WillSpirit!

What do we want? I mean, what do we truly hope for in life?

More than anything, I suspect it is to be understood. When a child falls and skins her knee, she would like the pain to ease, but mainly she wants her parents to hold her and honor the hurting. Minimizing the problem or telling her not to cry does not help; only a sweet embrace and a tender wiping of tears comforts the weal of suffering.

We remain like that child, despite our adult defenses. We don’t want people to tell us we exaggerate our ordeals, or that we should “just move on,” or that we should count our blessings. We yearn to be heard. We hope others will see how hard we try, how deeply we despair, how difficult life is for us. Reminders that most people suffer may help us feel less persecuted, but offers of compassion heal us more.

I’ve been writing about the Watcher and have even equated it with the mind of God. This may seem like hyperbole, but it is not so far off the mark. Because more than anything, the Watcher within knows our pain. It sees our struggle. It tries to help and is motivated by love. Aren’t these the qualities people attribute to God?

Perhaps the Watcher is nothing more than an echo of our infantile comfort in our mother’s arms. Or perhaps it truly is Divine awareness manifesting from the depths of our nervous systems. Or maybe it’s simply another reentrant loop of neural fibers in the thalamocortical circuit. But whatever its source, it exists as surely as consciousness itself.

Only rarely do we receive sufficient love and comfort from those around us. First of all, no matter how intimately we share or how closely our companions observe, no one else truly knows how we feel inside. So they can’t possess enough perspective on our suffering to fully assure us of their comprehension. Second, most people are dealing with serious problems of their own, and we can’t expect much more than brief reassurance and temporary smiles, as nice as these are to receive. Finally, every person has sensitivities and fears, so that truly confronting another’s distress brings them perilously close to their own. Defenses very often snap into place automatically, creating a distance that love can only partially bridge. People are only human, after all.

But the Watcher, that inner Grace and knowing Self, observes us intimately, shares our problems, and puts up no defense. It comforts almost as completely as the welcoming arms and nurturing breasts that saved us when we first fell into this world terrorized by glare and holler.

There may not be much serenity in human civilization, but there is tranquility in the human heart. We lose sight of it; often we even run from it, but it is there. We can regain this center. We can become acquainted with our innate loving nature and our personal share of divinity.

How? By stilling thought. By paying attention to the present moment. By looking around and seeing all that connects us with the world and other people. By recognizing our own smallness in the face of the vast universe, and our own largeness in the space of our souls.

Enlisting the Watcher does not require painful effort. In fact, we merely need to abandon striving and embrace our tiny but majestic human lives, just as they are: right here and right now.

The last essay, like one written long ago, emphasized the Watcher stance. In reading and responding to comments, I soon realized that my casually equating the Watcher with conscience muddied the waters. Conscience sits perilously close to its darker partner: shame. And while the Watcher is the guardian of conscience, it is much larger. So large, in fact, that it can nearly be equated with God itself.

You see me going out on the proverbial limb here. Only rarely (these days) do I offer suggestions about metaphysical reality because all such statements are partial, provisional, and controversial. But every once in awhile it makes sense to define terms, and for all my ‘devout agnosticism’ (as I’ve called it) I do bandy the “G” word quite a bit. So what do I really mean by it?

Let me start by saying that the biggest problem I see with religions is how they limit our outlook, when reality is too vast and mysterious for any doctrine to encompass. Of all the faiths I’ve investigated, Hinduism does the best job of keeping a broad perspective, but even it has its blind spots. As a consequence of religious myopia, I’ve never been able to wholeheartedly plunge into any faith. Yes, I consider myself a Quaker first and foremost, but even that group has some philosophical shortcomings.

What I’ve always wanted is insight into how the world works on its most fundamental and mystical level, and by picking and choosing among the opinions and metaphors of various sects (while informed by a fairly extensive education in the sciences), I believe that goal has been more or less reached. Of course, I don’t know the source or destiny of Creation, but I have found an edifying comprehension of why and how the cosmos manages to be both harsh and healing simultaneously.

Which brings me to the God concept. As I’ve said many times: during states of transcendence, awareness of the Unity, Rightness, and Love pervading the universe always resonates deeply within my heart. Sometimes one aspect dominates, but this trinity is always present. I’ve also read it described as Truth, Justice, and Beauty. Or why not use the Christian terminology of Father (Rightness), Son (Love), and Holy Spirit (Unity)? The words don’t matter, but the feelings do.

So where does the Watcher fit in all this? The Watcher comprehends this tripartite harmony of things. It understands that if we are all united, every act we perform affects the entire evolution of consciousness. If the universe is essentially ‘right,’ then there is little reason to fret and worry: everything that happens somehow serves Cosmic progression. And if Love is the fundamental quality of the universe, we need only choose to serve Love better. Life becomes very simple, and the Watcher embodies this wisdom.

Note that Rightness means that the universe is unfolding as it must; there is nothing wrong with its structure or development. Yes, humanity is a work-in-progress, and we have a long way to go before we can call ourselves morally evolved. But no child is born with adult maturity, and no self-aware species can make it to full realization without stumbling along the way.

Rightness is not meant to prompt us to judge ourselves, or berate ourselves, or hate ourselves. Love is the steadying force here, and it tells us that we are beautiful beings even as we struggle and fail. Whether we behave like saints or collapse and harm others, we are loved. This is a potent fact to keep in mind when we look at our shortcomings.

How can we manifest loveliness even when we harm others? Unity answers that question. Because every act is collective (at a minimum in historical development and subsequent effects), when we hurt others we harm ourselves; when we support others we uplift ourselves. There is no true hatred in such a world, only a vast, terrible confusion that leads us to (self) destruction.

The Watcher sees all these interconnections, even if it doesn’t articulate them outright. It operates from a place of ancient and unshakable insight. It is, in my opinion, our collective consciousness and (as Jung would have it) the collective unconscious. For all practical purposes, the Watcher is the mind of God.

I have written before about how this might work scientifically. For now, I just want us to recognize that God is best sought within our hearts. It is not an external force that we need to summon from afar; it is a loving, cohesive, and wise spirit that we all possess. We merely need to acknowledge its presence and power. Most importantly, we do best as we learn to accede to its guidance.

As a consequence of adopting the Watcher as my guide, I now understand the truth stated in one of my recent replies to a commentator: there is no “right” way for life to unfold. Perhaps I’d been moving toward this realization for a long time, but my sister’s death last October pushed me the final distance. To my regret, I had gotten in the habit of seeing her personality (which was highly volatile) as damaged and her life (she was a terminal alcoholic) as tragic. Yet even though only five people who knew her well attended her funeral, I could see how she had deeply affected all of us. Janice suffered, but I no longer believe she lost out in life. Yes, she missed some nice aspects of human existence: stability, prosperity, a family of her own. But she valued the dangerous, the marginal, and the iconoclastic. Those offbeat realms attracted her, and she pursued them with inspiring zest.

Throughout our lives, we are told a story about successful living. These days, with so much media and advertising, it has gone beyond mere suggestion and risen to the level of legend: we are successful only when we are energetic, attractive (and especially youthful), affluent, influential, popular, joyous, and fun loving. That story has haunted me much of my life, ever more so as I saw myself “failing” by its criteria. Ruined careers, no children, and for many years no joy. But from the Watcher’s perspective, all human lives are equal. This is not to suggest that we aren’t encouraged to improve, but I no longer think that success in the opinion of humankind corresponds in any significant way with valuable living in the cosmic sense.

So life can be, as I have found it to be, enriching even in the midst of dreadful pain, frightening illness, business failure, and injustice. Who says that sorrow and pain aren’t just as enriching as happiness and pleasure? Only our preference for the one over the other, but certainly not any cosmic value system. Don’t we feel moved by the sick and bereaved? Why not feel that same loving empathy when we witness illness and grief in ourselves? Why not direct toward our own ailing souls the compassion we feel toward others who suffer? (Here is where Love and Unity are useful principles to remember.)

To be alive is to be living rightly. Yes, there are those who hurt and exploit others, and we are all charged with the task of educating them (at best) or incarcerating them (at worst) so that the innocent are protected. But even such destructive individuals may be playing an essential role in the cosmic drama. Who are we to say the universe is badly made? Rightness is beyond our limited understanding.

If we look at pain and suffering as somehow “wrong” we end up rejecting a big portion of life’s journey, which includes such difficulties as surely as it includes their opposites. I prefer to think that Creation knows what it’s doing, even if we don’t. This Watcher wisdom may be nothing but opinion, not established fact, but it has made my life seem much richer and more rewarding than it did when I judged my progress by society’s narrow standards.

Christ’s life is meant, I believe, to give us exactly this perspective. The betrayal, torment, and humiliating death he endured were not mistakes. They were not signs of a life gone off-track. They became beautiful symbols of what’s possible if we look for the deeper purposes in suffering and embrace even misery and injustice with loving hearts.

The Universe is calling us to choose a path for ourselves. All of us are up to the call and to the task. This doesn’t mean we won’t continue to grieve, regret, and suffer, but we will be living exactly as we are meant to even as we stumble into the next stage of our pilgrimage.

At least, this is how I now see my own life, and if I can view my trajectory this way after all that’s happened, I believe anyone can. I do not regret the past anymore; I do not fear the future. I try to keep learning, try to keep helping, try to keep uniting. This feels so much better than struggling to succeed in worldly terms. It feels like I am finally on track. Adopting the Watcher stance has brought me to this point, and the same spirit of Unity, Rightness, and Love is beckoning us all.

When a stretch of ocean rises with the passing of a wave, we all foresee what happens next: it falls. The sun rises, and we know it will set. Summer heats the land, then winter cools it.

When mania grips the mind, driving thoughts, speech, and movement at high speed, the inevitable sequela is depression. But as a concept, to be depressed no longer means much to me. Yes, sadness envelops me like the wet fog that often blankets San Francisco. Yes, my heart beats drearily, worn out by the burst of energy and all the problems that came before. Yes, my mood feels down.

In the old days, say four or five years ago, I would have found it tough to get things done in this condition. The soft, lonely mattress upstairs would sing its siren song. My body might curl into the fetal position under layers of blankets, with the shades darkening the room and the door keeping out my wife and dogs. Back then, depression was a force that knocked me down as surely as a tornado flattens houses.

Nowadays, on the other hand, I embrace emotion’s gales. Rather than futilely trying to hold my own against their pressure, like a mobile home on the prairie, I ride them like a sail before the wind. Sure, I feel tattered and sometimes even shredded, but at least there is movement and the scenery changes. I don’t stare woefully at the ceiling for hours on end. This freedom to surf moods rather than resist them served me well during my recent manic crisis.

What happened to my brain weeks ago? Why did my mind wind into a state of mania so severe that I lost friends, frightened my wife, and learned once again that my mental state can become terribly unbalanced? We could point to the many stressors: a major illness, heightened pain, an insurance battle, a failed business. We could blame the medication prescribed to settle my moods that paradoxically accelerated them. No doubt these factors contributed to igniting my brain with frenetic and sometimes euphoric mental fire, but what was going on under the hood?

I just don’t know. One thing that’s become clear as I’ve watched myself get tossed around by psychiatric chaos over the years is that the causes are both manifold and obscure. I listed stimuli in the last paragraph, but these aren’t explanations. Neuroscientists could suggest areas of my brain that might have been overactive and neurotransmitters that might have been secreted in unusual amounts. But they could no more describe the details of my mania than I can explain the behavior of my dogs. If it rains, I know they will be less enthusiastic about their daily walk on the trails. But does that reflect nonverbal analysis, pure emotion, or simple instinct? Impossible to say. A brain scan and chemical assay might provide some interesting information, but they wouldn’t answer these questions. Nor could such studies truly explain why my brain lit up like the Burning Man.

What I do know is that through all the psychic chaos, a part of me stood outside the fray and simply observed inner and outer events. It watched my body get sick. It noticed anger toward the insurance company. It recognized disarray as my mind lost its moorings. It honored grief as we removed the decorations from our acupuncture office. But it didn’t get fully swept up in any of this. The watcher managed to avoid getting pulled into the whirlpool of problems.

You know how we sometimes get lost in scary movies and scream when the knife plunges into a character we favor? It’s almost as if we see a loved one under attack rather than an actor with a packet of fake blood under her blouse. I dislike that sort of film, but if one ends up playing in front of me, I try to picture the cameraman, the director, the makeup artists, the reflecting screens, the props, and all the activity that doesn’t show up in the frame. I pull back from the story and imagine the context that created it. This lessens my emotional distress.

Watching myself these past eight weeks has felt just like that. I’ve stepped back from the turmoil time and again, and looked at historical antecedents. I’ve watched my moods range up and down with the knowledge that this has happened quite a few times before. I’ve endured physical pain as a slightly dispassionate observer who understands the difference between the body that feels and the consciousness that watches.

Many of us have experience with drugs of abuse. Alcohol can make us unrecognizable to loved ones; so can psychedelics, stimulants, and sedatives. But even in the midst of intoxication, there usually remains a particle of conscience. Alcohol makes it easy to bypass our better instincts, but it doesn’t completely remove them from the picture. At almost all times, a kinder, healthier, wiser Self watches our actions. Just as we can observe the pains and trauma that befall us, we can also pay attention to our behavior. This is true when we are under the influence of drugs, and it is true when we are affected by mental disorder.

I’ve removed from this blog some early posts that discussed all the pain caused by prescribed drugs in the area of my sexuality. Because of how my stepmother intruded on me as a young adolescent and mocked my developing body, when the treatments for my mental health and spinal issues started affecting my reproductive system I felt deeply humiliated and even suicidal. Fortunately, most of the physiological damage has reversed now that I’ve tapered off the drugs, and I may soon restore for public view that painful series of essays so that others might benefit.

I mention that difficult time of my life because during the recovery process the doctors were treating me with fairly high doses of testosterone gel, which I applied to my skin daily. To take that drug was a lesson in the malleability of mind. Before long my libido became as intense as it had been in my twenties. It seemed as if a horny radar system tracked every female within a hundred yard radius. I felt lustful from dawn to dusk. It was not always pleasant, and it certainly wasn’t appreciated by my wife. It isn’t typical for a man of fifty to feel anxious for intercourse daily or even multiple times a day, and there are few women past menopause who would welcome such hunger from their mate.

Luckily, I am tapering off the hormone treatment, and it appears that before long I may be able to stop it entirely. I am content with my more modest sex drive, and I am relieved to feel less distracted by the young women on the street who no doubt have enough men salivating after them already.

I bring this up to show how a single chemical can radically change a person’s state of brain and mind. Unlike drugs of abuse, hormonal treatments alter people’s internal state for weeks and months. I contended with excess sexual charge for a couple of years. I know some men would welcome the transformation; they would accept the elevated cancer risk and all the other hazards of steroid therapy. They wouldn’t mind feeling irritable and easily angered. The dangers would seem trivial compared to renewal of youthful libidinous drive. The current onslaught of testosterone (“low T”) advertising will encourage many to demand the gel from their doctors.

And that is their right. My point here is only that if our personalities can be so affected by specific chemicals, imagine what life events can do. Or even food. What changes in brain chemistry follow a chocolate bar?

But let me stress again that we can choose to watch these changes and not get swept away by them. I never lost sight of the source of my heightened libido during the testosterone madness. If I had, perhaps I’d now be divorced and struggling to satisfy a much younger woman. Maybe I’d be living a whole new life, having broken the heart of the spouse who stood by me through so many difficult illnesses and losses.

So much better, in my opinion, to remain mindful and observant. To see the many surges of emotion, desire, fantasy, and thought, while retaining the ability to choose actions that serve the greatest good.

There is a difference between brain, mind, and Self (as in the last post, I emphasize the capital ‘S’). The brain can (and will) undergo all manner of changes in chemistry; the mind will follow with gyrations in mood, thought, and appetite. But the Self can remain selective. It can watch; it can choose.

Yes, I admit that during my manic peak my behavior became quite difficult to control. But even then, I was able to explain to others that my brain and mind were compromised. At my most lucid moments, I asked them to understand how much effort I was expending trying to hold on. I called out for help while trapped in boiling currents, and I attempted to rectify damage even as my mental apparatus created it.

It was a good exercise, because now that my nervous system is less fired up, I see improvement in my ability to monitor my psychological state and wisely select my actions regardless of inner distractions. Functioning under duress heightened my ability to ride the waves without dissolving in them.

The prologue last time mentioned a tiny psychiatric crisis that intruded upon my life. Later, in the body of the essay, I wrote:

One nice thing about complete mental breakdown is that it erases all delusions of inner solidity. This can feel alarming, but it can also awaken us to the power and hopefulness of fragmentation.

In the aftermath of my recent physical illness, a mammoth struggle with my disability company, and the dawning realization of my inability to continue as an acupuncturist, my mind became unpinned from its ordinary constraints. Like a hot air balloon released from tethers, it rose skyward. The loss of mooring led to large-scale mental disorganization, which due to meditative work, assistance from many healers, and luck, resolved within a relatively short time. I remain a bit more energized than usual, but my mental velocity is now compatible with normal life.

Readers have often observed my attempts to find lessons in hardship. My primary strategy for negotiating life’s trials is to use them as sources of insight. This doesn’t mean I believe the universe (God?) inflicts pain as education. But no matter how or why disaster arises, we are all forced to deal with it. For me, the surest way to live through my problems is to discover some meaning in them.

Here is some of the difficulty and instruction served up by 2012 (so far): A major abdominal disease process initially suggestive of pancreatic cancer taught me to value life more deeply. Severe pain and nonstop vomiting showed me that even as my body writhed in agony, my mind could find peace. The hassle with the insurance company forced me to abandon passivity and take a more proactive stance. The looming closure of my acupuncture practice helped me understand that I’d gained much from the project even if it failed in its stated goal of permanently establishing me in a new career as a healer.

So how did a full-blown manic crisis enlighten me? Was it merely a lesson in “the power and hopefulness of fragmentation?” Not at all. More importantly, it highlighted the differences between brain, mind, and Self (with a capital ‘S’). Before explaining how flying off the rails taught me so much, I’ll describe the evolution and resolution of my mania.

As is often the case with psychiatric spinouts, in the early stages nothing seemed terribly unusual. I had been released from the first hospitalization (for internal bleeding) and felt poorly. In short order I alienated a close friend, but he had treated me shoddily on several occasions and I felt justified in slamming him. That should have been a clue to my deteriorating mental state, but in typical human fashion I made excuses and blamed the other party. Besides, it seemed that pain and fear were sufficient to explain my irritability and impulsiveness.

The day after my discharge from the second hospitalization, my disability company called and declared me capable of full-time, high-paying work in a corporate/medical environment. This pronouncement immediately escalated my agitation and anxiety to dangerous levels, but that is more clear in retrospect than it was at the time. To burn off some of my raging frustration, I stomped up and down the hills around my house. My insides boiled with explosive terror and fury, even as I felt utterly depleted by my recent illness and the starvation I’d suffered during it. Waves of intense psychic energy propelled me forward despite my depleted physical reserves.

Late one afternoon, on my second hike of the day, I watched myself wound someone in pain. Walking with a friend, I tried to help this man cope with personal problems by (in effect) yelling at him. This is not at all my normal way of relating to people in distress, and before long I recognized my behavior as hurtful and counterproductive. I tried to smooth the situation by apologizing and blaming my poor health, but damage had been done. Another friendship succumbed (at least temporarily) to my evolving mania.

Because the disability company claimed (falsely, it turns out) that my psychiatrist had deemed me free of psychological impairment, I called the good doctor in an angry panic. I accused her of misrepresenting my case. After several days of unabating inner chaos, I acquiesced to “mood-stabilizing” medication to take the edge of the jagged mental state that afflicted me. The drug given then had the paradoxical effect of escalating a so-called hypomania into a surging manic state. Before long all ability to sleep or meditate was lost, emotional tsunamis swept through me unpredictably, and my language became erratic and alarming.

A few days later, my therapist likened watching me to seeing someone respond to the effects of LSD. In the course of our session I alternated between tears, laughter, attempts to calm down, and rapid flights of speech. Over the next twenty-four hours, my inner energies continued to burgeon until I could no longer sit down. I paced constantly and became unable to connect my high velocity thoughts with the snail’s pace of ordinary speaking. My language became stilted and bizarre as I tried to express myself through a swirling storm of neural chaos.

Despite the accumulating havoc, the experience had some positive aspects. At times during this maelstrom of mania, I entered spacious realms of divine wisdom. I understood in my deepest heart the exquisite tenderness and determined durability of life. I felt the densely woven webs of consciousness and ecology that unite us all. I recognized value in every wound I’ve ever suffered, and I lost all doubt that brokenness plays an essential role in creation. Insights that cannot be expressed in words flooded my soul with peace. Love became a palpable presence, as pervasive as air. But these moments came and went unpredictably, alternating with irritable torrents of spoken words and inappropriate expressions of boundless affection toward those nearby.

Whew…

Luckily my psychiatrist answered her phone personally at 6:30 pm, or I’d have ended up in the emergency room. There’s a good chance the next stop would have been a mental hospital. Instead, I was instructed to discontinue the putative mood stabilizer. My doctor called in a prescription for Valium to help me finally get some sleep. After pacing the pharmacy and putting the staff on edge while the bottle was prepared, I was able to snooze fitfully for a few hours.

Over the next couple of days I noticed a little slowing. I often couldn’t sit down for as long as a minute, but whenever I wasn’t speaking my mind seemed less on fire. Any use of language ramped up the energy, but by remaining nonverbal I was able to find moments of calm. Over the following week I augmented the soothing effects of sleep and Valium with acupuncture, massage, swimming, saunas, and soaks in the spa at the YMCA. I meditated whenever it seemed possible.

Today, nearly six weeks since this all started (and after about ten days of straight-up mania), I feel nearly normal again. I’m especially happy to report that despite all this spinning and bucking mental activity, throughout this episode I retained connection to a sane particle of consciousness in the center of it all. As a result, there remained a hint of helpless but patient curiosity even as I watched myself behave in an overcharged and inappropriate manner.

Well, this essay was supposed to describe the lessons gleaned from mental fragmentation, but it already exceeds twelve hundred words (i.e., fifty percent more than my preferred maximum). So I’ll put off until next time discussion of what this episode teaches. For now, let’s all mark the end of this essay with a few slow, deep, healing breaths…