There was never a kiss goodnight, never a hug and an "I love you." But there were shadows in the night and visitors. And then I would have visions too. I was given a mission and I told my parents (who by this time were religious fanatics having followed me into Christianity) that God had sent an angel to me to tell them to sell all they had and travel in a motorhome ministering around the country. Good plan. I thought it was real. It sure seemed real. And that's exactly what they did. Why they didn't have brains to reason by this time that I was mentally ill, is beyond me. But only six weeks into the journey it was obvious that it was all a big mistake. But bipolars often blame their irrational behavior on God and then also say that God is using these tests to do something entirely different than what they were saying God wanted in the first place!
I am a Christian. But in my mania I suffer with religious mania. As a result I have converted away from Christianity several times. Once in 1993 I converted to Satanism and witchcraft. Oh that was an adventure. But it definitely appealed to my religious mania. I was obsessed with spells and rituals and hearing voices. I would lock myself in the closet and rock and chant and cut myself. All classic bipolar manic signs.
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/8819/bipolar3.htmlProbably rather more extreme that what you experience, Shima, but when people tell me that they hear, see or feel God, my first suspicion is that something's gone a bit wonky in their head. I had a long discussion with a friend a while ago, where we were comparing our perceptions of things. She saw beauty in everything, felt really awed by sunsets and the way leaves would sway on a tree, felt that everything was part of some divine essence and so on, and to me it sounded very much like how I've felt when I've taken ecstacy, except she had it constantly. (When I've taken ecstacy though, I've been fully aware of the chemical reasons for why I felt the things I did, and didn't ascribe any religious significance to it).
Normally, I don't feel anything like that. Sure, something might be pretty, but it doesn't give me an emotional surge to see a sunset or whatever, and I never have the slightest sensation of there being a supernatural side to reality. I don't percieve things as being connected in any spiritual way, I don't see purpose in coincidences, and God, gods, magic, astrology, fairies and so on are completely absent from my experience of reality, though I understand, to my satisfaction, why many people believe in such things.
The friend, on the other hand, was into all sorts; believed in fairies, thought she could so magic (but said it would be disrespectful to test it under controlled conditions, along with a whole bunch of other excuses for why I'd just have to take her word for it), believed that everything was part of a divine essence, that everything happened for a reason and so on. She found it quite disturbing that I didn't feel the stuff she felt; that life for me was pretty cold and meaningless compared to her perception of it, ruled by happenstance rather than divine purpose.
So, I attribute a lot of religious feeling to brain chemistry and neurology. Some people just seem wired for religion.
