Why Manic Spirituality Feels More Real Than Reality

Every Building Is a Temple: The Beautiful, Dangerous Seduction of Manic Thinking

By Liam Ronan

During my manic episode, I became convinced that every building I looked at was a temple. Not metaphorically. Actually a temple. A cathedral. A place of sacred meaning revealed only to those who had eyes to see. My reasoning was that I thought it was a temple christened by the labor of the builders.

I would walk through ordinary architecture, residential neighborhoods, strip malls, and I would perceive them differently. The way a window caught light. The geometry of a roofline. The way a building related to the space around it. All of it suddenly signified something. All of it was evidence of a deeper order I was finally understanding.

Cemeteries, in particular, took on profound meaning. I remember thinking with absolute clarity: cemeteries are celebrations of those who built the world for us, and therefore they should make us happy. Not sad. Happy. I had figured out what cemeteries actually meant.

I was seeing patterns everywhere: In the natural world, the manmade world, with The Universe itself. I believed everything originated from nothing divided into positive and negative. This wasn’t a metaphor I was exploring. This was truth. A grand philosophical system that explained everything, and I had access to it because my brain was operating at a higher frequency.

Prime numbers became obsessive. They’re mathematically asymmetrical, which felt beautiful and natural. Magical. I believed they held power. That they were significant in ways that ordinary numbers weren’t.

And underneath all of this was a feeling of profound love. I felt love for everything and everyone. Other people seemed like the most valuable thing in the world. I saw connections everywhere, threads binding everything together. Every religion, I realized, had a sliver of universal truth. All of them should be learned and respected. I wasn’t fragmenting; I was finally synthesizing. I was seeing what unified thinkers had always known.

This is the trap that almost nobody warns you about when they talk about mania. Because it makes sense to you, because it feels true, because it feels like enlightenment, you don’t want to question it.

There’s a seductive quality to manic magical thinking that depressive thinking doesn’t have. When you’re in mania, or maybe hypomania, you feel like you’re ascending. You feel like you’re finally getting it.

But actually, our brain chemistry is out of balance. Neural networks are firing in patterns that produce these experiences. But the experience of mania, from the inside, isn’t “this is my brain malfunctioning.”

I can still see the beauty in those architectural moments. I can still understand why every building felt like a temple. I can still appreciate the philosophical exploration of prime numbers and universal truth. But now I see how it was fueled by a manic episode.

If you’re experiencing something like this, it might be your awareness trying to tell you something.

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