Thursday, July 1, 2010

Resolving Human Bipolarity

As a woman who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder for a while now, I've had the opportunity to observe how this so-called "disease" manifests inside me, as well as to notice when and why it manifests. I've also learned what to do to help myself move beyond it, to the point where it no longer feels like a medical disorder but has actually become a helpful tool for navigating reality.

The good news is, bipolar disorder isn't "personal." It's actually happening to a whole lot of people these days, which means it's probably something humanity has to move through as part of a collective evolutionary shift in our consciousness.

The best way to explain what I see as the cause of bipolar disorder is to use a computer metaphor most people can understand. Anyone who's ever owned a computer knows that they rely on a basic operating system to make them work. Programmers write applications specific to the operating system using languages the system understands. Things may run smoothly for a while, but inevitably we learn that the operating system we've been using has some serious limitations, so we upgrade to a new operating system. Unfortunately though, after we upgrade we often discover that our old applications will no longer run on the new operating system. That means we need to buy brand new applications (or application upgrades) to get our new system to work.

The modern human brain - like many computers nowadays - is concurrently running dual operating systems: let's call them Humanity 1.0 and Humanity 2.0. Humanity 1.0 has been mankind's default operating system for many thousands of years now. It's a system that basically tells us we're each separate from everything else and that life is a win/lose game. Humanity 1.0's programs are filled with usses and thems, victims and persecutors, the victors and the vanquished. In Humanity 1.0, mankind is the ruler of all that he sees and the entire natural world is his to exploit for strategic advantage. Virtually all our present social applications - our traditional religions, judicial systems, educational systems, economic infrastructures and political systems - were designed to operate effectively using Humanity 1.0.

Sometime in the recent past a new operating system birthed itself into being, one with fewer limitations and a lot of exciting possibilities for the future. It's a pretty cool system too, in that it removes the fear of loss from the game of life and replaces it with things like trust, love and social harmony. Humanity 2.0 informs us we live in a unified, interconnected and fully alive world in which our differentiation doesn't separate us from everything else so much as makes us more valuable to the whole, which in turn nourishes and supports us as individuals and as a collective. Humanity 2.0 proposes that, because everything in life is inextricably interconnected, the only way any of us can truly win is if we all play a win/win game. In Humanity 2.0, mankind's role is to carefully steward the world's natural resources for the long term benefit of all the life forms with whom we share our space. While Humanity 2.0 is a wonderful operating system, to date mankind hasn't written many applications that run on it. That makes it really hard for our brains to function well in 2.0, because our existing programs only run on 1.0.

What, you're probably asking by now, does any of this have to do with human bipolar disorder? My proposition, based on my own internal experience, is that what we presently call bipolar disorder is actually a clinical observation of what happens to people under one of four problematic operating conditions:

1) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they perceive themselves as big losers in the game of life (depression.)

2) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they momentarily perceive themselves as huge winners in the game of life (mania.)

3) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they keep bucking up against those who are running on 1.0 and don't understand how to play a win/win game (depression.)

4) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they haven't yet found enough useful applications to help them manage the system's immense capacities and bring some working structure to the game of life (mania).

The trouble is, none of the programs we've written for Humanity 1.0 will run on Humanity 2.0, because win/lose games are fundamentally incompatible with a win/win operating system. If we try running a 1.0 program on the 2.0 system we wind up with a total system crash, which I can tell you REALLY hurts the head! A hard reboot will eventually restart the system, but it isn't a pleasant experience from inside.

For an example of the kind of system incompatibility I'm talking about, let's consider the environmental folks known as "ELF," which stands for "Environmental Liberation Front." As 2.0 operators, they fervently want all of us to do whatever we can to nurture and support the environment that sustains us. So far, so good. The trouble begins though, when they then go out and blow up automobile dealerships that sell gas guzzling trucks and SUV's to make their point. That's clearly a 1.0 solution for a 2.0 operation. It's also bound to get the attention of the 1.0 police, who perceive the new system as some kind of worm, virus or other no-good intruder and try to kill it, or at least box it up for a good long time so it can't create any more conflict with the 1.0 system.

An example of 2.0 software that some people tried - and failed miserably - to run on the 1.0 system would be (don't bite my head off!) communism. As an economic philosophy communism was a win/win application, written to illustrate what our world could look like if everyone supported everyone else in maximizing their talents, passions and skills, then we each gifted of our abilities freely to everyone else. It predicted a world of peaceful abundance, and would have been just fine running on Humanity 2.0. The trouble with applying communism to society at the time it was first implemented was that the 2.0 operating system wasn't up and running in nearly enough human beings, so the proponents of communism tried to jam it onto Humanity 1.0 using the power and fear of fascism to make it work. Win/win games can't succeed at the point of a gun, so the 2.0 program crashed and burned and everyone assumed the program itself was very badly written. Unfortunate, but predictable with the benefit of 2.0 hindsight.

The key to successfully navigating this complex systems/programming mess seems to be twofold. First, we must remember there is always an operator - our own internal sense of awareness - who can choose, at any moment, which operating system he or she wants to run. If we don't choose consciously, our unconscious mind will choose a system for us, which means by default we'll mainly be running the very limited Humanity 1.0, since it's the system most compatible with our existing applications. If we choose instead to consciously run Humanity 2.0, which is kind of like an iPhone on super steroids, we then have to take some responsibility for designing new software for everyone else so they can see what a really cool system we're able to run. The early software we write probably won't shake up the world, but if we can design a couple of really neat applications and begin using them consistently we're going to demonstrate swiftly how much more we can collectively accomplish - and how much faster - using 2.0. One amazing 2.0 application already in operation is the Internet itself, which offers a dizzying array of information and fresh new ideas to anyone with access to a computer...and does so for free, out of the deep desire to give and share of ourselves.

My recommendation is that everyone check out the new Humanity 2.0 operating system for themselves and play around with the possibilities. Let's then put our heads together and see what software we can come up with to make it work for us all. The sooner we do so, the quicker we can retire Humanity 1.0 with honors, and the sooner "bipolar disorder" will become a disease of the past.

8 comments:

  1. The possible problem, for those of us running v1.0 is that, even if we can possibly conceive of v2.0, we may not be able to function there. As much as we may try, we may not be able to rewrite our original coding. I'm not saying we can't, just that it may be one humongous upgrade. Or, perhaps, someone may need write a manual.

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  2. I suspect, as with any computer system (or evolutionary process) a good bit of human hardware is going to be rendered obsolete because it simply doesn't have the capacity to run the new operating system. There are probably a lot of folks (I'm guessing those over 60) who will never understand the new operating system, and who will likely resist it until the day they die - even if they benefit from its installation and use.

    There are also a lot of folks (generally those between 30 and 60) who are capable of running both systems, but for whom 1.0 will be the first version they turn to in times of high stress. They will have to remain very conscious and deliberately select 2.0 whenever a crisis hits, or they'll risk falling unconsciously back on their old 1.0 applications to try and deal with new 2.0 challenges.

    Last but not least we have the under 30 generation, those who are most likely to have been born favoring 2.0 (and who perhaps aren't even carrying version 1.0 anymore) for whom 1.0 may seems like a scratchy, boring black and white film from the '30's. I believe we can count on them to write some nifty new 2.0 applications that will knock the socks off us all!

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  3. I especially like the idea of retiring 1.0 with honors; it has gotten us this far. No judgment, just progress. Fine, fine metaphor!

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  4. My Trinfinity8 software experience with developer Dr. Kathy Forti.
    Gently accessing the quantum field for , vibrations, frequencies, mathematical codes, energies of gentle release, balance, rejuvenation. Youthfulness ! Humanity 101 merges with "what the bleep do we know". It's here, it's now, it's Trinfinty8.
    You custom design your program specifically to your desires.... this is your magic wand to experience.
    FB Randy Gates

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  5. Humanity v1.0 and 2.0 may not be as simple as, say, changing your mind. (And I'm not saying that you're saying it is.) Just that one may have to be born with the proper wiring (like being born with gills in "Waterworld.") Maybe we understand it and even yearn for it, but it may be more a matter of evolution rather than resolution. (hey, I made that up myself!!)

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  6. What we need to realize is that any operating system is merely an interpretation of our sense of the nature of the source of all operating systems, the infinite operating system (yes, God), which has no limitations. Versions Humanity 1.0 and 2.0 are both still only mental constructs; perceptual frameworks created from mental concepts with minds that are still experiencing themselves as separate from the unfathomable whole. The concept is not the reality. The concept is emergent from the reality, yes. Yet, the concept is still merely our best attempt to understand reality, which can never really be understood. Reality can only be lived and never understood. Understanding is still only a concept.

    “Humanity 2.0 informs us we live in a unified, interconnected and fully alive world in which our differentiation doesn't separate us from everything else so much as makes us more valuable to the whole, which in turn nourishes and supports us as individuals and as a collective” This is an awesome concept!

    Where we must take care is not to believe that we can apply any conceptual template to our consciousness and have this result in our realization of the infinite, unfathomable reality. It is not Humanity 2.0 that informs us; it is the infinite operating system that informs us, and Humanity 2.0 that interprets that information.

    There is another belief we must take care to notice: the belief that we don’t have full access to the infinite operating system and that we can only interpret it but not live it; or more precisely, that we cannot Be It. (Think Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…”)

    When Moses brought forth the Ten Commandments (did he really call them that?), what really happened? I believe he had an experience of God. What happened after is that the tablets were created (not by him I bet) as an attempt at capturing his experience by etching the interpretation onto stone, so that others would have an operating system to guide them into an experience of God. The thing is, though, that didn’t work; the interpretation is not the reality. The danger is that the interpretation, the attempt to capture reality becomes the golden calf and people forgot that Moses had an experience that everyone else could also have, but they chose the rule of tablets instead.

    Our minds can be changed. But it’s not a matter of us individually choosing to reprogram our minds from version 1.0 to version 2.0 by installing new applications that we write ourselves. All of the applications are already written. What we need to change our minds about is from believing we need to rewrite anything and choose to open ourselves to receive, to live, to BE the infinite operating system We Already Are and let our unique Applications easily and gracefully run through our Being. This is our value to the whole, expressing as our unique Selves. There’s nothing to do. Stop trying so hard. It already IS. LET IT BE.

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  7. Beautiful, Robert.

    From a spiritual perspective I totally agree with you.

    From a living, evolutionary perspective I do believe there is still much more for us to "do." However, when whatever we do stems from our intimate relationship with the infinite/eternal aspect of creation itself, the outcome is far more beneficial and supportive of life than when it comes from an unaware state of being. In short, when what we do is informed by our very being, and when we how we are being is infused by our deep awareness (NOT a conceptual belief, but a knowing realized through direct experience) of our inter-connectivity to all that is, what we DO emerges as a fundamental expression of our true nature rather than results from a conscious decision to act a certain way on our part.

    I don't happen to believe we are here to be passive (unthinking drone) instruments of the life force, but to USE these amazing gifts of our rational minds, our physical bodies and our sensory and emotional responses in collaborative service with the essential spirit of the greater life force itself.

    In my experience, allowing the life force to work through us does not require us to "disappear" as individuated beings, but to fully actualize our differentiated talents, skills, abilities and passions so we can contribute our uniqueness to the totality as it creates itself anew in every moment.

    Perhaps the "ego" that is so often spoken of these days (often disdainfully, as if it's something bad inside us that we need to get rid of) is only problematic when it hasn't yet made a deeper, gnostic connection with the totality. Once it does - once it KNOWS itself to be a fractal of the greater whole - it no longer causes problems in the world, because it joyfully and willingly serves the whole as the conscious, differentiated and unique fractal that it is, out of love for all that is.

    A deep realization of inter-being is the step I believe humanity is presently being called to take. Are there higher evolutionary levels of awareness awaiting us? Most certainly, yes! I suspect some humans have already touched upon them and experienced them.

    Are we collectively ready to leap to those levels without successfully having first experienced reality and lived by expressing this deep awareness of our own inter-being? I'm doubtful we're ready, since this step alone seems to be meeting some deep resistance.

    Baby steps then, which seems to be how evolution progresses. Although even this seeming "baby step" of gnostic inter-being represents a radical shift in humanity's relationship with everything that is. In any case though, AS the singular, infinite/eternal life force manifesting temporarily as differntiated human beings, we have all the time in the cosmos to collectively evolve!

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  8. I also agree that "Letting it Be" is the way to travel. ("What Is, Is" can be a very comforting pillow.) However... :) ...I also agree that God (which/whom I believe to be the consciousness of the universe) never sleeps. Hence, while I don't go out of my way to rewire, I realize that sooner or later we'll hit Humanity v24.0, so I suspect adaptation is - or should be - in literally our genes. I also believe that life as we know it is not the epitome of what's eventually coming (a rock is to humanity what humanity will eventually be to "?"). Homo Sapiens Sapiens are (is?) simply the current surface layer in an eternally endless layer cake. So even though I'm comfortable in my own skin, I'm also somewhat excited to know that something's around the corner. Even though I don't have the wiring, I'm happy enough to believe I have the intuition of such.

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