I'm going to try very hard to make this post without referencing any specific religion. But I don't think I can say what I must say without alluding to certain beliefs that everyone knows certain religions have. I will leave it to the mods to decide.

This post has to do with an ongoing battle I've had for many years with the conundrum of suicide. I was raised in a religion that believes suicide is possibly the worst offense against God one can make, and is certainly a one-way ticket to an afterlife in which you do not want to find your soul.

During periods of mania. I have definitely gone through the textbook experiences of believing that I was the most influential religious figure in the history of the world, as well as all the other figures surrounding this mythology. Since I first became manic 7 years ago, there has been an ebb and flow in terms of my believing in this faith. But, it seems that when the mania dies, so does my belief.

I became non-religiously spiritual around 9 years ago. It was then that I read the book The Untethered Soul, which has been the most spiritually influential book I have ever read.

Since living through at least 9 waves of depression and mania over the last 7 years, there have been many times when I have just wanted to die. I have spent months praying to God every night to just take me away, to just make me never wake up. And yes, I have had suicidal ideations. I have many times pictured myself doing something - “the right way”, to quote the movie The Craft – vertically, not horizontally. Sometimes I'm in a bathtub, sometimes not. Funnily enough I never picture or anything else.

But I have never attempted suicide. I have never even cut myself. The reason why is not my religious upbringing, but a passage in The Untethered Soul that put such an impression on me that I have told myself over and over again I can never do it.

In the book, and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the text in front of me, there is a story about a woman who attempted suicide and traveled to the spirit realm. While there she spoke to the universal spirit/all that is and it knew that she had tried to commit suicide. She explained that her life was so painful that she thought it was the only way out. It said to her, (and this is a quote) “Don't you know that this is the worst thing you could have done?” The book went on to explain that while you are alive your soul is learning and growing based on the experience of your previous life and is preparing you for the next stage of your spiritual evolution in the next life. It explained that the reason that suicide is so bad for your soul is the fact that you did not fulfill your karmic destiny by living through your previous life, and you will therefore be condemned to have to learn the same karmic lessons in your next life. I read this to mean that you will have to live a future existence that is just as painful, if not more so, than your present one.

I have since drummed it into my head that no matter how bad things get, I cannot commit suicide. I had come to believe in reincarnation several years before reading the book. It was the only way I could explain the massive inequality between those who have wonderful lives and those who have really painful ones.

So here I am, having been though years of long and agonizing depressions, with no option of a way out. Only the determination to continue living through the pain. At this point it is hard for me to even contemplate making myself better, if that's even possible. In my depressions, there is nothing I can do to pull myself out. I merely have to wait until the depression is spontaneously lifted through no work of my own.
My posts so far have been pretty long. I'm not very good at being concise. Twitter is very hard for me!

If anyone else has these feelings or beliefs I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading.