Is anyone really all that suprised we are bipolar? Here's the dealio. We live in a bipolar world. Nature is a bipolar thing of counterforces and we have had to evolve over millions of years not on the outside of this reality, but right smack dab in the middle of it. In order to survive and to "compute" the forces of reality, we need to have a part of us that connects to all the positive and life giving forces that pass through our lives, as well as the those forces that bring a loss or disruption in energy, or in some cases death to the things that they influence. Where everything goes haywire in managing these two worlds is that all the warm and fuzzy good stuff bring us uplifting sensations, while the nastier darker sides of nature, including those within us, often bring us pain and suffering as their "language". We wish they could just be empty thoughts, but the gravity of shadows leave us with much more than just thoughts, as we all know. We can kick, scream, fight, deny, and/or blame, but in the end it will do us no good. We can only understand and manage what is wired into the core of everyone of us and that is a lifetime of diligent, albeit rewarding work.

One could also safely argue that the source of any form of craziness, of madness is, no matter how great or small, is a struggle to manage this bipolar nature of life. So no, you are not crazy for hearing more than one voice in your head. And you are not crazy for struggling to understand how two opposing views of life are both valid and both vying for your attention. And you are also not crazy for finding your self wrestling with multiple versions of yourself all trying to figure out how to do the right thing, or perhaps wisely go about doing the worng thing?.

So how do we begin to deal with this nasty beast of reality, our bipolar nature? First we need to eliminate the idea that it is a nasty beast or else we will think the nature of life is out to do us in, when in fact the nature of life just is what it is. The truth is that, as we all should know, life has its ebbs and flows. It's time when wisdom and harmony rule our lives and the voices within us that represent the extremes meld into one harmonious voice. Then we have times when, often under duress, those voices once again begin to separate and beg us to follow them into our own personal craziness. This is why work is so meaningful and why many people are workaholics. It helps us focus on something singular. However, in the case of work, we also must be cautious that the very thing that is supposedly saving us is not also killing us by allowing us to absorb more stress then we can manage, simply out of our fear to slow down a bit. This is true with everything that has the capcity to be a remedy. Most people who over indulge with substances do so as one more way to bury, instead of manage, their bipolar nature. It is hard to blame anyone for this. It is a very evolved person and an evolved society in which managing the extremes of life is a priority. This is not most of the world. So, we are surrounded by people, cultures, and lifestyles and that often pull us away from managing this critical part of our existence in a healthy manner.

All that said, let's dig under the hood a bit and take a little high level look at how the interplay bewteen the extreme forces of life play out in our human worlds: And if you feel like getting a little deeper, I iwll be doing just that in my future courses, along with some strategies for dealing with our bipolar existence.

Hanging Out With Our Shadow Self

Hanging out in our shadows is not necessarily a bad thing. It is all relative to why we are there and what process we are going through. To resolve our greatest fears and conflicts, we can't just hang out in the light, nor can we even stand in the middle. At some point life will take us deep into our shadows. This is where we go to heal and also where we find humility, usually not by choice, but by necessity. Yes, we call fall in love with shadows and we can play with shadows. The question is can we stay sane taking this approach? Are we wise and prepared to do such a thing? Do we know the power of our own shadows to decieve us, to blind us, often through our relations with others?. And is all this kosher with our grander self, or is it putting us at odds with our greater wisdom? Hmmm.

Hanging Out In Our Light Self

While this sounds like a rosy place to be, it is all relative to our ability to stay grounded in life. We can hang out in our loftiest place and still be riddled fear. Fear of what? Fear of cominig down. Fear of the past. Fear of our shadow self. Fear of spiders and elevators. Hanging out in our light self does not gaurantee us anything, unless we created a strong connection and sense of peace with everything that exists outside of our light self.

Hanging Out In Our MIddle Self at Peace

This is our most zen place. I say this all the time, we cannot truly stay in the middle of anything. As Joseph Campbell once said, we need to lean to one side. Our middle self is where all the truth lies and one could say where our fearlessness is best put to work. Hanging out at peace in our middle self naturally pushes us, either slightly or more than slighlty to one side or the other, a necessary process that gives us a center and position we can apply wisdom toward.

Hanging Out In Our MIddle Self at Conflict

Just because we are sitting the middle of life does not mean that we are doing so in some zen state of conflict-free bliss. Our middle state is where we often feel what many call bipolar disorder. It is our inability to accept and balance the natural contradictions of life. to root our selves in a position relative to the light and dark of existsence and then to maintain that position, which requires not only wisdom and diligence, but aslo flexibility. When we struggle with conflict in the center of our existence, that often pushes us back and forth into the extremes of our nature, our shadow and light self, seeking to resolve the seemingly never ending conflict. And this is what can start to make us feel like human pinball machines with our consciousness bouncing between light, dark and fear. Our minds want an answer, yet there is no answer to the existence of bipolar forces. And there is a part of us that wishes we could "have it all." The very idea that we can "have it all" is destined to reveal a certain madness becuase "it all" is juggling the extremes of life with no desire to commit to something we can balance and manage. The other challenge is that our light and dark sides have their own set of agendas for us. So we can get lost in conflicting desires, thoughts, and directions thinking those are the issues when they are actaully just covering up a far more central issue which is just our ability to chill out and let go of those things that empower our inner conflict. It takes courage to overcome inner conflict because we must choose not to be drama addicts, something many of us are trained to define our selves by.

Feel like more than two people?

When we are healthiest, our selves all seem to come together. Or perhap, if we smoke enough weed, some of them will go away. Yet it is perfectly naturally for any of us to "frgament" under stress or trauma, or perhaps just in the midst of a deep stillness when we are not accustomed to stillness. What we often fail to recognize is our past, not just the past we remember, but our entire genetic past. None of us come from a history of having the luxury to have one .singualr approach to life. What do we do when we are faced with a battle? That is one state of mind. How about an opportunity to express compassion or to nurture a child? Another state of mind. How about the deep analysis of a logic-driven problem, or how about when the worst thing we can do is think about something? Two more states of mind. What about that part of us that is always grasping for a higher truth? That part of us that never got a chance to express itself and is just trying to find a way express an anger or sadness in a healthy manner without fear or retribution? Can we honestly address all of these from one singular state of mind? We cannot. There is a sort of archetype within us for each of these challenges that reflects either a positive or not-so-positive way of addressing these challenges. These parts of oursleves are summoned for the occasion at hand. The more we find healthy ways to deal with the facets of who we are, the more we feel like one person juggling the challenges of living rather thant feeling internally fragmented, each challenge bringing forth a self which seems conflicted with some other part of us. Our defaults to our humanness are often not reflections of our best selves. We are works in progress. We have to permit ourselves to feel a bit crazy, fragemented at times, embracing it is one of the great arts in life to "pull ourselves together" intto someone who can wisely identify and manage the complicated nature of how we must manage life. We are justing making progress, wrapping our heads around these components, these archetypes within us, one at a time and recognizing they are serving a purpose, it is for us to figure out who to empower and who to tell to quiet down.