Cloudscape

That our society inclines towards yang might be because of our primal ancestry, for the African jungles in which they lived are a very yang environment: basking in sunlight, broiling with heat, brimming with life, whirling with activity and abundant in food. Vivacity, hedonism, sociability, industriousness and materialism are all values characteristic of our species, and they are also all very yang. Scientists have already found that war is something we inherited in common with primates from our evolutionary ancestry, and so are language and community; why then, not materialism? That so much of the earth's surface is covered with our factories might be a direct consequence of the fact that we share our original homes with the primates.

Yin and yang can be hard to reconcile. The only reason that nature has managed to combine them is that this was necessary for it to exist at all, since neither yin nor yang can exist by themselves in any form at all. It was needed for nature to achieve this balance between yin and yang in order for it to be able to evolve at all. We must be cautious to retain this balance.

Yin and yang cause one another; yet at the same time, they also avoid one another, as night shuns day and day shuns night. Try at all times to be mindful to be balanced between the two. Do not fear sadness when you are in joy, and do not fear joy when you are in sadness, but try to accept that one flows into the other as day and night. There can be joy in sadness and sadness in joy, and neither is above the other.

As our species are more yang than yin, we tend to fear sadness rather than joy, even though, when our joy remains too long, it will turn into anxiety. Some who are in sadness, on the other hand, fear joy when it comes to them. Try to accept both. Do not deny your sadness, but neither deny your joy. We must accept it when one has to succeed the other. The same counts for all things yin and yang, such as work and rest, or society and solitude.

Pain is our way of repelling what we do not want. Pleasure is our way of attracting what we do want, which may include the absence of something we don't want. Thus, both can be means of achieving the same purpose. The difference between the two is but that one painful and the other pleasurable. Thus, focus on what you do want, not on what you don't want.

Perhaps all the symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia in particular, are a direct result of ego-splitting, in which the person's sense of self, or ego, becomes split into separate compartments which seem to assume a role of their own. For instance, the person's own thoughts may seem as though they are those of someone (or something) else, leading to the delusion that thoughts have been inserted into the person mind. These thoughts which have separated from the ego may then turn to intrusive thoughts or voices.

At the same time, if the ego has been split into many compartments, it becomes harder to focus one's attention on one specific compartment, because one's thoughts have basically become scattered across each of these many compartments. In this way, one's attention may become distracted as it rapidly shifts from one train of thought to another.

In ego splitting, the central part of one's ego is still in one's physical body, but most of it has become transferred onto other areas of one's consciousness, such as daydreams, to such extent that these may become extremely vivid. These may then have such impact on one's emotions that they seem real, whereas the part of the ego concerned with reality has become so small that real events have a much smaller impact on one's emotions. The result is an increased response to imaginary stimuli, and a decreased response to real stimuli. In other words, the ego has partly dissolved into imagination.

In addition, parts of the ego may become transferred onto objects in the person's environment, so that it seems as though these are alive, or as though they contain cameras, microphones or other means through which they might be spied upon, or it might seem that the person can control these objects with his mind.

This may also happen with people: when parts of the ego are transferred to other persons, the person's emotions about him- or herself may become projected upon them. It follows that if the person has a high self-esteem, this may lead to the feeling that people will likewise have a high esteem of him or her, increasing the feeling of high self-esteem and so forth. This interaction may lead to grandiloquence. On the other hand, if the person has a low self-esteem, this may lead to paranoia, because he or she then projects his or her feelings about him- or herself onto others.

In addition, some people who suffer from self-loathing may use daydreams to punish themselves, especially people who have a lot of imagination. They may do this by hurting themselves in their thoughts, but also by making other people hurt them in their daydreams. In one's daydreams, one has the ability to exert full power over all things, and for people who live largely in daydreams, this ability might distort their image of reality, leading to the delusion that reality differs little from daydreams.

As the ego splits up, the person comes to feel one with things that are in reality separate from his physical self. In this way, the person's sense of separation becomes blurred. This may cause the feeling that people are too close to oneself and so worsen the sociophobia already caused in part due to the paranoia. Furthermore, because of this lack of sense of separation, it becomes as if all things in the world are in fact part of the person's own mind, things that are therefore controlled by the person's own thoughts. As the person dissociates from their own thoughts, however, and they come to appear to take a form distinct from the ego, it seems as if their thoughts are not their own, and that they are instead thoughts that they pick up from other people.

Furthermore, because of this lack of sense of separation, it may also seem that everyone is much too close to them. Close enough, for instance, to harm them, or to read their thoughts. Strictly speaking, this is not in itself ego splitting, since the ego is one's sense of self, and the paranoid still knows the difference between themselves and other people, and does not see them as part of themselves as one would see one's arm as part of oneself, for example; but the feelings they believe others to have towards them still originate from their own. This is so because the paranoid's sense of self has partly dissolved, so that they no longer recognize these feelings as their own.

If the person hates him- or herself, it may seem to them that the entire world hates them. If the person is also self-destructive, it will seem as if the entire world is keen on destroying them. But to paranoids, this feeling becomes so extreme that is no longer a mere emotion, but a reality to them.

One might argue that ego dissolution is not the only thing that may cause paranoia. Traumas can be another cause, for instance, which neither directly nor indirectly have anything to do with ego dissolution. On the other hand, one might question if this is paranoia at all, since people who develop fear of people because of traumas have an actual reason to do so, namely, the chance that the trauma might repeat itself. The traumatized person's estimation of this chance isn't even necessarily irrationally high, but he or she is so terrified of this chance that no matter how small it may be, it is still significant to him or her.

Some Buddhists, and other practitioners of meditation, practice a form of meditation called metta meditation, or compassion meditation, in which the meditator tries to generate compassion for living beings: first him- or herself, then loved ones, then acquaintances, then enemies, then strangers, and ultimately all that lives.

This form of meditation would not actually work with paranoids, because the issue with paranoids is not their own hate for others, but the imagined hate others have for them. However, if this form of meditation were reversed, it might actually serve as a potential cure or prevention for paranoia.

Since the paranoid's emotions have become projected onto other people, he must deal both with the emotions ascribed to the ego as those ascribed to others, meaning that he must re-place him- or herself in the place of others and then deal with the emotions he feels for himself in others' place.

To the paranoid, the metta meditation should be focussed entirely on the first stage of generating compassion for him- or herself, but from the viewpoint of others. In other words, he or she should imagine other people to love them and send them love. This is unlikely to work, but in the process, he or she might resolve the hate that he or she imagines others to feel for them, which is actually their own self-hate projected onto others.

As this form of meditation would require insight on the paranoid's part that he or she is paranoid, this would sometimes be more useful as a preventive than a curative method, at least in severe cases. Nonetheless, it can also be used in less severe forms of paranoia, or while the illness is already or still in full force.

The goal is always love. You can either search that which you love, or love that which you find. If there is nothing left which you love, for instance if everything causes you suffering, you have no more choice than to try to love that which you find, even if everything you can find brings you suffering. If you are suffering, it is not enough to accept your suffering: you must love it, especially if there is no longer anything else than suffering.

As everything is relative, so everything is in itself equal in value, equally beautiful and equally abominable — infinitely beautiful and infinitely abominable. Everything being equal in beauty, and having no real beauty of itself, the only thing that we should seek is the perception of beauty in itself, since that is the only real beauty we will find. Or rather, it is the closest to real beauty we can ever find — for no beauty is real. Beauty is but in our minds. It is something we imagine, and by imagining it, we make it real.

Outside our imagination, nothing is ever beautiful, and this is a curse we must bear; for whatever we may think to be beautiful, it is never beautiful in itself, and so no beauty we ever see will last outside ourselves; and it may be that when we think we have found beauty, it is only to find later that it no longer holds any beauty to us anymore. If beauty lies but in ourselves, it can never be certain, for nothing that lies in ourselves is. What lies in ourselves can always change.

The tragedy is that the perception of beauty, which is all that matters in the universe, is infinitely fragile, and it may shatter literally in a moment through the force of suffering, or worse, ignorance.

Because perception is so relative, so too is beauty, and beauty can be perceived in literally anything at all, no matter how ugly we tend to perceive it. Thus, to find beauty one must not only seek what one sees as beautiful, but also see the things you have already found as beautiful. The perception of beauty is called love, though love may also be many other things.

Things have no value of themselves whatsoever. Things can only have value to us when we give them that value, and one can only give something value through love. If life seems worthless, that is because you give it no value. If life seems precious, it is because you give it its value. Neither is an absolute truth. But why should we choose to give only certain things in life their value in the form of love, while not others?

In a person who is bipolar, hypomania and depression both have the same cause and cause one another. Bipolarity is usually caused by with an increased sensitivity in some form or other, though increased sensitivity does not necessarily lead to bipolarity. As such, the bipolar cycle is merely an exaggeration of a normal person's emotional cycle between normal sadness and normal happiness.
However, at the same time, hypomania may cause depression and the other way around, as yin and yang usually do, much like the crests and troughs of the waves. For one thing, hypomania may lead to denial of problems. In particular, hypomania may cause an overconfidence which leads to an indifference with regards to negative emotion, so that these become repressed. When these become too obvious to still be denied, they at once come to the surface and may thus trigger a depression.
At this point, the hypomania may either gradually turn into a depression, or it may first turn into a mixed state: a nervous state of feverish excitement. The latter happens if the bipolar person still tries to retain his or her elevated level of energy despite the agitation, but this eventually becomes to painful, and he or she finally gives up to end up in a full-blown depression.
On the other hand, depression may then pave the way for a new hypomanic episode in a bipolar person. The withdrawal caused by depression gives one time to contemplate what one wants to change in one's life, so that, when one endeavors to achieve these changes, one's quality of life may improve. At the same time, one may become used to dealing with negative emotions.
Bipolar people often learn to objectivize their emotions because they are so changeable, thus making it clear to them that everything is highly relative. Realizing this, people with bipolar depression may be more likely in a depressive episode to work about their condition than someone with unipolar depression, knowing that a hypomanic episode may come afterwards which may be worthwhile.
Either how, depression may paradoxically improve one's outlook on life in anyone. It puts one before the choice between suicide, suffering or self-improvement. Eventually, if given enough time, one either chooses for suicide or self-improvement. One becomes forced to become more conscious and more constructive in one's thoughts and actions.
Moreover, depression creates an emptiness which forces one to detach from things one formerly took for granted, so that one is reminded of their value, and later becomes more capable of appreciating them and being thankful for their existence. In major depressive episodes, it may be that one has to let go of absolutely everything one ever enjoyed, simply because one has lost every bit of enjoyment of it. But only once you've let go of something can you be mindful of what it means to you. Becoming depressed and then recovering is like dying and then being reborn again.
Bipolar disorder is common among artists not only because artists are often more intense people, but also because art can be a way of dealing with emotions. In addition, however, their emotions may depend strongly on their art, especially because artists often have less social contact then other people. At the same time, their art depends strongly on their emotions. This codependence may spiral in turns into a depressive and a hypomanic episode.

When you are too distracted by thoughts during meditation while being still, try to meditate more while moving, for instance, in yoga, tai chi, dancing, walking, exercise, work, or another activity. If you are too distracted by thoughts during active meditation, try a more passive meditation, like insight meditation, mantric meditation, prayer or hypnosis.

Since meditation is merely mindful experience, meditation can be both active or passive. There must be a balance between active and passive meditation, and if this balance is not respected, then the meditation may cease to be effective or even become harmful. People have slipped into psychosis from too much passive and too little active meditation. On the other hand, too much active and too little passive meditation will only lead to an obsessive concentration.

In any case, however it is very important that any activity during meditation can be more or less automatized, that is to say, that it can happen without much thought, as it is not concentration, but experience, that matters in meditation. It is impossible to experience if one is forced to concentrate on thought.

People who have too little yang might focus more on active meditation, lest they only lose focus in passive meditation. People who have too little yin might instead focus more on passive meditation.

When you are in sadness, try to let go of attachment as much as possible: let go of greed, of anger, of fear. Let go of all things you tell yourself that must or must not be. Letting go of attachment is easier when sad, and in this way, sadness can come to its use. It can thus cleanse your being from impurities and, like winter, creates an emptiness from which new life can grow in spring. The faster you are able to let go, the less painful your sadness will feel, and the quicker it can also pass. Thus, do not resist sadness, but try to make use of it until it is gone. The use of sadness is to make one let go how things go, not as a punishment when things do not go your way. In your sadness, let go off all control and let everything be. Thus, it will come to its use.

Sometimes the best thing you can do when you are in sadness is to make use of your sadness' purification abilities, and the best way to do this is to turn inwards. Meditation, or, if you are religious, prayer, can be a good way to do this. In your sadness, you are more able to let go of control, thereby creating an emptiness within yourself. Learn to appreciate the silence this brings, and in that silence try to find grace.

Above all, when you are sad, think about what you want to do with your life. Sadness is an emptiness which creates a panorama within your mind. Hear the silence. See the darkness. Feel the cold. In this emptiness, find purity. Once you have done this, your sadness has served its purpose, and the light may come back once again.

You've created this perception of good and bad and do not realize that this is but a perception of your own creation. The only thing that is good is the perception of good, and that perception doesn't even need to be in your experience; it can just as well be in your experience of your experience.