WillSpirit!

In May 2009, when this blog launched, I seldom hesitated to disclose my darker moods. Thinking back to my posts this year, on the other hand, it seems obvious that my comfort with opening up has diminished. The more recent writings emphasize my highest spiritual peaks and wisest mindsets. During periods of discouragement and seeming defeat, I seldom blog.

Although my posting frequency has decreased largely because of my acupuncture project, clamming up in the face of distress explains many of my quiet intervals. The pragmatic reason for holding back has to do with expectations society places on physicians. It’s bad enough to be practicing medicine with a fairly ‘out there’ stance on my past emotional difficulties. It would be even worse to suggest that turmoil happens in the present day. But why not take a chance and admit it does?

OK, here it is: sometimes I’m far from spiritually grounded, and all too close to neurosis. My suspicion is that this is true of most of us in modern times (although people feel their discouragement to different degrees of intensity), but it can be dicey to break the silence and admit it. For some reason, states other than happiness are viewed as wrong, if not diseased.

I’ll grant that the healthiest mindset is a contented one, and that true mystical realization would likely lead to peacefulness that didn’t fluctuate all that much. But average or even above average mental health includes times of darkness. Moments of doubt should not be considered illnesses or useless afflictions. Maybe they are promptings; maybe they are the mind’s way of calling for course adjustment; but they are no more a sign of disease than feeling tired after a long day at work. Life can be exhausting in contemporary society, and I believe we have a right and perhaps a duty to acknowledge this fundamental truth.

It does not follow that fatigue and sorrow is a normal human state we have no choice but to endure. I don’t believe that human experience has to be so punishing. As things stand, we’re bound to feel existential grief simply from looking at the modern scene with its myriad problems and discords. But perhaps if we all confessed to feeling overwhelmed, we’d start working together to build a more supportive culture.

As I’ve progressed on my journey, my distressing times have started to reflect the universal stress of daily life rather than specific trials of my childhood. This reversal from my previous situation seems like progress: at least now I’m reacting more to current stressors and less to historical patterning.

But I still react, and I’ve been remiss in not reporting my less admirable states of mind. Hopefully, this essay rectifies that lapse. Of course, you’ll note this post contains little about what I’ve specifically felt in past weeks. For reasons of professionalism, I’m refraining from describing details with my prior vivid emotional language. Even so, I want to come forward and dispel any notion that readers may hold, and especially that I might hold myself, which suggests I’ve found permanent spiritual grounding.

Without doubt I have my moments of dwelling in a psychic garden of profound acceptance and understanding. On the other hand, during recent months there have been many days when such verdant landscape seemed quite unreachable.

My previous stance was that occasional intense emotional pain would ever be part of my experience, and my task in life was to learn to live well even so. But after a recent weekend spiritual retreat, several key insights arose that have me questioning psychic fatalism. In short, there may be reason to hope that with the proper attitude I can actually eliminate or at least greatly reduce the times of anguish.

In my meditation practice to date, I’ve concentrated on entering primal awareness as a path toward serene acceptance of my place in the human drama. That my saga would continue to unfold with battering effect, and that the universe would stand dispassionately aside as I flailed through the churning waves of fate remained unquestioned.

The ideas of a deeply loving cosmos, and especially a personal God, seemed both unnecessary and untenable.

My position has changed. The previous post describes one line I’ve managed to draw through the thicket of controversy in order to entertain the idea of a caring and discrete Godlike consciousness. After this past weekend retreat, it seems obvious to me that my inner discord would be soothed if I allowed myself to take the next step and actually believe. In short, my life would go more smoothly with a measure of faith as it is traditionally understood.

To even raise the possibility of believing in a God who holds a personal stake in our experience feels more dangerous than admitting the fact of my ongoing periodic darkness, but I would dearly like this journal to remain honest and genuine. Thus I confess to facing a choice: either relinquish my skepticism and have faith in personalized cosmic love, or adhere to the ‘sophisticated’ intellectualism that dismisses such notions as childish, ignorant, and fearful.

More and more, the former seems like the wiser and healthier selection. Not because there is any empirical evidence for a loving God, but because such belief promises great relief to my lonely soul, which otherwise resonates with the aftermath of childhood bereavement, abuse, and neglect. I feel no call to believe in a directing God who intervenes or protects, for which I see absolutely no evidence. But a conviction that the universe cares whether or not we find inner satisfaction on our journey would be supremely comforting. Fortunately, after a great deal of study, thought, and introspection, I’ve accepted that the possibility is not farfetched.

This is as honest as I can be: although emotional pain now seems acceptable and sometimes even enriching, I’d rather move beyond it. As nearly as I can tell, getting to a state beyond inner turmoil is going to require humble acceptance of ideas that are neither sophisticated nor rationally supportable. Will the world think I’ve abandoned my intellect?

If the payoff is loving peace of mind, why would I care?