Very often our inner experience is charted as a series of stages that collectively make up a process. At each phase there exists unique difficulties to overcome and distinct methods for tackling those problems. Tackling the trials and tribulations of bipolar experiences—experiences that afflict all of us to some degree—must also be treated in terms of a process.

In Chassidic philosophy, one of the essential teachings from the Baal Shem Tov (the founding figure of Chassidism) depicts many phenomena in Torah and in life as going through a three stage process called submission, separation and sweetening. In light of this model, the three textual versions of Sefer Yetzirah that we introduced in the previous article enjoining us to ‘return back’, or ‘return to our place’ or to ‘return a sense of unity’ can be seen in terms of this threefold process.

Stage one, which requires a person’s submission or subjugation of his or her (as of yet) uncertified impulses, is a matter of discipline. We are filled with all sorts of drives—some positive and some negative, some ambiguous and some clearly self-destructive. To start we simply need to get things under control—to be drivers and not driven. If I have gone too far, then the best course of action is to take it down a notch.

After unwinding the intensity that caused me to get ahead of myself, after backing down, then I can move on to stage two. Termed the ‘separation’ stage, the idea is to distinguish the matter at hand. By clarifying what’s good verses bad in my situation, I can individualize my response in a way that best suits me. In the context of the present discussion, this would mean rejecting places where I don’t belong and accepting the place where I do. In other words, the separation stage is a filtering process to aid in my being able to make a conscious choice.

Finally, in stage three, once the work of the other two stages has been completed, I am able to sweeten the whole of my reality and open up my place in life to function as the intersection whereupon the extremes may converge. I become equally ‘myself’ no matter where I am.

Furthermore, to flip the relationship over and frame it somewhat differently, we could console ourselves with the insight that the Divine is everywhere equally. The unity of above and below is itself the sweetening of the severity of life, the ameliorating of judgment and softening of definition. The end and objective of the process is the return to the one, to unity. There is a psychological common denominator always and everywhere.

One of the verses that beautifully captures this recalibration of self appears in Psalms (139:8) where King David realizes his own overcoming of any bipolar tendencies within his soul: “If I would ascend to heaven, You [God] are there; and if I were to make my bed in the lowest depths, behold, You [God] are there.” God is to be found equally above and below. Ultimate reality entangles all of its dimensions. The highs and lows, pits and peaks, are co-extensive as forms of Divine self-expression. So too, with the human condition, we have returned to a solidarity of self and a oneness with our reality when the extremes of our experience—from which we would normally disassociate ourselves—are accepted and converge towards one and other. We meet our underlying unity no matter which direction we are headed.

The temptation is to say that God is with us only when things are on the up and up. Conversely, in the course of a downward spiral, we tend to think that we’ve been abandoned. States of depression, of falling low, of all the hellish situations that entrap us may be registered as a loss or absence—but this is only on a certain conscious level. If we can get over the initial shock of feeling abandoned, we may uncover within a more subtle dimension of our unconscious, the unsuspected presence of the Divine.

Like a person who has been waiting by the side of a loved one in distress, the Divine presence is said to accompany us into the exile of our suffering. The catch is that we are too often preoccupied with our immediate troubles to notice this presence. Half the battle to climb out of the lows is won by waking up to the fact that someone has us in mind—a concerned presence is watching.

The idea that “You are there” means that the infinite is here. There can be no end in the trip towards the infinite. The sensing of the infinite is what preserves the continued and unending aspiration to keep climbing. We must always keep going. Complacency endangers us. Thinking we’ve crossed the finish line causes us to give up the chase, to keep pushing ourselves.

Whether it be phases of instinctively rejecting the wrong place or consciously finding the right one, or even the eventual realization of being oneself in every place and situation in life, we have to go through it all. Moreover, it is the process to, and not the arrival at, that is important. When we ascend to the heavens working our way up higher and higher, the real danger in falling comes from feeling like we have made it. Mission accomplished. When we think we grasped what is in truth boundless, when we believe that we have reached our destination, this is precisely when we are liable to immediately fall.

Thus the process is the goal—an essential component for reconditioning the bipolar.

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