The book in this photo, The Gateless Gate, is one of the reasons I decided to stop pursuing enlightenment. It’s a collection of koans (gong’an in Chinese) and commentary. In “Pop Buddhism,” people think koans are to be figured out or tools used to become enlightened. You’ve probably heard, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” Koans are actually public records of an individual’s enlightenment experience. Koans aren’t meant to be reused. They’re tools for gaining insight into enlightenment experiences, not for becoming enlightened.

It was the commentary for one of the koans that made me take a break. A monk who dedicated 30 years of his life to enlightenment still hadn’t achieved it. Monk?! 30 years?! No enlightenment?! What chance did I have if someone with that level of commitment couldn’t do it?!

I still dabbled after that, but I was nowhere near as interested in pursuing enlightenment after reading that as I was before. It was also around this time that I started working on my own philosophy, Flowism, and system, Way of the 108, for living. These were really born out of a need to heal myself. Bipolar 1 had been consistently wrecking my life anytime I started making progress in anything.

As I’m typing this, I’m realizing that Flowism and The Way of the 108 have been something I’ve been able to consistently build on, because, from the time I created those tools until now, manic episodes have become data points. Something to learn from.

Something else I’m realizing as I’m typing this is that the enlightenment experience from October was also a data point for Way of the 108. In October, I had the enlightenment experience, and in November and December, I had my manic episode. I can’t say for sure if the enlightenment experience helped, but I was able to get through that manic episode without hospitalization or transitioning into depression. When things started to normalize after the manic episode, the first thing that came to mind was how I could streamline my life for manic episodes.

Something else I learned last time is that some mental frameworks did a lot of heavy lifting during the episode. The question became, how could I train them during the time between episodes? I’m still working on fully answering that question, but an example answer is “move slow.” Extremely simple, but when mania comes, everything speeds up. If I’m moving fast already, then things are going to get uncontrollably faster. If I’m moving slowly, I’ll hit a manageable speed. That’s one of the things that happened the last time.

I recently started working on the Heart Sutra, and when I did, my interest in enlightenment returned, and I also had a recent enlightenment experience to build on. Streamlining for enlightenment is a thought I just had this morning. There are many obvious changes to make, and I will make them, but some are harder to swallow. Like, for example, Claude (an LLM) told me to stop working on Flowism, and it was right.

Writing this post has been a great thought exercise for me. It was originally only about streaming for enlightenment but now I’ve realized that…

Streaming for bipolar is streamlining for enlightenment, and streamlining for enlightenment is streamlining for bipolar.

I had that enlightenment experience because of 10 years of streamlining for bipolar. Some of the tools I used during that 10-year journey were enlightenment tools that I thought would be useful for managing mania. I accidentally engineered an enlightenment experience through doing my best to heal.

It’s important to note that this enlightenment experience happened well outside of the manic episode. That’s part of what made it so powerful. I was chilling on a rock, minding my own business, and BOOM! 🤯 Then BOOM 😌 back to reality. I was able to journal and start processing the experience immediately. That’s just not possible when manic. The mind is primed for spiritual and enlightenment experiences while manic, but the mind is also moving too fast and likely sleep-deprived as well. It’s also hard to process the experiences from mania while in the hospital!

Closing thoughts

The focus of this post changed three times while writing it! It started with the title, “Streamlining for enlightenment,” to build on the experience I had, but I’ve been streamlining for enlightenment the whole time. I need to keep doing what I’ve been doing. What’s that? Planning, acting, and reflecting in cycles. Bipolar mania will continue to be a focus, but now “enlightenment” will have a seat at the table. Enlightenment can be a weird topic. I suppose it’s weird because, as I pointed out above, it’s REALLY hard and there isn’t a way to get “enlightenment certified.” How do you find a teacher or method when there’s no way to know if they’re good or if it works? You have to accept that these uncertainties are a part of the “fun.” 😂

It’s actually been fun, and it feels good to be back at it.