Bipolar & Beyond

Whatever emotional experiences were experienced in the past, good or bad, I embrace them all. Suffering, I conclude, brought me to see that we are more than skin & bone, more than brain or mind, whereas mere pleasure didn't teach me anything.

The past conditioning and karmic unfoldings which caused a hell of a lot of suffering in my life brought me to be finally diagnosed bipolar in 2017 although I suffered from depressions after my mother died in 1978 when I was 16.

Mam's dead cold hand in mine was one of my first encounters with spirituality, for want of another word to describe the beyond.

I have spent these last years denying all doctors orders to take tablets, working my way through with 4 different therapists only to come to the only conclusion for me, to take full responsibility for my own self. I meditated on my own diagnosis, that I am neither the brain nor the mind. Anyone who allows themselves to be defined by a mental health label that relates to their psycho or physical structure limits themselves tremendously and will remain trapped in their illusions. It is beyond description, all I can say is, the mind is like a playground yet I can walk out of it & be free.

I embrace "bipolar" which has made me what I am. A gemini by birth, I swim in creativity & what happens happens by itself. All I am in my true nature is the witness to a beautiful life, however tough it gets I can take it.

"Bipolar & Beyond"

Wood Sculpture

1999 

Renewed & sanded down November 2023

- After I carved the wood with a chainsaw in 1999 it split into two. Rather like being born a naturally joyful child & then having to face the pains & pleasures of life, which cause a wide variety of mental disorders like bipolar.

Just as a little footnote. I am indebted to my fearless mother who threatened before my very eyes Sister Mary di Pazzi, a so called, "Sister of Mercy", director of our school, to punch her if she ever again called me a, "Good for nothing"

She didn't