that I experienced you know that would be like saying to someone who has cancer to just say I have cancer and not share any of the story your struggles or or anything about it just say I've cancer so if I'm supposed to just say well I have bipolar disorder and not say anything that I went through and I have shared stuff before but a lot of its in terms of like my recovery journey so it's like well these are the symptoms i had and this is how I've gone about my recovery journey and that um you know that's usually for like a hopeful story for people to get better but you know that's like the diagnosis assumes there's going to be some kind of recovery story and so a recovery story implies a diagnosis and a diagnosis implies they'll be some kind of recovery story well what about all the other stories yes there is a story of recovery but there's also stories from the experiences and what that meant and what it means you know so much of life has become quite meaningless and for me the states of mania and psychosis are very meaningful and i'm not meaning meaningful in terms of the meaning that i would like to just put onto it you know so often when we have an experience we think it means a certain thing to us which is usually projected from her past so in my experiences in altered states in mania and psychosis there's a lot of different meanings that I see that I wouldn't necessarily choose so for example if I have a delusion of some sort and what's called a delusion I might conclude that that means i have to die now that's the meaning it's not meaning that i want or would i choose but there's a lot of that type of meaning from you know i'm the worst in the world to I'm you know right up there with God so the feelings and the meanings are very diverse and very rich and I don't feel like talking about those meanings is the purpose would be to be like I want to cling to the good meanings and get rid of the bad because that would just be choosing based on our own personal preferences which are conditioned and you know that's like using the ego to sort of choose but I feel like the overall flavor can be extracted and I've talked about before how sometimes there are messages and there are special messages and there's a lot of thinking that special messages are bad and I talked about before how yes if I was to get a special message every second of every day that would be not good it would be a little overwhelming we we aren't really designed to handle that amount of a meaning that is seem special and meaningful personally and I feel like reality in the world actually needs these special messages it needs some people to feel like they're getting special messages from somewhere that are particularly designed for them it's almost like saying here's your meaning in life we're all looking for it and we assume that we have to work hard to look for it and then sometimes people go into a manic state and it's sort of given to them on a silver platter and the trouble is that it's a very high energy state and if a person is in a high energy state for a long period of time and then they come out of it it makes sense that it's going to take a little bit of time to re equilibrate to consensus reality so psychosis and depression are kind of like a hangover from being in a different dimension of this reality that it takes some time to to recover and so yeah the conversation isn't about negating the mental illness paradigm it's just about expanding on it and having more options of the language that we can choose to use at least with each other to expand our vocabulary on how we talk about the experience and and just doing that could be a bit validating and again it's not to be thinking that we want to go back into those states I actually feel like by talking about it more by talking about it more we're less likely to go back into those states because it's made into conversation of the whole so it's not like something other that would be felt as oh I'm going into something other than reality and if nothing less it would be slightly entertaining to share some of our stories of what we experienced and felt and thought when we were in those states I think together we'd probably create some really good movie scripts and you know there's how much of that is actually still hidden within people who have never spoken about their experiences and there's a lot of good stuff in there so I feel like I can have both a brain disease and lots of good stories lots of good stories that came out of that brain disease if that's what it is you know and it feels like it's a brain disease it's a disease of meaning there's so much meaning in there and a lot of it is not coherent it's not congruent it's ascribing meaning to things where there is no real meaning but it's like everything that we see when we're in that state of consciousness feels like there's some kind of meaning so the brain is making up the meaning and maybe some of that meaning can be brought into daily life that's what I'm interested in the most there is a quote in a book and the book is called I can't remember but the quote says something about I don't care about your spiritual experience I care about what you do with it afterwards and that really resonates with me because spiritual experiences are transient they don't happen all the time but what can be taken out of that experience if that spiritual experience didn't transform how a person is going to be in their daily life moving forward then it didn't really have any value and if it's just going to be held on to and wished for again you know there's there's drugs for that you know it's not really any different than just taking a drug which you know has maybe some value and like ceremony but not really something to be repeated it's like a learning it's like a journey thing and romanian psychosis to me feel like a journey inward so i think i think a person can both have a brain disease diagnosis and be a visionary and a visionary just a person who has visions and sees things differently you know and there's a lot of in congruence in the state of mania and psychosis between the inner and the outer and that's one of the reasons why behavior doesn't really match up if i'm experiencing something inwardly that isn't happening outwardly and I'm behaving based on the inward part and somebody sees me and it doesn't match up they will wonder and what I'm thinking is that you know there's a certain level of having a vision or seeing things in reality in daily reality that aren't congruent with how things may be should be in the world like say people killing each other and stuff and normally we can walk by that and not walk by but sort of get by knowing that that's happening and then in those other states a person becomes so sensitive that it's like why I can't stand that so it's almost like not being okay with that stuff happening so that's part of to me I feel like that's one of the things that start some of the in congruence is that our inner becomes incongruent with the outer in what is really happening in the world for real that we don't necessarily witness on a daily basis would get discontented by really and you know maybe a person retreats inside to some kind of utopia or this idea that we can actually do something about it you know in mania we feel like hey there's something I can do about the world I can help the world I can change the world well maybe we need people that actually think that way and even though it gets out of hand in mania perhaps it only gets out of hand because there's only a few people in mania doing that whereas if people consciously decided to be like that collectively there wouldn't be any manic weirdos out there there there would be if people were in mania they would probably be providing a lot of insight and ideas and visions for the people that actually wanted to take action so to me a person in mania is almost like a leader in a way but one gets lost in one's own inner vision an inner manifestation and and we don't know how to make it manifest outwardly and that's why we need to start talking to each other because you know all these visions are sort of within us and among us but we're not sharing them and then if we're not we're not able to take some sort of collective action towards that because our visions are pretty big and it's hard to do that by oneself and we get super passionate about certain issues and it makes reality difficult because people don't match our passion they can't see what we see and they can't feel what we feel and and so we get really disheartened and then we end up needing to take medications to suppress the passion that we feel and I feel like maybe one day we won't need to because that passion and energy will be valued in a way that it's actually utilized in a moment to moment basis and it's not sort of wasted and it may be if we're able to refine some of our vision will have a sense of where to channel our energy in her efforts so it's not met with opposition and what I mean by that is if I was in a super high mania and I'm just wandering around the streets I would just go from one thing to the next using all my energy and passion that I had in the moment and you know what I would probably meet up with quite a bit of opposition because I'd be trying to help and maybe somebody doesn't want help for example but if the vision was there and there was some sort of there was it was more refined it wasn't just me out in and in society with infinite possibilities of things that I could bump into and I could bump into trouble if there was a vision I would be more activated in the vision versus just being out randomly that is sort of how it happens at first if a person goes into mania they're pretty much doing random stuff so if we each had our sort of piece of the vision we if we went into that state we would be able to channel it and keep ourselves out of trouble more I don't know if that's true but could be could be helpful not only do we need more options for recovering from a mental health crisis and mental health diagnosis I feel we also need more options in the language we choose to talk about it about and perhaps if we talk about it with each other enough even when we go into the hospital we will be able to relate what's going on for us in a more coherent way that a person who is working in the system what almost understand what we're saying instead of just looking for mental health symptoms if we had sort of a collective conversation we would be speaking in a way that they would it would almost be like huh that actually kind of makes sense you know the way you just explain it kind of makes sense and you know I feel like one day we'll be able to not convince but we'll be able to go in there and be like this is what's happening for me i know this is what's happening and you know keep me safe for some days and i'll be okay not tell me what's wrong with me and give me a label and a diagnosis and then treat me I feel like one day we'll have the language well we'll have had enough conversation about it that we will feel strongly within ourselves we'll have more of a conviction about what's happening for us and I don't even know what all that language is and there's a lot of different language out there and it would be great to include all of it because whatever is helpful for each person you know if you could think of the best way you can explain it or the moat if you think of a most coherent way to explain it you could think about the most magical way to explain it you could think about the most mysterious way to explain it and you could think about the most logical way to explain it there are a lot of different ways you know you could explain it in terms of the social context you could explain it in terms of biochemistry in terms of ortho molecular psychiatry there are a lot of different aspects to it and you know the more that we can talk about it in so many different ways in different dimensions will start to see other solutions for the distress that accompanies it because even though I'm talking here about having conversation about it and also a little bit about well let's get our visions and our ideas together we still have to keep ourselves safe we still have to go to the hospital if we need to we still have to take a medication if things are getting too scary or daily medication if you take daily medication I do and I hope one day I don't have to but I'm not in a rush to to prove anything um I don't think you know I whether it's something besides a brain disease that's probably a long way off in terms of people actually seeing it a different way and I feel like first by talking about in many ways and seeing it in many ways that will produce a huge conversational context through which a person can sort of choose how they want to frame it the most helpful way and but at the same time even if I choose one-day to say I'm not mentally ill and just a visionary you know 10 years down the road say that happens and then all of a sudden I start losing it and feel like I could I'm gonna die or something I might take some drugs you know like I might take some kind of medication and because it's important to stay alive because even if it is a visionary thing being in that state can be dangerous because the visions don't always line up with reality and thoughts and the insights because the thing is it's it's a non temporal state it's there's no time in that state there's no and what I mean by that is an insight could come thats related to something two thousand years ago and I could have the sense of that or it might come in it is from you know 2,000 years in the future and maybe things two thousand years in the future are different and if I act based on that insight whatever it is thinking that it's now then I could get myself hurt whereas if i take that insight and just make note of it write it down talk about it without acting on it then when i'm in an ordinary state i can kind of the pieces of the puzzle together and see if there was anything there you know you can think of it as mining you know it's like an interstate of you never know what's going to come up and what's going to come through a person that was one of my mistakes when I was in mania and psychosis the first time and I don't think it's a mistake I could have avoided but it feels like you know everything each moment is so powerful it feels like it needs to happen now so if I felt like I'm going to help the world I'm gonna save the world it has to happen right now and you know if I could take that thought or that feeling and just put it aside and be like yeah I want to connect with some kind of purpose or mission in my life obviously that's something that I want but it doesn't mean I have to do it all now that's impossible that's why I feel like that state you know overall with all the meaning and feeling and passion and energy and compassion and love and scary stuff in that state not two month period the first time was like it's like a seed it's like all this energy and it like infuses my entire being and all of that energy and all of that experience and all of that feeling and meaning inform the being that I am for the rest of my life in subtle ways or in in bigger ways and is true because all of that cumulatively glad to being diagnosed with a mental illness and going to the psych ward and now here I am wanting to make different kind of meaning out of it so there was all that experience that had a different kind of meaning and then I was diagnosed with a mental illness and they told me what meaning it had and I'm here five years later saying I think it had other meaning and I don't know exactly all the meaning but I it would be cool to talk about it because I didn't really talk about it when I was in the state i was just in it and you know it's like it's like being infected with all that meaning and all that whatever it was you know it did in fact me it did change my brain you know it did cause a disease it cost a dis ease and you know I'm I don't know what to I don't know what to do about it except for I just want to talk about it and I just want to invite whatever language you have to explain it or talk about it not even explain it because you can't it's not something to be explained like there are explanations and they're all they're all really useful it's actually useful to have a bunch of different explanations whether it's you know pi role disorder you know it which is a certain biotype bipolar it's like a physiology thing and you know whether it's you need the gaps diet to help with your stomach digestion which changes the response of the brain you know there's a lot of different things even the book interpersonal neurobiology has a lot of insights into the brain and how that could happen so there's a lot of different things and i'm i'm also interested in the language is creating more language for it and just having more conversation and creating a bigger context of stories and and people's own personal explanations of what is happening and i really like what's his name Sean Blackwell's videos on bipolar or waking up he's like a 20 video series or something and it's really good and that's a great it's a great wave of looking at it and you know I could say I'm bipolar and waking up instead of or I don't need I don't think it needs to be an either/or thing and I don't think it's healthy to necessarily talk about in that way because if I was just to resist the the diagnosis that I have that I don't know how helpful that would be and I'm interested in actually having enough conversation that brings together the mental health system and and other ways of talking about it you know all that would really look like be four people that went to some kind of crisis center for help when they're in a mental health crisis you know for them to be asked so what do you feel is for you what's happening inside what meaning is happening what's happening internally and not in a way like I don't actually care what you have to say but imagine if it was to the point where a person was asked that and it was genuine in that the person asking the question actually did want to know what the person experiencing the crisis want had to say and would actually value it and would actually be interested in it and would actually take it into account and it would actually inform the next steps that the person experiencing the crisis would go through it wouldn't be just some kind of patronizing thing and and the person asking the question would also have all this lift different language and vocabulary like a huge vocabulary to really understand what the person was saying and you know even if the person that was saying it didn't really know what they were saying exactly they would still be understood because this other person would just really know what kind of language would come out of these experiences and that doesn't mean they would never use any medication ever it just means that you know maybe for some people they would not have to but so I feel like it's important to include the system because you know the system is full of people who do want help and do care other people too so it's just a matter of meeting people with people and so to me it's a matter of we're all in this together I just realized this whole video I looked naked but I'm not and when I think about meaning and what it means you know if we were to think about like what's the meaning of life and everybody's wondering it's probably the same for everybody not in terms of what people think the meaning of life is and sense it but what it actually is whatever that is it's probably very much the same for every single person so what I'm saying is that you know people go into this state of mania and psychosis and they're trying to figure out some kind of meaning and every moment has different meaning and super meaningful and maybe none of it's really right per se but it's still like an attempt for the psyche to find some kind of meaning somewhere and you know it's trying to find it and it finds way too much of it so if we do imagine that there is just sort of one meaning to life whatever that may be it's a shared thing then like it's shared for all of us whatever that true meaning is so it's shared by the world that's shared by the entire world and in my feeling a person in mania experiences a good portion or some portion of it feeling very altruistic very much concerned with the world and in that way to me those states usually have the ego subside and then as ego subsides there's more of this sort of shared concern about the world and it's like felt so strongly that it feels like i am the world like i am all this meaning i am you know i am every meaning that i see i'm not separate from it and then as the ego subsides I really feel that the states are actually a movement towards world centricity and I came across that term in Ken Wilbur's book the spectrum of consciousness and he talks about just that world centricity where a person their orientation is more towards concerns for the world than just their own individual self and I think that's part of the thing is that there's not really that much meaning in you know one's own personal little life for one's own personal little gain you know we try we do that and some people get to the peak of that and then oftentimes they're unfulfilled and and I feel like mania is like an attempt of evolution in a way to bring about more worldcentric beings you know like if some people might be taking the psych ward and they're thinking oh my gosh the trees I can't sleep they're being cut down and and then we think that that's illness but imagine if everybody took something that seriously and really acted and took it upon themselves to have one's life but then really take an active role in something that is very obviously in need of change and I'm not saying that's the way to go I just feel that a person that goes into those states and they're feeling like I gotta save the world well it's pretty hard to do that by oneself so it would be good if we could get together and talk about world-changing ideas that we've probably already had we probably already had a million of them and they're just sitting there on the shelf or in your computer and I have a lot of ideas but it would be cool to talk about them with other people because I can't really do anything by myself and I don't know if I want to there's a lot out there about people becoming their own individual entrepreneurs and then having their business and their clients well if there's a person with a business and they need clients somebody who's got to be the client and somebody's got to be the expert that's sort of innately what's wrong with the world is that there's experts and then there's clients and we're not just getting together and actually trying to just solve some issues I think maybe it might be up to us to do that because everyone else is sort of you know normal people they have their normal life and they're not really gonna change that much where is a lot of us we don't have much to lose and you know we've already lost our minds so and we might have some good ideas and maybe we're kind of attached to them like my ideas and I don't want to share and but you know I think they came to us in those states as a gift that we're supposed to give the world and if we can't do it individually because it's you know not each one of us can become some little expert entrepreneur maybe we could form some kind of coalition or group that there's like a thousand of us with all these great ideas and we just since there's so many of us working on whatever it is you know you don't really have to do to too much but you can give the gift that you have to give you know maybe when you give that gift maybe if you have a specific thing that you're like this is what it was I wanted to give and give it to the group maybe you can move on to the next thing instead of being like well how am I ever gonna make this work and bring this about just you know give it away just give it to the group probably so many people have the same kind of idea because it's an idea that doesn't come from our individual brains it comes out of sort of our meaning and our perception of meaning and a lot of us probably saw a lot of the same meanings and a lot of the same ideas or we saw a lot of the same issues that need to be resolved and perhaps always that might help result them maybe they won't maybe it's all just crazy delusional stuff and it could be but I want to know if it is and maybe just by talking about with each other will it'll give us something to do it'll give us you know some project to work on and and it could be good

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