HEALING BY FAITH - Resolving Mania

One grey, wintry day, as I sat by a window and looked out on my back porch, I pondered my fate after 14 years of manic depression, two of those in recovery. I had made much progress. I was working a professional job, had not had a manic episode in two years, and was managing a social life for the first time in ten. Still, I looked out on a life that had no great passion. The driving impulse of my manic episodes of the past had continued to elude me.

I reflected on what was missing from my life and the answer to a quandary I had yet to resolve. What was the nature of my psychotic, religious episodes? Though having shelved my inquiry into the meaning of God’s contact with me, I had to ask myself whether they were real or not. The evidence was overwhelming. I had a collection of episodes filled with the acts of spiritual oneness too numerous to count, which left me enchanted with the promise of sitting at God’s knee. I yearned for the mental state where I was certain of a destiny enshrined in a sense of the sacred.

I had experienced 14 years of vivid memories of living touched by God. They had filled my life with purpose. Yet, 14 years after this strange conveyance to the history of the universe I believed I was part of, I was once more relegated to a world where the immediacy of sacred purpose eluded me. I had spent the last two years out from under the shadow of God, filled with the early struggles of recovery, going to work everyday living in the mundane world, and fulfilling the boring tasks of existence. I felt bereft. The magic of life was missing. It was time to take those earlier experiences off the shelf that had put them there. Were they real or but delusions?

The answer was central to my recovery. If those manic highs were true, then I was part of world history, enshrined in the goings on of the eternal. Yet, after 14 years of being introduced to this cosmic existence and being locked out months later, I questioned their validity. Was I to be famous, or was I one more anonymous body of ordinary humanity? While my recovery had been significant, I had held back by not resolving this issue.

The answer came to me as I sat thinking. I imagined God speaking to me. There are those who can live in my presence in conscious awareness, but, after 14 years of trying to live in that state, perhaps you are not one of them. You have to take the same road most of humanity has, living in blind belief that there is a God. Like your ancestors who for thousands of years moved the belief in God step by step forward over a lifetime, you have to hand off God’s reality from one generation to the next. This was a powerful thought, and it made perfect sense.

In that moment, I had my answer. My psychotic, spiritual episodes were just that, psychotic and delusional. They were not to be sighted as proof of a sacred reality. I was set free in that moment. Finally, I could let go. A vision of clarity ensued. This epiphany would affect the rest of my life. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was healed.

Now, 25 years later, I can see my life rebuilt and full. My life has blossomed. I rely on the signposts of the familiar: religious observance, ethical dealings with others, and spiritual practice. We talk about religion as faith. “Take it on faith; what works is what’s real. Its proof is in the living.”