Readers of this blog have demonstrated their preference for intimate sharing over intellectual musing. Abstract, reasoned posts garner few comments and occasionally prompt people to unsubscribe from WillSpirit. Reader involvement has waned of late, and I suspect that’s because many of my recent essays have been more philosophical than emotional.

But I need to write about metaphysics, the nature of knowing (technically, epistemology), and consiousness. Although its primary motive is helping others, my blogging nurses the wounds inflicted by past traumas and setbacks. Grounded spirituality supports my health, and philosophical essays situate my mystical aspirations on solid footings.

Several years ago I switched from a private practice psychiatrist to Kaiser’s mental health clinic. My new doctor offered two observations early in our relationship. First, she remarked that I was taking a lot of ‘garbage,’ by which she meant my half-dozen psychiatric medications. Second, she opined that my only hope for lasting peace of mind was to find a spiritual solution to the problems caused by my traumatic upbringing and devastating career loss.

Her contempt for my medication regimen shocked and alarmed me. I had trusted my prior psychiatrist and obediently taken all the pills she prescribed. It had never occurred to me that a different doctor would view the cocktail of potent drugs as excessive and dangerous. My new psychiatrist’s perspective forced me to realize that the dreadful side effects I’d incurred might have been avoided had I started out with more competent care.

Even more perplexing was the advice about spirituality. I’d attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for twenty years and had been trying to find a ‘Higher Power’ the entire time. After my transcendent experiences in 2000 (which doctors diagnosed as manic psychosis), I’d managed to sustain religious fervor for a few years. But the mystical resonance had worn off (indeed, the earlier psychiatrist had discouraged my exploration of mystical states). How was I going to find spirituality with a materialist worldview predetermined by my atheist upbringing?

Around the same time, I became friends with someone who had been active in AA for a long time but struggled with the Twelve Steps’ emphasis on God. Despite some moderating language in its Big Book, AA usually makes God sound like an all-powerful parent (i.e., Yahweh). Both for my friend’s sake and my own, I began writing blog posts to ferret out a transcendent path free of mythic and irrational beliefs.

I dovetailed this work with attendance at local Buddhist sanghas and retreats for over a year, and then a like amount of time training at a nearby Hindu center. Prior to this, my meditation practice had been developed in either Quaker or secular contexts (i.e., mindfulness classes at my local medical center). The former provided little instruction, and the latter ignored mystical implications. In contrast, Buddhist programs offered specific guidance toward deep currents of consciousness, and the Hindu tradition connected meditative states to cosmic love. As I progressed along these paths, WillSpirit essays helped me reconcile my spiritual insights with my understanding of biology and physics. The search was on.

My Buddhist and Hindu explorations overlapped with my study of Chinese Medicine as I prepared to practice acupuncture. Readers already know the outcome of that professional venture, but the schooling exposed me to Taoism, Confucianism, and other Chinese philosophies. These studies complemented my growing understanding of Buddhist and Hindu metaphysics. For the first time, I began to feel comfortable with Eastern mysticism. Blogging organized my thinking as I incorporated an entirely new set of philosophies into my worldview.

As many experts have asserted, it is easy to find parallels between Eastern philosophy and the counterintuitive reality revealed by modern physics (especially quantum mechanics). Similarly, although divergent in emphasis, both holistic healing and conventional medicine restore vitality to weakened organisms. WillSpirit became the platform on which I integrated newfound holism with the reductionism I’d absorbed as an undergraduate, graduate, and medical student.

You can see how blogging about philosophy has helped me mature. Since gaining insight remains central to my mental health, metaphysical writing will remain a key feature of WillSpirit.

Even so, I respect the needs of my readers. When I visit other blogs, I’m most touched when the writers reveal inner conflicts or neuroses that resonate with my own difficulties. I want WillSpirit to serve as a locus for kindred souls to gather and heal as one. Besides, just as philosophizing helps me grow, sharing my life experience helps me heal.

With that in mind, let me end by revealing how devastated I’ve felt during the past two days. After weeks of slow improvement, the neck pain that had so worsened around the time of my hospitalization returned full-force. I may have overstretched doing yoga, or maybe the intense pain and spasm happened for no reason. But until I broke down and started taking muscle relaxants and narcotics, I could barely move because of intense, stabbing pain in my neck, shoulder, and upper back.

This was bad enough, but the awful discomfort also had its predictable effect on my mood. I spiraled quickly into an angry depression, complete with specific plans for suicide. My thinking bordered on the delusional, as evidenced by my suggesting that my wife prepare for my death. On what planet would that be the right thing to say? I didn’t announce a definite decision, but I told her that my reserves were running dry and it felt like I’d lived long enough. I wanted the suffering to end, once and for all. Naturally, this greatly alarmed her and left us both shell-shocked for the next 24 hours.

As an alternative to suicide, I gave in and took pills. Narcotic pain relievers alarm me because of my past addiction problems, but they seemed preferable to sliding further toward suicide.

Where was my vaunted spiritual perspective during all this uproar? I must admit it failed me. I felt only sucking despair and lost my ability to mentally detach from pain. The agony worsened as I looked at my professional failures and troubled friendships through the lens of discouragement and self-contempt. I felt unable or perhaps unwilling to step back and adopt ‘The Watcher’ stance that usually saves me.

Today I’m feeling better. After a day of lessened pain and tension, I can now discern a spiritual light shining dimly in my heart. I can see the bigger picture, though the narrow view still tugs at me.

Maybe the philosophical posts are my way of sidestepping true emotion. If they serve avoidance, it’s no surprise they don’t engage readers. But I still think such writings help me. They don’t vaccinate me against despair, but they elaborate a spiritual philosophy that is independent of specific beliefs and resistant to doubt. Such a foundation makes it easier for me to accept my hardships with an open heart. Obviously, it sometimes takes time and even medication to unlock the gate, but I know where to find relief.

Hopefully, my readership will understand and forgive my putting personal needs first. Although the philosophical posts are often boring, they serve my psyche. I also realize that successful blogs usually stick to a single subject area; I appreciate my readers for indulging the obvious variability of theme (e.g., mental health, metaphysics, neuroscience). Long ago I promised to write the Whole Story. For me, that includes dispassionate contemplation as well as heartfelt intimacy. But the ultimate goal is to help us all discover paths to Peace of Mind.

In my own clumsy way, I seek to reconcile rationality with intuition, mind with heart, Will with Spirit. As boring as it often sounds, this is my best formula for Grace.

Who am I fooling?

Myself, mostly. The last piece did the usual intellectual thing and talked about an approach without talking about approaching. What matters is getting close to life, not describing getting close. And right now I feel very far away.

Enough posts lately have catalogued my recent misfortunes; I won’t list them again. Besides, although I’m sure the hardships play into my feelings, they aren’t playing through my thoughts. So what’s causing this sense of detachment and sorrow?

Pain, first of all. Physical discomfort in my neck, left arm, and abdomen. Although I consider myself skilled at using meditation (and not medication) to manage my pain, there are limits. I’ve reached them.

Hopelessness, second of all. With the demise of the acupuncture practice came a great reduction in stress but also the loss of a meaningful project. Sure, I’m slowly preparing a WillSpirit upgrade, which gives me a new focus, but it doesn’t feel as rich and exciting as clinical work.

Acupuncture connected me in a person-to-person way with others. Now my only helping activity is right here on this inconspicuous blog. Although writing gives me some sense of making a difference, we are talking about action at a distance. There is none of the sweetness of treating patients hands-on. I miss that and realize such experience has probably passed from my life forever.

Then comes the fear. With no way of making a living, I’m at the mercy of my disability company and the greater economic system, both of which have proven horribly untrustworthy. This isn’t a new reality, but I can no longer imagine breaking free of it. I feel trapped as the future and old age bear down on me.

And loneliness. I do a poor job of maintaining social contacts. A promising friendship got nipped in the bud when the person in question moved to the opposite coast. Another friendship ended during my manic episode. I value my small social circle, but there’s no denying its narrow circumference. I’ll keep reaching out, but in this mood it’s difficult and it isn’t like I’m much fun to be around.

The mood will lighten eventually, of course, but for now the darkness is deepening. Based on past experience, I know the bleak emotions may get a lot worse before they dissipate. I no longer feel compelled to fix the situation with pills or rash action, but I still feel oppressed.

So for all my talk of behaviorism and acting rather than obsessing about thoughts and feelings (as in the last post), I feel pretty stuck. Yes, I’ll go through all the necessary motions today: an AA meeting, swimming, some errands, a doctor’s appointment. I’ll write this blog post. I’ll walk the dogs. I won’t just lie in bed and feel sad.

But curling up under blankets sounds tempting. I find myself asking how much longer life will last. Like a kid in the back seat of a car, I look forward to the end of this journey. That’s not a happy way to live, and I try to keep from focusing too much on that question, but it’s in the air. My air.

Ever since starting this blog I’ve tried to remain honest. Often it seems like my hard work has paid off and I feel a sense of mastery over my mental state; on those days I write accordingly. But today I feel lost and confused. I wonder if anything substantive has actually changed. Have I just been fooling myself?

I have no choice but to make this short (or what counts as brief for me): I only have one hand. Slicing broccoli normally doesn’t cause me problems, but as my mental condition deteriorates off Cymbalta, even routine tasks are becoming hard. The knife careened off the stalk I was skinning.

I like to put broccoli flowers in salads, and after I chop up the tops I always split the peeled stalks with Ralphy, one of our two dogs. Tonight the blade slipped as I was cutting off the rind, and I somehow managed to slide the tip of my left ring finger between the knife’s edge and the cutting board. The blade nearly sliced off the part of the figertip distal to (sorry for the medical term–’distal to’ just means ‘further out than’) the nail. My pain tolerance is high, but this surprised me with how much it hurt. The end of the finger obviously contains a dense network of nerve endings. Luckily, there was enough of an attachment remaining that after a long period of washing, and then even more time placing pressure to staunch the bleeding, Mandy was able to secure the little flap in place with an adhesive strip. As an operating room nurse, she would have preferred to drive to the emergency department to see if they could stitch the tiny piece down. As a former (ophthalmic) plastic surgeon, I felt that a successful job would have taken very fine suture and a high degree of skill. I did not think I would get that level of care for this minor problem, and a trip to the ED would only waste 3-4 hours driving, and who knows how long waiting to be seen. In the end, I would have come out with an adhesive strip–much like the one Mandy already attached.

Time was I never would have been so careless with a sharp blade. I prided myself on being able to handle knives, scalpels, etc., skilfully and safely. Now, ten years later, I am very much out of practice. My acquired ineptness with cutting instruments, combined with antidepressant withdrawal (which floods me with the distracting conviction that life is pointless, and also saps my energy levels) caused me to stupidly cut myself. So here I am typing with two fingers and a thumb on one hand, while I keep the other elevated to reduce swelling.

Before this injury, I had toyed with making my next post about the dreadful and permanent side effects I’ve suffered from taking psychiatric drugs. That would have been a big step, because I feel a great deal of shame. Yet doing so will ultimately help me heal and, more importantly, might serve as a warning to others. Maybe cutting off a part of myself was an unconscious way of putting off this decision. So, another time.

I would have a better outlook, increased energy, and sharper judgment if I went back on Cymbalta. But, mainly because of how similar drugs have wrecked my body, I just can’t bring myself to swallow that nasty little green pill. So I keep on in this deteriorating mode, hoping that things don’t get too much worse before they start getting better. I suspect my body needs to regrow a huge number serotonin and/or norepinephrine receptors, as per a post I wrote not long ago. Given how far I’ve sunk since I penned that essay, it seems like it could have been in another lifetime.

Mandy thinks I need to take a break from writing, and a number of other activities important to me, in order to give my fingertip the best chance of healing properly. Since my mood continues to take me to more and more maudlin and self-pitying places, that might be a good idea even without the finger issue. So for a little while I may spend less time blogging. If nothing else, I can concentrate on learning how to customize my blog functionality and layout. I have a stack of books on html, css, php, java, mySQL, etc, that I’ve been unable to devote time to because of the hours spent drafting posts and exploring blogs. I figure if writing never leads to an income, by acquiring programming abilities as I work on my site I will be in a position to look for work in computers instead. But to achieve that objective, the books need to be read.

Nothing as ambitious as success (either as a writer or programmer) will be attained if I don’t recover my emotional equilibrium. I can’t express how much regret consumes me when I think about how a therapist finally talked me into taking medications, and how I went ahead despite a lifetime of opposition to psychiatric drugs. My hesitation was born of watching my mother destroy herself with drugs given to her by psychiatrists, and now I have done exactly the same thing. Except that unlike her, I remain alive… Barely.

The last few days have been grim. As much as it seems like I can now manage my depression, can modulate its intensity, and tolerate it (or even appreciate it as a kind of privileged insight), those concepts have been just that: concepts. No heart. No ability to give me a will to do anything. It started when the readership on the blog dropped off. That, in turn, began with my idea of putting my ‘spiritual philosophy’ out there. Either that direction bored, annoyed, or just did not get picked up in search engines. The problem for me was not the lack of readership, which no doubt will wax and wane. Rather, my incredible sensitivity to adversity has become a handicap.

The good news is, today I feel better. I awoke with a better perspective, and got the courage to turn on the computer and check out the inevitable fact that my blog has dropped off the radar. At first I had a rush of excitement when my email downloaded: a bunch of comments to my posts had rolled in! Then I realized that all of them were spam. And because I’d left them sitting there for two days, they encouraged more spam. So my site had been flooded. At least I was able to chuckle at the irony of my ‘popularity’ only being junk mail.

So, this blog isn’t supposed to be about me anyway. I started it to help others. From that view, if others don’t come, at least I’m fulfilling my intent to try. The tenderness of my feelings is the big problem. I’ve always been touchy, but now it’s become almost ludicrous. Having had so many disappointments and perceived failures in the past decade has taken my original sensitive area and rubbed it raw. I will try to use this last mood collapse as a lesson to not allow setbacks, actual or not, big or small, to affect me so deeply.