Rhythm Compensation

An Esoteric Inquiry into Bipolar, Oscillatory & Divergent Psychology

Layman’s Introduction

Our last Xagick article explored the role of mental illness in the Occult. I suggested that “magical” approaches to wisdom, nonstandard agency & existential development may uniquely involve the integration and refinement of those alternative sensemaking modalities that are (in their exaggerated forms) viewed as common psychological disorders.

Following that essay, several readers asked specifically for more exploration into bipolar, manic-depressive, and other oscillatory conditions. This is not my area of specialization. In early childhood, I did tell some adults that I only had two emotions (“boredom” and “glee”) but I may not have enough personal experience to describe the intersection points between bi-modal affect conditions & esoteric intelligence.

Fortunately, Geoff (a high-caliber liminal trickster mystic) from the Creekmasons reached out to ask if he could contribute more on this topic. The following is his personal, philosophical & pro-moodswing piece. I will append a short reflective comment at the end.

* And for those who don’t know 51-50 is California's legal code for involuntary psychiatric confinement...  

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I. A BRUSH WITH PSYCHOSIS

Doing naked cartwheels in your front yard doesn’t always lead to a 51-50. 

In Ram Dass’s India, instead of qualifying you for a mandatory psychiatric hold, that kind of behavior elevated you to a full-on holy status. He frequently recounted the story of cartwheel pro and, in his words, “one of the greatest saints of all time,” Anandamayi Ma: 

In that culture it is: “Ah, there’s a God-intoxicant. We must take care of them at a temple.” … we have not had a support system for that type of transformative loss of ground, which you need to go through at times.

Source

A “God intoxicant!”

After her transformative loss of ground—the challenging trip that Western psychiatrists would call psychosis—Anandamayi Ma taught that the “supreme calling of every human being is to aspire to self-realization.” 

She changed lives. 

Now, she reportedly accomplished that through miracles, but whether there’s space in your worldview for that or not, consider that her Sanskrit title translates to “bliss-permeated”—is that a common outcome of assigning the label of Affective Disorder as a stigmatized alternative to “God intoxication?”

After my own brush with psychosis—I can still remember the feeling of my cracked crown chakra absorbing the infinite divine—my Sanskrit title could have been “booze-infused.”

Set and setting matter for psychosis too. In a culture where it’s Bad to be Crazy, you have a Bad Trip when you go nuts. 

So on the way to the hospital, I leaned my head out the car window and watched a police helicopter circle. 

“No, Geoff. We’re not being followed by that helicopter.” The driver’s compassionate patience was growing threadbare.

I watched the intake nurse scribble in my chart while I explained “what brought me in,” growing increasingly paranoid. Clearly familiar with the suspicion I must have been doing a terrible job hiding, she let me look at her clipboard.

Among other notes, I saw checkmarks next to “hyper-religiosity” and “delusions of grandeur.”

I was given some sedatives and sent home. At dinner, I attempted to explain to my dad that, no, I didn’t think I was The Second Coming—surely John Lennon or MLK or Mr. Rogers held that title—but in a way, I was related to those people.

“We’re not related to Martin Luther King Junior,” he let me know. “And Geoff. You’re drooling.” 

It took me about a decade to work through the initiation I had begun a year or two earlier. It was a period awash in rituals of paranoia, defeatism, unemployment, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

For a long time, I displayed signs of cherophobia—the fear of happiness. It was a kind of preoccupation with the “other shoe dropping” whenever I got a little buzzy with self-confidence. After my initial download from the divine, when I felt the vibratory light of the universe beginning to collect in my crown, I’d panic.

I considered any sign of mania an invitation to paranoia. An invitation to the despair that inevitably followed. The deep depression that felt like impenetrable clarity. Like I was finally seeing this dismal, meaningless reality for the dark shitheap it really was.

“Where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches… whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.”

~ Robert Bly, Iron John

What’s my wound? What’s my genius?