Friday, July 24, 2009

Mirror Neurons and Mental Illness

So I discovered some amazing things during what society calls a "manic episode." What I had was a "vision." I learned a lot of things about perception and this whole bipolar thing because I was studying my consciousness as it collapsed. Bipolar affects mirror neurons and dopamine. Mirror neurons are the biological basis for empathy. You know why you love your cat and he loves you? Mirror neurons. Animals mimic our subconscious (our feelings). We also never say that our cat did something "wrong" because he doesn't know How to do wrong. Same thing with you (us). We have not been desensitized to the world enough to override our mirror neurons from "feeling" empathy when we see suffering around us. Our brains (all humans) are not programmed to perceive human suffering on television and around us. The animal/human reaction to others emotional pain, suffering, joy is to ACT. We have the natural instinct to act/help just like a cat or dog. All animals help in their own way. We (people who suffer from bipolar) cannot do wrong just like animals cannot do wrong. We see immoral behavior and it doesn't just make as feel bad it actually doesn't make sense, it can drive us insane. Society asks us to ignore these feelings and participate in an essentially flawed system where we play along with all these things which are painful and don't make sense to us. Because society serves to alienate the individual and tell him/her that he/she should take care of him/herself, we feel isolated and alone. Some people can function in this society but we need to be interconnected more than society allows. When we keep getting shut down and pushed away most people become hardened to this and learn to do the same. We cannot do the same because we know this is not morally right. We still want to help. We are dependent on others because we should be dependent, we are interconnected with everything (animals, people, plants, etc). The main thing is to develop healthy dependency. This means networks of people doing creative, healthy things (art,music, etc.).
Now we can ask ourselves "who is right? Those who want to push people away and serve themselves, doing everything in there means to achieve this, (cheat, steal, be insensitive) or those who feel natural empathy towards others." We know the answer is the latter, so what we are programmed to do is to push society in the right direction. Human evolution has necessitated that this occur. We are just slightly more "evolved." We are like the X-men/women and there are powers which we have which are gifts, not curses. We have to learn how to use these powers. It will become more of a blessing than a curse. Some people call this stuff magic, others religion/spirituality, I call it science and I understood how some of these "powers" can be explained scientifically. This is very good because I can explain why I am not crazy. Most people will still call it crazy but I have been encountering more and more "magic" every day. A woman in Peet's looked at my shirt which says "not art" and she said "you're not art, you are mike." She was a psychic. I have learned to open my mind to these experiences and ignore any negativity which I encounter. This requires great perceptual discipline. But it can be taught. All this stuff is on the forefront of science and will be corroborated in the coming years with the onset of nanotechnology and breakthroughs in neuroscience and cognitive and behavioral psych. People in psychology are still trying to treat our perception rather than trying to help our reactions to our perceptions. Perception is not what is wrong it is only what we DO with those perceptions. "What happened is not as important as what we do with the information," I like to say. It might take hundreds of years before psychology really comes around but I think it will be faster than that. Everyone is ready for a change, with our economy in shambles, people sick of working for "the man," talk of the apocalypse, 2012, Obama in the White House telling us "YES WE CAN (change that is)." We are ready for a cultural and spiritual reawakening as a nation and you and I are part of this. It is an exciting time to have "mental illness."
I would prefer if you kept this to yourself and take it however you want. I would not want anyone to make a judgement on what I wrote here except for you. I hope you are well and keep up the good work!
:) Mike

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