Honoring Stillness

I love being bipolar.  24/7, maybe not, but are there parts of the cycle that I feel deeper and deeper in love with?  Yes.  This is why I always encourage people to go after their dreams.  How cliché George.  Go after your dreams, doesn’t matter, big step, little step, no matter, think obsess, dedicate energy every chance you can in your dream.  WHY?

My low lows, have been replaced with a buoyancy.   When I contemplate and trace it back, when I question my quietness and my stillness, I realize it’s because irregardless, of all that I am/am not/do/don’t do, I’ve accomplished dreams that matter to me.  This has given me a quiet inner strength, which even my own dark withdrawn moodiness at times can no longer seem to penetrate.  Does anyone with bipolar reading this know the power of this?  What a relief it is to know, the dark empty times I used to fear, have transformed into a quiet stillness.  I don’t feel the need to force myself to do anything.  What is also amazing is when I really allow myself to be inside this quiet, and I begin to question the depth of it, a part of me opens up to insights about life which I’m not always able to capture, but I know it is what allows me to drop into a deep nurturing space when I chose to be around others.  It also allows me to sort out times when I’m the complete opposite.  Some coworkers actually expected me to go to work bearing gifts for putting up with me over the summer(not a bad idea from time to time, I’ll bring some bribes next time up).

What I love about my continuing journey with bipolar, having survived the darkest of years, is the quiet stillness which can exist in the same trails inside of me that used to be treacherous.  I can now look at the realities, my dreams and yearnings created through shear stubbornness, and know that what I wanted most for myself and others with this gift, was a trail hacked through the wilderness, bread crumbs of a way, captured in a book.  Is what I wrote the final word on bipolar, not by a long shot, it’s barely a ruff draft on a napkin, what matters, is that I took my best shot, at creating another method for transforming the gift of bipolar disorder, into an opportunity.  And the biggest reward I receive is affirmation.  From time to time someone sends an email, posts on facebook, amazon or itunes a review or comment and my stillness deepens.  I’ve completed a sacred cycle.  I’ve honored what appeared to be dark in me, until I heard and shared the gifts, by sharing the gifts others have received the benefit, some agree, some discard, some are grateful.  Each revolution has emptied a void of darkness in me, and filled it with a stillness.

Thank God for stillness, thank God for the ability to dream,

George