Philosophy, poetry, and musings from the WTFery Institute. A think tank, working to solve the problem of thoughts trapped in the mind.
That is the word that keeps coming to my mind anytime I read the news, surreal. We continue to live in a world of violence and hate, nothing new there. Politicians lie and cheat, some on a more epic scale than others, nothing new there. The general population is apathetic about any of the major issues going on in the world, nothing new there. So if all of this is no different from how it has always been why does the word surreal keep coming to my mind?
I think as I mature I expect the rest of the world to grow up as well. In my mind adults should at some point stop hating other people because they look, act, think differently, or are from somewhere else. Adults should tell the truth and stop making shit up all of the time. People should start giving a damn about the world around them.
I think now though I understand the Torah better, I understand God’s anger and frustration that his chosen people continually turned away from God. I think that is why in Christianity it is about individual relationships with the triune God, sins of the individual could be forgiven, the handful of each generation could be saved who truly repented and took up their crosses with joy in their hearts. Jews, Christians, Muslims; I think God is playing a long game to save as many of us from ourselves as God can and we are not cooperating in any way, we are too smitten with golden calves to maintain the hard road.
Now that my Bipolar disorder is medicinally under control it is a great time to work on my skill sets to deal with everyday life. Medicine can only do so much, in my case I am emotionally on an even keel, however the storms of my mind are still raging. The medicine cannot change my ways of thinking, I still have negative thoughts running through my head, still have the same self esteem issues, still lack organization and structure in my life to effectively balance work and home life. So I have a laundry list of things I want to do and yet my mind works against me in accomplishing any tasks.
Currently I am working my way through 2 books in an attempt to get my mind working right. The first book is Why Am I Still Depressed by Jim Phelps, MD and the second is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Lawrence Wallace. The first book is giving me a deeper understanding of the brain disorder from which I suffer, while the second book I am using as a self help guide to start getting my ways of thinking turned around. Now I know ideally CBT should be done through a good therapist however living in a country without universal healthcare one must muddle along the best one can while balancing health with copay’s and deductibles. I still have a stack of medical bills to pay due to a high deductible insurance plan, so, I have to just make the tough decisions on where my money goes.
I know going into this that there is a high risk of failure doing it on my own, but the alternative is to do nothing and attempt to maintain the untenable status quo. Therefore I have nothing to lose in being my own therapist for awhile. If you would like to learn more about bipolar disorder NIMH has a good overview here.
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world” Buddha
A universal truth that we can all apply to our lives no matter our religious beliefs. If as a Christian we truly spend our time daily in prayer, meditation, and reading of scripture our thoughts will dwell on God and we will change our perspective. My personal recommendation is to pray the Lord’s Prayer, meditate on the 23rd Psalm, and reading of Matthew Chapter 5. Most assuredly a month spent in this manner daily will have profound changes on how your thoughts are ordered, this combined with honest self reflection can have a positive impact on how you think.
It has been over a year since I did this last, starting again today as I need a reset in how I am thinking.
