illusions of madness

I haven't been posting much here this week. Along with the spring I have been in an extended state of euphoria that makes reflection difficult and analyzation near impossible. It also doesn't help that I've been working on my hypersigil regularly. When ever I'm writing a story it is my life, it's world is my world, even if that isn't exactly the world my body is in. And worse, I can't look at any other text without reading them as the lines in my head, or as fodder and inspiration for that plot. But most of all I've just been feeling wholly ecstatic, in a way that far surpasses my usual manic states.

It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "

That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.

Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.

Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.