The Seven Hermetic Principles of Being Bipolar #SteeMeditate

Like water in the desert, knowledge quenches my unbearable thirst for understanding.

Today for #SteeMeditate, I decided to write down this thing that has been rattling around my cranial echo chamber since I made the Magician medicine bag. Grab a cuppa, because it's a longer read than my usual posts.

I am using this site for the quotes from The Kyballion http://thirdmonk.net/knowledge/seven-great-hermetic-principles-teachings-thoth.html

The Seven Hermetic Principles of Being Bipolar

1. "All is mental."

Bipolar disorder means that I experience massive swings in energy and affect. One day, I may feel unstoppable, cosmic. Later, life will appear to be a total impasse and my body aches all over. My mentality governs how I conduct myself in the physical plane. My behavior follows my mental state. Meditation gives me back mastery and choice about to what degree mania and depression affect my behavioral choices, thereby giving me free will in my life outcomes, especially in my productivity levels and relationships.

2. "The principle of correspondence: As above, so below. As below, so above."

Bipolar life makes those twin wolves inside viscerally real. I can sense the existence of my soul extending into higher dimensions, and the karmic importance of all of my decisions. Will I feed the wolf of evil, or the wolf of virtue? I am bound in a interdependent system, a Cosmic Jazz Improv, and there is truth coming down from the grand chorus as well as up from individual players. All things are animated by soul and are sacred beings with teleos. I have read that scrupulousness contributes to racing thoughts and compulsions, and I do experience heights of moral anxiety.

3. "Vibration."

To me, this hermetic principle is only now being grazed by quantum physics, which I don't pretend to understand. But I have read some Michio Kaku, and listened to hours of Alan Watts, and I think they are speaking of the same thing.

Vibration requires poles to dance between, and that is my game in a nutshell. The particle who is also a wave. Somehow, despite all the flailing instability of my high-low neurological carpet, there is still a constistency of identity: there's still only one me. Like when Siddartha Guatama realizes the river is the same, but the water is constantly changing....

I think that just as some animals have sensory abilities outside of human faculties, bipolar being has its increased sensitivities to vibes. I can feel other people's energy like static electricity.

4. "Polarity."

"Everything is dual; Everything has poles; Everything has its pair of opposites; Like and unlike are the same; Opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; Extremes meet; All truths, are but half-truths; All paradoxes may be reconciled." – The Kyballion

It seems to me that being Bipolar has given me a lifetime of practice riding this dragon that fuels so much conflict. Opinions seem very fleeting to me, since I regularly experience huge shifts in my point of view. I feel into highest peaks and lowest rifts of human emotion, yet all that soul topography exists in my sole container. Microcosmic and macrocosmic exist in a fractal relationship (as stated in the Principle of Correspondence. )

Kant says that Transcendental Reality is revealed to us by causing patterns in our Empirical Reality which we discern and extrapolate with our higher reasoning faculties. I feel grateful to have been given such a frequency of patterns at such a loud amplitude!

Polarity is the engine that keeps all those vibrations in motion.

5. "The Principle of Gender."

This principle states that all things have feminine and masculine aspects. Gender is tricky political water these days. Science flounders, too, in the mire of cultural conditioning and the fact that history is written by the victors. I feel profoundly feminine, a feminist, a maiden, mother, and crone. At the same time, I have some pretty unladylike, tomboy aspects. I feel very comfortable leading a traditional wife and mother lifestyle.

I think this principle is deeper than lifestyle or human behavior, though. It is about innies and outies. Sockets and plugs, caves and mountains, fructation and pollination, gestation and semination. These gendered poles and their passion for one another fuel the engine of the world.

Creation and destruction are a gendered pair I connect with deeply as a bipolar artist. Creation sure does make a mess! I must celebrate birthing new creations by destroying the assemblage of dross and materials. Cleaning is destruction! And nobody cleans like mama.

6. "Rhythm.

"Everything flows, out and in; Everything has its tides; All things rise and fall; The pendulum swing manifests in everything; The measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; Rhythm compensates."– The Kyballion

Dr. Peter Levine, creator of Somatic Experience Therapy, illustrates best how to use this principle of pendulation for health.:

Pendulation is a term used by Dr. Levine to describe the natural oscillation between opposing forces of contraction and expansion. Somatic Experiencing® utilizes this philosophy to help a client experience a sense of flow. https://traumahealing.org/about-us/#about

When I am feeling really bad, thinking moribund thoughts or hyperventilating with paranoia, pendulation helps me use bodily memory to feel into empowering, grounded states. I can feel lost, found, lost and found again, and continue safe existence.

7. Cause and Effect."

To me, this one seems patently obvious, and is the principle upon which both science and karma hang. It is the crucible of co-creation, because all of my actions are reactions and are causes for other reactions, endlessly into the time-space continuum.

Growing up bipolar with an untreated bipolar parent, it took me a long time to step out of the blame game when witnessing cause and effect unfold before me. Forgiving my father releases me to examine my own reactive behavior with a little more matter of factness, enabling me to face my Self with less trigger and overwhelm!

I can also be more responsible about tending my brain health so as to be less episodic. I can use Mindful Awareness to cool down and make more effective choices.

I can choose to observe others, and withhold from adding my consequences when they are unwarranted, allowing other people's karma to unfold unconfounded by my own.

Thanks for joining me on my process of discovery. I hope my musings result in some benefit to you, dear reader, and that the 7 principles illuminate aspects of your own journey.

Love,Cat
@creationofcare

All photos by me using my phone.