WillSpirit!

My last post talked about my encounter with emptiness, and how it has disoriented me. I phrased the dilemma in Buddhist terms, but I also pointed out that although much of that tradition appeals to me, I don’t define myself as a Buddhist. I resist such self-labeling for a couple of reasons. The Buddha himself, I suspect, would have discouraged people from defining themselves that way, or any other way. In addition, I want to remain wide open to other sources. In particular, I maintain loyalty to my Quaker roots. (The Religious Society of Friends figured largely in my ancestry, and that faith has helped me ever since I first questioned my atheist upbringing in the 1980′s.) In taking up the trade of acupuncture I’m encountering philosophies that, although not incompatible with Buddhism (since they are Eastern in derivation,) are undeniably different. In this as in all things, I like to foster a receptive mind, while picking and choosing what works for me.

During an appointment yesterday, my acupuncturist offered me an alternate way to frame my current angst. He pointed out that one can grieve for negative influences almost as much as positive ones. I know this firsthand from the death of my stepmother. I went through a clear-cut grief process after her departure, even though I don’t miss her in the slightest. She treated me kindly on only the rarest of occasions, and could usually be counted on to deliver a cutting comment that undermined whatever was most important to me. Add in her breathtaking cruelty toward me when I was little, and you’ll understand why I primarily felt relief when she died. And yet, I also felt bereaved.

The loss this time is not of a person, but of a battle, or a war. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fighting psychic demons. Self-hatred, discouragement, bitterness, fury, confusion, grief, doubt, and many other painful mental states have often threatened to consume me, and I’ve attacked them all, tooth and nail. An enormous amount of energy was expended in this ceaseless assault against my mind’s weather. How could it not be all-consuming to wrestle the incontrovertible fact of one’s emotional condition at every moment? I finally understand the futility of my lifelong struggle. If one feels something, one feels it. Why not just settle into the experience? Then one will have more energy to pursue thoughts and actions that might foster better frames of mind. But it’s a waste of effort to fight the emotion that’s already in place, or to bemoan the past, or to fear the unknowable future. Change happens with action, not fretting. But I have made a religion out of fretting.

No longer. I simply don’t feel the internal pressure and outrage anymore. I can sit comfortably with sorrow, or disappointment, or any of the other other so-called negative emotions, and wait for it to pass. Each discomfort passes away. And then it comes back. I see that now, and I’m OK with it.

Which leaves me standing on a silent battlefield, in full war regalia, with no enemies in sight. It’s as if an exciting, epic Hollywood war movie suddenly came to an anticlimactic ending. The enemy vanished without warning, as did the allies. The war and the armies disappeared. You can see how that might be a little disorienting.

Now what? I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is to reach out to others, to help them gain the same insights into the futility of fighting reality. In my current dullish frame of mind, I almost wonder if offering this will truly be a kindness. Maybe it would be better to let others remain in maximum battle mode. Then I remember that I know peace now, as I never have before. If the price of serenity is a bit of boredom and grief, it is worth it. At least I find the bargain fair, and I believe others should be offered the same emotional armistice. Some will no doubt choose to pursue a better victory rather this slightly unfulfilling stalemate. They are welcome to fight onward. Others, I am sure, will welcome the freedom to live with a peaceful mind. And yes, peace can be a bit boring.

Whether my posts have made it clear or not, the past few months have been hard for me. Thankfully, as so often happens, during a meditation group last night I heard exactly what was needed.

My emotional condition of late has been confusing. The good news is that I no longer worry very much, nor do I feel awful about myself, nor do I resist my underlying sadness. I seldom feel like things ‘should’ be any different than they are. To feel this way has been my goal for over a year, and here I am. The bad news is that my energy level is low and I find it hard to muster enthusiasm for anything. No doubt this is partly the result of my stopping my antidepressants three months ago (after a long, slow taper under psychiatric supervision.) But it also feels like my newfound understanding of the nature of human life contributes to my diminished zest. Although I resist defining myself as a Buddhist, I’ve been incorporating much of that tradition’s philosophy into my worldview. In particular, I now understand from my deepest being that life is inherently unsatisfying, that reaching for material pleasures will never result in lasting happiness, and that all experience is transient. These realizations have relieved me of my old belief that life wasn’t working for me the way it should, that I just needed the right career or home or change to be happy, and that if I could only get things organized properly everything would be fine.

The problem is that a vague nihilism is threatening to take the place of my old frustration. If there is no way to fix everything, no way to adjust my life to make it all dandy, why attempt to learn or accomplish at all? If everything I do is doomed to first leave me unsatisfied and then pass away, what is the point of undertaking anything?

Luckily, I found out last night that this is a common stage on the path to realization. Evidently one often feels a distressing emptiness when one begins to recognize the true nature of reality. Where I use to alternate between long periods of horrible, rotting despair and brief flights of high exultation, I now live with a low-grade sorrow punctuated by occasional hours of meditative absorption. My studies and meditations have helped me recognize the hollowness of my sadness: since it lacks substance it no longer leads to deep misery. Repeated experience has taught me that even the ecstasy of sustained meditation must always be transient. Because I understand I can never hold onto them long-term, my ‘highs’ have lost much of their allure. So life has gone from being a passionate cycle of horrible-excellent-horrible, to a more muted condition where nothing moves me terribly deeply.

My discomfort with this new quietude is compounded by the amount of grief, disappointment, and trauma I’ve endured. As a result of the numerous stormy and destructive events in my life (and the paucity of really happy experiences), not to mention my inherited tendency toward mind-states that psychiatrists often label ‘depressed,’ my background feeling tone is rather gloomy. Although I have very few negative thoughts or worries, and feel fully prepared to accept whatever my mind serves up, there remains a lingering darkness. Knowing that there can be no ultimate relief leaves me concluding that although I don’t feel the kind of intolerable suffering that I once did, I’m going to be living with this shadow over the long term. It’s not an unbearable prospect, but it’s hardly delightful.

This realization was weighing on me before last night, when our meditation teacher explained how the recognition of life’s hollowness can be disorienting at first. After thinking about the instruction overnight, I better understand the root problem: I’ve replaced my former pitched psychic battle with a direct experience of the illusory nature of mental life. Sound and fury have been supplanted by emptiness. Since within the Buddhist framework this can be counted as a kind of progress, I now feel a bit better about it. It’s not that I see this progress as any kind of accomplishment, but I feel relieved to know that I’m still on the right path.

Here comes another book-inspired post. Since my last essay, I’ve finished Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Brach. Coincidentally, the text launches with a discussion of the biblical story of Eden’s Garden and the Fall. The same saga figured in the conclusion of my last post even though I had not yet begun Brach’s book when I wrote the piece.

Brach focuses her discussion of acceptance on the self, or perhaps I should say the person, since as a Buddhist she recommends we not hold too tightly to self-identity. She points out that with the story of the Fall, Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed to most of us feelings of core inadequacy and sinfulness. Our culture teaches us that we are fundamentally flawed and undeserving, thus effectively locking us into lifelong struggles to prove our worth. We are trained to reject much of what comprises us; we criticize our bodies, remain dissatisfied with our accomplishments, and reject our feelings.

Brach’s book offers one great suggestion after another, including meditations that can help us accept our personalities, our discomforts, and our cravings. Most of what she writes rings true for me: not just her descriptions of modern angst, but also her prescriptions for transcending the curse of self-doubt. Her meditative exercises sound a lot like my own practices of recent years, and her tales of how she and others have found relief resonate with my own recovery.

I was particularly impressed by how she helps people cope with the aftermath of childhood trauma. Because Buddhist practice cautions us against believing all the many stories we tell ourselves about our lives, it occasionally happens that those who’ve suffered child abuse end up being told that their suffering results simply from clinging to stories.

This happened to me in a recent meditation retreat that was aimed at those who battle depression and anxiety. During a discussion session, I explained that because of an extremely adverse childhood, I’d struggled most of my life with depression. I then asked about a meditation practice I’ve been exploring. Sometimes I imagine a different upbringing. In this practice, I build for myself a lovely and love-filled childhood, completely fictional. It’s a surprisingly comforting visualization.

The meditation teacher endorsed this practice. The mind, she said, doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. So long as I remained clear about what I was doing, and didn’t get lost in denial or idle fantasy, she thought it a skillful means to improved frames of mind. But then she opined that my so-called terrible childhood was in itself just another story.

I didn’t question her at the time, but later emailed her and gently suggested that it is a bit hazardous to tell victims of child abuse that their traumatic memories are ‘just’ stories. I asked her to clarify what she meant, since I am convinced she would never tell a person who suffered abuse that his or her experience was unimportant. I’d love to hear her thoughts, but she has not yet responded.

Brach negotiates these waters well. She is able to show how one can remain realistic about one’s past injuries, and yet find resources to transcend the victim role. For instance, she tells a touching story of a woman who visualized a fairy godmother visiting her as a frightened child. The guardian angel explained to the terrified little girl why she was having certain feelings, and how she could protect herself. The woman felt much better after this style of meditation.

I am all for using the imagination to heal trauma, but only if it honors the suffering of the injured little one. To dismiss abuse as ‘just a story’ risks perpetuating the plight of the mistreated child, who often is accused of making things up or inviting molestation. I applaud Brach for finding ways to help those with harrowing childhoods reframe events while remaining loyal to the wounded youngster’s need for validation.

Those of us who suffered abuse were kicked out of the Garden at early ages. Even more than those with more ordinary upbringings, we learned to feel worthless and ashamed. We learned to feel like irritants and toys, like ‘things’ that adults could treat however they wished.

Meditation allows us to approach and heal the dreadful feelings that remain after these torments. We must proceed gently and with great caution, but we can begin to work with the core agony that remains, and to explore the still-inflamed emotional wounds. We can quit feeling like frightened children running from deeply embedded monsters, and instead face our demons as the seasoned adults we have become. From there, we can begin to rediscover our purity and innocence, our childhood passion and budding joy. We can acknowledge the scars left by mistreatment, but let go of the mistaken belief that they define us.

Addendum (7 July 2010): The meditation teacher called to explain her meaning. As I’d suspected, she did not intend to downplay the impact of trauma on my or anyone’s history. On the other hand, she points out, people fall into habitual patterns when remembering their lives. These fixed ways of seeing the past can become boxes from which we have a hard time escaping. I certainly agree that on top of the factual events that haunt me there is an overlay of interpretation, as well as a fear that the past dooms me to an unhappy future. This accretion is not ‘truth’, and it is not helpful. The overlay indeed must be recognized as false and constraining, and it must be challenged. The teacher says she now questions the use of the word ‘story’ in this situation. Since that word gets used so often by Buddhists in describing the limitations of thought, it may be hard to abandon. But there is a definite need to distinguish between historical fact, which usually must be acknowledged and accepted in order to heal, and the retrospective myths the mind constructs around past events. The myths can and should be countered with healthier (or fewer) interpretations.

Since I’m not spending much time reading other blogs right now, I don’t leave comments at other sites. Without visibility on other websites, and especially given my very sparse output here, the traffic to my journal has dropped off sharply. Naturally, incoming comments have been sparse too. That explains why my topics no longer arise from the observations of visitors, as used to be common, and instead more often center on whatever books I happen to be reading.

The two books I just finished are The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Compte-Sponville, and The Undiscovered Mind by John Horgan. The former begins by arguing against a personalized, creator deity and ends by promoting a spirituality based on meditation, universal morality, and expanded states of consciousness. The latter book begins by showing the weaknesses in the much ballyhooed mind sciences, and ends without advocating much of anything.

Both books mention Freud’s attitude toward nonlinear states of consciousness. Evidently the father of psychoanalysis had a friend who described an ‘oceanic feeling’ that bordered on spiritual epiphany. Freud seemed to half-envy and half-scorn this friend’s experience. Compte-Sponville suggests this state of mind could serve as a basis for atheist spirituality. Horgan dismisses the possibility of our learning much from such internal states, just as he (rather effectively) undermines most of modern psychotherapeutics and neuroscience.

My attitude is closer to that of Compte-Sponville, in that I think meditation and expanded consciousness are the best escapes from common neurosis. After spending my entire adult life battling unpleasant moods, and trying a multitude of therapies, medications, and support groups in the process, I found consistent relief only after taking up a regular practice of meditation and using it to hone my ability to enter wordless frames of mind. As I write and speak to others about this path, I hear similar reactions from virtually everyone who has given meditation a sincere try: it succeeds where counseling and drugs more often fail. (One reason for this outcome, at least in my case, is that meditation does not emphasize altering how one feels. Therapy and drugs are all about building better moods, but mindfulness meditation focuses on living well with the experience at hand. Since the primary aim is more modest, the success rate is higher. The elevated frames of awareness that come with a serious meditation practice blossom after one has begun to accept the more ordinary states we often instinctively battle; a satisfied life is glimpsed much earlier, simply by embracing one’s current condition of mind.)

Where I differ from both authors is in their reluctance to ascribe profound significance to altered consciousness. One primarily sees it as a way for sensible, non-superstitious people to attain deep feelings; the other views the awakening experience as an interesting curiosity without potential to teach us anything useful. In my view, awakened states of mind open us to the heart of life, and teach us ancient truths in the process.

Although not all altered states are positive (Horgan cites a frightening experience described by William James), most often if they occur in the context of meditation they carry one into an atmosphere of rightness, unity, and love. One gets a sense of understanding in ways completely foreign to ordinary verbal life. The mind feels so comfortable and at ease in moments of expansion, that it is easy to believe that one has found a form of truth that transcends factual information and linear logic. Life’s very answer seems obvious.

These frames of mind bring us close to the experience of all other life on earth. Humanity exited Eden’s Garden when the brain/mind began abstracting and living life via symbols rather than remaining in the direct experience of each present moment. Meditation awakens the mind by putting this logic engine to rest. We see the universe through the eyes of creation rather than through a screen of human angst. This view is utterly non-scientific in that it seeks not to explain, but to experience; not to investigate, but to inhale.

Does this mean one has contacted mystical currents? Are nonmaterial forces at play? It often feels that way, but the answer doesn’t matter. What matters is that the heart goes from feeling ill at ease in a complicated and confusing world, to being at home in a unified cosmos. There is more that could be said, but nothing that must be.