Status update

It has been nearly 11 months since my last hospitalization for mania.   I am more in tune with my body and mind then I have ever been in the past 16 years since I had my first bout in 1998.  The last time I felt myself getting even remotely close to a “manic” state of mind, I immediately called Turning Point, and went in to speak to my therapist, and we decided to up the dosage on the Haldol.  This was after one night of not sleeping.  After I took the increased dosage, the following day I drifted off like a baby.  That was my own initiative.   I have come a long ways since February of 2012, which was the time of my wild car experience driving manic.  After that close brush with the law, and realizing I could have seriously injured somebody, I realized I could no longer play games with my medication.  From that point in 2012 on, I never again skipped a single dose or refused to take the meds.  This is a huge victory for me.  Your concerns about the long term effects of Haldol are, for me,  quite false.   I am not mentally impaired by any of the drugs I am taking.  Do I believe I could stop taking the drugs and be fine?  At this point, surprisingly enough, yes I do.  But it’s not worth the risk.  Furthermore, it is not up to me to decide at this time.   I’ve established trust with my psychiatrist and counselors at Turning Point, plus I have a history (even though history doesn’t define the future) of getting manic when off meds.   I have still had some minor episodes even while taking the meds, but they have been much more spread out and much less intense than the episodes I used to experience when I continued to fight the system and would refuse taking medication because I believed in doing so I was negating to the world the reality of the spiritual experience I was going through.  Well, I’ve come to learn that the body affects the spirit, and as far as our earthly bodies are concerned, the spirit cannot continue its earthly journey with out the body, and its health depends greatly on the body, which the Lord calls the temple of the Holy Spirit.   I had to learn this painful lesson the hard way, through many hospitalizations and bouts in jail.  My mind couldn’t function properly, because my brain’s chemistry was messed up.   But there’s more to it than that.  My mind also couldn’t function properly because I had adopted and internalized some beliefs deep with my soul that caused chaos in both the mind (spiritual) and the brain (physical).  You see, I believe deep down that our core beliefs, what we internalize in our minds and souls, can actually have a resounding effect upon our physical bodies, namely, the workings of the brain.  So if you internalize an erroneous belief that is based upon lies or falsehoods, it will directly affect the synapses and the chemistry in the brain, and can cause all sort of other psychological, and perhaps even neurological problems.   Thought is real.  And thought can manifest itself in very physical ways.

For me, I came to accept deep down the following beliefs that that caused my brain to misfire, and resulted in all manners of erratic and crazy behavior:    I am the Prophet Elijah, sent to prepare the way for the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ into the world.  My father is the Anti-Christ.  Jesus was a sinner.  The Pharisees were righteous people.   I am the Anti-Christ.  I am Perfect, and contain no sin.  And finally, I am God.   These beliefs did not just bubble up willy nilly into my conscious mind.  There was a very long and complicated route.  Each time I accepted a false premise in my mind, it was internalized in my soul, and my behavior reflected the new belief.   The erroneous thoughts were like a virus that started small, and grew and grew because I was not being spiritually guided in a proper way.  I was rejecting the spiritual guidance at Church, and I was opposed to the spiritual guidance I was getting from mentors and teachers, and instead I looked within for answers.  I probed the deep interworking of my mind to attempt to understand the nature of reality- Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  How do I overcome the mental and emotional suffering I have in my life?  I was not seeking the True God of the Bible for answers.  In fact, I rarely even went to the Scriptures for answers unless I was seeking the thrilling experience of journeying through the book of Revelation, and pondering for hours on end the nature of the end times, Armageddon,  the mark of the Beast, the Anti-Christ and the New Heavens and New Earth.  Other than the book of Revelation, I didn’t really read much of the rest of the Bible at all.  I didn’t contemplate it or meditate upon it, I didn’t memorize Scripture or go to Bible studies.  Had I done these things, I would have been spiritually balanced and the Devil would not have gotten a foothold in my life the way he did.  I know without a shadow of a doubt that Lucifer is the one behind all my erratic and destructive behavior of my past.  I’m not saying it was his fault I did these things.  But I yielded my spirit to Satan, and therefore, my behaviors were influenced a great deal by him.   He attacked me with PRIDE, which lead to me to enter the hospital in 2004 and declare to everyone around that I would heal everyone in the hospital.   He attacked me with anger and impulsivity when I attacked my own father for insisting I take my medications when I didn’t want to, and he attacked me with malice and delusion when I attacked a friend in 2008 and said she was the Whore of Babylon.   Had I been yielding myself to the Spirit of Christ, I would have exemplified the true gifts of the Spirit, which are kindness, gentleness, patience, self-control, love, and forbearance.     But because I was taking my clues from within my sinful, clouded mind on how to behave, my behavior was atrocious.   God has been working gently on my soul throughout the years.  He never forces me to grow, but he nudges me in the direction of spiritual holiness and love.   And I can absolutely feel those nudges from time to time.   God is shaping me, bit by bit, into the whole person he created me to be in the beginning.    I had to go through hell to get here, but now that I have a better perspective of God’s master plan for my life, I am glad I went through all the hell, because it makes me appreciate so much more the peace and joy I have in my life today.   I have become much more in control of my impulses.  I’m not perfect, but all in all, I can see the person God is shaping me to be, and I am excited for what he has in store for my life. All that hell I went through, all those dark nights of the soul, all that confusion and chaos, was not caused by something as harmless as a tick bite.  Lyme disease did not cause the chaos in my life.  My own evil choices, influenced by the lies I believed from Lucifer, are what caused the chaos and destruction that characterized my life for so long.  I have been freed from that.  Is there a possibility that I could have another manic episode in the future?  As long as sin exists in my heart, it will always be a possibility, I cannot rule that out.  But so long as I am walking in the Presence of the Lord, practicing love and kindness on my fellow human beings, I know that Lucifer cannot harm me, and my thoughts will remain ordered and peaceful, yielded to the Spirit of Christ.   Believe me, I am not just making up these changes that are within me.  I am not just writing down empty words on a page.  I know the hell from whence I came, and I know the Heaven to which I am going.   I know the toughest times are behind me.  What lies ahead of me is a grand adventure, where I get to immerse myself in the word of God each day and communicate with my Creator through prayer, and grow in intimacy moment by moment with my amazing wife, who completes me in just about every way possible.   And as for my sanity, Father, I can assure you I am not white knuckling it as you protest.   You cannot gauge my sanity because you do not observe me on a daily basis.  You assume you know all these things about me, but you just don’t.    Why do you think you are such an expert on my life?   I know what it feels like to be insane.   Do you?   I also know what it feels like to be sane.  And I tell you the truth dad, I am more sane today than I have ever been since my first manic episode back in 1998.  I am deeply grateful to God for this very real truth, and for all the wonderful things he has done in rescuing me out of the quagmire.   I know that when I am grateful to God for all things, whether good or bad, I will be rich in all circumstances.   I am even Grateful that God has blessed me with a father who is opposed at a foundational level to all I believe in.   You are a challenge in my life Dad.  And I welcome the challenge, and I know that as we continue together in our lives, God will find a way into your heart.   When you see the changes in me, if you are observant, I pray that you will also yearn for the things of God.  Dad, eternity is a long time.   Our time here is but a brief “poof”, and then we enter into the next life- either an eternal bliss and wonderful paradise with God, or apart from God in a dismal place that I can’t even begin to describe the horrors of.   I know if you could experience the grace of God, your scientific quest for the solution to all mental illness would change dramatically.  You would discover that there exists a supernatural realm, a realm of the Spirit, that you have been blind to all these years, as you are myopically obsessed with the physical world and all of its workings.  The Spiritual world is real, whether you believe it or not Dad.  It’s a truth that I hope you will discover this side of eternity, before it is too late.   This is all I have to say for now.