Psychosis and spirituality

I remember starting my own religion. Well, not quite a religion. I had a belief system and a belief in the existence of a non-corporeal entity or being or force that affected and controlled my life.

I was trying to make sense of what the information was telling me. I'd been through experiences where I felt external reality, i.e. what goes on outside my head, changed so that events and actions had a signfiicance or an interpretation that was different to what is normally thought of as why events and things happen. I was convinced that everything could be controlled by this invisible or intangible force or entity/ies.

What does that feel like? On the tube going into work I'd do a Sudoku puzzle as a way to keep my mind occupied and give it something to focus on to better mask any sign of what I was going through. One morning I noticed I was getting through a difficult puzzle very quickly. Usually I'd be pretty happy with that. Instead the experience was that the work wasn't mine. In fact at that moment the newfound capabiity to do Sudoku puzzles was being created by the banker who may have been staring over at my work. It was clearly him and everything was telling me that somehow it was his mind that was doing the puzzle. This is one instance that was part of a process of breakdown of my idea of self.

The process was fluctuating so there would be times when the presence of a god-like entity was real or it was telepathic control from people around me. There were brief moments where I thought it was an alien influence that was the reason for the change in perceptions.

There were many facets to this experience of change in consciousness and experience of sensory input. It was something I'd been through before in a weaker form and that helped me surivive it better than others might have. I knew that people couldn't really be controlling my thoughts even though the science exists. I had to force myself to believe that people couldn't have extra information about me, information gathered through mind control, even though the sense of "this is not a coincidence" was very high and there were times where I couldn't control the inner maelstrom.

I read widely to find answers. I never thought it would be "god" for much of the time but eventually it made sense. Whether in truth it was god or gods or spirits or the influence of the dead or aliens or projections from humanity in the future or whatever I became aware that the experience I'd been through was similar to the experience of existing with god in your life, i.e. direct contact and knowledge of the influence of god as well as communication with god.

I'd had times in the past where I'd thought I was experiencing god and being in contact with god around the time of my first hospitalisation several years ago. The period I'm writing about now happened two or three years ago.

I didn't want god in my life. I'd been an openminded but hardcore atheist for most of my life. I may or may not have been going through the same experience as other people talk about when they talk about god but I didn't want it. I hated the consciousness or force that controlled me, that made events unreal, that twisted life into a thing better rid off, that controlled me and other people in secret, that showed this truth to some but made them mad and reviled by those who hadn't been through it.

I fought against this force with everything that I had. I wanted to die and my hope was that I'd succeed. My failure to kill myself wrought anguish and sorrow few could survive. This seemed to be god's way of torture - I couldn't even end it.

The internal experience of god and my previous atheist beliefs coalesced into a quasi-religious definition. I became an antitheist: a person who believes in the existence of god/s and hates god/s.

"i" was being controlled by this force or entity. What I mean by "i" is my sense of self. There is probably a technically correct term in the mental health lexicon but I feel it is explained by the idea of the sense of self. Pre-psychosis my sense of self was that all the thoughts in my head, all the ideas, all the emotions (and physical sensations) were all part of me and myself. Psychosis to me was the period where I learned something different or my awareness changed: "i" was one part of what I used to consider my sense of self. In many ways "i" was a passenger on a ship, a victim and a recipient to the effects of god.

This was a god I hated internally as the controlling force in my life. "i" was helpless against it and I couldn't even kill myself, but I kept on trying. "i" was in so much pain and if I could convey it to you you'd understand why I wanted to die so much. I had some many other reasons to kill myself but my experiences of god were the prime factor.

I went through a process of considering responsibility, culpability and credit. The old sense of I and the one that is the consensus reality is we are responsible for everything we do, all the good stuff and all the terrible stuff. In the new state of awareness it isn't so simple. "i" suffered but wasn't responsible for I. "i" also gained the credit for good things but wasn't the one who did it. The latter is also one of the roots of the concept of we which is how I sign off this blog (it isn't my work and the first person plural seemed an appropriate pseudonym). The medico-legal framework also notes the possiblility of reduced culpability though the roots of the reasoning are different: diminished responsibility and not guilt by reason of insanity.

Internally I'm from what some may consider a backward and old fashioned mentality (and others may consider more male). I had to take the responsibility for everything. If I didn't I couldn't function anyway. People couldn't understand that, for example, there were times I might say something but internally it felt as though something else was saying the words. "i" didn't do it but I was culpable.

This internal belief or delusion or experience mixed with the religious idea of god in antitheism. I saw god as responsible for most of the good and most of the ill. Homelessness is still a problem in the developed world and the problem is caused by god, as is the decency of the individuals who help the homeless every day. The force that brings people into crisis is god, and it is the same force that brings them out.

Many religions see god as good. I saw god as bad, but that was a natural part of the order of things. God was neither good nor bad in truth. God was responsible for all the ills in the world but an antitheist (and there was only ever one) took the responsibility for fix god's mistakes in the world as if it were their own.

So because I found god and found that I hated it I was going to make the world a better place. I was seriously fucking delusional back then.

This long post is just half the journey and the tip of the iceberg.