dear nina, it’s me god—Repost
Author's Note: This essay was written years ago and is being reposted largely as it originally appeared. I've corrected formatting and minor errors, but I've left the substance intact because I want to preserve the experience and perspective I had at the time.
I am very hesitant to tell this story. It may seem that I have no problem sharing my personal stories, but this is a story I don't know how to talk about. I know there are others who share similar experiences, but this is my version.
I want to try to describe what my first encounter with "insanity" was like.
I put that word in quotes because I think mania can partially be a spiritual experience as well as a complete breakdown. In my view, it can be both simultaneously.
Let's start from the very beginning—a very good place to start.
I was 24 years old. This was before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, or what was then often called manic depression.
I was lying in bed. I had experienced my first panic attacks ever. I had taken Klonopin the night before. As I lay there, I heard a voice in my head. I didn't hear any sound in my ears; it was simply in my mind.
It said:
"Wake up."
So I did.
"Go to the window and look outside."
I felt compelled to listen to this voice, so I got up, walked across the cream-colored carpet, and stared out the window. It was a beautiful summer day. No one was outside, but the grass was as green as ever.
"What do you see?" the voice asked me.
"I see the sky, the green, green grass, and the neighbor's house," I replied silently in my head.
"You are in heaven," the voice said.
I looked around again, this time more closely.
"But everything is the same," I responded.
"Exactly," the voice said.
I didn't really get it. I was confused.
Am I still in a house, with my family?
I looked all around the room. Nothing had changed. The walls were still white. Nothing had moved.
Except one thing: me.
I was completely relaxed and at peace.
I had been suffering from panic attacks and extreme anxiety the night before. It was all gone. I felt free.
I don't remember if the voice said anything else to help me understand what was going on, but eventually it spoke again.
"You are god," it said.
For a moment, I felt the entire universe inside me.
There I was. There god was—in the trees, in the blue, blue sky, in the green, green grass.
There I was in everything.
I was everything, and everything was me. For a few moments, I was at complete peace.
Then the voice went away as suddenly as it had come.
nina came back to earth as quickly as she had risen to heaven.
The anxiety returned. It was almost worse.
What am I supposed to do now? I thought.
"Am I supposed to tell my family that I am God?" I silently asked.
I pictured myself as a big, huge, fat man. Then I looked in the mirror with my long hair and flushed cheeks.
I started to freak the fuck out.
I went into the shower and cried violently.
I didn't go to work. I couldn't go to work.
I had to speak to someone, but no one was going to understand.
I was scared—scared of myself, scared of the world.
How could I explain this to them?
To be continued...
Okay, let's stop for a second here.
I'm an English instructor. What is really happening in this story?
Let's analyze it. Let's write a paper on it.
What does it mean to hear a voice in your head?
In clinical terms, it means you have a mental illness.
And I do.
Could god have been communicating with me?
That is a matter of opinion.
Yes, I think god was talking to me.
I have to tell you something: I don't feel comfortable sharing this with the entire World Wide Web. But something is compelling me to tell this story.
Now, how can I be crazy and be talking to god?
I don't know how crazy works, but I'll tell you this: a lot of people who are in psychiatric wards think some spiritual being is talking to them.
Let's hypothetically say that spiritual beings, including god, can communicate with people.
Why do these people go crazy?
In my humble opinion, the human mind and body are not ready for this. It shocks the system and creates havoc. It creates what you call insanity. It creates physical symptoms, mental symptoms, and can even be deadly.
Mental illness is real.
So is this—whatever you want to call it.
I think I was enlightened for a moment.
Now you may ask: Do I think I'm an enlightened person?
Yes and no. More no than yes.
I think enlightenment comes and goes.
There are times when I feel like I'm channeling a source. There are times when I'm more human than anyone else—all I want is a glass of wine, some chocolate cake, and a good laugh.
Sometimes I'm exceptionally miserable.
We call this depression.
I think depression is when I forget that my essential nature is pure love.
It is also depression in the clinical and medical sense, and that is why I take antidepressants.
Just because I think there may be a spiritual dimension to being manic or depressed does not mean I am suggesting that anyone, including me, ever get off their medication.
I will tell you, perhaps in the future, what happened to me when I got off my meds.
Let me repeat that:
I am not telling you to get off your meds.
You can still have enlightenment with your meds.
It is a lie and a myth that medication stops source from entering you.
Maybe humans made medicines, but god is in humanity, so god made medicines too.
Perhaps we were given them so we could handle our spiritual states. So we could find peace without losing our sanity.
At first, I did not tell a single soul about this experience.
How could I? I thought.
They would lock me up. They would not understand.
The voice said I was in heaven.
Most of us think heaven is a place far away in the sky.
In my religion, Sikhism, we believe heaven and hell are experienced on earth. We believe there is a place where god resides in the universe that is the "real" heaven, but we do not believe there is a place called hell in this universe.
We believe heaven and hell can both be experienced here on earth.
For a moment, I thought I was in heaven.
Heaven with a little h.
The earthly heaven.
My mind felt pure love.
I loved the grass I was looking at, the sky, myself in the mirror, and the god I was talking to.
Now you might ask: Do I think I am god?
No.
I think you are god.
I think each one of us contains god, and that in our truest selves we are connected to the entire universe.
I think of myself more as a goddess than a god.
I am a very flawed person.
I can be mean, egotistical, and angry.
I'm not god.
I repeat this so no one walks away thinking that I believe I am god:
I am not god in the traditional sense that we think of god.
I am simply her daughter.
The voice I heard had no gender.
However, after the experience was over, I thought of it as male because the world had conditioned me to think of god as having a gender.
After many years of dealing with this condition, it has occurred to me that it is about time a woman told this kind of story.
Men have been telling these stories for ages.
I would like to make a disclaimer:
This is my individual experience only. I am diagnosed with a mental illness. However, not every person with bipolar disorder or another mental illness has had experiences similar to mine.
Some people do not have spiritual experiences when they first discover they have a disease.
Image courtesy of Tristan White via Scopio
Often, their experiences are very negative and may involve thoughts of suicide or self-destruction.
Just because I had this experience does not mean I am special.
I happen to think everyone is special and that god communicates with everyone in some form.
The way I believe god communicates with most people is through intuition, thought, and experience.
I also need to make room for those who do not believe in god.
For you, this may simply be my imagination. You may believe I have a chemical imbalance, and that is where the story ends.
I'm okay with that because I do have a chemical imbalance.
In my eyes, the chemical imbalance created a kind of spiritual balance.
In your eyes, I was experiencing a delusion.
I respect the atheist perspective because it questions authority—the greatest authority of all: religion and god.
If you do believe in god, you may think this experience was real, or you may think it was a severe hallucination.
Either way, it is my experience.
When was the last time you thought the universe—or god—might be giving you a sign?
Maybe that sign appears in the next song you hear, the next article you read, the next commercial on television, or the next word you hear someone utter.
nina
Do you need help learning how to read, write, or speak English?
I am an experienced tutor who can give you real conversational and written expertise in English Language Learning.
I can also help with Foreign Accent Reduction.
I work virtually in any time zone in any country.
To explore tutoring with me, please submit the form below:
A couple of friends and I started a podcast called 2 Curries and a Ranch. Listen here: https://2curriesandaranch.riverside.com/ or wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine two loud, dramatic, hilarious Indian women explaining to a white man what it's like to grow up and live in America. Join us for laughter, deep thoughts, and witty banter about life, love and culture. We tell it like it is, with honest, bold and funny stories, discussions and arguments. We explore boundaries and challenge norms. Join us for a good talk.
We have a new episode out: Body Hair
Join us as we discuss different humorous and serious aspects of body hair and all its entanglements.